Rape in Libya? Er, what about some evidence?

The media, as also politicians, are all too quick to jump onto the bandwagon to accuse a country, political leader or opponent, or anyone for that matter, of all sorts of diabolical things. The only problem is that very often there is no evidence to support the allegation.

Take the recent hyper-ventilation by both the media and politicians accusing the Gadhafi regime of engaging in mass rape of women. MediaLens uncovers that the claim is without foundation.

"In the Independent on June 24, Patrick Cockburn reported a vital development countering official propaganda on Libya:

'Human rights organisations have cast doubt on claims of mass rape and other abuses perpetrated by forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, which have been widely used to justify Nato's war in Libya.

'Nato leaders, opposition groups and the media have produced a stream of stories since the start of the insurrection on 15 February, claiming the Gaddafi regime has ordered mass rapes, used foreign mercenaries and employed helicopters against civilian protesters.'

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have checked the claims and found flat zero evidence.

And yet, earlier this month, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, told a press conference: 'we have information that there was a policy to rape in Libya those who were against the government. Apparently he [Colonel Gaddafi] used it to punish people'.

Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was 'deeply concerned' about reports of widespread rape in Libya by Gaddafi's forces.

By contrast, Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty, who spent three months in Libya after the start of the uprising in February, said: 'we have not found any evidence or a single victim of rape or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped'.

Liesel Gerntholtz, head of women's rights at HRW, said of the rape claims: 'We have not been able to find evidence.'

The Amnesty investigation also found no evidence of mercenaries fighting for Gaddafi. Rovera commented:

'Those shown to journalists as foreign mercenaries were later quietly released. Most were sub-Saharan migrants working in Libya without documents.'

And what about the massacres? Cockburn writes:

'During the first days of the uprising in eastern Libya, security forces shot and killed demonstrators and people attending their funerals, but there is no proof of mass killing of civilians on the scale of Syria or Yemen.'

Not quite the impression given by the flood of media propaganda.

Cockburn followed up his June 24 piece with another excellent report on June 26: 'Don't believe everything you see and read about Gaddafi.'

At time of writing, there has been a single low-profile response to Cockburn's reports in Roy Greenslade's Guardian blog.

Greenslade quoted Cockburn, adding only that these findings of course do not mean that Gaddafi's forces have not committed crimes.

There have been no other mentions in the UK media that we can find of this credible information challenging key claims justifying the war on Libya.

But shouldn't a media system that so eagerly advanced these claims against the latest target of Western violence be equally willing to publicise counter-evidence?"

Continue reading here.

$3.7 trillion.....and counting

The critical question to be asked is this......for all the money the USA has spent on going to and being in wars, a staggering $3.7 trillion to date - and see below for what president Obama said the figure was - what has America gained? Peace anywhere? Less threats from terror or terrorism? More secure pipelines to oil? A better world all round and for the American people?

"When President Barack Obama cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America's wars.

Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project "Costs of War" by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies.

In the 10 years since U.S. troops went into Afghanistan to root out the al Qaeda leaders behind the September 11, 2001, attacks, spending on the conflicts totaled $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion.

Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs such as long-term obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020. The estimates do not include at least $1 trillion more in interest payments coming due and many billions more in expenses that cannot be counted, according to the study.

In human terms, 224,000 to 258,000 people have died directly from warfare, including 125,000 civilians in Iraq. Many more have died indirectly, from the loss of clean drinking water, healthcare, and nutrition. An additional 365,000 have been wounded and 7.8 million people -- equal to the combined population of Connecticut and Kentucky -- have been displaced."

Buying underwear may shape not only women but a mini revolution

First the women of Saudi Arabia changelled their inability to drive, now what to those in the West seems incomprehensible - being able to purchase underwear, not from male employees in shops, but women saleswomen.

"On the "ladies' level" at the Kingdom Centre shopping mall in the Saudi capital, winds of change for Saudi women are blowing among the racks of bras. Gender barriers are falling among the body-shapers and panties. In what Saudi activists argue is one of several potentially momentous moves this spring and summer to ease some of the toughest strictures in the world upon women, Saudi Arabia says that it is remaking employment regulations -- so that women clerks can wait upon female customers in lingerie stores.

Never mind that it took changes in the labor law in 2005-2006, a boycott and online campaigns by Saudi female activists, and, ultimately, personal intervention by King Abdullah himself this month to counter fatwas regarding lingerie clerks, simply so that Saudi women wouldn't have to talk to male clerks about cup sizes and overflowing muffin tops.

In deeply conservative Saudi Arabia, where King Abdullah's government moved this year to further open jobs and education for women and responded surprisingly leniently last week to the most significant protest in decades against the kingdom's ban on women driving, this summer is what amounts to hopeful times for supporters of greater freedom for Saudi women."

A different strategy to violence

Rami G Khouri is a respected commentator on The Daily Star in Beirut and well regarded in the Middle East and beyond.

He reflects on a change of strategy by Palestinians from violence against Israel.

"While the Arab world is experiencing a historic series of citizen revolts against nondemocratic governments, something equally significant is happening among Palestinians in their struggle with Israel and Zionism. Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, Palestinians seem to be making a strategic shift in their mode of confrontation with Israel, from occasional military attacks toward a more nonviolent and political confrontation.

This development seems to be driven by two factors: that various kinds of armed struggle against Israel, by Palestinians or Arab armies, have had little or no impact on changing Israeli policies; and, that nonviolent political protests are more in keeping with the spirit of the moment in the Arab world, where unarmed civilians openly confront their oppressors and in most cases seem to be making headway".

****

"All four of these signs represent political actions that send a single, integrated message that finds resonance around the world: Israel’s practices against Palestinians continue to reflect a combination of criminality and impunity that are totally unacceptable, and people of conscience everywhere are taking action to force Israel, if possible, to comply with its legal obligations. The aim is for Israel to respect Palestinian rights in the same way that Israel demands respect for the rights of Jews and Israelis from the rest of the world.

Israelis and Zionists complain that this is a campaign to delegitimize Israel. That is not really accurate. The truth is that Israel and Zionism have gone a long way toward delegitimizing themselves, because of the way they deal with the Palestinians. If I were an Israeli, I would be worried, too, because this political battle cuts to the heart of the conflict between Israeli-Jewish Zionism and Palestinian Arabism.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is over a century old, but in practical terms it is starting only now. That’s because the contest is now one of clashing political and national rights facing off on a more level playing field, where justice, legality and legitimacy are the operative criteria, and, therefore, where Israel’s traditional strengths and the Palestinians’ weaknesses have little impact".

Read and ignore at your (our] peril

Nothing really to add to this blunt and direct piece from TomDispatch:

"Let’s see: today, it’s a story about rising sea levels. Now, close your eyes, take a few seconds, and try to imagine what word or words could possibly go with such a story.

Time’s up, and if “faster,” “far faster,” “fastest,” or “unprecedented” didn’t come to mind, then the odds are that you’re not actually living on planet Earth in the year 2011. Yes, a new study came out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that measures sea-level rise over the last 2,000 years and -- don’t be shocked -- it’s never risen faster than now.

