By David Irving

11/27/09

Some American businesses are benefiting tremendously from the war in Afghanistan at the expense of the taxpayers. For example, it has been estimated that it costs $600 a gallon for the gasoline that’s used there. We can believe that businesses riding a gravy train serving up this kind of profit love this war and want it to continue as long as possible. As for the American taxpayers – screw them! There’s money to be made. It’s that simple.

Private contractors for security in Iraq and Afghanistan now outnumber American troops doing the same work and are paid five times as much, causing much resentment in the military. What we have on our hands in Iraq and Afghanistan is an army of mercenaries, and its costing the American taxpayers plenty. But, well, like we’ve said – screw them! Moreover, only 5% of the Taliban are hard core ideologues. And while ten percent have a grudge against the U.S. because their family members have been killed by the U.S. military, or for other reasons, the remaining 85% are just simple farmers trying to make a go of it in life. We pay Afghans $100 a month to join our cause. The Taliban pays them $300 to become Taliban fighters. Guess who wins out there. But the big thing to consider, of the countless billions of dollars the United States is paying to wage this war, we could be rebuilding and building Afghanistan to create jobs, eliminate disease, build homes, pave roads, and do all kinds of good things that would win Afghanistan’s heart and mind. Unfortunately, it’s not likely we will do that, just as we don’t do it here at home.

America’s leaders are too shortsighted to grasp how this simple concept of giving works. Perhaps it’s because there is something too non-capitalistic sounding about it. Perhaps they just don’t have enough empathy and compassion. Perhaps they just don’t care quite enough. And so, needing a solution, they turn to a traditional reliance on their military leaders for answers who, like all military leaders wherever they live in the world, do their best to convince the country that military action is the only effective response to violence. But the generals are wrong as shown by the obvious fact that their solution can only lead to further violence, killing, maiming, and continuing bloodshed. After we have crushed the opposition and killed how many innocent men, women, and children in the process, is that when we win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, destroy Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and get peace all across the Middle East? The cry of defiance against the war in Vietnam was “kill, kill in the name of peace.” It appears that little has changed.

President Obama will listen to the generals and then make a few modifications of his own. But few running the show will consider peaceful means like those described above that would have the most powerful impact. Instead, we will have more war and more needless killing and suffering on both sides. Besides inspiring more anti-American propaganda and increasing anti-American recruitment abroad, not to mention the paltry little fact of bringing more death and casualties to American troops and the Afghan population – but hey, what the hell! – more war also increases the build-up of the negative national karma that could someday have catastrophic consequences for the country. In fact, many signs indicate that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are forms of karmic payback stemming from the war in Vietnam. When karma strikes, of course, we rail and fume against everybody but ourselves, just like individual people do when their own actions have brought them down. For those who are unfamiliar with the term karma, it means simply that what goes around comes around – we reap what we sow, in other words, though the form the harvest takes may need some sifting through before it is recognizable, as in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Until people become enlightened they must suffer the consequences of their ignorance. The same is true for countries. To kill when other means are available is not an enlightened approach and the country should not support it.

Thomas Paine’s Corner wants to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to receive them, type “TPC subscription” in the subject line and send your email to willpowerful@hotmail.com

For the latest updates on the animal liberation movement, visit NAALPO at http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/

If you have a Facebook account, don’t forget to look up Thomas Paine’s Corner’s Facebook page via the “search” feature and become a fan.

And if you have a MySpace account, don’t forget to friend Thomas Paine’s Corner at www.myspace.com/anarchovegan

Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4 and go vegan. Do it for your health, for nonhuman animals and for the Earth!

To support or undertake animal rights and liberation activism in the Kansas City area, visit Bite Club of KC at http://biteclubkc.wordpress.com/.

0n the elections in Honduras, taking place six months after a military coup against centre-left president Manuel “Mel” Zelaya – by José Luis Rojo

What was bound to happen all along has now materialised: Mel Zelaya, the bourgeois leader of the resistance to the Honduran military coup, has ended up giving up everything in exchange for nothing. Signing the “Gaymuras-San José” accord (supervised by the Obama administration) he has capitulated. It is clear that the the US government proposed him a ‘double standard’ deal: Zelaya had to sign the deal, the other side only to make a vague promise eventually to “reinstall” him.

But the ‘letter’ of the deal does not oblige post-coup president Micheletti to reinstall him: this is at the mercy of the same pro-coup Congress which voted to depose Zelaya in late June. The Congress has no need to hurry either: “This crucial aspect (his supposed reinstallment) was placed as the fifth of seven items, not the first, and was drafted ambiguously, showing that Zelaya made too many concessions as he signed the accord”.[1]

Zelaya then proceeded to sell the deal to the world, a deal which in no way says what he interpreted it to mean: rather, he had conceded them everything but the shirt off his back.

Dying a death

It is clear that there was nothing in the ‘letter’ of the text to satisfy Zelaya’s demand: it came only from the text of Obama and Clinton’s principal envoy Thomas Shannon, who gave his word that Zelaya would be returned to power. “The question at hand is why, with this document, Zelaya allowed them to take him down a winding path avoiding his return to power: having thrown away the combative resistance, and in view of Micheletti’s obstinacy, in his eyes the only exit route open to him appeared to be to sign this document. Most pressure for this came from the USA, in particular the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Latin America representative Thomas Shannon [2].

However, even apart from these simply children’s games (saying one thing and doing another) there was worldwide paraphernalia about “having reached a deal in Honduras” and finding a solution to the crisis.

At root, however, it was nothing but a simple ruse by which the Obama government achieved what it desired: an escape route to allow it to endorse the coup régime’s 29th November election… even if Zelaya is not to be reinstated. In their eyes, in either case – whether or not he returns – it will be a matter for the “sovereign decision of the Honduran people”.

Micheletti – no fool, let’s be clear – has anchored himself in the ‘letter’ of the deal, which does not bind him to anything and gave him the opportunity to form “a national unity government” to his own liking…

With this Mel Zelaya blew his top – impotently – and, with no effect whatsoever, announced he had ditched the aforementioned ‘deal’. On the way there was a sharp fall in the heroic resistance to the coup, which time and again he had submitted and subordinated to the games of dirty top-level bourgeois diplomacy, and which remained almost unarmed after months and months of back and forth, meaning it represented an ever weaker threat to the coup regime.

In this context, the oligarchy and the thuggish Honduran ruling class closed ranks behind the staging of the 29th November electoral farce, at the head of which stands Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, the candidate of the right-wing Partido Nacional who for certain is a beneficiary – in the last instance – of the affair.

A shadow named Mel Zelaya

The agonies and the ultimate impotence of Zelaya paint a portrait of him as a “dwarf”, like other dwarfs among the other bourgeois politicians who claim to have any independence from imperialisms. In reality, Zelaya never even managed to rise to that level: even if at any given moment he was a member of Petrocaribe and ALBA, he never left the Free Trade Agreement, nor kicked the American marines out of Palmerola [3]. These facts must be evidence enough to judge his political “standing”…

However, his displacement (and the popular struggle for his reinstatement) could have created in some people’s minds the illusion that this would catapult him to the rank of a “bourgeois leader who might perhaps put up a fight”.

None of that took place. With the Gaymuras pact (and his whole trajectory these last few months) what he showed, in reality, is his feebleness faced with imperialism: many Chavistas have been angered by our contention that signing the deal meant “brown nosing” imperialism, but there is no other words to describe it, even if post mortem Zelaya ended up “angered” by the role of the Obama government.

Why did he genuflect so much, almost to the point of political suicide? This owes to Zelaya’s class background and the mood of his own class (the bourgeoisie) after the 28th June coup.

To explain: the fact is that Zelaya was ever more the mere “shadow” of his own social class, coming from a rich landowning family, proprietors of much of Honduras’ territory.

All that was left to “Mel” was the support of the mass movement: but not the support of his own party (which is also Micheletti’s party), any sector of the armed forces, or any other capitalist or institution.

At the same time, given the expressed rejection of the whole armed forces, he realised that he did not have a solid state apparatus at his disposal either: Zelaya’s Honduras did not at any moment bring into place the elements of state capitalism such as exist in Chávez’s Venezuela, although he had made deals with the latter.

Given these circumstances, held back by his bourgeois class position from giving consistent support to the resistance, the least that can be said is that the many “cards” in his hand meant nothing, except perhaps the supposed favours of the “international community”…

From Zelaya to Obama

“His government fell short at the moment of putting words into action with regard to the Honduras coup d’état, and as a result the USA once again left itself more isolated on the continent”[4].

This passage reminds us of the key role the Obama government had in this whole affair. Its trajectory is more than clear: a constant drift to the right, not having fulfilled a single point of his supposed “reformist” agenda. Obama rescued Wall Street but the country has the highest unemployment rate in generations [5]. Obama partially pulled out of Iraq… but only to devote himself more to the war in Afghanistan, extending it to the territory of Pakistan itself. Obama now says that he will shut down Guantánamo “in the course of 2010″… not in January as he had promised. Obama had promised measures to facilitate the unionisation of “informal” sectors of the American working class… only to leave this initiative on this shelf. Barack Obama has been nothing more than part of a media showcase (which has a lot to do with his so-called “reformism”), dressing up very badly as something other than the continuation of the Bush administration.
How did this “evolution” play out on the territory of Honduras? Very simple: from very early on, and inspite of his rhetorical condemnation of the Honduras coup, he aligned himself more and more with the coup. Putting the arch-pro-imperialist Oscar Arias[6], neo-liberal president of Costa Rica, at the head of the negotiations was a clear indication of where his government was headed. This course of action went far indeed: Hillary Clinton ended up condemning Zelaya himself more times than the coup regime.

This being so, the dynamic was ever further to the right. The Republicans attacked the president to the effect that “Obama is ceding ground to Chávez over Zelaya” and that “Chavismo is the USA’s main problem in the region” leading him to lean, almost openly, in favour of the coup. This, not before putting out a series of cynical declarations of the type – ‘they have always been against us interfering in Latin America, and yet now they’re asking us to condemn the coup’.

However, the USA did indeed intervene – with all its weight – in the Honduras crisis. Having said it would not in any way recognise the legitimacy of the 29th November elections, indeed it ended up doing so!

The Obama government is day-to-day the strongest international support for the Honduran bourgeoisie to be able to “turn over a new leaf” with the elections, capitalising on all its gains to rub out all the concessions Zelaya had made to the mass movement: as if his time in power had never taken place.

