Author Archives: TPNS

Despite West’s Efforts, Afghan Youths Cling to Traditional Ways

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Azam Ahmed And Habib Zahori, “Despite West’s Efforts, Afghan Youths Cling to Traditional Ways,” The New York Times, July 31 2013

To those who like to think that the foreign presence here has left more than spent shells and hollowed-out buildings, what the young people of Kabul wear and value can itself offer a sense of comfort. These trappings of the West, the hope goes, belong to a generation ready to embrace women’s rights, democracy and other ideals that America and its allies have spent billions of dollars trying to instill. …

“If someone thinks that youngsters have changed, they should think twice,” said Amina Mustaqim Jawid, the director of the Afghan Women’s Coalition Against Corruption. “These young men grew up in a war environment. They don’t know about their own rights; how can we expect them to know about their sisters’ rights, their mothers’ rights or their wives’ rights? If they wear jeans and have Western haircuts, that doesn’t mean they are progressive.”

Read the full article here.

 

‘Go home or face arrest’

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Jeremy Harding , “‘Go home or face arrest’,” London Review of Books, 1 August 2013

Three years ago in Arizona, Russell Pearce, the leader of the state senate, hit the ‘illegal’ button, and a strange thing happened: authorised migrants and citizens of non-US extraction – often the first to call for stricter immigration targets – changed their position and started muttering about racism. Meanwhile, as the round-ups began, thousands of unauthorised workers left for neighbouring states and the local economy went from steep decline to death row.

Unauthorised arrivals by boat have always been a prickly issue in Australia.

Read the full article here.

There Is No Good Drug War

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Maya Schenwar, Interview “There Is No Good Drug War,” Truthout, 31 July 2013

Twenty years ago, when acclaimed neuroscientist Carl Hart began studying drugs, he was motivated by a desire to help communities like the one in which he grew up: poor communities of color that had been, he believed, ravaged by the crack “epidemic.” The media craze around crack headlines was swirling to a fever pitch at the time – the late ’80s and early ’90s – and, Hart writes, “I became utterly convinced that crack cocaine was the cause of everything that I now saw as wrong with the neighborhood.”

However, nothing is that straightforward, in the world or in High Price, and Hart’s work in the lab called into question some of his most deeply rooted assumptions.
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80 Percent Of U.S. Adults Face Near-Poverty, Unemployment

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Hope Yen, “80 Percent Of U.S. Adults Face Near-Poverty, Unemployment: Survey,” AP, 07/28/13

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend. …
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The “Unusual” Yet Ubiquitous Left-Right Alliance: Towards an Anti-Establishment Center

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Sam Husseini, “The ‘Unusual’ Yet Ubiquitous Left-Right Alliance: Towards an Anti-Establishment Center,” Sam Husseini’s Blog, 28 July 2013

Every time you have this convergence of progressives and conservatives against the establishment, it’s regarded as “unusual” “odd” or “bizarre”  — even though it keeps coming up on issue after issue: war, military spending, trade, corporate power, Wall Street, fossil fuel subsidies, as well as — in the case of the NSA spying on the citizenry — the central issue of Constitutional rights and civil liberties. 

As documented below, the meme in the media and elsewhere is a permanent note of surprise, when it should be an established aspect of U.S. politics: There are in fact two “centers” — one that is pro-war and Wall Street (the establishment center) — and another that is pro-peace and populist (the anti-establishment center)
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The rising independence movement in Okinawa

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Trefor Moss, “Okinawa: the Scotland of Asia?,” The Diplomat, July 24 2013

The tension over the large U.S. military presence on Okinawa seems never to subside, the U.S. Marines’ deployment of noisy, and possibly quite dangerous, MV-22 Osprey aircraft having been one recent trigger. And yet, if asked to vote today, Okinawans would overwhelmingly stick with the status quo: a recent poll by Ryukyu Shimpo found that only 5 percent of citizens favor independence, with 62 percent opposed. Then again, these things start from humble beginnings, and independence is at the very least being discussed seriously. Okinawa has a complex relationship both with Tokyo and with the U.S. military, and it is too casual to dismiss the notion of independence as the pipedream of just a handful of local activists.
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The Pentagon Has Too Many Generals

