Category: 08 Wild Cards

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NIGHTWATCH Extract: Strategic Prisoners in AF…

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards

Afghanistan: Taliban militants said on 25 July they had killed one of two US military personnel captured on the 24th in Logar Province, south of Kabul, and that they are holding the other hostage, Reuters reported, citing an interview with a Taliban spokesman. The spokesman said the group has taken the living captive and the dead one's body to a “safe place” and that the group's leadership would decide the fate of the captive later.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: US authorities announced that two US Navy personnel have been missing since Friday. Taliban state they ambushed the two, killing one. The memory of Vietnam's handling of American prisoners of war is still fresh enough to revive horrible memories, but the Pashtun Taliban are more brutal and less organized than the Vietnamese and lack a French colonial-built prison system for hiding POWs. The leadership safe havens in Pakistan do not include access to provincial prisons or kidnappings would be much more frequent.

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Journal: New Strategy for Afghanistan? Or Just a New Naked Emperor and a 2012 Bow Wave?

08 Wild Cards
Chuck Spinney Recommends

The  report of Damian McElroy in the Telegraph [UK] describes General Petraeus new strategy for Afghanistan.  It will be have a broad emphasis on counterinsurgency, like McChrystal's strategy, but McElroy highlighted the following (presumed) differences or distinguishing features:

Recognition that Taliban defections are crucial to achieving goal of ending war in 4 yrs (2014). … Observation: no talk about the drawdown starting in summer 2011, 2014 is now a “given.” So one benefit of substituting Petraeus for McChrystal is that politicians and generals can save face and keep defense budgets high while “bow-waving” the end of the war to 2014, well beyond the end of Mr. Obama’s presidency, and at which time, new excuses to continuing the wars of empire will materialize. “Bow waving” problems into the future is business as usual in the hall of mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac.

Petraeus’ new strategy will induce more defections by paying Taliban defectors. Observation: this implies a rent-a-Pashtun strategy like Petraeus' rent-a-Sunni strategy in Iraq, even though recent events in Iraq show that renting Sunnis did not end sectarian violence in Iraq; nor did it provide conditions for a lasting peace.  It did provide enough of a reduction in violence to let us declare victory and begin something of a drawdown (50,000 troops will remain in permanent bases).  Renting Pastuns, by the way, is not a new way to exit Afghanistan.  Alexander the Great, for example, had to bribe local tribes to “remove” the hostile tribes who were blocking his exit route by controlling the Khyber Pass.  My guess that the tribes split the profits and something similar will happen to our rental payments.

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Crises of Capitalism Audio + Animation

01 Brazil, 02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 08 Wild Cards, Audio, Civil Society, Commerce, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

This is an audio presentation by David Harvey accompanied by an animation that shows an interesting series of recent historical and geographical connections in the global financial system. The speaker admits to not having any solutions, but only providing the overview of what has happened.

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Journal: Legalize Marijuana, Displace Illegal Mexicans

03 Economy, 08 Immigration, 08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Law Enforcement
Michael Ostrolenk Recommends

Want to Defuse the Mexican Border Problem? Legalize Marijuana

By: Jane Hamsher Friday July 23, 2010 9:44 am

I was on MSNBC talking about the schism among Democrats regarding Arizona’s new immigration law and the Justice Department’s response. Obama is worried about his plummeting poll numbers among Hispanics (down 12 points this year), while Arizona Congressional Democrats are worried about being voted out of office.  But nobody is talking about pot.

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When asked about it by Dylan Ratigan, I said that everyone discussing the “immigration problem” was ignoring the elephant in the middle of the room: marijuana prohibition. It’s channeling millions in drug money into the Mexican cartels, and  represents 60% of all cartel profits. That money gets used to finance violence not only at the border but in over 200 cities across the United States where they currently have a presence — up from 100 cities three years earlier.

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Journal: Colombia-Venezuela Denounce Each Other within OAS–US is the Loser, Cuba Spins Up OAS Alternative Without the North

07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

While the US watches another CNN story on rape, Latin America has been watching CNN Espanol where  the Ambassador of Venezuela to the Organization of American States (OAS), has just delivered a phenomenally detailed, articulate, and persuasive denunciation of the US and its regional allies, particularly Colombia.

Hugo Chavez has then come out, breaking relations with Colombia (with great sadness), while offering Guyana the oil it needs, and calling again for a regional organization, the only thing “missing” in t he Bolivarian reconstitution.  He anticipates that the incoming government of Colombia will restore rational and reasonable relations.

Off to the side, Cuba is re-presenting its proposal for an OAS without the US and Canada–a regional organization that goes beyond UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) to include the Carribean and Central America.

What one notices from the South is that nothing has changed in the US between the Bush and Obama Administrations.  The Ambassadors are the same, the policies (if they can be called policies) are the same, the military mumblings about Hugo Chavez are the same.

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NIGHTWATCH Extracts: US Foreign Policy Confused

02 China, 03 India, 08 Wild Cards

Koreas Comment:

The White House statement presented the exercises in the context of routine behavior among Allies, timid and defensive. The Defense Department and UN Command statements indicated the exercises are pointed, aggressive and intended to be intimidating. The two statements neutralize each other because reassurance always trumps vigilance.

Undermining both statements is the fact that the US did not respond in a timely fashion to the defense of South Korea, which was attacked on 26 March. The response lag time erodes the cogency of all the lofty American words. The bottom line is that South Korea was attacked, but the US response took four months. That is not “strategic reassurance.”

As noted yesterday, in four months, a healthy North Korean army could overrun the Peninsula. Fortunately, it is not all that healthy. Somewhere in Washington the strategic thinking is muddled, timid and misguided in dealing with the Far East.

The Korean peninsula has now become an acute hotspot where an accidental clash can escalate into a full-scale war.

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