The refusal to call a general strike

From the start the Honduran resistance was contradictory in nature. On one hand there developed a heroic, unabashed struggle under the military regime: there has barely been a day since 28th June where the resistance has not been challenging the coup in the streets. At the same time there were put in place a series of organisational initiatives which, based on the Coordinadora Nacional de Resistencia Popular, giving way to the Frente Nacional de Resistencia, throughout this time managed to coordinate and/or centralise the fight against the coup.

But from the start the resistance also contained contradictions, the most obvious being the concentration of all demands on the return of Mel Zelaya… leaving the rest by the wayside. And it was clear that it everything was based on the return of Zelaya, then he could not but be the political leadership of this movement. Liberals and Zelayista leaders of the popular movement were thus completely subordinated to Zelaya. Zelay himself subordinated the resistance to the ideas and experiences of his travels around the capitals of the world, looking for the so-called “international movement to reinstall him.

On this track he missed various opportunities to knock down the coup-mongerors. One of the earliest, and most important, came on Sunday 5th July when a crowd estimated at 150,000 people arrived at the international airport in Tegucigalpa in the hope that the elected president would land his plane.

Months afterwards, the impact of Zelaya’s surprise return to Honduras was also wasted: his rhetoric, after he sprung up at the Brazilian embassy, was of “reconciliation” with the coup regime rather than wider mass mobilisation as a response.

Besides, it is clear that the strategies of the resistance itself failed: it never gave up on the “strategy”of protest marches alone.
With anti-working class cretinism characteristic of this type of bourgeois or petty-bourgeois leadership, they never took seriously the idea that to break the coup we had to paralyse the country!

Twenty times in the leadership of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia our comrades in the Honduras Socialist Workers’ Party, members of the Socialismo o Barbarie tendency, stressed the need to launch a general strike to bring down the coup thugs and twenty times this suggestion was passed over. Lamentably this leadership could never have really have compensated for the lack of instances of real grassroots democracy [7].

Given these circumstances the resistance “ran out of ammunition”: mediating via the zig zags of negotiations and false expectations of top-level negotiations, over days, weeks and months it unravelled, although without being entirely defeated.

For this reason, we should not yet rule out a day of action on 29th November with widespread abstention and a later return, more forcefully, of the struggle against the legitimacy of the coup and the new government. Above all if the Coordinadora Nacional de Resistencia Popular had held meetings and was calling a civic stoppage for the week prior to the elections, showing the real strength it could have.

The withdrawal of the independent candidacy, as a revolutionary step
This brings us to the electorial situation. On 9th November the independent candidate Carlos H Reyes formally withdrew (before the Supreme Electoral Tribunal) his candidature.

The news of his withdrawal on the most-viewed political programme in the country, “30-30″ on Sunday 8th November, fell as a true political “bomb”. Not only did the coup supporters try and play it down, saying that “Reyes is withdrawing because he was afraid of his lack of support”[8]

For the mass of the vanguard of the resistance in the country, Reyes’ exit from the illegitimate and fraudulent elections staged by the gangsters has given him impressive prestige. In the country which “gave in as not to be broken” the independent candidate assumed a principled and revolutionary position (not only tactically speaking) as argued by the Honduras Socialist Workers Party, which cannot but be a precedent of immense importance for the establishment of an independent working class pole in the country.

Besides, it is very clear that the withdrawal of the independent candidate is exacting fierce pressure on the centre-left formation Partido de la Unificación Democrática. But disgracefully this party, at the head its leader and presidential candidate César Han, in spite of everything now appear decided on presenting themselves at the elections, arguing that if they did not they would lose their elected representatives (and the money they afford to its coffers). “Why is it so difficult for the UD leadership, which so wants to be ‘on the left, and revolutionary’ to take a decision on such a simple question? Why have they not followed the example of the independent candidate Carlos H Reyes who withdrew from the electoral spectacle, keeping his word? We need only answer: the reason is that the UD leadership is opportunist”[9].

But we should beware: this is only the question of the central leadership of UD; among the grassroots are emerging criticisms and factions who could break with this leadership and evolve to the left [10].

The withdrawal of Carlos H Reyes (setting out the idea of a working-class political instrument in Honduras), simultaneous to the truly treacherous behaviour of César Han’s UD, is now opening up the possibility of political recomposition in Honduras to the left of Zelayismo.

From the starting point of having raised a principled banner – with wide impact – on the part of the independent candidate, it is thus possible to lay the basis for a working-class reference point in Honduras. It means a historic opportunity to establish a revolutionary working-class pole which our Honduras Socialist Workers’ Party comrades could commit everything to.

An abstentionist tradition which could play a very progressive role

After Reyes’ withdrawal, one novelty was the fact of Coordinadora Nacional de Resistencia Popular meeting again under that guise. Not only has it called a boycott of the 29th November election but it has resolved the possibility of calling a civic stoppage against the fraudulent elections in the week beforehand.

This is no minor question: it could be a major centre of support for the campaign for a boycott of the fraudulent elections being organised.

But there is even more that can be said against the coup regime (whether or not the general politics of the Honduran masses are slipping). It is that the illegitimacy of Honduran democracy goes years back. In the 2005 presidential elections (when Zelaya was elected by a wide margin) some 50% of the electorate abstained.

Abstentionism in these conditions represented apathy more than anything else (although insofar as that year there was no independent electoral alternative, and Zelaya was a landowner whose father was known as the murderor – thirty years before – of 15 peasants and liberation-theology priests over a land struggle.

However, given the level of politicisation, in which the resistance itself was implicated, this was somewhat in the balance. In the current situation, abstentionism (which independent sources cite as five out of ten voters) could be much more political, expressing the masses’ repudiation of the gangsters in power. This in spite of the fact that the regime’s electoral apparatus was on the march, that the media had indundated the country with electoral propaganda and that a significant part of the masses will surely go and vote nonetheless.

Preparing the workers’, peasants’ and popular counter-offensive

In conclusion: at the current moment, from the standpoint of the independent candidacy and the Honduras Socialist Workers’ Party, we are calling for an active boycott: in full recognition of carrying this out, withdrawing Carlos Reyes from these fraudulent elections. On this trajectory, we have to realise a national civic strike and establish the widest possible campaign for active resistance to the elections.

If a significant section of the masses expresses itself thusly, the new Pepe Lobo government will emerge with fatal wounds and open up a popular counter-offensivein the proper sense of the words for a Constituent Assembly and the government of the Coordinadora Nacional de Resistencia Popular.

[1] Emilio Martin, 16th November 2009

[2] ibid

[3] Palmerola, also known as Soto Cano, is the major US base in Honduras (a few miles from the capital Tegucigalpa, it was a base for the struggle against the Nicaraguan revolution in the 1980s

[4] Statement by 240 American academics calling on Obama not to recognise the 29th November elections.

[5] Unemployment figures in the USA have reached a level not seen since the Great Depression.

[6] A key aspect of the negotiations of the 1980s which betrayed the Central American revolution.

[7] The Honduras Socialist Workers Party pressured as far as possible this phenomenon such as it existed in the poor districts of the capital city.

[8] Let our readers know that Reyes was running third in the polls and the Organisation of American States expected some 18% support for his candidacy.

[9] Tomas Andino Mecía

[10] See the UD document “Workers to power” calling for rejection of the electoral fraud.

Watched the movie Gallipoli a few nights back. Still thinking about it, a very disturbing movie. The DVD cover says: “Honor. Friendship. War.” Yes. It was also a story about runners. And British imperialism. And nationalism I suppose.
Beyond the story, the setting is reason enough to watch- the desert of western Australia and early 20th century Cairo are mesmerising.
It stars Mel Gibson and Mark Lee. Directed by Peter Weir. 1981.

In 2007 I read Peter W. Galbraith’s “The End of Iraq“, which suggests cutting Iraq into three mini-states, and then responded in two parts. The first part criticises Galbraith’s thesis, and the second part criticises the failures of Arabism. Both are merged below. More recently it has been revealed that Galbraith actually stood to gain financially from the dismantlement of Iraq.

explosion at Baghdad's Mutanabi Street book market

Peter W. Galbraith’s book ‘The End of Iraq’ argues the initially persuasive thesis that Iraqis have already divided themselves into three separate countries roughly corresponding to the Ottoman provinces of Basra (the Shii Arab south), Baghdad (the Sunni Arab centre) and Mosul (the Kurdish north), and that American attempts to keep the country unified are bound to fail. I agree wholeheartedly with Galbraith’s call for America to withdraw from Iraq – America is incapable of stopping the civil war, and is in fact exacerbating it. (update: I stick by this. The civil war has to some extent calmed because of internal Iraqi dynamics, not because of the US ’surge’ – the Sunni forces turned on al-Qaida, and also realised that they had lost the battle for Baghdad and national power. Some groups then allied with the US for a variety of reasons to do with self-preservation). The rest of Galbraith’s argument is much more debatable.

For a start, he minimises the extent to which the US occupation has contributed to the disintegration of Iraq. I do not wish to deny the sectarian and ethnic fractures which exist in Iraq and other Arab countries, but it is reasonable to expect that any country, having suffered dictatorship, war, sanctions, and then the overnight collapse of all its institutions, would enter a period of chaos and division. Galbraith accurately records Western support for Saddam Hussain throughout the Iran-Iraq war, when he was gassing Kurds, and the American refusal to intervene when Republican Guards were slaughtering southern Shia in 1991 (the massacres happened under the eyes of American forces occupying the south at the end of the Kuwait war). He describes the criminal failure in 2003 of the occupying forces to stop the looting and burning of every ministry except the oil ministry, of military arsenals and even yellowcake uranium stocks the Americans claimed to be so concerned about in the run-up to the invasion, and of the national museum and national library. (He doesn’t examine claims made at the time by Robert Fisk and others that masked men with Kuwaiti accents were bussed in to certain ministries to set fires professionally.) The attack on Iraq’s – and the world’s – heritage is of course a cultural crime far greater than the despicable Taliban destruction of the Bamyan Buddha statues. Bombing and looting ravaged what was left of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure. The Iraqi state was destroyed within the first week of occupation, long before the sectarian killing began.

