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[click image]Pakistan Resists US Presence, InfluenceIs this okay with you?
Nation Poised to Reject Billions in US Aid
by Jason Ditz, October 05, 2009
Growing opposition to the US attempts to expand its influence in Pakistan is taking shape in the form of increasing resistance to plans by Pakistan’s military and increasingly its civilian government as well.
Nowhere has American power been more visible than the massive expansion of the embassy in Islamabad, sparking protests against the site that will some day hold Ambassador Anne Patterson, a contentious figure in her own right who has been threatening US military attacks against the city of Quetta if Pakistan doesn’t give in to demands to launch action of its own.
Then last week the US Congress pressed through with overwhelming support a bill to triple aid to Pakistan as part of a “strategic partnership.” The bill was enthusiastically supported by President Obama and was described as expanding America’s commitment to the nation over the next decade.
Less enamored with the bill was Pakistan’s government and particularly its military, which sees assorted requirements under the bill as an attempt to exert growing control over the domestic affairs of the nation. The bill gives the US power to monitor Pakistan’s military and court system, leading to concerns that it is a threat to the nation’s sovereignty.
“This is less an assistance programme than a treaty of surrender,” MP Ayaz Amir wrote in an editorial piece circulating around the Pakistani press, insisting “a convicted rapist out on parole would be required to give fewer assurances of good conduct.”
While there seemed to be little discussion of the bill beforehand, Prime Minister Raza Gilani and military chief Gen. Parvez Kayani met in recent days to discuss the ramifications, and Foreign Minister Qureshi, currently visiting the US, has been ordered not to publicly comment on the bill. Though the US scaled back the demands it linked to the bill and Pakistan is short on funds, it seems the momentum is in favor of the Pakistani government rejecting the offer of aid.
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[click image]Socialists trounce conservatives in Greek election
By ELENA BECATOROS (AP) – 3 hours ago
ATHENS, Greece — Greece's opposition Socialists won an early election by a landslide Sunday, initial results indicated, with voters angered by scandals and a faltering economy ousting conservative Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis.
Official results from 39.66 percent of votes counted showed former foreign minister George Papandreou's Panhellenic Socialist Movement, or PASOK, ahead with 43.66 percent, compared to 35.29 percent for Karamanlis' New Democracy party. If the figures remain unchanged, the result gives PASOK a comfortable majority of about 158 seats in the 300-member parliament, bringing the party back to power after five years of conservative governance.
Papandreou, 57, now follows in the footsteps of his father, party founder Andreas Papandreou, and grandfather and namesake George Papandreou, both of whom served several terms as prime ministers.
PASOK's victory, along with a recent election win by socialists in Portugal, bucks a European trend that has seen a conservative surge in the continent's powerhouse economies, including most recently in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel won re-election last week.
"This is a historic victory for PASOK, which means great responsibility for us," senior party official and former minister Evangelos Venizelos said outside party headquarters, surrounded by jubilant supporters lighting flares and waving PASOK flags depicting the party's symbol of a green rising sun.
Thousands of cheering supporters mobbed a smiling Papandreou as he arrived at the central Athens headquarters as the results trickled in, while others drove through the city honking their horns.
Karamanlis telephoned Papandreou to congratulate his rival on his victory, New Democracy said in an announcement.
Final projections by the company carrying out the vote counting indicated PASOK would win with as much as 43.8 percent, with Karamanlis' New Democracy trailing at 33.9 percent — which would be the conservatives' worst electoral performance ever.
The conservatives made "a poor showing," New Democracy lawmaker and former minister Manolis Kefaloyiannis admitted. "It is obvious that PASOK has won a clear victory."
Karamanlis, 53, called the election just halfway through his second four-year term in a risky gamble that ultimately failed, saying he needed a strong new mandate to tackle Greece's economic woes. He had already been trailing in opinion polls when he called the election in early September, sparking criticism from within his own party.
Karamanlis stormed to power in 2004 to become the youngest prime minister in modern Greek history after more than a decade of socialist rule. He was re-elected in 2007, but quickly saw his popularity eroded by several financial scandals, including a land-swap deal with a Greek Orthodox monastery that cost the state more than euro100 million ($145 million) and forced two of Karamanlis' close aides to resign.
