International news – Bladsy 11

‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’

An upcoming book challenging whether diplomatic and military support for Israel is in the best interests of the United States is set to spark fresh debate on Washington’s role in the Middle East.

“The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” written by two of the United States’ most influential political science professors, is set to hit the bookshelves next Tuesday and promises to break the taboo on the subject. Written by John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt from Harvard, the book follows an article they published last year that stirred impassioned debate by setting out a similar position.

Their thesis is that US endorsement of Israel is not fully explained by strategic or moral reasons, but by the pressure exerted by Jewish lobbyists, Christian fundamentalists and neo-conservatives with Zionist sympathies.

The result, according to the book, is an unbalanced US foreign policy in the Middle East, the US invasion of Iraq, the threat of war with Iran or Syria and a fragile security situation for the entire Western world. “Israel is not the strategic asset to the United States that many claim. Israel may have been a strategic asset during the Cold War, but it has become a growing liability now that the Cold War is over,” the authors said.

“Unconditional support for Israel has reinforced anti-Americanism around the world, helped fuel America’s terrorism problem, and strained relations with other key allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,” they added.

According to the two writers, “backing Israel’s harsh treatment of the Palestinians has reinforced Anti-Americanism around the world and almost certainly helped terrorists recruit new followers.”

Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, described the book as “an insidious, biased account of the Arab-Israeli conflict and of the role of supporters of Israel in the US,” in an interview with AFP.

“Everything about American policy toward the conflict is presented in exaggerated form, as if America is completely one-sided in support of Israel and that those policies are simply the product of the Israel lobby.” He is countering Mearsheimer and Walt’s book with his own title: “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control,” due out on the same day.

Mearsheimer and Walt highlight the three billion dollars in US economic and military aid that Israel receives every year – more than any other country. They also point to Washington’s diplomatic support: between 1972 and 2006, the United States vetoed 42 United Nations Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel, while watering down many others under threat of veto. Foxman counters that the special relationship works both ways and that the United States has gained much out of its ally.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs canceled a public debate on the issue planned for September and featuring Mearsheimer and Walt when they were unable to schedule a time that Foxman could also manage.

In the conclusion of their book, Mearsheimer and Walt say that the United States must change its policy towards Israel. “The United States would be a better ally if its leaders could make support for Israel more conditional and if they could give their Israeli counterparts more candid advice without facing a backlash from the Israel lobby.” With just over a year until the 2008 US presidential election, however, they said the issue was unlikely to even enter the debate.

search casino games Лобановский Харьков

US threatens to abandon NATO RRF

The United States has drastically scaled down its military engagement in the NATO rapid reaction force and has threatened to abandon the elite troops of the western defense pact, the business daily Handelsblatt quoted NATO circles as saying Monday.

The ‘NATO Response Force’ is no longer fully operational, NATO’s commander-in-chief John Craddock warned in his letter to NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

The US has reportedly lowered its authorized troop strength in the NATO rapid reaction force to only five percent.

Meanwhile, other NATO member states are now also refusing to allocate enough soldiers and military material for the NATO Response Force.

While on paper the authorized troop strength of NATO’s military force is supposed to be at 25,000 that number has dwindled to less than 50 percent, only six months after the creation of the rapid reaction force.

The NATO Response Force goes back to an American initiative which sought to use the NATO elite troopers for crisis intervention anti-terror missions.

The US and Britain have also called for deploying the NATO rapid reaction force in war-stricken Afghanistan.

boost post on

The RNA revolution

Nature is full of surprises. When atoms were first proved to exist (and that was a mere century ago), they were thought to be made only of electrons and protons. That explained a lot, but it did not quite square with other observations. Then, in 1932, James Chadwick discovered the neutron. Suddenly everything made sense—so much sense that it took only another 13 years to build an atomic bomb.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that biology is now undergoing its “neutron moment”. For more than half a century the fundamental story of living things has been a tale of the interplay between genes, in the form of DNA, and proteins, which the genes encode and which do the donkey work of keeping living organisms living. The past couple of years, however, have seen the rise and rise of a third type of molecule, called RNA.

The analogy is not perfect. Unlike the neutron, RNA has been known about for a long time. Until the past couple of years, however, its role had seemed restricted to fetching and carrying for DNA and proteins. Now RNA looks every bit as important as those two masters. It may, indeed, be the main regulator of what goes on in a cell—the cell’s operating system, to draw a computing analogy—as well as the author of many other activities (see article). As important, molecular biologists have gone from thinking that they know roughly what is going on in their subject to suddenly realising that they have barely a clue.