Galbraith charitably calls incompetence what may more realistically be seen as deliberate divide and rule policies. Certainly arrogance, stupidity and corruption have played a large role – the arrogance and stupidity which allowed Americans to park their tanks on the ruins of Sumerian cities; the corruption which allowed Halliburton to profit by the billion from reconstruction which never happened, and which put Americans in their early twenties, and with no knowledge or experience of Iraq, in charge of entire sectors of the Iraqi economy simply because they were members of the right ‘think tank’ or prayer group. At a certain point, however, it seems naïve to put all the mistakes down to incompetence. From the very beginning it was obvious to me and the people I talk to that a violent assault on an Iraq already crippled by war and sanctions would not result in a prosperous, unified democracy. It was obvious that every ‘mistake’ made would further damage national unity. I and my friends are not geniuses, and unlike the neo-conservative and Zionist architects of the invasion, we aren’t paid to study the Middle East.

The immediate and sweeping dissolution of the Ba’ath Party, the army and security forces made it inevitable that people would look to the nearest militia or criminal gang to provide security and material supplies. Before long each area had its dominant gang, and the country was a free competition zone for Shia, Sunni, takfiri, and Kurdish militias, American and British troops, South African and Latin American mercenaries, imported Wahhabi nihilists, kidnappers and drug traffickers, and so on. John Negroponte, who had made a career setting up fascist death squads to destabilise leftist democracies in Latin America, was brought in to organise Kurdish and Shia militia into ‘police’ to pacify militantly Sunni towns. Meanwhile, Bremer at one stroke abolished Iraqi economic independence, opening every sector of Iraq to privatisation and foreign control.

These supposed ‘mistakes’ give us a much clearer picture of the real purposes of the invasion than all the journalistic psychoanalysis of a traumatised post-September 11th America or of its ignorant president. The war was designed as corporate rape of a resource-rich country and as a further hammer blow to the possibility of any secular Arab state taking on apartheid Israel. Having the Iraqis split into tiny units, each fighting the other and looking for an external sponsor, guarantees that there will be no unified Iraqi force to pose a serious threat to the corporations or their imperial and Zionist facilitators.

Despite the hatreds unleashed by the sectarian war, the number of Arab Iraqis I’ve met who want the disintegration of their country to be formalised is precisely zero. The neat picture ‘The End of Iraq’ presents of three clearcut post-Iraq zones is not realistic. Iraq has splintered into smaller pieces than the three zones Galbraith describes. In the south, the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army battle for supremacy. In al-Anbar, the battle is between the tribes, the Ba’ath, and al-Qa’ida. Baghdad, supposedly part of the Sunni zone, has a Shii majority. Mosul is a largely Sunni Arab city with a largely Kurdish hinterland. For these cities and other mixed areas such as Diyala and Babil a formalised partition would lead to greatly intensified ethnic cleansing. The horrific bomb attacks which recently killed 500 Yezidi Kurds happened within the context of a forthcoming referendum on which northern areas will join the Kurdish zone.

And if Iraq is allowed to formally splinter, where does the break-up stop? The Arabs of the Jezira in eastern Syria have more in common ethnically, culturally and tribally with the Arabs of al-Anbar than they do with the urban Levantine Arabs of western Syria. There are almost two million Iraqi refugees in Syria, most in Damascus, very many of them Sunnis who have nowhere to return to if Iraq is not put back together. An ethnic-sectarian Sunni state would also pull at the fabric of Jordan, as artificial a state as they come with its three populations of urban Iraqi Sunnis, Jordanian Beduin, and Palestinian refugees. And in Syria, if the Sunnis were to give their allegiance to a sectarian identity, what would stop the Alawis demanding a state in the north west, or the Druze in the Hauran? Which would bring us back to an early French imperial plan for Syria. I could go on, ad infinitum, to prospects for the division of Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and further afield.

Division is a disaster for all but imperialists and for Israel, the region’s key sectarian state. If the map must be changed, we should aim for fewer state units, not more. Yet Arabism as manifested so far has clearly failed. I’ll examine why in part two.

Part Two

Peter W. Galbraith writes that Iraq is an artificial creation made up of different ethnic groups. This is true, but Iraq is not alone in its artificiality. All states are artificial in that they have been created by historical process and human machination, not by God or nature, and all contain different ethnic groups. More specifically, the centralised nation state in the Middle East (and Africa and much of Asia) is always artificial because the very concept of the nation state is an import from 19th Century Europe. The borders of every Arab state were determined, suddenly, by imperialism, and not by the long processes of war, negotiation and ideological mythmaking that drew borders in Europe. It is this imperialist division of the Arabs which has led to various forms of pan-Arab nationalism.

The definition of ‘Arab’ has expanded over the last hundred and fifty years from describing tribal nomads as opposed to townsmen, to describing the people of the Arabian peninsula, and then to describe all from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf who share the heritage of the Arabic language.

The Ba’ath Party went so far as to find religious significance in ‘Arab,’ as is evident from the slogan ‘One Arab Nation bearing an Eternal Message.’ The ‘risala’ or message is what Arabs would previously have assumed to be the revelation of the Prophet (more often called Messenger in Arabic) Muhammad. The word used for ‘nation’ is ‘umma’ – a word previously used to denote the international Muslim community. In fact, Ba’athism should be seen as one of the twentieth century’s many attempts to compensate for the collapse of traditional religion (Nazism, Zionism, Stalinism, contemporary Wahhabism and hedonist consumerism are others).

In its effort to spiritualise and mythologise Arabism Ba’athism surely takes nationalism to absurd extremes, but it is significant that the Ba’ath Party was founded by a Damascene Christian, and that it appealed in the main to minority communities. Arab nationalism’s potential strength was its inclusive nature, the possibility that Sunni and Shia, Christians and Muslims, urban and rural populations would all identify together as members of the Arab nation. Sadly, it is precisely this inclusiveness that has failed.

If nationalism’s definition of ‘Arab’ had been the widest possible – to engage all those who share the common heritage of the Arabic language in a cooperative enterprise – the Arabs could perhaps have overcome their underdevelopment and imposed borders more easily. They would have had increased political weight for a start, and would not have wasted so much blood and treasure on intra-Arab fighting (or rather, fighting on behalf of the little ruling classes of each state). Given that some Arab countries are blessed with fertile land but not with oil, others with educated people but not with sea ports, an intelligent sharing of resources would have been mutually beneficial.

This cooperation has failed, and there is no Arab state, but the Arab nation exists. The nation, not the state. The nation exists despite the tens of states, and now the attempt to splinter the Arabs further, into yet more mini-states squabbling over sect and ethnic variation, all of them dependent on a corporate-imperial sponsor for survival. It exists in shared language and cultural reference points. Any Arab who travels the great distances of the Arab world will find each corner foreign and also familiar. He will recognise the classic and contemporary music on the radio. He’ll see the same Egyptian films in the cinemas, the same Syrian comedies and historical dramas on the television. He’ll understand the newspaper. He’ll feel welcomed and understood, more than he would, for instance, in a non-Arab Muslim country. Wherever you go in the Arab world the ordinary people want closer economic cooperation between Arab countries, an end to foreign military bases, and justice for the Palestinians. In these times of rising sectarian conflict, it’s important to realise and remember that the Arab nation exists.

So why then is Galbraith’s thesis – that even a single unit of Arabism like Iraq needs to disintegrate – to some extent persuasive? Because the same homogenising impulse that animates both contemporary Islamism and late capitalism has perverted Arabism. I’ll repeat it: Arabism only had a chance if it recognised the diversity of the Arab world’s peoples. The inheritors of Arab history, culture and language include blue-eyed Syrians and black Africans in the Sudan. Many of the heroes of the Arabist narrative were not ethnically Arab at all. Salahuddeen al-Ayubbi (Saladin) was a Kurd, Ibn Rushd a Spaniard, Ibn Batuta a Berber. In Iraq, where Arabism has failed most spectacularly, ‘Arab’ even began to morph into ‘ethnically-Arab Sunni Muslim,’ but many of the great Arabic-language writers and scientists have been Christians and Jews, Berbers and Persians.

The moral degeneration of Arabism is painfully evident on Layla Anwar’s blog. We must make allowances for the fact that Mrs. Anwar lives, it seems, in Baghdad, in the midst of a savage occupation and civil war. Many of the Iraqis I meet who have recently left Iraq are traumatised in some way or other, and Mrs. Anwar probably is too. But then, she doesn’t make any allowances for the Kurds or Shia who suffered so much under the previous regime. She calls the Kurds turds (ha ha), and denies that any were massacred by Saddam Hussain. I must say here that by now, although I don’t believe that new states can set anybody free, I understand the Kurdish desire for an independent state, at least in Iraqi Kurdistan. Perhaps Iraqi Arabs could have persuaded the Kurds to be part of an Arab state if, from the start, they had treated them as full citizens with full rights to cultural expression. What happened was that they were seen as a non-Arab security problem, and that thousands of their villages were razed, hundreds of thousands of their people subjected to poison gas attacks. True, it was a dictatorship, backed at the time by the West, that committed these crimes, and relations between ordinary Kurds and Arabs often remained good. But if people like Layla Anwar can’t accept that the oppression even happened, we have an insurmountable obstacle to coexistence. Mrs. Anwar declares in one of her postings that the Kurds are guests in Arab Iraq. How shameful that this supposed nationalist is unaware of her own country’s history. Kurds have been present in Mesopotamia for as long as Semites, and for far longer than Sunni Muslims.

Mrs. Anwar regards ALL Shia forces in her country as Persian, and therefore inauthentic. Again, exclusive national-chauvinist extremism has blinded her to her country’s reality. The Shia are of course a majority of Iraq’s people. It is both true and unsurprising that many Shia escaped Saddam’s persecution by crossing the border to Iran, where some founded organisations with Iranian help. Some of these organisations, like al-Hakim’s Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, returned to Iraq after the regime’s fall, made themselves available to the Americans as death squads, and are now in powerful positions. But other organisations, like Moqtada Sadr’s Jaish al-Mahdi, are Arab nationalist as well as Shia, and resent the Iranian-supported organisations. Mrs. Anwar rightly complains about the persecution of Sunnis by Shia militias, but is silent on both the sectarian repression practised by the Ba’ath regime which provoked the Shia revival, and the horrific Wahhabi terrorism to which Shia militia crimes have been retaliation.

As for more general Iranian influence in Iraq, which many Sunni Arabs are unable to accept, this is natural. The word itself, Iraq, comes from the Persian ‘Eraagh’, meaning ‘lowlands.’ The Arabs of southern Iraq have been as influenced by the cooking and religious and philosophical ideas of Persia as much as the Arabs of Syria have been influenced by the Turks and Mediterranean cultures. This doesn’t stop them being Arabs.