Earlier in the week, there was that report on the state of the oceans produced by a panel of leading marine scientists. Now, close your eyes and try again. Really, this should be easy. Just look at the previous paragraph and choose “unprecedented,” and this time pair it with “loss of species comparable to the great mass extinctions of prehistory,” or pick “far faster” (as in “the seas are degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted”), or for a change of pace, how about “more quickly” as in “more quickly than had been predicted” as the “world’s oceans move into ‘extinction’ phase.”

Or consider a third story: arctic melting. This time you’re 100% correct! It’s “faster” again (as in “than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts” of 2007). But don’t let me bore you. I won’t even mention the burning southwest, or Arizona’s Wallow fire, “the largest in state history,” or Texas’s “unprecedented wildfire season” (now “getting worse”), or the residents of Minot, North Dakota, abandoning their city to “unprecedented” floods, part of a deluge in the northern U.S. that is “unprecedented in modern times.”

It’s just superlatives and records all the way, and all thanks to those globally rising “record” temperatures and all those burning fossil fuels emitting “record” levels of greenhouse gases (“worst ever” in 2010) that so many governments, ours at the very top of the list, are basically ducking. Now, multiply those fabulous adjectives and superlative events -- whether melting, dying, rising, or burning -- and you’re heading toward the world of 2041, the one that energy expert and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet Michael Klare writes about in “The New Thirty Years’ War.” It's a world where if we haven't kicked our fossil-fuel habit, we won’t have superlatives strong enough to describe it."

No credit card allowed here

What Does it Cost to Change the World? from WikiLeaks on Vimeo.

From CommonDreams:

"What do MasterCard, Visa, Bank of America, Paypal and Western Union all have in common? They help you pay for what you want? Well, yes... that is unless you want to help WikiLeaks make the world a better place. To see the shocking details, please go to wikileaks.org/​support.html."

A tragic legacy (400,000 traumatic brain injuries) of the Afghan and Iraqi Wars

The politicians can posture as much as they like, but it is the military and those associated with them who actually bear the brunt of decisions made by those very politicians. Witness the "results" of war. Death and destruction and as this piece on AlterNet highlights, for the Americans over 400,000 traumatic brain injuries for its vets from the Afghan and Iraqi wars.

"We are facing a massive mental health problem as a result of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a country we have not responded adequately to the problem. Unless we act urgently and wisely, we will be dealing with an epidemic of service related psychological wounds for years to come." -- Bobby Muller, President Veterans for America

"The multiple nature of it [multiple tours and longer deployments] is unprecedented. People just get blasted and blasted and blasted." -- Maj. Connie Johnmeyer, 332nd Medical Group

According to official Defense Department (DOD) figures, 332,000 soldiers have suffered brain injuries since 2000, although most independent experts estimate that the number is over 400,000. Many of these are mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI), a term that is profoundly misleading.

As David Hovda, director of the Brain Injury Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles, points out, "I don't know what makes it 'mild,' because it can evolve into anxiety disorders, personality changes, and depression." It can also set off a constellation of physical disabilities from chronic pain to sexual dysfunction and insomnia."

Horror of horrors! The French are drinking less wine

Who would have thought that the nation which savours good food and wine, France, is now seeing a drop in wine consumption.

"Researchers fear the culture of wine drinking is being lost in France, with younger generations less likely to savour a bottle over food and more prone to drink simply for pleasure.

They are also less aware of its cultural significance to France.

Just 16.5 per cent of the French population are now regular wine drinkers, according to research from the ESC Pau research centre and Toulouse 1 Capitole University.

Regular consumption over meals has been replaced by the French drinking wine occasionally rather than frequently, often on nights out."

On the road...

MPD is travelling for the next little while.....

That said, the world goes on.....as will this blog. Keep on checking in.

Whistle-blowers: Obama no better than Bush

The lawyer-president in the White House - who ought to know better - is no different, if not worse, than George Bush. Despite all the hype about open government and during the election campaign saying that he would treat whistle-blowers differently, as Glenn Greenwald highlights in this piece "Climate of Fear: Jim Risen v. the Obama administration" on Salon, the White House through the Department of Justice is pursuing a New York Times journalist.

One would have thought that the Valerie Plame saga, and how WikiLeaks has shown up governments with all their secrecy, might have taught Obama something. It doesn't look like it.....and in the process of pursuing the journalist there is always the angle of intimidation lurking in the background.

"The Obama DOJ's effort to force New York Times investigative journalist Jim Risen to testify in a whistleblower prosecution and reveal his source is really remarkable and revealing in several ways; it should be receiving much more attention than it is. On its own, the whistleblower prosecution and accompanying targeting of Risen are pernicious, but more importantly, it underscores the menacing attempt by the Obama administration -- as Risen yesterday pointed out -- to threaten and intimidate whistleblowers, journalists and activists who meaningfully challenge what the government does in secret.

The subpoena to Risen was originally issued but then abandoned by the Bush administration, and then revitalized by Obama lawyers. It is part of the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent whom the DOJ accuses of leaking to Risen the story of a severely botched agency plot -- from 11 years ago -- to infiltrate Iran's nuclear program, a story Risen wrote about six years after the fact in his 2006 best-selling book, State of War. The DOJ wants to force Risen to testify under oath about whether Sterling was his source."

US forgets about international law, let alone human suffering

Little needs to be added to this piece from The Electronic Intifada - other than to say that it again highlights the cosy relationship of America to Israel before all else. No wonder the US is on the nose in the Middle East. Small trifles like international law seems not to bother the US Administration.

"In comments yesterday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to lay the ground – indeed almost provide a green light – for an Israeli military attack on the upcoming Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which will include the US Boat to Gaza.

Among the passengers aboard the American boat will be 87-year old Kindertransport survivor Hedy Epstein, and author and poet Alice Walker. In all it is expected that about 10 ships, carrying 1000 people from over 20 countries will take part.

Here’s what Clinton said in remarks at the State Department on 23 June:

Well, we do not believe that the flotilla is a necessary or useful effort to try to assist the people of Gaza. Just this week, the Israeli Government approved a significant commitment to housing in Gaza. There will be construction materials entering Gaza and we think that it’s not helpful for there to be flotillas that try to provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves.

Clinton must know that Gaza is not part of what any country recognizes as “sovereign” Israeli territory, and therefore neither are Gaza’s territorial waters. Any boats entering Gaza’s waters would not in fact be entering “Israeli waters” as Clinton claimed. Clinton also, presuming she is properly briefed rather than misled, must also know that last year Israel attacked the Gaza Freedom Flotilla when it was in international waters and GPS data showed that it was actually heading away from Israel.

By invoking Israel’s supposed “right to self-defense” against civilian boats trying to reach Gaza, we must understand that Clinton is telling Israel the United States will not stand in the way of another military attack.