That might sound a step backwards; in fact, it is how science works. The analogy with physics is deeper than just that between RNA and the neutron. There is in biology at the moment a sense of barely contained expectations reminiscent of the physical sciences at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a feeling of advancing into the unknown, and that where this advance will lead is both exciting and mysterious.
Know thine enemy

As Samuel Goldwyn so wisely advised, never make predictions—especially about the future. But here is one: the analogy between 20th-century physics and 21st-century biology will continue, for both good and ill.

Physics gave two things to the 20th century. The most obvious gift was power over nature. That power was not always benign, as the atomic bomb showed. But if the 20th century was distinguished by anything from its predecessors, that distinctive feature was physical technology, from motor cars and aeroplanes to computers and the internet.

It is too early to be sure if the distinguishing feature of the 21st century will be biological technology, but there is a good chance that it will be. Simple genetic engineering is now routine; indeed, the first patent application for an artificial living organism has recently been filed (see article). Both the idea of such an organism and the idea that someone might own the rights to it would have been science fiction even a decade ago. And it is not merely that such things are now possible. The other driving force of technological change—necessity—is also there. Many of the big problems facing humanity are biological, or are susceptible to biological intervention. The question of how to deal with an ageing population is one example. Climate change, too, is intimately bound up with biology since it is the result of carbon dioxide going into the air faster than plants can remove it. And the risk of a new, lethal infection suddenly becoming pandemic as a result of modern transport links (see article) is as biological as it gets. Even the fact that such an infection might itself be the result of synthetic biology only emphasises the biological nature of future risks.

At the moment, policymakers have inadequate technological tools to deal with these questions. But it is not hard to imagine such tools. Ageing is directly biological. It probably cannot be stopped, but knowing how cells work—really knowing—will allow the process to be transformed for the better. At least part of the answer to climate change is fuel that grows, rather than fuel that is dug up. Only biotechnology can create that. And infections, pandemic or otherwise, are best dealt with by vaccines, which take a long time to develop. If cells were truly understood, that process might speed up to the point where the vaccine was ready in time to do something useful.

But physics gave the 20th century a more subtle boon than mere power. It also brought an understanding of the vastness of the universe and humanity’s insignificant place in it. It allowed people, in William Blake’s phrase, to hold infinity in the palm of a hand, and eternity in an hour.
Know thyself

Biology, though, does more than describe humanity’s place in the universe. It describes humanity itself. And here, surprisingly, the rise of RNA may be an important part of that description. Ever since the human-genome project was completed, it has puzzled biologists that animals, be they worms, flies or people, all seem to have about the same number of genes for proteins—around 20,000. Yet flies are more complex than worms, and people are more complex than either. Traditional genes are thus not as important as proponents of human nature had suspected nor as proponents of nurture had feared. Instead, the solution to the puzzle seems to lie in the RNA operating system of the cells. This gets bigger with each advance in complexity. And it is noticeably different in a human from that in the brain of a chimpanzee.

If RNA is controlling the complexity of the whole organism, that suggests the operating system of each cell is not only running the cell in question, but is linking up with those of the other cells when a creature is developing. To push the analogy, organs such as the brain are the result of a biological internet. If that is right, the search for the essence of humanity has been looking in the wrong genetic direction.

Of course, such results are speculative and primitive. But that is the point. Lord Rutherford, who proved that atoms exist, knew nothing of neutrons. Chadwick knew nothing of quarks, let alone supersymmetry. Modern biologists are equally ignorant. But eventually, the truth will out.

бачок для Фильчаков прокурор

Let?s Not Cower From The Hard Truth About Race And IQ

The debate over racial differences in IQ represents perhaps the greatest scientific controversy of the past half-century. The facts are not in serious dispute: blacks score, on average, significantly lower than whites in IQ tests in the United States, Britain and beyond.

Some argue that the only plausible response is to accept that blacks are naturally less intelligent than whites, a view that causes outrage among equal rights campaigners. But is there an alternative explanation for these puzzling statistics and what would it mean if there were not?

All too often the liberal establishment has stifled debate on the issue by pretending that it does not exist. It is asserted, for example, that the concept of intelligence is culturally relative. Even if this is (relatively) true, it does not alter the fact that the kind of intelligence revealed by IQ tests is crucial to one’s prospects in the modern world. It hardly helps the cause of racial equality to argue that, although blacks do worse at IQ tests, they have the kind of intelligence that is useful in preindustrial societies.