Nations (as opposed to states) are imaginary structures. Their borders are porous and membership in them is not exclusive. You can feel allegiance to the Arabs and also to Islam, or Africa, or Christianity, or Shi’ism. Variety and diversity should be the strength and richness of the Arabs, but many Arabs are ill with the centralised state disease, the rage for conformity which made Saddam Hussain brutalise the majority of Iraq’s people. When we replace humane, inclusive nationalism with exclusive totalitarian police states, we have lost nationalism as a positive force.

There are still glimmers of light. Important sections of Sunni Iraqi opinion have turned decisively against both Wahhabism and Ba’athism. The vast majority of Shia feel both Iraqi and Arab. But the Iraqis and other Arabs will be unable to work cooperatively until they honestly confront sectarianism and the class oppression which it usually masks, until they are able to sympathise with the history of the other, until they can think beyond the imported nation state.

PARIS, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) — The French unemployment rate in October increased 2 percent from September and saw a year-on-year growth of 25 percent, the employment ministry announced Thursday.

In October alone, 52,400 people lost their jobs, making the total number of jobless hit 2,627,300 in the country.

The noticeable rise following five months of restriction showed the impact of the economic crisis on the labor market, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said in a statement.

Although the government has taken a series of stimulus measures to spur the labor market, positive reactions may take time to emerge.

The construction sector, the biggest contributor to the labor market, saw a 7.1 percent loss in this year’s turnover, leading to 50,000 layoffs low cost payday loans. For next year, the French construction union has predicted a contraction of 3.1 percent.

The French Secretary of State for Employment, Laurent Wauquiez, said the decreasing trend would last for a few quarters as the gradual resilience of market activity would not affect employment immediately.

France’s budget plan has set a benchmark of 0.75 percent economic growth for 2010. However, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said a reduction in the unemployment rate might need a growth of between 1.5 and 2 percent. Special Report: Global Financial Crisis

French unemployment rate up 2% in Oct.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

‘Shameful Flight’ relates the history of the final years of the British Raj in India, including the partition of India into both Pakistan (West and East) and India, and the early hostility of the two new nations destined for perpetual warfare in such regions as the Kashmir.The history of this era of political instability on the subcontinent includes all the main players from Great Britain, India and Pakistan.These main players include Winston Churchill, Viceroy Louis Mountbatten, Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah. There is not a single figure in this history of India’s partition who comes out of it in a good light, though several seem to have had very well-intentioned aims and motivations. It is the true story of lost opportunity and the devastating consequences of human pride and selfishness that have reverberated down through the decades to the present day and remain visible in the continuing clashes between India and Pakistan, as well as in the extremism expressed in both the Islamic and Hindu communities throughout the sub-continent. It is a story of perpetual tragedy and human suffering with no end in sight.

This book is extremely easy to read, passes on a wealth of historical information and whets the appetite for further research on the India/Pakistan situation. It provides enlightenment, by bringing understanding to the current political instability in both India and Pakistan, by clearly revealing the root of the problem – the manner of the birth of both nations out of British imperialism and that nation’s final haphazard departure aptly described as a ‘Shameful Flight.’ This is a great book for understanding the sub-continent and the wounds it still carries to this day.

This book was provided to me for review by Oxford University Press – www.oup.com

by Ed Komarek

	Howard Menger.

I read a lot of contactee stories from the 1950’s when I first got interested in UFO/ET as a young man. I did not know what to make of these stories and just moved on. Now that I am much older and have quite a lot of experience under my belt I found myself rereading the book, From Outer Space by Howard Menger. As we all know these contactee stories were heavily debunked in the 1950’s and 1960’s and to a point where most mainstream UFO investigators to this day easily dismiss these cases of human extraterrestrial infiltration into our society. I believe this is a big mistake.

First, the very fact knowing what we know now about the propaganda campaign propagated against the public since the 1940’s ought to be cause enough to revisit these old cases. Second, in light of current knowledge of human Extraterrestrial encounter cases and possible meetings between human ET’s and Eisenhower in 195Os is another reason to take a good look at these old cases. Third, I have local contactee friends that have been providing me with stories for many years that are no different from these old contact cases.

The only difference between these newer local cases and the very public cases of the 1950’s is that the human ET’s seem to have changed tactics in light of resistance from earth humans as well as some other races that have been troubling them and us. Forth, this discussion of tight fitting ET flight suits having a slight glow with invisible pockets, a kind of small square image recording device that fits into the palm of the hand and projects a holographic image, electromagnetic propulsion systems, doors on craft that just open up and are invisible when not open, view screens etc. all compare well to what we know today about ET technology from crash retrievals.

This image recording device seems similar to the device that holds a ET history known as the Yellow Book. Something else I have not heard anywhere is that the ET men don’t have a problem with facial hair on their worlds but when on earth for awhile they have to shave. Menger remarked that on his moon trip is facial hair quit growing. What could be causing this effect I have no idea but it could be important.

From what I am hearing from my local contactee sources is that extensive contact and infiltration into earth human society has continued unabated since the 1940’s. What is different today from the 1950’s is that what once was a very overt infiltration has morphed and gone underground due to resistance from world military, economic and government elites. From what I am hearing is that the human ET’s intent to turn things around on earth has not wavered even though tactics have had to be modified so as to adapt to changing external conditions. It also seems that there continues to be a high turnover rate amongst individual ET’s with earth educated ET’s being constantly replaced with new recruits. I am speculating that there are two reasons for this, one being the stress involved, and the other being growing interest in earth affairs by more ET individuals and groups.

Howard Menger gives a very broad perspective on extraterrestrial humans and their relationship to earth’s indigenous people. He is saying that there are different human races living in parallel worlds around other planets, moons and the sun of our solar system as well as elsewhere about the universe. One of the main criticisms by the uninformed and sceptical is that the rest of the solar systems seems to be inhospitable to life at least complex life forms. But Menger makes it clear that these ET humans are living not in our dimension around the inhospitable planets, moons and sun, but in other hidden to us dimensions.

It looks to me that maybe what we have are habitable finite dimensional shells or zones around large accumulations of mass that are held together by some processes of gravitation and quantum entanglement.

I have heard of speculations by physicists that gravity is weak because it is holding together mass in other dimensions. Menger talks about being in orbit around the moon for 10 days according to his watch having his body adjusted on a molecular and atomic level before setting foot on a inhabited moon. This compares well to what some of the Rama folks in Peru have been saying since the 1970’s, that their human ET contacts go in and out of other dimensions even here on earth. There is some really interesting physics going on that physicists should be taking a good look at.

But Menger’s broad view is even broader and he says that his ET friends tell him that all these parallel worlds are connected and that souls transmigrate between these different parallel worlds. He is talking about this way back in the 1950’s and in a big way on the Long John Nebel radio show that reached millions of people just as George Norey and Art Bell do today.

While we can see from cases like the 1958 Fontes Briefing that the military was freaking out about a ongoing alien invasion and trying to shoot down craft and mostly getting shot down themselves in the process, while Howard is helping his human ET friends infiltrate into earth society. He is cutting their hair, getting them earth clothes, briefing them on local ever-changing language, going about helping them install transceivers about the country that have a range about 25 miles to monitor earth humans etc. He says his ET’s are vegetarians, the men don’t like having their shoulder length hair cut off and the ET women can’t stand bras. The only time he knew them to be really upset and angry was when they themselves were being infiltrated both by earth humans and it seems at least one other ET race causing them and their contactees a lot of trouble.

In fact a contactee friend of mine believes that things have only gotten worse over the years with some troublesome ET’s and that this friend thinks a ET war may be brewing. Other than that the human ET’s are keeping a lower profile, not much has changed in regard to their activities and their long range plans of earth humanity.

My friend said that a mutual contactee friend even got clothes for his ET’s so they could walk around Walmart and feel and touch things. Another contactee that I know about says he calls some ET’s stupid ET’s because they have had to ask about simple things like what is Christmas? Its obvious that many ET humans are still dropping in cold turkey without going through any formal courses on earth affairs. What does seem to have changed is that human ET’s now favor involvement and infiltration with lower economic social classes because when people talk it won’t be taken seriously causing them security problems. Social class divisions restrict information flow to the military and economic elite that give the ET’s trouble.

Its even kind of funny in that all this infiltration and interaction with earth humans is happening right under the military’s arrogant noses, right around their military bases where they engage in cat and mouse games with ET craft and have their Blue Beret Teams stationed. It seems that our military has all this hard power just as Fulford claims but little soft power.

The U.S. political-military-industrial complex is enamoured with technology and it is getting us into no end of trouble even in terrestrial affairs. This all makes our military and intelligence community look like the Keystone Cops when compared against the ET military and intelligence community. America’s terrestrial HUMIT intelligence is pretty bad but it would seem that extraterrestrial HUMIT intelligence is even worse. Those of us that have taken the trouble to become informed have seen plenty of cases of human ET’s involved in earth affairs, so all this infiltration should come as no surprise.

Even Bob Dean has commented that the military brass at NATO were very upset at these human ET’s that look just like us infiltrating our planet. Its obvious from the Fontes Briefing, The Three Star General Report and other cases that the military was very paranoid about this in the 1950’s and 1960’s with a reactionary faction of the military even today just as paranoid, dangerous and delusional. This mentality about shooting first and asking questions later is pretty dangerous and stupid if you ask me.

I thought Menger was quite clear about the motives of his ET friends and that it was in their and our self interest to turn things around on earth. In light of the much bigger picture of soul migration and the interconnectiveness of these parallel dimensional worlds this makes since. It would seem that earth human devolution is harming others in the cosmic neighbourhood in ways that are difficult for us to understand and the celestial humans are determined to get things straightened out here even if they have to fight us and other troublesome ET’s in the process.

In fact other UFO investigators are beginning to comment that there are just too many crashes for it to just be due to equipment malfunction. Not only are earth forces still fighting with some ET groups but ET groups seem to be fighting amongst themselves not only around earth but on a much wider universal scope.

Why should we think conflict ends with us when we see conflicts between predators and prey all through the natural world. If the world’s military and economic elite would just observe more and act less, things would be better for everybody concerned. But no, earth humans have to make it hard not just on themselves but on everybody else as well. So what is new? The immensity and reality of the situation is just mind boggling for anybody who tries to get a handle on it both inside and outside of government. As usual our worst enemy is ourselves!