And by citing Israel allowing construction materials into Gaza to make the case that the flotilla is “unnecessary” because “aid” can reach the Palestinian people in Gaza, Clinton is engaging in the ultimate obfuscation.

People in Gaza have been reduced to penury and rendered dependent on aid by decades of Israeli occupation, siege and military attacks. The issue is not the delivery of aid but freeing the people by lifting the siege. It is an abhorrent position to suggest – as Clinton seems to – that if people in Gaza receive enough calories or a few building supplies then we should not be concerned about Israel’s siege. The Palestinian people of Gaza are not caged animals for whom sufficient care consists of shoving rations through the bars of their prison.

Israel’s siege is intended as a form of collective punishment and has been declared illegal by the ICRC.

Israel, as The Electronic Intifada reported, is engaging in military drills to intercept this unarmed civilian flotilla. In light of Clinton’s statements, if any blood is spilled it will not only be on Israeli, but also American hands.

Not content with tacitly encouraging Israeli violence, in another alarming development, the State Department has apparently threatened that Americans who board boats to Gaza could be jailed or fined for supporting terrorism. Haaretz reports:

The U.S. State Department said Friday that attempts to break the blockade are “irresponsible and provocative” and that Israel has well-established means of delivering assistance to the Palestinian residents of Gaza. It noted that the territory is run by the militant Hamas group, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization, and that Americans providing support to it are subject to fines and jail.

In effect, the US now seems to be defining any support for any Palestinians, including a besieged civilian population, as support for Hamas, and therefore support for “terrorism.”

This mirrors its use of such “material support” laws as a pretext to investigate and persecute Palestine solidarity, antiwar, and labor activists exercising their First Amendment rights at home.

"Living" in a Failed State

We hear talk of a failed State. But what does it mean?

FP investigates:

"Every failed state, to borrow a formula from Tolstoy, is failed in its own way. For some countries, instability is a chronic condition; for others, a single catastrophe can undo years of hard-earned progress. Teasing apart and quantifying the various factors that have contributed to state failure over the past year is a difficult job, and the Fund for Peace has again met the challenge with its Failed States Index (FSI).

What the index can't do, however, is put into relief the human tragedies behind the statistics. A lack of public services isn't merely a source of national shame -- it's often a cause of unnecessary disease and death. A national government that lacks popular legitimacy isn't just fodder for revolution -- it's an injustice that sometimes expresses itself through cruelty and repression. As an abstraction, ethnic conflict sounds bad, but it only barely suggests the traumas of watching one's family slaughtered without warning.

Continue reading here to see what living in a failed State actually means.

So, who is gonna be leaving?

Credited to Mike Luckovich, truthdig

Israel shows its inhuman and undemocractic side

An Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, is "lost" in battle, not kidnapped as the Israeli claim, 5 years ago. He hasn't been released - despite alleged negotiations with Hamas - and one has to wonder whether that is a result of Shalit being a convenient pawn and good PR vehicle.

Gideon Levy, writing his latest op-ed piece "A society is judged by the way it treats its prisoners" in Haaretz, highlights the plight of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Inhumane treatment and being imprisoned without trial - in the only democracy in the Middle East? as it is always touted.

"About 5,400 Palestinian prisoners are now in Israeli prison, of which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have had a bitter taste over the years. It's not a matter of "thousands of murderers," as people like to portray it. Only some have been convicted of murder; some of their acts were particularly horrific. Two hundred and twenty have been imprisoned without trial, and there are also 180 incarcerated minors, among whom are a few dozen children under 16.

Some of the Palestinians are political prisoners in every sense of the word; they were convicted of "membership" and other political offenses. Most were convicted by the military court system, whose connection to justice is like a military band's to music. Among them are victims of frame-ups by collaborators - they have been jailed without committing a crime.

These are not "thousands of murderers." In any case, they all have rights according to Israeli and international law, rights they do not always receive. Some, especially those from the Gaza Strip, have not received family visits for years. And of course, there are no prison furloughs for Palestinians. Israeli Arab lifers do not even get their sentences reduced, the way any Jewish murderer does, which is scandalous in itself."

We are what we eat...and get!

We ought to be alive to what we eat......and what are doing to our bodies.

"More than 350 million people in the world now have diabetes, an international study has revealed. The analysis, published online by the Lancet on Saturday, adds several tens of millions to the previous estimate of the number of diabetics and indicates that the disease has become a major global health problem.

Diabetics have inadequate blood sugar control, a condition that can lead to heart disease and strokes, as well as damage to kidneys, nerves and the retina. About three million deaths a year are attributed to diabetes and associated conditions in which blood sugar levels are disrupted.

The dramatic and disturbing increase is blamed by scientists on the spread of a western-style diet to developing nations, which is causing rising levels of obesity. Researchers also say that increased life expectancy is playing a major role.

Type 2 is the most common type of diabetes, accounting for about 85-95% of cases, and is often tied to obesity. It develops when the body fails to produce enough insulin to break down glucose, inflating blood sugar levels. Type 1 diabetes is a separate auto-immune disorder."

Audacity of Hope

Muna Khan is the Editor of Al Arabiya English.

He writes about the vessel, Audacity of Hope, due to sail for Gaza. The trip is already fraught with issues......not the least the position taken by the US Administration with respect to the voyage.

This piece, if nothing else, is an insight into how the Arab world views America's complicity with Israel in suppressing the Palestinians and Gazans in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel itself.

"None of “us crazy Muslims” as so many of our beloved commentators enjoy pointing out are surprised by America’s alliance with Israel on a host of issues but the audacity of it still surprises. The US flotilla to Gaza is just another example of it.

Ironically the boat is called The Audacity of Hope, perhaps in an effort to pay homage to Barrack Obama’s career, and even remind him of his forgotten promises. The boat carries 50 citizens, many of them notable intellectuals and writers like Naomi Klein and Alice Walker.

The Audacity of Hope will join other vessels to form a Freedom Flotilla to take aid to Gaza.

The ship plans to depart from a Greek port except that Greek authorities are under a lot of pressure from Israel and the Obama administration to disallow it, and other vessels, from using its ports to head to Gaza. Israel is using economic incentives at a time when Greece’s economy is all but bust to place pressure on Athens.

That makes sense for Israel.

That the Obama administration is issuing warnings to its citizens against traveling to Gaza by any means “including sea” doesn't make sense to me.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, noting “that previous attempts to enter Gaza by sea have been stopped by Israeli naval vessels and resulted in the injury, death, arrest, and deportation of US citizens,” states very clearly which side the Obama administration is on.

Even if it does not surprise, it bears noting that last year flotilla fiasco saw the death of one US citizen on board the Mavi Marmara and the American government did nothing on his behalf after his death—including assisting in the seeking of compensation from Israeli government.

Given that US administrations are quick to fight wars on the pretext of protecting its citizens, it is almost laughable that it is warning its citizens on, not protecting from, Israeli aggressions.