The reluctance of liberals to engage in real debate has left the impression that there is an inconvenient truth about IQ differences that is being suppressed by political correctness. This has bolstered the phenomenon of black skin being used subconsciously as an information-bearing trait, so that blacks are judged as a group rather than as individuals. This has prejudiced blacks in finding jobs and amounts to de facto affirmative action for whites.

The unwillingness to engage with the IQ controversy is based upon the fear that an exclusively environmental explanation is difficult to sustain. It is generally accepted that the variation in IQ within the white population is largely heritable, as is the variation within the black population. But if white-white and black-black IQ differences are predominantly heritable, how could it be that the black-white difference is exclusively environmental? This argument was first put by Arthur Jensen in 1969 in his seminal paper, How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?

But it rests upon a confusion. To see how, imagine a sack of genetically diverse seed that is randomly divided into two bunches. Bunch A is grown in a field with good lighting and Bunch B in a field with poor lighting. The differences in height between the seedlings in Bunch A will be exclusively genetic since they have all been subjected to the same environment. The same is true of Bunch B. But the difference in the average height between Bunch A and Bunch B is exclusively environmental—caused by the difference in lighting conditions.

This tells us that the variation within two populations (such as whites and blacks) has no logical connection with the variation between populations. This insight is particularly powerful when combined with the research of James Flynn, a New Zealand psychologist who discovered that IQ scores are inflating over time, a phenomenon that can only be explained by environmental factors.

Flynn’s discovery provides a real example of the thought experiment involving the seeds: IQ variation within each generation is largely heritable; IQ variation between generations is exclusively environmental. For the environmental hypothesis to work, we need only show that today’s black Britons face comparable conditions to whites in the mid1950s, something that chimes with common sense and social data. Allied with evidence of how IQ differences disappear when black children are brought up in residential nurseries with white children, the environmental hypothesis becomes convincing.

This will not come as a surprise to geneticists who have long understood that racial categories are social constructs lacking genetically rigorous boundaries. Most genetic variation exists within groups rather than between them and skin colour can be a highly misleading measure of the genetic distance between populations. It would have been astonishing if the diverse peoples who happen to share darker skin all had a genetic IQ inferiority.

The environmental explanation for racial IQ differences might also come as a relief to whites, a group that scores lower than East Asians. The idea that whites are naturally inferior in IQ to East Asians is worth pursuing if only to observe the reaction of white supremacists. But, as Flynn has shown, the environmental explanation is as persuasive for the difference between whites and East Asians as between whites and blacks.

But need liberals have been so paranoid about the possibility of natural IQ differences between the so-called races? Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that whites have a genetic advantage in IQ over blacks. Would this sanction the kind of policies favoured by the far Right, such as segregationist schooling or a bar on blacks entering university?

It is not difficult to spot the logical fallacy. Even if the average black had a naturally lower IQ than the average white this would not mean that all blacks had lower IQs than all whites. There would still be a significant overlap such that if a white person and a black person were chosen at random there would be a fair chance that the black would have a higher IQ. This demonstrates that even in a hypothetical society with genetically based racial differences in IQ it is sensible to treat people as individuals rather than as group members.

Of course, if the far Right were sincere in its motivation for the different treatment of blacks it has a far more effective policy at its disposal. Why not set a mandatory IQ test and then divide people into high, medium and low IQ? Anecdotal evidence suggests that a disproportionate number of the far Right would find themselves in the lowest category and ripe to be bossed around by intelligent black masters.

This ought to demonstrate to all shades of opinion that apartheid is an evil whether it is based upon colour, IQ or anything else. The fear of the Left over possible natural differences between the so-called races is understandable but exaggerated. It is founded upon the idea that political equality is derived from some actual equality that we all share. The truth is that political equality is a moral abstraction, not an empirical discovery. Grasping this important truth should enable us to celebrate our differences rather than cower in fear of them.

deposit free

New Anti-Slavery Law Not Enough

The Mauritanian government must take additional measures to ensure a new law criminalizing slavery has an effect, human rights activists say.

"The new law is a very positive first step. It is only a first step though," said Romana Cacchioli, Africa Programme Coordinator for the British non-governmental pressure group, Anti-Slavery International. "We don’t eradicate slavery just by introducing a law."

On 8 August, Mauritania’s National Assembly unanimously adopted a law criminalizing slavery, which continues to exist in Mauritania in both traditional and contemporary forms. The law, passed by the Senate on 22 August, makes slavery punishable by 5-10 years in prison. It marks the first time in Mauritanian history that slave holders have been sanctioned.