About the writer:

Ed Komarek is an investigative research on UFOs and Extraterrestrials. Check out his blog: LINK

This explains why and how to apply ice to an acute injury. A simple process that has a big impact on the healing process.

jQuery ( '. intro. vignette'). each (function (i, e) (jQuery (e). find ( 'img'). a ( 'error', function () (jQuery (e). remove (); ));)); Email Print l ' Article Article Add to Favorites Flag Difficulty: Easy Things instructions you need: Ice cubes 1 gallon Baggie or frozen ready to use ice briefcase step 1

Assess the injured area and check for bleeding new born baby. If it bleeds heal the wound and cover before applying the ice.Make sure the bleeding has stopped before applying the ice.

Step 2

Collect ice cubes and place in a plastic bag and / or flexible container replacement. This should be flexible so it can wrap or draped around the body part injured.

Step 3

Wrap the ice pack in a towel at hand it is completely covered. This may require overlapping the towel around the pack. If ice is applied directly on the skin, it may cause more pain. The cold will pass through the towel. Place the bag of ice on the injured area for 20 minutes. Other 20 minutes, 20 minutes off. Do it 3 or 4 times.

…

From: How to Apply An Icepack To An Injury

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. consumer sentiment improved slightly in late November from earlier this month, but it was weaker than October on deep anxiety over personal finances, a survey showed on Wednesday.

The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said the final figure for its index of consumer sentiment in November stepped up to 67.4 from 66.0 in the first half of the month.

Analysts had expected a final November figure of 67.0, compared with a final October reading of 70.6.

"The decline in consumer confidence was due to grim assessments by consumers of their finances, the worst ever recorded in the 60-year history of the surveys," Richard Curtin, director of the survey, said in a statement.

The survey's index on current personal finances ended November at 63 compared with 69 a month ago, while the reading on expected personal finances closed out the month at 112, down from 117 at the end of October.

(Reporting by Richard Leong, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

U.S. consumer mood improves a tad late November: survey

MONDAY, Nov. 23 (HealthDay News) — Body weight and co-existing health problems don't explain why black colon cancer patients have lower survival rates than whites, U home design.S. researchers say.

In an effort to determine why blacks have lower survival rates than whites for nearly all cancers, including colon cancers, investigators have explored a variety factors, such as differences in health care access, exposure to risk factors and tumor characteristics. However, the role these factors play in survival rate disparities remains unclear.

In the new study, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham looked at how weight and comorbidity (the presence of other diseases in addition to colon cancer) affected colon cancer survival in 496 patients who had surgery for colon cancer between 1981 and 2002.

Black patients were 34 percent more likely than white patients to have died by 2008, according to the study published online Nov. 23 and in the Dec. 15 print issue of the journal Cancer.

Among patients with early-stage cancer, the risk of death from any cause was 2.2 times higher in those with a high level of comorbidity. Among patients with advanced cancer, being underweight was associated with an 87 percent increased risk of death. However, being overweight or obese reduced the risk of death by 42 percent among patients with stage IV colon cancer, the study authors noted.

These findings were the same regardless of race, which suggests that differences in weight or comorbidity don't explain why black patients are more likely to die than white patients, the researchers concluded.

"Further efforts are needed to identify the basis for the survival difference by race for patients with colon cancer. A greater understanding of this complex issue may help eliminate the disparity," research leader Upender Manne said in a news release from the journal's publisher.

More information

The

It did not take long for overtly racist explanations to be offered. Before facts come fantasy, and before truth comes tabloid opinions masquerading as insight. And it arrived not in some radical, fringe magazine but in the pages of the international magazine Forbes by one of their regular contributors. (I of course ignore the determined Islamophobia of outlets like Fox News.)

Tunku Varadarajan wrote a piece for Forbes magazine on 11th November 2009, title Going Muslim where he argued that:

“Going postal” is a piquant American phrase that describes the phenomenon of violent rage in which a worker–archetypically a postal worker–”snaps” and guns down his colleagues.

As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub–disconcertingly–”Going Muslim.” This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American–a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood–discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.

Mr. Varadarajan is no clown – he is in fact a a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School and a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and an executive editor for opinions at Forbes. Clearly a man of some learning and yet able to offer us this fine insight:

This is part of a larger–and too-hot-to-touch–American problem, which is the privileging of religion, and its frequent exemption from rules of normal discourse. Muslims may be more extreme because their religion is founded on bellicose conquest, a contempt for infidels and an obligation for piety that is more extensive than in other schemes.

Moving on to ask us a crucial question of whether:

But can the American swagger persist if many Americans come genuinely to view Muslims as Fifth Columnists? The integration compact depends on a broad trust that the immigrant’s desire to be American can happily co-exist with his other forms of racial/cultural/religious identity. Once that trust doesn’t exist, America faces a problem in need of urgent resolution.

∞

One doesn’t quite know where to begin to respond to what is without a doubt an overtly racist diatribe that takes the actions of an individual and paints it as that of a collectivity. That is after all the ideal description of racism: (noun) the belief that all members of a group posses characteristics or abilities (or pathologies) specific to that group. But then again, the learned professor is not alone in this and arrives as the inheritor of centuries of orientalist thought that can never quite reconcile itself to the individuality of the people it labels as Muslims. And he is not alone in America, or elsewhere.

But the learned professor raises specific points which I would like to examine perhaps a little more closely.

He says in this very article that ‘they’ [the Muslims] are more extreme because ‘their’ religion is …founded on bellicose conquest, a contempt for infidels and an obligation for piety that is more extensive than in other schemes.

Only sheer hubris combined with willful amnesia can allow this gentleman to offer us this explanation. Hubris as he sits as a citizen of a nation that is at this very moment in violent and repressive conquest of at least two once sovereign nations, and whose army has repeatedly insisted on a sheer contempt for the infidels it has found there and encouraged its soldiers to piety the likes of which can only make the foundations of our Republic weaker. The hundreds of thousands that have died since 2001 under the guns and arrogance of an overtly Christian/Evangelical administration that also led us to become instigators of war crimes, violators of international law and perpetrators of mass murder perhaps may not agree that it is Islam that is intrinsically programmed to encourage mass violence, conquest and/or piety.

(For those with short memories, see Micklethwait/Wooldridge’s The Right Nation, or Chris Hedges’ American Fascists or Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming or any number of others books on this issue)

I don’t think I have to elaborate on our occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I will move to the next point – Islam’s unique contempt for infidels and its piety. Really? Is it that unique? Lets see.

In a fabulous piece written by the relentless Jeff Sharlet for Harpers Magazine title “Jesus Killed Mohammed: The Crusade For A Christian Military”, he points out that:

When Barack Obama moved into the Oval Office in January, he inherited a military not just drained by a two-front war overseas but fighting a third battle on the home front, a subtle civil war over its own soul. On one side are the majority of military personnel, professionals who regardless of their faith or lack thereof simply want to get their jobs done; on the other is a small but powerful movement of Christian soldiers concentrated in the officer corps.

What men such as these have fomented is a quiet coup within the armed forces: not of generals encroaching on civilian rule but of religious authority displacing the military’s once staunchly secular code. Not a conspiracy but a cultural transformation, achieved gradually through promotions and prayer meetings, with personal faith replacing protocol according to the best intentions of commanders who conflate God with country. They see themselves not as subversives but as spiritual warriors—“ambassadors for Christ in uniform,” according to Officers’ Christian Fellowship; “government paid missionaries,” according to Campus Crusade’s Military Ministry.

This is perhaps one of the scariest pieces of journalism I have read, reminding us of the infiltration of Christian fundamentalist ideology infesting the armed forces and its consequences for our operations abroad. Perhaps the learned professor would do well to read his words, including:

Within the fundamentalist front in the officer corps, the best organized group is Officers’ Christian Fellowship, with 15,000 members active at 80 percent of military bases and an annual growth rate, in recent years, of 3 percent. Founded during World War II, OCF was for most of its history concerned mainly with the spiritual lives of those who sought it out, but since 9/11 it has moved in a more militant direction. According to the group’s current executive director, retired Air Force Lieutenant General Bruce L. Fister, the “global war on terror”—to which Obama has committed 17,000 new troops in Afghanistan—is “a spiritual battle of the highest magnitude.” As jihad has come to connote violence, so spiritual war has moved closer to actual conflict, “continually confronting an implacable, powerful foe who hates us and eagerly seeks to destroy us,” declares “The Source of Combat Readiness,” an OCF Scripture study prepared on the eve of the Iraq War.

As we look across to our Israeli allies, we ironically (or perhaps not) find in fact the same problem there! In a scathing piece written by Christopher Hitchens called An Army of Extremists for Slate Magazine, he pointed out that:

Recent reports of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the course of the intervention in Gaza have described the incitement of conscripts and reservists by military rabbis who characterized the battle as a holy war for the expulsion of non-Jews from Jewish land. The secular Israeli academic Dany Zamir, who first brought the testimony of shocked Israeli soldiers to light, has been quoted as if the influence of such extremist clerical teachings was something new. This is not the case.

And should one have thought that this was simply a rare exception, he goes on to remind us that:

Possibly you remember Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the man who in February 1994 unslung his weapon and killed more than two dozen worshippers at the mosque in Hebron. He had been a physician in the Israeli army and had first attracted attention by saying that he would refuse to treat non-Jews on the Sabbath. …[I]n the March 22 New York Times about the preachments of the Israeli army’s latest chief rabbi, a West Bank settler named Avichai Rontzski who also holds the rank of brigadier general. He has “said that the main reason for a Jewish doctor to treat a non-Jew on the Sabbath … is to avoid exposing Diaspora Jews to hatred.” Those of us who follow these things recognize that statement as one of the leading indicators of a truly determined racist and fundamentalist. Yet it comes not this time in the garb of a homicidal lone-wolf nut bag but in the full uniform and accoutrement of a general and a high priest.

And we can even look outside of the ‘immediate’ military structure, and find piety and a religious zeal for conquest raising its ugly head. In an article written by Jeremy Scahill titled Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder we learn that:

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia.The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”

In fact, the allegations read as follows:

To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince’s executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to “lay Hajiis out on cardboard.” Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince’s employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as “ragheads” or “hajiis.”