What, if any, measures is the Obama administration taking to protect Americans sailing to Gaza amidst a backdrop of Israeli aggression? A cursory online search did not find any statement by a US official to Israeli authorities asking them to show restraint. Instead, you will easily find statements by US officials warning its citizens that it will be their fault if they are harmed.

Is it just us crazy Muslims who see that there is something very wrong with this picture?

Gaza is under siege—and the Obama administration’s actions validate it. Under which law does it say that aid can only be delivered to 1.5 million people living like hostages in Gaza through Israel?

What laws are participants of flotillas in violation of when they travel to deliver humanitarian assistance?

Mr. Obama and his administration’s audacity to behave this way leave little room for any hope. Of the 535 members of Congress, only six have signed a letter asking the government to ensure the safety of its citizens participating in the flotilla.

We’ve always known that the lives of the 1.5 million in Gaza are immaterial. It seems that the 50 lives aboard The Audacity of Hope amount to nothing as well.

If that’s not worthy of some form of contempt, I don’t know what is."

Australia's shame

There can be little that isn't shameful about how Australia's indigenous population has been treated since the arrival of the white man - and the appalling position they still find themselves in 2011.

An all-party Federal Parliamentary Committee released a Report on the plight of the aboriginal community last week - as op-ed columnist Mike Carlton deals takes up in his latest column in the Sydney Morning Herald.

"Last Monday night, a report with the rather clunky title of Doing Time - Time for Doing: Indigenous Youth in the Criminal Justice System was tabled in Federal Parliament.

Its contents were anything but clunky. They were horrifying. Aboriginal Australians are being thrown into prison at a greater rate than ever before, in every state and territory. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of black males in custody increased by 55 per cent, and the number of black females by 47 per cent.

Far too many of them were and are kids. The report found that: "The detention rate for indigenous juveniles is 397 per 100,000, which is 28 times higher than the rate for non-indigenous juveniles (14 per 100,000). In 2007, indigenous juveniles accounted for 59 per cent of the total juvenile detention population."

And it gets worse. To quote again:

Aboriginal Australians make up about 2.5 per cent of the national population, but 25 per cent of the prison population.

Indigenous juveniles make up 53 per cent of all juveniles in detention.

Twenty-two per cent of indigenous juveniles in detention were 14 or younger, compared with 14 per cent of non-indigenous juveniles.

NSW has the highest total number of indigenous people in prison: 2139.

Western Australia has the highest number per capita: at least three indigenous people in jail for every 100 state residents.

In case you're wondering, this report was not the work of a bunch of bleeding-heart lefties. It was compiled by an all-party committee of MPs - Labor, Liberal, the lot - who agreed unanimously that "this situation is a national disgrace" and that "all governments, including the Commonwealth, states and territories, have failed to adequately address this problem".

Afghanistan: Nothin' has really changed

Sobering report on the "condition" of society in Afghanistan, and how it operates. Seems like nothin' much has changed after all these years of a NATO presence in the war-ravished country, the billions of dollars "invested" and all the human tragedy - for both Afghans and Western troops.

"The farmer picking apples in the outskirts of Kabul must pay the Taliban $33 to ship out each truckload of fruit. The governor sends in armed men to chase workers off job sites if the official bribes aren’t paid. Poor neighborhoods never get their U.N.-provided wheat, long since sold on the black market.

These are some of the elements, large and small, that together form the elaborate organized crime environment Afghans contend with daily. And despite the hoped-for success of the U.S. military surge and President Barack Obama’s claims of significant progress, Afghanistan’s resemblance to a mafia state that cannot serve its citizens may only be getting worse, according to an upcoming report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.

The 46-page study, to be released next week, looks specifically at Afghanistan’s heartland: the rural areas of Ghazni, Wardak, Logar and other provinces just beyond the periphery of Kabul. Unemployment is high, government presence is low and the insurgency operates with impunity. Corruption and cooperation with the Taliban reach the highest levels of local governance.

“Nearly a decade after the U.S.-led military intervention little has been done to challenge the perverse incentives of continued conflict in Afghanistan,” the research group says. Rather, violence and the billions of dollars in international aid have brought wealthy officials and insurgents together. And “the economy as a result is increasingly dominated by a criminal oligarchy of politically connected businessmen,” the report concludes."

No apple for Apple here

Ah, politics and pressure! How else to explain Apple's shameful double-standards in taking off one App from its Apple Store - that's one for the Palestinians - but allowing what is clearly a propaganda Israeli one to remain.

ThinkProgress reports in "Apple Bans Palestinian Activist App From iTunes, But Allows Israeli Government Propaganda App":

"Earlier this week, Apple announced that it would pull an iPhone app published by a group of Palestinian activists calling for a third intifada (Arabic for uprising). The banning of the app came after complaints from the Israeli government and allied activists. In explaining the decision, an Apple spokesman said it violated “the developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people” — likely because it protested Israeli policies and helped organize protests against that country’s military presence.

Yet Apple does not seem to be giving similar treatment to an app published by the Israeli Ministry of Affairs (MFA). The “Israel MFA” app features a newsroom, YouTube videos, and photos that portray the Palestinians as obstinate and violent, and convey the message that Israel is committed to peace. In the newsroom section, there are links to stories such as “Palestinian incitement distances peace” and praising the supposed “Israeli humanitarian lifeline to Gaza.

As (one) can see from the screenshot above — or if you download the app by following the link here — the Israel MFA appears to have a mirrored purpose to the Third Intifada app that Apple banned — namely, to tell one side’s narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This would appear to be an instance where the company is applying its policies in an inconsistent manner.

This isn’t the first time the company has been engaged in such activity. In 2009, Apple rejected an app advocating for single payer health care, reportedly calling it “politically charged.” One has to wonder why the company views the Palestinian cause or single payer health care as too politically toxic but does not feel the same way about an Israeli government propaganda outlet."

The state of play in the USA

As an outsider the more one reads and sees about America, one is left with a strong impression of the rich getting very much richer whilst the rest are going sideways or backwards. No less importantly one cannot help get the feeling that Washington is oblivious to the plight of many Americans and that any turn-around of the economy is a long way off, if ever. The landscape in the wealthiest country in the world has changed.

This op-ed piece in The New York Times - published here in full - would seem to reflect the mood in the US.

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

James Baldwin penned that line more than 50 years ago, but it seems particularly prescient today, if in a different manner than its original intent.

Baldwin was referring to the poor being consistently overcharged for inferior goods. But I’ve always considered that sentence in the context of the extreme psychological toll of poverty, for it is in that way that I, too, know well how expensive it is to be poor.

I know the feel of thick calluses on the bottom of shoeless feet. I know the bite of the cold breeze that slithers through a drafty house. I know the weight of constant worry over not having enough to fill a belly or fight an illness.

It is in that context that I am forced to assume that if Washington politicians ever knew the sting of poverty then they have long since vanquished the memory. How else to qualify their positions? In fact, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, nearly half of all members of Congress are millionaires, and between 2008 and 2009, when most Americans were feeling the brunt of the recession, the personal wealth of members of Congress collectively increased by more than 16 percent. Must be nice.