However, in the wake of the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition on 23 August, local and international organisations are calling on the government to do more to give the law real meaning for the estimated half million slaves in Mauritania.

"Accompanying measures are necessary so that this law is not forgotten – so that it actually contributes to the emancipation of former slaves," said Mamadou Moctar Sarr, executive secretary of the forum of national human rights organisations in Mauritania.

"It’s not too soon to start talking about the next steps that should be taken," said Julia Harrington of the Open Society Justice Initiative, an international programme for law reform. "The existing law is not really going to be effective all by itself," she told IRIN from Nouakchott, where she was meeting with NGOs to discuss how best they could lobby the government.

NGOs are asking for a monitoring and implementation mechanism that would apply the law, investigate allegations of slavery, mediate the release of slaves and award compensation.

"The passage of this law is incredibly important and symbolic, but there’s still a lack of clarity about what its practical effect is going to be," Harrington said.

As it stands now, victims of slavery must take their complaints to the police, "who probably don’t have the mentality and definitely don’t have the resources to implement the law." She said victims also need the legal right to take their masters to court in a civil suit, a provision that was not included in the law.

The NGOs insist former slaves need social and economic reintegration projects if they are to be truly free. They want the government to set up welcome centres for slaves who leave their masters and give them access to land and income-generating activities.

"Even if they are no longer slaves, as long as there is financial dependency, they will never be totally free," said Sarr, of the forum of Mauritanian human rights organisations.

Another key demand is free education for children of slave descent. "All these people need to know their rights, so that they know that they are whole persons who should be proud of themselves," Sarr added.

The groups say an awareness campaign is essential to spread the news that slavery is a criminal offence, and that it has also been deemed incompatible with Islam. Mauritania is West Africa’s only Islamic republic. According to Cacchioli, religious leaders have promised to talk about the abolition of slavery in their sermons.

The groups are also pushing for a comprehensive law against discrimination, which would address the relationship between slavery and discrimination. "Many of the legacies of slavery are around discrimination," Cacchioli added, noting some people of slave descent have been prevented from owning land, accessing water and running in elections.

Slavery has existed for centuries in Mauritania, a Sahelian country which falls geographically and culturally between Arab North Africa and black sub-Saharan Africa. The enslavement of the black Arabic speakers (Haratines) is not limited to the upper class white Moores (Berber-Arabs), but also exists among black Africans, mostly of the Halpulaar and Soninké ethnic groups.

Prevalence of the internationally banned practice is hard to quantify. One estimate by the Open Society Justice Initiative places the number of slaves and former slaves at 20 percent of the population – or about 500,000 people – but the organisation says the numbers are impossible to confirm. According to most estimates, the Haratine cast – slaves, former slaves or the descendants of slaves – make up close between 40-50 percent of the Mauritanian population, although the government has not officially released results from the last census.

Forms of slavery in Mauritania range from people who live independently but cannot get married without their master’s permission to people who "don’t get a single bit of food unless it comes from their master’s hands, spend their lives looking after their masters, and get beaten everyday," according to the Justice Initiative’s Harrington.

NGOs say that despite its shortcomings, the new law marks a huge shift in government attitude. Slavery was banned in Mauritania in 1981, but previous governments always denied the practice existed and the subject remained taboo.

"This law is a recognition that the practice exists," said Boubacar Messaoud, president of SOS-Esclaves, the local NGO that led the push for an anti-slavery law.

All NGOs contacted by IRIN said they believed Mauritania’s first democratically elected government – elected in March 2007 – was sincere in its promise to eradicate slavery and would take their requests seriously.

"We are optimistic," Messaoud said. "And we will continue to push for these accompanying measures until one day we get them because they are the solution to the problem."

Sexual harassment in Kenya

A troop of vervet monkeys is giving Kenyan villagers long days and sleepless nights, destroying crops and causing a food crisis.

Earlier this month, local MP Paul Muite urged the Kenyan Wildlife Service to help contain their aggressive behaviour.

But Mr Muite caused laughter when he told parliament that the monkeys had taken to harassing and mocking women in a village.

But this is exactly what the women in the village of Nachu, just south-west of Kikuyu, are complaining about.

They estimate there are close to 300 monkeys invading the farms at dawn. They eat the village’s maize, potatoes, beans and other crops.

And because women are primarily responsible for the farms, they have borne the brunt of the problem, as they try to guard their crops.