Again, perhaps the learned professor would like to peruse this material if for no other reason than to understand that zealotry, piety, and a desire for conquest is never the exclusive purvey of any one spiritual delusion, but reflects the world views of practically all of them.

But in particular, at this moment in time and history, at this juncture of modernity, if there is a rapid, rapacious, powerful and in fact in execution spiritual movement of conquest and a drive for excessive piety, it is more so in the hands of some of the most powerful military nations in the world. And none of them can claim an Islamic collective mindset.

I will say something about the learned professor’s incredibly racist mistake in assuming that the shooter was an immigrant – as he says The integration compact depends on a broad trust that the immigrant’s desire to be American can happily co-exist with his other forms of racial/cultural/religious identity. But in fact Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is as pure an American as they come; born, raised, educated and trained in the United States of America. He wasn’t an immigrant professor, he was an American.

And he was an American inside a deeply Christianized, racist military structure that has become comfortable speaking about and of the Arab world and Muslims in the most derogatory, demeaning and racist terms. It has become so because its wars are against a people it sees as a mass, a mob, a group, a collective – A-rabs, Muslims, ragheads, hajjis. The latter term is used openly and gleerfully in even such mainstream Hollywood films such as Stop-Loss. (I am sure there are more, but Hollywood is not something I watch with interest or regularity.)

The army has has become so because it is the war that it is fighting and it is here that we refuse to ask the hard question; how much of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s rage was against his fellow soldiers and the atmosphere at the base itself that allowed for a constant and unchecked language of hate and ridicule against an entire religion, people, culture and way of life? Were there, perhaps, white supremacists on the loose? Well, we will never know of course.

But I am sure that the learned professor doesn’t know either. What is dismaying is that he does not have the awareness to ask, but has instead chosen to give public vent to what can only be a deeply personal hatred against all Muslims claiming that it is only political correctness that is forcing America, and her Army, from taking the necessary, collective/racial profiling, actions that it should. He is angry that America suffers from a …privileging of religion, and its frequent exemption from rules of normal discourse.

Lets be clear, the learned professor is not complaining about America’s privileging of all religions, for after all it is not the insanity of the Christian Evangelicals that has bought him to this realization, but that the country is not collectively targeting Muslims! We have to remember that the same learned professor has been an outspoken advocate of racial profiling of Muslims in America,

But dear professor, viewing a crime as the act of an individual and not because of a pathology indigenous to an entire collectivity is less about being politically correct and more about being just and not being a racist. In fact, the determination to not reduce this to yet another all-too-easy Islam bashing exercise is a testament to America’s determination to return to the ways of the law and legality, and to move its society back to a point where it speaks not with generic hatred of an imaginary collectivity but with genuine desire to offer both justice and rights for individuals who commit crimes. It is one of the very set of values we always speak about and insist are what we are killing in places around the world for!

And it is a battle that we as American citizens have had to fight hard – to move past the infantile and retrograde desire to hate ‘all of them’ for the actions of a few, to lynch them for their color for example, and move towards the point where we can see individuals and individual responsibility and make them not only the recipients of retribution, but also the motivation for our respect for fundamental liberties and rights.

I do not know what led Maj. Hasan to do what he did. I can’t even begin to understand his motivations, and certainly not his actions. I remain dismayed to learn that he chose to justify his murders on the basis of his spiritual beliefs. Just as I have been dismayed to learn about Jewish extremists gloating about their murders on the basis of their beliefs, or Christian fanatics e.g. those in the US military I speak about earlier explaining their bloody rampages because of their ‘loving god’. Maybe he was just a mentally disturbed and ill person, as a recent NPR piece claims to have uncovered. Maybe he lost his way. I don’t know. I don’t claim to have an answer here.

My interest here is to question our learned professor. And wonder how we have arrived at a moment in time when such blatantly racist statements can make it to the pages of one of our most respected magazines, and then find hundreds who rush to defend his bigotry? Our continued insistence on seeing Muslims as a collective whole, tied at the psychological and moral level into one large blob, is quite flabbergasting and ultimately confusing.

Like a taint, a disease, a scar or a deformation, anyone, man, woman or child, even vaguely or deeply implicated by having been born, raised, educated, traveled to, interested in, curious about things Muslim has his entire identity and all its various other facets subsumed and erased by the label of being Muslim. And once that is established, the individual is safely dropped back into a mob, where only mob acts that are predictable and programmatic based on an formalized, systematized, idealized and perfectly synchronized response to instructions in text books or from the mouths of religious leaders can occur. LIke robots in a massive spiritual assembly line, anything that reeks of Islam can be expected to behave like a swarm, mindlessly following the dictates of their religious books, devoid of individuality, individual morality, judgment, discernment and comprehension.

I am diseased.

The proof: In the people’s reactions and anyone viewing this video.

.

.

But we have a group of scoundrels creating havoc. If we accept it is happening abroad, why can’t we accept it is happening here.

.

.

False flags, betrayal, vaccines – anything to insure mayhem, fear and lack of fraternity…

When the Government of India Act came into force in 1936, our government was a clone of British Imperialism. The whole military set up smelt of imperialist blood, eager to  expand, if necessary by annexing the neighbouring countries, and alwys suspicious of powerful countries beyond our borders. Both the Durrand line and the Macmohan lines, were drawn arbitrarily, without reference to ground reality, the former dividing the Pashtoons into two halves, one to become part of Afghanistan and the other half part of Pakistan

The mind set of our defence establishment and the self styled patriots (who will give away our secrets for money) remains the same, as it was among the Britishers in 1936.

That is why no one protested when Morarji Desai annexed Sikkim, when he was our Prime Minister. When Rajiv Gandhi intervened in the civil war in Lanka, our patriots praised his statesmanship. It was utter fiasco.

Junagad was annexed when they opted for Pakistan in terms of the 1947 agreement. The Nizam of Hyderabad remained independent; so he was removed by military force. Goa was liberated by the armed forces, to rehabilitate the reputation of our Defence Minister.The will of the people of Kashmir was ignored and we occupied it, just to save the King. We are still suffering the consequences, both in terms of huge yearly expenditure and precious lives!

Why did we receive the Dalai Lama, when he came to India in 1992? He could have been given back to the Chinese.

What is remarkable in all these cases, is the fact that these were not discussed in Parliament. We all felt happy that our Nation is acquiring territory!

Yes. India is an Imperialist power.

If we forget our false pride and work for the upliftment of the poor and the downtrodden, the better for our own future. That is true patriotism.

Henry Ford, perhaps the first businessman to market driving and automobiles to the world, famously wrote in his 1922 book “My Life and Work” that:

“I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.”

Armed with ambition and determination, Ford did exactly that. From Detroit, the Model T was introduced into the marketplace circa 1908, quickly becoming the commodity of the new century. It was affordable, easy to learn and repair. And with a network of local distributors, the car rapidly flooded onto American streets and into American homes, much like Miley Cyrus and Robert Pattinson have broken into the hearts of teenage girls everywhere.

‘heeeeey, it’s a party in the USA!’

Such was the gusto of Ford’s marketing that in 1931, Aldous Huxley depicted Ford as the Christ of AD 2540 London, and his systems of mass production as the bedrock of a homogeneous, mass-produced society in “Brave New World”. Little did Ford know that even today, his vision would become so ingrained in the American psyche.

In the quote above, we can see a logic emerging. “No man” “will be unable to own one”, or “enjoy with his family”, the “blessings of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces”.  Engineering, machinery, motoring. This is the realm of men.

Akin to the Futurist Manifesto by F. T. Marinetti (written just 1 year after the introduction of the model T), Ford sees a world in which, through the car, man is able to be the king of his family and the ruler of his world. He loves his home and he loves his country. By embracing the car, he is able to drive closer to God. After all, we all know driving is a spiritual activity – it’s a form of meditation through which manliness can be achieved. Manhood is defined by what’s under the hood.

However, there’s no logical reason for masculinity and motoring to be linked so strongly, but even today we can see this belief, this mythology is repeated wherever we look.

Deep within Ford’s mainstreaming of automobiles and automotive culture in general, somewhere along the way, this mythology was attached to it, and carried forth even to the current day. Throughout 20th century American popular culture, the idea that ‘car is man’ was repeated in every conceivable way that today, we accept it as truth. Motoring is synonymous with masculinity.

‘hmm, which to pick? The car, the girl, or the cougar….?’

That’s the myth. Over the next few weeks (or however long it takes), we’ll be looking at how Ford’s vision has dug and entrenched itself into the logic of a nation and the ego of a people. From NASCAR to Nightrider, bikers to Barbie dolls, we’ll look at specific examples from US pop culture over the past 100 years, looking at how driving has been driven by gender.

Maybe then, we can debunk this myth. We live in different times to Henry Ford. With the collapse of the US car industry, perhaps now’s the time to rethink how we approach motoring and driving, or atleast the ways that it’s marketed to the masses. Let’s re-examine the mythology of the American automobile…

Next post: The driving nation

Happy drivin’!
Mark

PKKH

The red corridor which is now turning into red alert for Indian sovereignty has been camouflaged by the Government of India so strongly since years to save the face in the world community. But now the cover is proving too short to hide this ugly reality.

Naxals/Maoists issue is widely censored by the common Indians you interact in daily life, but the living reality says otherwise. Naxalite/Maoist insurgents are controlling more than 45% of India without any obstruction from the state anywhere in those regions. The police and paramilitary is too vulnerable to their deadly attacks due to lack of capability and fire power to confront these militants. The most dangerous reality is that the Militants are now in full control of those regions where there are located key Nuclear Installations or most convincingly the Nuclear Arsenal storage sites

Talcher’s Heavy Water Plant

Starting from the state of Orissa at the eastern coast of India, where Maoists are showing much stronger presence. A very important Heavy Water Plant is located in the City of Talcher in this state. Since last many months this city is badly hurt due to repeated terrorist activities of Maoists and their supporters. Maoists displayed their power most recently when they blocked the road access to Talcher making things to complete standstill inside that city and in the surrounding areas. Most ironic is that the presence of law enforcing agencies in these areas is very minimal and almost next to none. Local residents are living in extreme fear and in complete insecurity. In these circumstances, any serious accident to the Heavy Water Plant would lead to complete catastrophe. It is ironic that besides being completely helpless against the growing influence of Maoists near this important nuclear site, Indian media is not alarming any warnings. It is clear that India is hiding this matter deliberately and does not want the world to know about the intensity of the threat.