Authorities' failure to contain widespread riots sparked by the fatal police shooting of a teenager in Athens in December also undermined the conservatives' position, which the global financial crisis finished off.
Many conservative voters were angered by rising crime and the riots, when anarchists rampaged through Greek cities, smashing shops and banks with little police intervention.
A small bomb exploded in Athens on Friday, without causing injury, two blocks from the site of Karamanlis' final campaign speech. A far-left group, Conspiracy Nuclei of Fire, claimed responsibility for the bombing, which caused no injuries.
"What I believe is happening today is that Karamanlis is paying for his past mistakes, for the financial situation," voter Alexandros Panagiotakopoulos said outside New Democracy's headquarters watching the results on a giant outdoor screen.
Now, it will be Papandreou who will have to deal with his country's faltering economy, which is expected to contract in 2009 after years of strong growth, while the budget deficit will probably exceed 6 percent of economic output.
In contrast to Karamanlis, who advocated an austerity program of freezing state salaries, pensions and hiring, Papandreou has promised to inject up to euro3 billion to jump-start the economy. However, his government will likely have to borrow heavily just to service the ballooning debt — set to exceed 100 percent of GDP this year — and keep paying public sector wages and pensions. Papandreou has pledged to limit borrowing by reducing government waste and going after tax dodgers.
The Greek Communist Party, far right-wing LAOS and the small Left Coalition are expected to retain their representation in Parliament, while the Ecologist-Greens were hovering on the fringe of the 3 percent threshold for entry.
"Mr. Karamanlis brought PASOK into power," said LAOS leader Giorgos Karatzaferis.
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[click image]Report says Iran has data to make atom bombSo I'm not the only one with it turned all the way up to eleven here.
03 Oct 2009
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A confidential analysis by staff of the U.N. nuclear watchdog has concluded that Iran has acquired "sufficient information to be able to design and produce" an atom bomb, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
The Times report was posted on its website hours after Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Tehran for talks on a timetable for inspectors to visit a newly disclosed unfinished nuclear enrichment plant.
Iran, which rejects Western charges that it is seeking to build nuclear weapons, held talks with six world powers in Geneva on Thursday. Western officials said that in the talks, Iran had agreed "in principle" to ship out most of its enriched uranium for reprocessing in Russia and France.
The analysis, according to the Times, says the IAEA "assesses that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device" based on highly enriched uranium.
The Times said unnamed senior European officials had described the document's conclusions to the paper. It said the report was written earlier this year and had since been revised, and quoted one official as saying the text was "not ready for publication as an official document."
It said the report, titled "Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program," described a complex program run by Iran's Defense Ministry "aimed at the development of a nuclear payload to be delivered using the Shahab 3 missile system."
The report said the program apparently started in 2002. It suggested "the Iranians have done a wide array of research and testing to perfect nuclear arms, like making high-voltage detonators, firing test explosives and designing warheads," the Times said, but it did not say how much progress they made.
"The agency's tentative analysis also says that Iran 'most likely' obtained the needed information for designing and building an implosion bomb 'from external sources' and then adapted the information to its own needs," the Times said.
The paper said a dispute had erupted in recent months over the report between the IAEA's senior staff and ElBaradei, the agency's outgoing director who opposes adopting a "confrontational strategy" with Iran.
"In recent weeks, there have been leaks about the internal report, perhaps intended to press Dr. ElBaradei into releasing it," the Times said.
Congress poised to act swiftly on Iran if neededI wonder what kind of authorizations they're going to hand out to the president....
By JIM ABRAMS (AP) – 5 hours ago
WASHINGTON — Congress is poised to act swiftly on new penalties against Iran if international talks on Tehran's nuclear program show signs of faltering. And this time lawmakers are talking about trying to block gas and refined petroleum exports to Iran, possibly causing serious disruptions in the lives of ordinary Iranians.