They say the monkeys are more afraid of young men than women and children, and the bolder ones throw stones and chase the women from their farms.

Nachu’s women have tried wearing their husbands’ clothes in an attempt to trick the monkeys into thinking they are men – but this has failed, they say.

"When we come to chase the monkeys away, we are dressed in trousers and hats, so that we look like men," resident Lucy Njeri told the BBC News website

"But the monkeys can tell the difference and they don’t run away from us and point at our breasts. They just ignore us and continue to steal the crops."

In addition to stealing their crops, the monkeys also make sexually explicit gestures at the women, they claim.

"The monkeys grab their breasts, and gesture at us while pointing at their private parts. We are afraid that they will sexually harass us," said Mrs Njeri.

The Kenyan Wildlife Service told the BBC that it was not unusual for monkeys to harass women and be less afraid of them than men, but they had not heard of monkeys in Kenya making sexually explicit gestures as a form of communication to humans.

The predominantly farming community is now having to receive famine relief food.

The residents report that the monkeys have killed livestock and guard dogs, which has also left the villagers living in fear, especially for the safety of their babies and children.

All the villagers’ attempts to control the monkeys have failed – the monkeys evade traps, have lookouts to warn the others of impending attacks and snub poisoned food put out by the residents.

"The troop has scouts which keep a lookout from a vantage point, and when they see us coming, they give warning signals to the ones in the farms to get away," said another area resident, Jacinta Wandaga.

The town has been warned by the Kenya Wildlife Service not to harm or kill any of the monkeys, as it is a criminal offence.

Running out of options, residents are harvesting their crops early in an attempt to salvage what they can of this year’s crop.

Unfortunately, this only invites the monkeys to break into their homes and steal the harvested crops out of their granaries.

Even the formation of a "monkey squad" to keep track of the monkeys’ movements and keep them out has failed.

The area is simply too large for the few volunteers to cover, they say.

Some residents have lost hope and abandoned their homes and farms, but those who have stayed behind, like 80-year-old James Ndungu, are making a desperate plea for assistance.

"For God’s sake, the government should take pity on us and move these monkeys away because we do not want to abandon our farms," he said.

"I beg you, please come and take these animals away from here so that we can farm in peace."

детский велосипед топкарго развод

Nigerian fetish killers

Scores of people fled villages in the Oju district of Benue state, near the border with Cameroon, as word of the killing spread, prompting authorities to impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

"The woman’s two ears were cut off, her hands were chopped off, her stomach was ripped open, her heart removed and her vagina was taken away," said a police spokesman from the state capital Makurdi.

Two girls who were with the woman also suffered deep machete cuts but survived the attack and are recovering in a local hospital, he added.

The attack occurred on Aug. 11, but the report reached state police command only on Tuesday because of poor communications.

Killing for rituals is common in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, where many believe witchcraft involving the use of human organs can make them instant millionaires or provide protection.

Nigeria is nominally divided equally between Christians and Muslims, but many mix these imported faiths with traditional beliefs.

Sorcerers often use human genitals, eyes, tongues and skulls to make charms.

In 2004, police discovered 83 decomposing, mutilated corpses in a raid on fetish shrines in a teak forest near Okija town in southeastern Anambra state. About 30 witch-doctors were arrested.

The former Anambra state governor, Chris Ngige, said he was taken to the forest to take an oath with some political sponsors before assuming office in 2003.

black jack топкарго развод

Oz unveils immigrant test

Australia has unveiled details of a new citizenship test for immigrants.

They will be asked questions about history, institutions and culture – as well as committing to Australian social values focusing on "mateship".

The aim of the test was to get "that balance between diversity and integration correct in future", said Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews.

Critics believe the requirement of an English language exam discriminates against non-English speakers.

The new citizenship test is expected to be introduced later this year.

The details were unveiled in a 40-page draft guide that is to be given to all applicants.

The prospective citizen will have to give a correct answer to 12 out of 20 questions – drawn from a total of about 200.

Some elements will almost certainly be beyond the knowledge of many ordinary Australians, says the BBC’s Nick Bryant in Sydney.

They include knowing the country’s first prime minister or when European settlers arrived in Australia – or what the opening line of the national anthem is. Another one could be related to the nation’s most important horse race.

Applicants who fail the test will be allowed to re-sit the examination.

But Kate Gauthier, national co-ordinator of refugee support group A Just Australia, criticised the government for introducing a citizenship exam.