Uranium mines & mills, Jaduguda, Jharkand

The important Uranium mines and mills in Jaduguda Jharkand are facing worst catastrophe of deadly leakages when a new tailings pipeline burst caused a uranium mill tailings spill that reached nearby homes. Ironically this incidence of International importance was camouflaged again by the Indian media. It is widely believed that this particular area is now under full control of Naxal/Moist forces.

Read More

Madras Atomic Power Station

Located at  Kalpakkam about 80 km south of Chennai, India, is a comprehensive nuclear power production, fuel reprocessing, and waste treatment facility that includes plutonium fuel fabrication for fast breeder reactors [FBRs]. It is also India’s first fully indigenously constructed nuclear power station. It has two units of 170 MWe capacity each. The first and second units of the station went critical in 1983 and 1985 respectively. The station has reactors housed in a reactor building with double shell containment ensuring total protection even in the remotest possibility of loss of coolant accident. An Interim Storage Facility [ISF] is also located in Kalpakkam

Naxal tentacles are reaching Chennai which as mentioned above has this important Power Plant, Naxal presence just few kilometers from this city is a living threat which no one can ignore so easily. The recent train mishap in Chennai is believed to be the activity of Naxals to signal their strong presence in this region too. Read Report

Narora nuclear power plant

Narora is located on the banks of river Ganges, in district Bulandshahar, Uttar Pradesh. A nuclear power plant is located in its vicinity. The insurgent sympathizers smuggle highly radioactive material out of the Nuclear Fuel Complex to detonate a radiological dispersion device or ‘dirty bomb’ in Hyderabad. An example of security blunder that could have resulted in the theft of fissile material in August 2006: Security was tightened in and around the Narora nuclear power plant after three men working there were arrested for giving fake addresses at the time of their appointments. Unbelievably, the men were given access to the facilities without first conducting thorough background checks. The problem is that India does not only have 22 declared including under construction  nuclear reactors, but it also has about 60 less secure agencies connected with nuclear activities. India is well known for lax security and overworked systems; security experts believe smuggling of radioactive materials to be highly probable.

There are several other regions where Naxal ideology is gaining popularity and more and more poor and homeless are becoming part of their Army. The Maoist/Naxals are too close to capture the half of India and consolidate their position for their future goals. Read More

It is extremely ironic that India is yelling and screaming about the vulnerability of Pakistani Nukes, but it is more catastrophic when we see that many important locations of Indian Nuclear Installations are situated in those areas which are in complete control of these insurgents. Why this truth is hidden from the world? The catastrophe of weapons slipping into the hands of most cruel terrorists on earth is quite possible not in years but in days. The question arise that who will raise the alarm for the world? The world leaders are quite unmoved on this issue, but once we come to know that Naxals have obtained few of the war heads for their ugly means then it will become a global threat overnight and the sleeping savers of the world would jump for crash program! This is bad luck for the poor people of India in particular that their government has thrown them in front of Maoists/Naxals and has accepted an undeclared defeat against these forces. Read More

From every corner of India sane and intellectual journalists and news channels are now beginning to raise their voice on this issue but it seems that water has reached the noses already.

When we analyze as to why India is not taking strong action against Maoists/Naxals then we can find few important reasons behind this criminal delay which is hurting Indian existence:

• India has till now portrayed itself as a safe and trouble free country thus gaining maximum attention of tourism and foreign investment which it does not want to loose due to this issue.
• Next year a huge event of Cricket World Cup is to be held in India and the Government does not want a situation in which the neighboring country Pakistan has fallen into after initiating assault over Taliban Militants which brought complete catastrophe and subsequent barring of all International sporting events to be conducted there for security reasons.
• India does not want itself to be slipped into the same situation where Pakistan has been pointed out as an unsafe Nuclear Power.
• It is also believed that Americans are trying to penetrate into Nuclear Installations of India in the name of assistance or help to increase security level of these Installations. Some of them are almost 4 decades old and have completed their life. India is trying to hide the vulnerable status of their Nuclear command and control system to avoid undue interference of USA.

In short, Indian nation would have to bear the threat of Naxals/Maoists helplessly because in the near future Indian Government seems to have no plan but to unwillingly allow these terrorists to spread their influence inside the whole of the Indian territories.

USA, UK, China and Europe should see this latest development with responsibility because the threat of Maoist/Naxals is 1000 times more deadly than the proclaimed threats in Pakistan who are confined to only some remote mountain areas as compared to Naxals/Maoists who are controlling the cities and the huge region in full. World cannot afford to see the Nuclear Arsenal of India easily slipping into the hands of Naxals who can use that any time anywhere to surprise the peace loving nations. It is also possible that these insurgents who are so close to capture these important weapons would also sell them ahead to Al Qaeda or any deadly group which can hit America with unmatchable intensity as USA has put a blind eye on this possibility.

By: RupeeNews | Moin Ansari

There is a parable in South Asia, mainly Bharat (aka India) which loosely translated goes something like this “All night long, we told you the lengthly and long-winded story of Ramayan–and in the morning you asks was ‘Sita’ one of the main characters–a man or a woman”. Obviously one who has ever read or heard the story of Sita, will never forget the fact that Sita was a woman. In Western terms it would be like reading Shakespeare and then asking whether Juliette was a woman or a man. This is exactly what happened in Washington. Even before Prime Minister arrived in Delhi, everyone know what the agenda would be—Bharati gripes against Pakistan on terror.

Mr. Manmohan didn’t realise that each time he mentioned Mumbai and terror in the same breath, it took millions of Dollars away from business in the commercial capital of Bharat. However he along with Sancho Panza in Delhi persisted in the old story of terror and why Pakistan should be sanctioned, blah blah blah.

After the long discussion, the congratulatory interview paid advertisement (interview) with Pakistanphobe Farid Zakaria and others, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met with President Obama, he wanted to hear mr. Obama threaten, castigate, and scold Pakistan–to Bharati chagrin, the exact opposite happened.

After patiently listening to Bharati whining for the years, Washington essentially ignored Bharat, tripled aid to Pakistan, increase military supplies to Islamabad, and is working on construction a Reconstruction Opportunity Zone (ROZ), and a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Bharat’s arch-enemy.

Obviously Mr. Singh knew all this before he came to Washington. The Bharati lobby had essentially failed to derail the Biden/Kerry-Lugar bill and the amendment letter attached to it watered down or eliminated the Bharati inspired language in the bill.

This picture is very descriptive and worth a thousand words—as Mr. Singh “stood rapt withal”, his stone faced silence, drooping face and stoic demeanour was unable to hide the disappointment–when he heard President Obama snubbed the Bharati Prime Minister by loudly proclaiming that Pakistan was a very important ally of the United States and that it was doing a lot in fighting terror.

Mr. Singh will have a lot to answer for when he returns to Delhi–the opposition will tear him apart on why he was unsuccessful in his mission–maligning Pakistan

In a press conference with the Indian PM, the US president emphasised that Pakistan was progressing against extremism. —Photo by AFP

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama on Tuesday re-emphasised Pakistan’s key position in the American strategy for South Asia, telling a joint news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that Islamabad had an enormously important role in the security of that region.

His statement, in response to a question about US military assistance to Pakistan, was a calculated departure from the tributes he had paid to India earlier.

In remarks delivered before the news conference, Mr Obama described India as ‘indispensable’ for his visions for the future of the world, ‘a leader in Asia and around the world,’ and a ‘nuclear power’ with which the United States would like to work ‘in preventing the spread of the world’s most deadly weapons, securing loose nuclear materials from terrorists, and pursuing our shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons.’

While Mr Obama continued this eulogy in the press conference as well, he paused to stress Pakistan’s importance in the South Asian region when an Indian journalist spoke about the perception that US military aid to Pakistan was misused against India.

‘Obviously, Pakistan has an enormously important role in the security of the region,’ said Mr Obama, adding that Islamabad could fulfil this role ‘by making sure that the extremist organisations that often operate out of its territories are dealt with effectively.’

I have gained confidence that there’s not an important question out there that has not been asked that we haven’t answered to the best of our abilities, the US president said. —Photo by AFP

While acknowledging that Pakistan faced the problem of terrorism, Mr Obama said he also had ‘seen some progress’ in Islamabad’s efforts to fight the militancy.

While Prime Minister Singh was bush playing victim in Washington, his Chief of Staff General Kapoor, suffering from Foot-in-mouth-disease was busy displaying his incompetence by threatening war to its nuclear armed neighbors.

Stephen Cohen a known Indophile who created the now debunked “Cold Start Strategy” has clearly said that the India and the US are strategically moving apart. This assessment comes in the wake of the reality that America’s new banker is not New York—it is Beijing. Prime Minister Manamohan Singh sheepishly mentioned this anomaly during his various conversations in Washington and elsewhere. While the chest thumping on democracy fell on deaf ears, what chagrined the prime minister and Bharati media was the fact that the US has ignored Delhi’s whining on Mumbai. Contrary to the lobbying efforts of Delhi, the US Congress tripled aid to Pakistan, and then some—it is also working on ROZ and a FTA with Pakistan. Unbeknownst to Delhi, the US Army has helped the generals in Islamabad with weapons that are under the radar or press and or media scrutiny.

‘The work that the Pakistan military is doing in the Swat Valley and in South Waziristan all indicates the degree to which they are beginning to recognise that extremism, even if initially directed to the outside, can ultimately also have an adverse impact on their security internally,’ he said.

‘So my hope is that over time what we’re going to see is further clarity and further cooperation between all the parties and all peoples of goodwill in the region to eradicate terrorist activity, to eradicate the kind of violent extremism that we’ve seen.’

Such cooperation, he said, would benefit the peoples of Pakistan and India, and the world community as well.

Mr Obama conceded that in the past the US-Pakistan relationship was ‘single-mindedly focussed just on military assistance’ and that the United States didn’t think more broadly about how to encourage and develop the kinds of civil society in Pakistan that would make a difference in the lives of people day-to-day.

His administration, Mr Obama added, had tried to change this approach by re-focussing its attention on helping the Pakistani people.

Showing more diplomatic skill than some of his senior diplomats, President Obama also nudged India and Pakistan to resume their dialogue without appearing intrusive.

‘One of the things I admire most about Prime Minister Singh is that I think at his core he is a man of peace,’ said Mr Obama before stressing the need for a peaceful resolution of India-Pakistan disputes.