Poverty is brutal, consuming and unforgiving. It strikes at the soul.

You defend yourself with hope, hard work and, for some, a helping hand. But these weapons grow dull in an economy on the verge of atrophy, in a job market tilting ever more toward the top and in a political environment that would sacrifice the weak to the wealthy.

On Thursday, the Pew Research Center released a poll that showed how disillusioned low-income people have become. Those making less than $30,000 were the most likely to expect to be laid off or be asked to take a pay cut. Furthermore, they were the most likely to say that they had trouble getting or paying for medical care and paying the rent or mortgage.

But at least those numbers include people with incomes. A vast subset is chronically unemployed and desperately searching for work. According to the Consumer Reports Employment Index, “In 23 of the past 24 months, lower-income Americans have lost more jobs than they have gained.” It continues, “Meanwhile, more affluent Americans seem to be gaining more jobs than they are losing.”

And the current election-cycle obsession to balance the books with a pound of flesh, which is being pushed by pitiless Republicans and accommodated by pitiful Democrats, will only multiply the pain.

Until more politicians understand — or remember — what it means to be poor in this country, we are destined to fail the least among us, and all of us will pay a heavy price for that failure."

•

Whither being distracted

As you settle into the weekend reflect on this op-ed piece by Johann Hari in The Independent addressing how we are finding it easier and easier to be distracted - and not to be able to escape with or to something like curling up with a good book in piece and quiet.

"The book – the physical paper book – is being circled by a shoal of sharks, with sales down 9 per cent this year alone. It's being chewed by the e-book. It's being gored by the death of the bookshop and the library. And most importantly, the mental space it occupied is being eroded by the thousand Weapons of Mass Distraction that surround us all. It's hard to admit, but we all sense it: it is becoming almost physically harder to read books.

In his gorgeous little book The Lost Art of Reading – Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, the critic David Ulin admits to a strange feeling. All his life, he had taken reading as for granted as eating – but then, a few years ago, he "became aware, in an apartment full of books, that I could no longer find within myself the quiet necessary to read". He would sit down to do it at night, as he always had, and read a few paragraphs, then find his mind was wandering, imploring him to check his email, or Twitter, or Facebook. "What I'm struggling with," he writes, "is the encroachment of the buzz, the sense that there's something out there that merits my attention."

I think most of us have this sense today, if we are honest. If you read a book with your laptop thrumming on the other side of the room, it can be like trying to read in the middle of a party, where everyone is shouting to each other. To read, you need to slow down. You need mental silence except for the words. That's getting harder to find."

Justice? It all depends on who you are

We all know that no justice system is perfect, but here is an example, from CommonDreams, not of a tale of two cities, but two men from different sides of the tracks. Ponder both the offence with which both men were charged, who the "losers" were in the final result and the outcome sentence-wise.

"Consider Paul Allen, 55, a former mortgage CEO who defrauded lenders of over $3 billion. This week, prosecutors celebrated the fact they got him a 40-month prison sentence. Consider Roy Brown, 54, a hungry homeless man who robbed a Louisiana bank of $100 - the teller gave him more but he handed the rest back. He felt bad the next day and surrendered to police. He got 15 years. Justice in America has a ways to go."

Over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer, takes up the situation which has arisen above in a piece "The definition of a "two-tiered justice system".

Three key words: WikiLeaks, Libya, Oil

MediaLens follows up on 3 words, "WikiLeaks", "Libya" and "oil".

"Interesting" results.....

"'Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves — 43.6 billion barrels — outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects.'

So reported the Washington Post on June 11, in a rare mainstream article which, as we will see, revealed how WikiLeaks exposed the real motives behind the war on Libya.

So what happens when you search UK newspaper archives for the words 'WikiLeaks', 'Libya' and 'oil'? We decided to take a look."

Continue reading here.

A timely message?

Credited to MIke Lester, Rome News-Tribune

Analysing those withdrawal from Afghanistan figures

FAIR points up how the media haven't done their homework in reporting the Obama line on the number of military to be withdrawn from Afghanistan.

"Barack Obama's June 22 announcement of a phased troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was often portrayed as a major step towards ending the war, with many outlets neglecting to accurately explain the pace of escalation that has happened under his watch.

When Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. had about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan. Obama has initiated two major troop increases in Afghanistan: about 20,000 additional troops were announced in February 2009, followed by the December 2009 announcement that an another 33,000 would be deployed as well; other smaller increases have brought the total to 100,000. Much of the media conversation portrays the announced withdrawal schedule as a removal of all the surge troops--"the withdrawal of the entire surge force by the end of next summer," as the New York Times put it (6/23/11)--which ignores the initial escalation.

News accounts over how many troops might leave should account for the total U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, in historical context. As ThinkProgress noted (6/22/11),

if the reductions are carried out as planned, the United States would still have far more troops in Afghanistan than it did when Obama came into office and more than at any point during former president George W. Bush’s administration. This means that the troop reduction would not put us much closer to actually ending the war by the end of 2012."

****

"Reporting also nearly universally excluded any mention of the 100,000 Pentagon contractors currently in Afghanistan, which double the U.S. military commitment there. Given the full context, it's hard to read a phased pullout of 30,000 out of 200,000 over the course of an entire year as a "rapid" withdrawal (Los Angeles Times, 6/23/11). Nor is it clear how this withdrawal, which conforms to Obama's promise to begin to pull out troops from the second surge within 18 months of their deployment, merits a headline like the New York Times' "Obama Will Speed Military Pullout From Afghan War" (6/23/11)."

Shedding light on corporations and government togetherness

Valid points made in this piece "5 WikiLeaks Revelations Exposing the Rapidly Growing Corporatism Dominating American Diplomacy Abroad" on AlterNet on how government and large corporations, in effect, essentially are in each others pocket and basically on the same page in many areas.

"One of the most significant scourges paralyzing our democracy is the merger of corporate power with elected and appointed government officials at the highest levels of office. Influence has a steep price-tag in American politics where politicians are bought and paid for with ever increasing campaign contributions from big business, essentially drowning out any and all voices advocating on behalf of the public interest."

****

"In this context of corporate government corruption, one of WikiLeaks' greatest achievements has been to expose the exorbitant amount of influence that multinational corporations have over Washington's diplomacy. Many of the WikiLeaks US embassy cables reveal the naked intervention by our ambassadorial staff in the business of foreign countries on behalf of US corporations. From mining companies in Peru to pharmaceutical companies in Ecuador, one WikiLeaks embassy cable after the next illuminates a pattern of US diplomats shilling for corporate interests abroad in the most underhanded and sleazy ways imaginable.

While the merger of corporate and government power isn't exactly breaking news, it is one of the most critical yet under-reported issues of our time. And WikiLeaks has given us an inside look at the inner-workings of this corporate-government collusion, often operating at the highest levels of power. It is crystal clear that it's standard operating procedure for US government officials to moonlight as corporate stooges. Thanks to WikiLeaks, here are five instances that display the lengths to which Washington is willing to go to protect and promote US corporations around the world."