"If they want to have Australia be more integrated they should spend more money on programs that achieve that instead of punishing people who are having trouble achieving that [integration] because they have language barriers and are recovering from things like torture," she was quoted as saying to the Sunday Herald Sun newspaper.

For the first time, the draft guide lists 10 essential Australian values every citizen must embrace – focusing on "mateship and a fair go" and including tolerance, compassion, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and secular government, equality of men and women and peacefulness.

It describes Australia as "a nation at ease with the world and itself", but it expects potential citizens to respect Australia’s core values.

"Australia has a strong tradition of mateship in which people help and receive help from others voluntarily, especially in times of adversity," it says.

"A mate can be a spouse, partner, brother, sister, daughter, son or friend. A mate can be a stranger."

The formulation caused controversy in 1999 when voters rejected an attempt by Prime Minister John Howard to have the concept written into the preamble to the constitution.

It was criticised as too sexist, or inappropriate for a formal document. справка Фільчаков прокурор

‘Enhanced blast’

British soldiers in Afghanistan are being supplied with a new "super weapon" to attack Taliban fighters more effectively, defence officials said yesterday.

The "enhanced blast" weapon is based on thermobaric technology used in the powerful bombs dropped by the Russians to obliterate Grozny, the Chechen capital, and in US "bunker busters".

Defence officials insisted yesterday that the British bombs were different. "They are optimised to create blast [rather than heat]", one said, adding that it would be misleading to call them "thermobaric".

So-called thermobaric weapons have been used by the US against suspected al-Qaida and Taliban underground bases. Combined heat and pressure kill people over a wide area by sucking the air out of lungs and destroying internal organs.

Defence officials described the new weapon as a shoulder-launched "light anti-structure munition".

They said the bombs would be more effective than conventional weapons such as anti-tank missiles which often miss their targets. Even when they hit the damage is limited to a confined area.

The new weapons would be more effective against buildings and structures used by the Taliban, they said.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, described the weapons as a "serious step change" for the British army. He added: "The continuing issue of civilian casualties in Afghanistan has enormous importance in the battle for hearts and minds. If these weapons contribute to the deaths of civilians then a primary purpose of the British deployment is going to be made yet more difficult."

The deployment of the weapons should have been announced to MPs, Sir Menzies said. "We need much more transparency."

The MoD said in a statement that it was buying "a small number of enhanced blast munitions for use on operations". It added: "These have been procured in full accordance with the UK’s obligations under international humanitarian law. It is important to us that our forces can choose from a wide suite of weaponry so they can respond appropriately and proportionately to any threat." The weapons would be used "proportionally under specific rules of engagement", the MoD said.

A "legal review" for the weapon – officially the lightweight anti-structure missile (ASM) – considered issues including whether it was prohibited or restricted under international law, whether it could be used discriminately, and whether it would cause unnecessary suffering.

депутат лобановский

Four Major Banks Borrow From Fed

Four major banks said Wednesday they each borrowed $500 million from the Federal Reserve’s discount window, lending weight to its efforts to restore liquidity to tight markets.

Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Wachovia Corp. each stressed they themselves have "substantial liquidity" and the ability to borrow money elsewhere.

In a joint statement, the latter three said they decided to borrow directly from the central bank to demonstrate "the potential value of the Fed’s primary credit facility" and encourage its use by other banks. It was not clear if other banks had also decided to borrow from the Fed.

On Friday, the Fed took the dramatic step of cutting its discount rate on loans to banks, to 5.75 percent from 6.25 percent, in an attempt to alleviate Wall Street’s credit crunch. It also made technical changes to make it easier for banks to get discount loans, including extending the credit period to up to 30 days.

Tapping the discount window had previously been seen as a last resort for banks in trouble, a perception the Fed sought to eliminate.

Citigroup was the first to announce its decision to borrow the money, "on behalf of its clients" at Citibank.

"Citi is pleased to inject liquidity into the financial system during times of market stress and to support creditworthy clients," the company said. "Citibank stands ready to continue to access the discount window as client needs and market conditions warrant."

It was followed minutes later by the three other banks.

"The companies believe it is important at this time to take a leadership role in demonstrating the potential value of the Fed’s primary credit facility and to encourage its use by other financial institutions," their statement said. The three added that they hoped their actions would "promote broad acceptance of the use of the facility."

Фильчаков прокурор

IMF hopes to triple African voting rights

International Monetary Fund (IMF) director general Rodrigo Rato on Monday expressed the organisation’s commitment to triple the voting rights of African nations in the organisation.