‘Obviously, there are historic conflicts between India and Pakistan. It is not the place of the United States to try to, from the outside, resolve all those conflicts,’ he said.

Pakistan has important role in S. Asia: Obama

A drop in unemployment claims and a rise in new-home sales pulled the stock market higher on Wednesday in light trading ahead of Thanksgiving.

Modest gains on Wednesday left the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index at 13-month highs.

The economic news, as well as a drop in the dollar, stoked investors’ appetite for higher-returning but riskier investments like stocks. For months, investors have been weighing their desire for bigger returns with fears that the stock market will falter if the economy looks as if it won’t maintain a recovery.

Investors drew confidence from a handful of promising economic reports. The government said new claims for unemployment insurance fell by 35,000 last week, to 466,000.

The drop in claims suggests the job market is healing, but concern remains that the improvement will be temporary. The jobless rate hit 10.2 percent in October, and many analysts say they believe it will keep rising before starting to improve next summer.

In other economic reports, new home sales rose 6.2 percent, to an annual rate of 430,000, above what economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected.

The government also said that spending rose a brisk 0.7 percent last month, after falling in September.

Increased spending by consumers is seen as necessary for the economy to sustain a rebound. The report was a welcome sign as the holiday shopping season prepared to move into full swing.

Not all the day’s news was promising, however. Orders for expensive manufactured goods dropped 0.6 percent last month, the first decrease since August. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 30.69 points, or 0.29 percent, to 10,464.40, its second gain this week and its best finish since October 2008.

The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 4.98 points, or 0.45 percent, to 1,110.63, while the Nasdaq composite index rose 6 bad credit pay day loans.87 points, or 0.32 percent, to 2,176.05.

Markets in the United States are closed Thursday for Thanksgiving and will close early on Friday.

A. Haag Sherman, chief investment officer at Salient Partners in Houston, said light trading around Thanksgiving indicated that investors should not draw many conclusions about the latest economic data.

“The market’s reaction has been kind of a muted,” he said. “You can’t read too much into what the market’s doing today.”

The dollar fell against most other major currencies, while gold rose for the ninth consecutive session, advancing $22.40 to settle at $1,191.80 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Bond prices were mixed. The benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 9/32, to 100 28/32, pushing its yield down to 3.27 percent from 3.30 percent late Tuesday. The yield on the three-month Treasury bill rose to 0.05 percent from 0.03 percent.

Beyond the increase in consumer spending, earnings from Tiffany & Company increased confidence about consumer spending for the holidays. The jeweler’s third-quarter profit topped expectations, and the company raised its full-year profit forecast. Tiffany rose $2.06, or 4.9 percent, to $43.89.

Other luxury names rose, as did most retailers. Saks gained 33 cents, or 5.2 percent, to $6.74, while Nordstrom rose $1.15, or 3.4 percent, to $34.83.

The reports came ahead of the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season on Friday. Investors will be looking for any signals in the coming weeks from retailers about consumer spending, which is the primary driver of the economy.

Following are the results of Wednesday’s Treasury auction of seven-year notes:

Data on Homes Sales and Jobless Claims Lift Markets

The Washington Post will close its last three remaining national bureaus in a cost-cutting move, Kris Coratti, the paper’s director of communications, said Tuesday.

The decision effectively means The Post will cover national stories by traveling from its base in Washington. The reporters from the bureaus — in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles — will be offered the opportunity to relocate to Washington, Ms. Coratti said, though three news assistants in those cities will lose their jobs.

The Post’s executive editor, Marcus W. Brauchli, issued a memo to The Post’s staff Tuesday outlining the plan. He cited “limited resources and increased competitive pressure” for the move. He said the paper’s “commitment to national news of interest to our readers is undiminished.”

Ms. Coratti said the decision was consistent with recent statements from Mr. Brauchli and the publisher, Katharine Weymouth, that the plan for the paper’s future was to “cover Washington as a place to live and as a place that has impact on the nation and the world.”

The Post had already closed several national bureaus in recent years, including Denver and Miami. It has more than a dozen foreign bureaus.

Ms. Coratti said three of the reporters affected now work in New York: Keith Richburg, Barton Gellman and Tomoeh Murakami Tse. Two reporters will be leaving Los Angeles, Karl Vick and Lisa de Moraes. The one reporter in Chicago is Peter Slevin.

The Post has closed several sections and has had several rounds of buyouts to reduce the staff. Six years ago the paper had a newsroom staff exceeding 900 people. This year it had reduced the number to under 700.

Washington Post to Shut U.S. Bureaus

LOS ANGELES — The role of public hospitals in America has been remarkably consistent over the decades, in spite of health care policy debates, insurance trends and shifting medical advice garden. They were centers of last resort, where the quality of care could be inconsistent and the finances often a disaster, but where the poor could always be served.

Skip to next paragraph Related Times Topics: Hospitals

But a deal struck last week between Los Angeles County and the University of California to rescue the Martin Luther King Jr. hospital followed a pattern set by many other public centers across the nation that have found that teaming with outside help can lead to more efficient operations, and often improved care.

The Martin Luther King Jr. hospital, which cared for patients in the severely underserved South Los Angeles area, was closed in 2007 after a series of errors, some of them fatal. In May that year, for example, Edith Rodriguez, 43, was seen in a security video writhing on the floor of the hospital’s emergency room for nearly an hour as a janitor swept around her.

It looked as if no one would take the hospital off the county’s hands.

But under a proposal approved by the University of California Regents on Thursday, the hospital, previously known as Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, will no longer be run by the county, but will be a nonprofit organization governed by a seven-member board of directors. Two will be appointed by the university’s president, two by Los Angeles County officials and three jointly. The county will contribute $50 million annually to cover expenses and operating costs and $13.3 million a year toward the care of uninsured patients.

The university, in turn, agreed to provide 14 to 20 physicians and medical oversight for the in-patient hospital, with a goal of eventually providing medical residents to train there.

The nonprofit entity would do all the hiring, a main point in the negotiations because

In a shift in the National Football League’s approach to handling concussions, the league will soon require teams to receive advice from independent neurologists while treating players with brain injuries, several people with knowledge of the plan confirmed Sunday distance finance training.

Skip to next paragraph Donald Miralle/Getty Images

Brian Westbrook sustained two concussions in a month.

Related Ouster of N.F.L.�s Voice on Concussions Sought (November 20, 2009) Now, Pressure Is for Players Not to Play After a Concussion (November 18, 2009) Sports of The Times: Paying a Price for Playing in the Moment (November 15, 2009) N.F.L. Players and Union Say They Share Blame on Head Injuries (November 1, 2009) N.F.L. Scolded Over Injuries to Its Players (October 29, 2009) N.F.L.�s Influence on Safety at Youth Levels Is Cited (October 30, 2009) Times Topics: Head Injuries in Football

Discuss the Giants, Jets, fantasy and everything else N.F.L on the Times�s pro football blog.

Go to The Fifth Down Blog � N.F.L. Live Scoreboard Standings Stats | Injuries Giants Schedule/Results Stats | Roster Depth Chart Jets Schedule/Results Stats | Roster Depth Chart

For generations, decisions on when players who sustain concussions should return to play have been made by doctors and trainers employed by the team, raising questions of possible conflicts of interest when coaches and owners want players to return more quickly than proper care would suggest.

As scientific studies and anecdotal evidence have found a heightened risk for brain damage, dementia and cognitive decline in retired players, the league has faced barbed criticism from outside experts and, more recently, from Congress over its policies on handling players w

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — China’s foreign-exchange regulator tightened rules on individuals making cross-border money transfers, stepping up efforts to quell inflows of funds on speculation that the yuan is undervalued.

Dollar Falls Under Y88 For First Time 10 Months

The dollar fell under Y88 for the first time in 10 months and could continue to fall as US real yields decline, Japanese risk appetite wanes and the country’s current account surplus grows once again.

Under the new regulations, individuals are limited in the number of transfers they can make from overseas to onshore Chinese accounts, according to wire reports that cited a statement on the State Administration of Foreign Exchange’s Web site. The statement was dated Nov. 19.

Specifically, an individual cannot send foreign currencies to five or more onshore accounts in a single day. The restrictions will also apply to transfers made to multiple accounts made on consecutive days payday loan companies.

The measure appears aimed at tackling a practice growing increasingly common — namely, investors pooling the quotas of several people during a single day as a way of getting around official limits on cross-border money flows.

Analysts say Chinese authorities are increasingly worried about speculative inflows attracted to the Chinese currency in the belief the yuan will strengthen.

Outflows of capital from the mainland to Hong Kong have been blamed for a rapid rise in property prices, elicting warnings from the city’s central banker about the potential for a bubble in asset prices next year.

China tightens rules on cross-border money flows

Hot News: Idaho joins fight against foreclosure fraud

In the latest indication that the National Football League will redirect its approach to players’ concussions, the co-chairmen of the league’s committee on brain injuries resigned from the group Tuesday, the league announced home design.

Skip to next paragraph Related N.F.L. to Shift in Its Handling of Concussions (November 23, 2009)

Discuss the Giants, Jets, fantasy and everything else N.F.L on the Times�s pro football blog.

Go to The Fifth Down Blog � N.F.L. Live Scoreboard Standings Stats | Injuries Giants Schedule/Results Stats | Roster Depth Chart Jets Schedule/Results Stats | Roster Depth Chart

Dr. Ira Casson and Dr. David Viano, members of the committee since 1994 and co-chairmen since 2007, co-authored most of the group’s published research papers whose conclusions regarding head injuries were met with considerable criticism from medical peers. Casson has been the league’s primary voice discrediting all evidence linking football players with subsequent dementia or cognitive decline, drawing criticism from fellow scientists, players and ultimately Congress.

In a memo to all teams on Tuesday in which he outlined several measures regarding concussions, Commissioner Roger Goodell said that Casson and Viano would “continue to assist the committee,” but offered no details of any future relationship. A league spokesman confirmed that Casson and Viano would no longer be official members of the committee.

“The N.F.L. is currently identifying their replacements and additional members who will bring to the committee independent sources of expertise and experience in the field of head injuries,” Goodell said.

On Sunday, the league confirmed that it is collaborating with the players union to identify independent neurologists to work with team medical staffs to treat players with brain injuries.

This is the second time that the league has replaced leadership of its committee on concussions. In early 2007, the chairman, Dr. Elliot Pellman, resigned after strong criticism of his work and indications that h