Say that again! The withdrawal from Afghanistan is what?

President Obama today announced his plans for withdrawing US military personnel from Afghanistan. But is it really a plan which bears close examination let alone credibility? Phyllis Bennis writing in "In Afghanistan Speech, Obama Offers Token Troop Withdrawals While Maintaining the "War on Terror” Mindset" on AlterNet thinks not!

"President Obama’s speech tonight violated one of his most important campaign promises: to “end the mind-set that leads to war.”

To the contrary, his announcement of a token shift of 10,000 soldiers leaving by the end of 2011, and maybe another 23,000 in another year, makes clear that his claim tonight that “the tide of war is receding” remains untrue. The enormous current deployment of 250,000 U.S. and allied military forces (100,000 U.S. troops, 50,000 NATO troops and 100,000 Pentagon-paid contractors) in Afghanistan continues, and reflects not an end but an embrace of the mind-set of war, even with this small shift of soldiers. This was an opportunity for President Obama to recognize our democracy, to acknowledge and – dare I suggest? – even respect the views of the vast majority of the American people. Sixty-four percent of the people of our country believe the war is not worth fighting. When this war began in October 2001, only about 12% of people in the U.S. did not support it. So 64% opposition means a lot of folks have come to that realization now after years of escalating Afghan civilian and U.S. military casualties, years of a collapsing economy, and yes, years of hard-fought anti-war organizing.

The American people are way ahead of the government on this one – Congress, the White House, the Pentagon, all of them. A few members of Congress are starting to get it – those in the Progressive and Out of Afghanistan Caucuses. Rep. Barbara Lee of California has introduced an amendment to the pending $560 BILLION Pentagon authorization bill (that one doesn’t even include the costs of the actual wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and beyond…) that would prohibit any money being spent on the war in Afghanistan except for the cost of a quick and safe withdrawal of all the troops. The U.S. Conference of Mayors just passed their first anti-war resolution since the height of the Viet Nam War in 1971, calling for a quick end to the war in Afghanistan and for the war dollars to be brought home to rebuild U.S. cities. The mayors get it, unemployed people across this country get it, many of the troops being forced into their third, fourth, fifth or even more deployments get it. And that’s why the president’s speech tonight focused – however inadequately – on how many troops are being pulled out, not how many more are being sent in."

Credit-crunch? Not for many (many more) post the GFC.

The Guardian publishes a report on the wealthy....and perhaps not at all surprisingly more people are so-called rich than before the GFC. Bottom line, the rich are on the march, upwards, whilst the rest of us are languishing, going sideways or backwards at a great clip.

One has to wonder how long people will sit back and watch what is happening to their lack of good fortune. Witness some of the European countries where already people are increasingly taking to the streets to protest about their jobs, income and pension-entitlements. All of this doesn't augur well for the future.

"We are not all in this together. The UK economy is flat, the US is weak and the Greek debt crisis, according to some commentators, is threatening another Lehman Brothers-style meltdown. But a new report shows the world's wealthiest people are getting more prosperous – and more numerous – by the day.

The globe's richest have now recouped the losses they suffered after the 2008 banking crisis. They are richer than ever, and there are more of them – nearly 11 million – than before the recession struck.

In the world of the well-heeled, the rich are referred to as "high net worth individuals" (HNWIs) and defined as people who have more than $1m (£620,000) of free cash.

According to the annual world wealth report by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, the wealth of HNWIs around the world reached $42.7tn (£26.5tn) in 2010, rising nearly 10% in a year and surpassing the peak of $40.7tn reached in 2007, even as austerity budgets were implemented by many governments in the developed world.

The report also measures a category of "ultra-high net worth individuals" – those with at least $30m rattling around, looking for a home. The number of individuals in this super-rich bracket climbed 10% to a total of 103,000, and the total value of their investments jumped by 11.5% to $15tn, demonstrating that even among the rich, the richest get richer quicker. Altogether they represent less than 1% of the world's HNWIs – but they speak for 36% of HNWI's total wealth.

Age also helps: more than eight out of 10 of the world's wealthiest people are aged over 45. So does being male: women account for just over a quarter of the total – though this is slightly higher than in 2008. The highest proportion of wealthy women is in North America – 37% of HNWIs – while the lowest is in the Middle East, which has 14%.

Generally, HNWIs are most concentrated in the US, Japan and Germany: 53% of the world's most wealthy live in one of those three countries, but it is Asian-Pacific countries where the ranks of the rich are swelling fastest. For the first time last year the region surpassed Europe in terms of HNWI individuals.

This scale of wealth of the richest people in Asia Pacific – fuelled by the fast-growing economies in China and India – is now threatening to overtake North America, where the value of the wealth rose more slowly – 9% – to reach $11.6tn.

The richest people in the Asia-Pacific region have also fared better since the crisis. Their wealth is now up 14.1% since 2007 while individuals in North America and Europe are yet to recoup the losses they suffered during the banking crisis.

Britain is lagging behind in the league of affluence – it has not yet enjoyed a return to pre-crisis levels of wealth as sluggish economic growth holds back prospects. The growth in the number of rich individuals in the UK was among the slowest in the top 10 nations, showing a 1.4% rise to 454,000 and remaining below the 495,000 recorded in 2007.

The report said that while the UK stock market rose almost 30% and GDP grew 1.3% – after contracting by 4.9% in 2009 – the fortunes of the rich were held back by falling house prices and the rise in unemployment. Their prospects might improve next year, however. "Construction spending for the 2012 London Olympics is expected to help propel the economy and the housing market recovery," the report said.

The 1.4% rise in the number of rich people in Britain compares with a 7.2% rise in Germany and 8.3% in the US – where there are 3.1m HNWIs – and the 3.4% rise in France.

India moved into the top 12, with a 20.8% rise to 153,000, for the first time, while Italy, 10th in the table, endured a contraction in the number of wealthy people from 190,000 to 170,000."

The cure lies in breast milk

"What if nutritionists came up with a miracle cure for childhood malnutrition? A protein-rich substance that doesn’t require refrigeration? One that is free and is available even in remote towns like this one in Niger where babies routinely die of hunger-related causes?

Impossible, you say? Actually, this miracle cure already exists. It’s breast milk.

When we think of global poverty, we sometimes assume that the challenges are so vast that any solutions must be extraordinarily complex and expensive. Well, some are. But almost nothing would do as much to fight starvation around the world as the ultimate low-tech solution: exclusive breast-feeding for the first six months of life. That’s the strong recommendation of the World Health Organization.

The paradox is that while this seems so cheap and obvious — virtually instinctive — it’s also rare."

So begins a piece by op-ed writer Nicholas D Kristof for The New York Times as he swings through Africa on what might almost be called his annual pilgrimage to that continent.

Reading the piece makes one wonder, not for the first time, why the world and agencies like the UN aren't at the forefront in working in areas of aid and material assistance to the poor of Africa as Kristof describes.