"We are conscious of the fact that current voting rights of African countries are insufficient and not representative enough," Rato said in Maputo at the end of a meeting of African finance ministers and central bank governors.

"Therefore, we will try our best possible to increase the voting rights and improve on their representations," he said.

He also hinted at the possibility of appointing an African deputy director general.

At the IMF’s inception, African countries had 11,2% of voting rights but their share has fallen to 2%. The rights are calculated on the basis of financial contributions.

Mozambique’s Finance Minister Manuel Chang said he hoped to see the African vote raised to 6% "in the first instance" and then in stages "until we arrive at our initial voting capacity".

African countries have demanded a reform of IMF working rules to include factors such as population and economic development in the calculation of voting rights

Blacks won’t die for US

NBC News on Sunday examined the "disappearing military mainstay" of African-American recruits, who in recent years had provided about 1/4 of military enlistments.

Once seen by young black people as "a sure way to climb the ladder," the military is increasingly being shunned because of the Iraq War. "Nearly 3 in 4 blacks oppose the war," NBC stated, and the percentage of active-duty black soldiers in the Army "has plunged by a third since 2001."

The drop-off in black recruits has been recognized as a problem since at least 2005, when the Washington Post reported that "the percentage of new Army recruits who are black has slipped dramatically over the past five years, reflecting a lack of support among African Americans for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The Associated Press recently updated those figures and suggested that "the findings reflect the growing unpopularity of the wars, particularly among family members and other adults who exert influence over high school and college students considering the military as a place to serve their country, further their education or build a career."

The father of one young black man who would like to enlist told NBC that he has refused to give his permission — required because his son is only 17 — because "I still have that hope that in a year from now he might change his mind."

knights game депутат лобановский

Top Swiss banker attacks US

Switzerland’s top banker has warned of massive losses from the unfolding credit crisis, describing the collapse in US lending standards as "unbelievable".

Jean-Pierre Roth, president of the Swiss National Bank, said market turmoil was far from over as tremors from the sub-prime debacle continued to rock the world.

"We’re certainly not at the end of the story. There are question marks surrounding the development of the American economy," he said. "Something unbelievable happened. People who had neither income nor capital got credit with very attractive conditions. Now reality is striking back," he said.

In Germany, the state bank SachsenLB admitted that it had received a €17.3bn bail-out after its investment arm Ormond Quai racked up huge losses on US sub-prime debt. It had previously denied holding direct exposure to sub-prime.

The revelation came as traders braced themselves for another turbulent week, with mounting expectations that central banks may soon cut rates to prevent market mayhem leading to an economic downturn.

While the surprise half-point cut in the US discount rate to 5.75pc last Friday helped settle markets and launch a relief rally on Wall Street and European bourses, investors remain wary until it becomes clearer who is holding the main losses on US mortgage debt.

Stockmarket historian David Schwartz warned investors not be fooled by signs of recovery. "The truth is no-one knows how serious the financial problem in the US is, nor how it will unfold. We do know central banks are scared out of their minds," he said.

The scale of last week’s sell-off sent shock waves through almost every asset class. Hedge funds liquidated yen "carry trade" positions to meet margin calls, toppling dominoes across Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.

Both Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers predict two cuts in the US federal funds rate to 4.75pc by the end of the year as falling house prices dampen spending. Michigan’s consumer confidence index slumped to 83.3 in August, down from 90.4 in July.

Markets are pricing in a 34pc chance that the European Central Bank will have to start cutting rates before the end of the year after growth faltered in the second quarter. The French and Spanish property booms have both stalled.

Jean Claude-Trichet, the ECB’s president, last week reaffirmed a likely quarter point rate rise to 4.25pc in September, despite the bank’s emergency actions in previous days. inside

Александр Фильчаков

British forces useless

Under attack

When America’s top commanders in Iraq held a conference with their British counterparts recently, Major General Jonathan Shaw – Britain’s senior officer in Basra – was quick to share his views on how best to conduct counter-insurgency operations.

For much of the last four years, the Americans in the room would have listened carefully, used to deferring to their British colleagues’ long experience in Northern Ireland. This time, however, eyes that would once have been attentive simply rolled.

Few were in the mood for a lecture about British superiority, when they fear that Downing Street’s planned pull-out from Basra will squander any progress from their own hard-fought "troop surge" strategy elsewhere.