"If we want to get their attention, we have to do something real: sanction Iran's gasoline imports," said Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, in a speech on the House floor. "That's where Ahmadinejad is vulnerable," he said, referring to Iran's president.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, is one of several lawmakers working on plans to expand current penalties.
"Congress must equip President (Barack) Obama with a full range of tools to deal with the threats posed by Iran," said Dodd, D-Conn., who said his bill would include extending current restrictions on Iran's financial institutions, imposing new trade bans and exacting penalties for entities exporting certain refined petroleum products to Iran. His committee plans a hearing on the subject Tuesday.
Obama said talks Thursday in Switzerland between Iran and six world powers, where Iran indicated it would open its newly disclosed nuclear plant to U.N. inspectors, were "a constructive beginning." But he said Iran must match its words with actions.
The president said his administration, in conjunction with Congress, is crafting plans that could target Iran's energy, financial and telecommunications sectors. The hope is to gain a united international front that includes China and Russia, countries reluctant in the past to restrict trade with Iran.
Several Democratic leaders, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., say Iran should be given a short time to show it is acting in good faith.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the talks should have the chance to succeed. But, he added, "We don't have to wait, certainly for Russia or China or for anybody else, to take the action we deem to be appropriate."
Hoyer made the comments while speaking to the No. 2 Republican, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, on the House floor Thursday.
Cantor prodded Democrats to restrict gas and refined petroleum exports to Iran. He said Republicans did not support the concept of waiting "until there is some collective agreement on the world stage in order for Congress to act."
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was more direct. "The U.S. must put away the begging bowl, act like a world leader and lead the effort to impose immediate, crippling sanctions on the Iranian regime," she said.
Ros-Lehtinen introduced a bill this year to toughen penalties against people who aid Iran's proliferation efforts. She has an ally in the committee chairman, Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif. He's pushing a bill that would prohibit foreign entities that sell refined petroleum to Iran from doing business in the United States.
While Iran is a major oil producer, it imports gasoline and refined petroleum products. Stopping fuel shipments to Iran could have serious effects on the Iranian people.
Mideast expert Kenneth M. Pollack, director of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, said it was questionable whether such penalties would work. There's bound to be ways around them, Iran is quickly expanding its refinery capacity and Tehran could manipulate world opinion by displaying the suffering of common Iranians, Pollack said.
The hardline positions of some in Congress, he added, could prove useful to the White House as it tries to get U.S. allies on board for the administration's more targeted penalties.
[click image]Russia could borrow up to $4 bln from World Bank in 2010 - Kudrin
22:17 | 03/10/2009
ISTANBUL, October 3 (RIA Novosti) - Russia and the World Bank have negotiated the possibility of a $2-4 billion loan in 2010, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Saturday.
Russia started technical talks on the possibility of borrowing from the global financial institution in June, but the sum was not disclosed then.
"We have discussed the possibility of taking a loan of $2 billion to $4 billion," Kudrin said after talks with WB President Robert Zoellick.
The Russian finance minister said the sum could be split into tranches.
"This is our quota for the next year or two," Kudrin said, adding that the potential borrowing from the WB would be a finance loan.
Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin, who attended the talks, told reporters that no principal decision had been made on either the sum, or timeframes or purpose of the loan.
He said the sum would depend on the country's financial demands and the market situation.
"The lower the interest rate is, the more interesting it is to us to borrow from the World Bank," Pankin said.
Russia could take a WB loan at LIBOR+ 0.3%-0.5% now.
Pankin denied that Russia was planning to borrow from other international financial organizations to cover its 2010 budget deficit.
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[click image, part of his welcoming committee on his return to Tehran from the UN Assembly]
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No one has to "marry" anyone else politically; no one has to embrace every tenet or belief that an anti-imperialist ally might hold. You simply have to say: "All of us, regardless of our other views, believe this truth to be self-evident: dismantling the empire will bring immediate and enormous benefits to our nation and to the world."
If in your travels you meet the Buddha, throw him through your tv set.
—Davis Fleetwood
I've found that culture, however useful and important, is neither the foundation nor the ceiling of human experience, even if it is commonly used for walls.
I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States. —Hillary Clinton