7 billion people.....and counting

Whilst debate continues about the state of our planet, and amongst other things, how we are going to be able to feed and maintain the peoples of our globe, a UN Report tells us that we will "hit" 7 billion people on this planet some time later this year. Equally startling is where the people of the world are located.

"Somewhere in the world - Asia would be a good bet - a pregnant woman is carrying a baby destined to be the planet's seven billionth human being.

The historic baby is due to be born on October 31, the United Nations Population Division predicts.
Bookmakers have made Asia the hot favourite for the symbolic arrival, possibly for no better reason than that the sun rises in the east, giving Asian mothers a head start.

If they are right, another reasonable bet would be that the baby will grow up to be part of another historic demographic shift and live in a city.

By mid-2022 there will for the first time be more people living in Asia's urban areas than in the countryside as "a tidal wave of humanity" surges towards the cities in search of jobs and a better life, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) says.

The statistics are startling:

About 1.1 billion people will migrate from the countryside into Asia's cities in less than 20 years, according to the ADB. That's about 137,000 every day.

India needs to build the equivalent of a city of Chicago every year to provide enough commercial and residential space for its migrants, according to McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) research.

One hundred new cities from China will join the list of the top 600 urban centres - which generate about 60 per cent of global GDP - in the next 15 years, says MGI."

Trying for press freedom in Egypt

In some respects post Mubarak has seen the military crack down on freedoms such a for the media. Then again there are hopeful signs of a change of direction from the censorship which prevailed throughout the Mubarak regime.

The Nation has a revealing piece "After Mubarak, Fighting For Press Freedom in Egypt":

"Despite the crackdown, there is a burgeoning movement for press freedom in Egypt. Many of the revolutionary youth who helped lead the eighteen-day uprising are looking to create new, independent outlets in the post-Mubarak media landscape. The publication El Gornal recently printed its second issue, intentionally breaking Egyptian law prohibiting publishing newspapers without official permission. An independent media center called Mosireen (Arabic for “We insist”) has opened its offices in downtown Cairo, advocating for citizen journalism—so ubiquitous during the uprising, with protesters using cell phone cameras to document the revolution—and providing services like media training, camera rentals, filming workshops and editing booths. Historian Khaled Fahmy is leading efforts to create a digital, accessible archive of the revolution in collaboration with Egypt’s National Archives. A new Egyptian Journalists’ Independent Syndicate has been established with the aim of defending the rights of journalists. Media advocates are also looking to reform the laws and regulations governing the traditional spaces for television and radio, to redraw the media landscape in Egypt.

“Truly independent media is going to be the only guarantee that we can really build a democratic society,” says Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. “When it comes to women’s rights and gender equality, when it come to the rights of religious minorities and the exercise of freedom of religion and when it come to social liberties and personal freedoms. We have to ensure that the media is a part of the struggle to democratize our society in parallel to our efforts to democratize the government.” In this critical transitional phase in Egypt’s history, the battle for freedom of the media is just beginning."

Google wraps it up with the British Library

Google has done it again.......by this time wrapping up a deal with the British Library to scan a huge collection of books for eventual availability on line.

cnet news reports:

Google Books has an ambitious mission statement: "Google Books is an effort to make all of the knowledge contained within the world's books searchable online."

That's a tall order, but the company will make a dent in it with a new agreement to scan 250,000 books from the British Library.

The books, pamphlets, and periodicals are all out of copyright and come from between 1700 and 1870. This is a nice companion project to the British Library's new 19th Century Books app that will eventually put thousands of old books on your iPad.

To put it in perspective, these books were generated during some famous events you may have heard of, including the French Revolution, the invention of rail travel, and the end of slavery. Google will foot the cost for this mammoth digitizing effort.
The digitized books will be available free online through Google Books and the British Library site. Readers will be able to view, copy, and share the text for non-commercial uses.

I'm most looking forward to reading "De Natuurlyke Historie van den Hippopotamus of het Rivierpaard" from 1775. That translates to "The Natural History of the Hippopotamus, or River Horse." According to the British Library, this rare tome includes the story of a stuffed hippopotamus that belonged to the Prince of Orange. Awesome.

Stark contrasts indeed

On the very day that the US Supreme Court dismissed a class action brought by Walmart employees, just reflect on the stark contrast between what the executives of that company earn as against that of its employees.

"Robson “Rob” Walton, Walmart chairman, has a net worth of about $19.7 billion. And he's only number 9 on the list of 2010's top 20 richest Americans.

Walmart workers, meanwhile, make around $8.75 an hour—about $18,000 a year. They'd have to work over a million years to approach what the chairman of Walmart Stores is sitting on. Alice and Jim Walton each have about $20 billion, and Christy Walton has $24 billion.

Last year Jonathan Turley noted that the CEO of Walmart, Michael Duke, makes his average employee's yearly salary every hour.

A new report by the Washington Post on “Breakaway Wealth” contains new research by economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley T. Heim, who analyzed tax returns from the top 0.1 percent of earners in the U.S. That top percentile takes home more than 20 percent of the personal income in the country, and their average income is $5.4 million. The average income of the bottom 90 percent, according to the Post, is just $31,244."

Things may not go better in China with a Coke

Who would have thought that a fizzy drink might stand in the way of China's economic growth? Emulating the West may not be in China's best interests.....

"More than 92 million Chinese live under the cloud of diabetes. It is also why Beijing's grand visions for flotillas of aircraft carriers and fleets of stealth fighters could ultimately be crushed by a simple can of fizzy drink.

What this statistic shows is that long before the country has even flirted with being a fully developed economy, its health profile is starting to look ominously American.

As the economy has grown, ever-increasing numbers of Chinese are eating more, drinking more, driving more and sitting more. Data from makers of soft drinks suggests that sales in the more affluent parts of the country have risen fivefold in the past decade. In lower-income provinces, the increase has been even more pronounced. Cases of the disease are soaring, and show little sign of reaching a plateau.

The population is ageing more quickly than in the US, per capita sugar consumption in China has risen 48 per cent since 2001 -- and that is before snacking on processed food really begins to blossom.

About 10 per cent of adult Chinese suffer from either Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, which is alarmingly close to the 11 per cent ratio that blights the notoriously obese US.

Plans that would see China's largest producers of high-fructose corn syrup doubling output by 2013 do not inspire confidence that the problem will soon peter out.

The difficulty posed by the 10 per cent ratio of adult diabetes sufferers in China is how quickly that unhappy landmark has been reached, and the sort of financial and budgetary recalculations that the pace of increase now demands.

A 2007 report by the Economist Intelligence Unit assumed that 4.3 per cent of Chinese had diabetes. From this, analysts concluded at the time that the epidemic was draining 14 per cent of healthcare expenditure and causing the country 0.6 per cent of GDP in lost productivity. Redrawn with one in ten adults afflicted, almost 1.5 per cent of GDP is lost and treatment costs lurch even higher.