"It’s insufferable for Christ’s sake," said one senior figure closely involved in US military planning. "He comes on and he lectures everybody in the room about how to do a counter-insurgency. The guys were just rolling their eyeballs. The notorious Northern Ireland came up again. It’s pretty frustrating. It would be okay if he was best in class, but now he’s worst in class. Everybody else’s area is getting better and his is getting worse."

The meeting, called by General David Petraeus, the senior US officer who has the task of managing the surge, is emblematic of what is fast becoming a minor crisis in Anglo-American military relations.

In Britain, Gordon Brown’s government has tried to depict a quiet process of handover to Iraqi troops in Basra, which will see the remaining forces in the city withdraw to the airport in November.

What US generals see, however, is a close ally preparing to "cut and run", leaving behind a city in the grip of a power struggle between Shia militias that could determine the fate of the Iraqi government and the country as a whole. With signs of the surge yielding tentative progress in Baghdad, but at the cost of many American lives, there could scarcely be a worse time for a parting of the ways. Yet the US military has no doubt, despite what Gordon Brown claims, that the pullout is being driven by "the political situation at home in the UK".

A senior US officer familiar with Gen Petraeus’s thinking said: "The short version is that the Brits have lost Basra, if indeed they ever had it. Britain is in a difficult spot because of the lack of political support at home, but for a long time – more than a year – they have not been engaged in Basra and have tried to avoid casualties.

"They did not have enough troops there even before they started cutting back. The situation is beyond their control.

"Quite frankly what they’re doing right now is not any value-added. They’re just sitting there. They’re not involved. The situation there gets worse by the day. Americans are disappointed because, in their minds, this thing is still winnable. They don’t intend to cut and run."

The officer predicted that the affair could have long-lasting implications. "There will be a stink about this that will hang around the British military," he said.

It is a view echoed by General Jack Keane, the architect of the surge strategy, who has just returned from Baghdad.

Gen Keane, who has the ear of Vice President Dick Cheney and Stephen Hadley, President George W Bush’s national security adviser, told The Sunday Telegraph: "It is disappointing and frustrating to see a situation in Basra that was once working pretty well, now coming apart. The situation there has been getting worse for some time."

The depth of concern has grown since Gordon Brown’s first prime ministerial visit to the US earlier this month, when he delivered a blunt message to Mr Bush that he would stick to plans which could see most of Britain’s 5,500 troops gone from Iraq next year.

The next political drama will come in four weeks when Gen Petraeus reports on the status of the surge strategy, which has successfully quelled violence in some areas but has failed to put an end to calls from Congress to bring the troops home.

Britain’s uncertain legacy in Basra will then be used as a political battering ram in Washington, as Mr Bush tries to win support on Capitol Hill.

One US official said that recent US military intelligence reports sent to the White House had concluded that Britain had "lost" Basra, and that Pentagon war games were predicting a virtual civil war in the South once British troops left.

He said: "When the White House makes the case for continuing the surge on the Hill they will say: ‘Look what happened in Basra when the Brits went back to their barracks. We can’t pull out now. Give us more time to get it right’."

He added that White House officials had expected Mr Brown to strike a different tone on Iraq to that of Tony Blair, but that they were disappointed not to win a firmer agreement to keep British troops in place.

"They don’t mind a change in rhetoric, but the bottom line for the president was to keep Basra as a British responsibility. He didn’t get as much as he wanted. There was a whiff of double dealing about it all."

As The Sunday Telegraph revealed last week, plans have been drawn up to send thousands of American troops into southern Iraq to take over the supervision of the vital supply route north from Kuwait, a task the British will bequeath when they leave.

But the senior US officer warned that combat troops may also have to go into Basra itself to "protect the population" from violence between its numerous warring Shia militias – an extra burden as perilous as any in Baghdad.

US Marine Colonel Gary Anderson, who has conducted recent Iraq war games for the Pentagon, said the situation Britain would leave behind in Basra "could be the most bloody part of the transition".

He said: "The primary issue in Basra will be a struggle between various Shia factions for control of the region, and frankly the regular government in Baghdad as well. It will be between pro-Iranian factions and those that are more nationalistic. It’s going to be nasty."

Col Anderson said British troops "did the best they could", but added: "I’m not sure they did as good a job as they did traditionally. This isn’t Northern Ireland. They thought they had a pretty good model but Iraq is a different culture."

Michael O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, added: "Basra is a mess, and the exit strategy attempted there has failed. It is, for the purposes of future Iraq policymaking, an example of what not to do.

"Basra has gone far towards revising the common American image of British soldiers as perhaps the world’s best at counter-insurgency."

иг ры для детей