New research by the consultancy China SignPost points out that the average per-patient cost of managing Type 2 diabetes is about $US6000 ($5695) per year in America. Using conservative numbers and assuming that China is able to treat about a quarter of its 92 million sufferers at a cost of about $US2000 a year each, that implies an annual cost for diabetes treatment alone of $US46 billion - half the country's entire official defence budget for 2011."

Oceans in deep (yes, truly) trouble

The sceptics about climate change and global warming, etc. etc. may just have to accept, however begrudgingly, that our world is confronted with a crisis. Witness this piece from Yahoo News [sourced from Agence France-Presse] about the strife our oceans are in and what confronts us with that being the case.

"Pollution and global warming are pushing the world's oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists warned Monday.

Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water "dead zones," toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of big fish stocks -- all are accelerating, they said in a report compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world's top ocean experts.

Sponsored by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), the review of recent science found that ocean health has declined further and faster than dire forecasts only a few years ago.

These symptoms, moreover, could be the harbinger of wider disruptions in the interlocking web of biological and chemical interactions that scientists now call the Earth system.

All five mass extinctions of life on the planet, reaching back more than 500 million years, were preceded by many of the same conditions now afflicted the ocean environment, they said."

Fighting corruption post the Arab Spring

A timely piece from Foreign Affairs, the Council on Foreign Relations' publication, on fighting corruption post the Arab Spring. As it happens the Tunisian President referred in the piece was to just today sentenced to 35 years imprisonment: see here.

"From Tunisia to Yemen, the corruption of Middle Eastern regimes has played a significant role in motivating the Arab Spring. Former Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his family now face trial in absentia for, among other crimes, money laundering and drug trafficking. Meanwhile, Egyptian courts have charged former President Hosni Mubarak with corruption and sentenced in absentia his former finance minister, Youssef Boutros-Ghali, to 30 years in prison on charges of corruption and embezzlement of public money. Frustration with cronyism and corruption is a key grievance of those protesting in the streets in Libya, Syria, and Yemen as well.

These corrupt leaders have managed to stash much of their collected wealth abroad, despite international obligations designed to prevent such looting. The Arab Spring has thus highlighted the inadequacy of current international efforts against corruption.

If global leaders are serious about strengthening anticorruption efforts in response to the Arab Spring, they should build on recent improvements in an unlikely place: Switzerland. Switzerland recently changed its law about returning corrupt funds and has led much of the international community in freezing the assets of certain deposed leaders, including Ben Ali, Mubarak, and former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo. Switzerland took these actions at least in part because it feared that its reputation as a haven for illicit assets could harm its ability to attract legitimate business. The United States and its allies should capitalize on such reputational sensitivities by promoting mutually enforced anticorruption standards and exposing those countries that fail to cooperate. This is the most promising path to inducing countries to prevent corruption and to excluding the proceeds of corruption from the global financial system."

An open letter to China: Release Ai Weiwei

Hats off to members of the Australian creative community for signing up to a letter to the Chinese Ambassador in Australia about the disappearance of artist and activist Ai Weiwei:

"To Chen Yuming, Chinese Ambassador to Australia,

We write to you today in relation to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

As you may know Ai was detained on 3 April 2011 at Beijing airport by Chinese police. His studio was then sealed off and his staff and wife interrogated. All this occurred without any given reasons or charges lain.

When on 7 April the Chinese ministry announced that he had been arrested for alleged economic crimes no proof was given and no official charge made.

His studio was then searched again and on 9 April his accountant, driver Zhang Jingsong and studio partner Liu Zhenggang disappeared. Ai Weiwei’s assistant Wen Tao has also been missing since Ai’s arrest on 3 April.

It has now been 78 days since the disappearance of Ai. 9 May was the date that Ai should have been released unless there is an official charge. No official notifications have been given regarding his whereabouts or reason for detainment.

The EU and US have protested Ai’s detention and the international arts community has rallied behind his cause. The international Council of Museums has collected more than 90,000 signatures and countless petitions have been organised.

We are deeply concerned about the kidnapping and disappearance of Ai Weiwei and his colleagues. We call on the Chinese government to carry out fair and open legal proceedings.

We believe the arrest of Ai Weiwei represents a watershed. His arrest came days after his Twitter comments about the Jasmine revolution and the arrest of such a high profile figure in China spreads the concern of human rights, freedom of speech and artistic expression.

We the creative community of Australia as friends and neighbours of China call for the immediate release of Ai Weiwei."

It's war...or not!

Professor Stephen Walt makes a valid point on his blog on FP about whether the US is at war, or not, with regard to the offensive being undertaken by a number of, but not all, NATO forces in Libya.

"Not that FP has suddenly become joke central, but there's an old joke that runs like this:

An accountant, a social scientist and a lawyer are seated in a room. A guy walks in and asks them: "how much is 2 + 2?" The accountant whips out a calculator, pencils and paper, scribbles for awhile, and then says: "The answer, sir, is 4." The social scientist grabs her laptop, fires it up a few minutes, and then says "Well, as you know this is not an exact science, but I can say with a 95% level of confidence that the answer is between 3 and 5."

The lawyer, meanwhile, gets up, looks under all the chairs, checks in the closet, opens the door to the room and looks both ways down the hall. Then he comes back, sidles up to the guy who asked the question, and whispers:

"I don't care. How much do you want it to be?"

I mention this because I learned that the Obama administration is claiming that it doesn't need congressional authorization for its Libyan intervention under the War Powers Act. Why? Because what we are doing doesn't amount to "full-blown" hostilities.

Oh, please. Let's start with the definition of "war" itself. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as "a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country." Now, let's see: what are we doing in Libya? What we know is that we've sent cruise missiles, and drones and U.S. aircraft to attack military targets in various places, including several attacks on Qaddafi's own compound. We are continuing to provide targeting information to our NATO allies, who are conducting additional raids on their own. Although U.S. ground troops are not present in force, it's a safe bet that U.S. special forces are operating in various places, probably helping provide some of that targeting info. And of course because the Obama administration isn't telling us everything that it's doing, we have no clear way of knowing exactly how involved we really are.

By any reasonable, common-sense standard, in short, we are at war. It doesn't matter that we aren't using our full strength to help the rebels or that other states are doing more than we are. The plain fact is that the United States is using its military forces and intelligence capabilities to attack Libyan forces. In plain English, we are killing (or helping to kill) Qaddafi loyalists (and occasionally innocent civilians), in an openly-acknowledged campaign to drive him from power. Sounds like war to me, and to anybody else who isn't being paid to find ways to evade or obscure reality.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether this war makes strategic sense or not. (I think not, but I can see the merits of the other side's case). They can also disagree about whether outside intervention was necessary to avert an anticipated "bloodbath" in Benghazi, or whether it was really a precipitous decision that may in the end make things worse. But let's not fall for the creative legal sophistry being offered up here. If Obama and his foreign policy team think this war (yes, war) is really in our interest, then they should make their case to the American people and their elected representatives and let the chips fall where they may. I don't have enormous respect for Congress (who could, these days?) but that's how a republic is supposed to operate. And let's not forget that Obama used to think so himself."