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Benjamin Freeman, “The Pentagon Has Too Many Generals,” U.S.News & World Report, July 24 2013

Over the past 10 years, as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan raged, the U.S. military’s enlisted ranks shrank, while the officer corps – particularly the general and flag officer ranks – and the bureaucracy supporting these top commanders, grew immensely.

Earlier this month Third Way released a report on this trend, reaching a disquieting conclusion – the U.S. military is more top-heavy than it has ever been. While I, and others, have documented this trend before, it’s only gotten worse. The U.S. military now has an officer-to-enlisted personnel ratio that’s at an all-time high; this imbalance will only worsen with the recent announcement of further reductions to the force. …
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Who Are We at War With? That’s Classified

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Cora Currier, “Who Are We at War With? That’s Classified,” ProPublica, July 26 2013

In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again that the U.S. is at war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.”

So who exactly are those associated forces? It’s a secret.
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Solar Could Help Australia Phase Out Coal Power by 2040

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“Solar Could Help Australia Phase Out Coal Power by 2040,” Solar Energy News, July 26 2013

Australia could phase out almost all its fossil-fuel sourced electricity by 2040 if it doubled the current rate of take-up of solar energy and wind energy maintained its current growth pace, said Professor Ken Baldwin, director of ANU’s Energy Change Institute. …

Solar energy, currently dominated by photovoltaic cells, is adding about 1 gigawatt of capacity annually, roughly equivalent to the amount added by wind farms. If the pace of solar energy expansion doubled, starting in 2025, it would overtake fossil-fuel fired power plants by 2030 and leave only a couple of gigawatts of coal or gas power by 2040 – down from almost 40 gigawatts now. …
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The US Military’s Limited Critique of Itself Ensures Future Disasters

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William J Astore, “The US Military’s Limited Critique of Itself Ensures Future Disasters,” The Contrary Perspective, 26 July 2013

In the New York Times on July 20, Major General H.R. McMaster penned a revealing essay on “The Pipe Dream of Easy War.”  McMaster made three points about America’s recent wars and military interventions:

  1. In stressing new technology as being transformative, the American military neglected the political side of war.  They forgot their Clausewitz in a celebration of their own prowess, only to be brought back to earth by messy political dynamics in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.
  2. Related to (1), the U.S. military neglected human/cultural aspects of war and therefore misunderstood Iraqi and Afghan culture.  Cultural misunderstandings transformed initial battlefield victories into costly political stalemates.
  3. Related to (1) and (2), war is uncertain and unpredictable.  Enemies can and will adapt. …

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Short of cash, rent and food – Britons in dire financial straits

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Karen Rowlingson, “Short of cash, rent and food – Britons in dire financial straits,” The Conversation, 25 July 2013

Britain is currently experiencing its longest and deepest economic slump in a century. But through new research we’re only just beginning to realise quite how dramatic the impact of this recession has been on UK residents. …

Around 2.5 million people have been out of work since 2008 and, among those in work, earnings have been falling or stagnating for some years. In 2012, the real value of workers’ wages fell back to 2003 levels, following several years of pay freezes and economic restructuring.
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Ha-Joon Chang: Osborne’s description of the UK economy is near-Orwellian

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Ha-Joon Chang, “George Osborne’s description of the economy is near-Orwellian,” The Guardian, 26 July 2013

If all else fails, they say, you can always lower your standards. This is what we have become used to doing in relation to the UK economy. The UK’s economic performance since the start of the coalition government in May 2010 has been so poor that Thursday’s announcement of 0.6% growth in the second quarter of 2013 was greeted with a collective sigh of relief.

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Pentagon’s new Trans-Sahara STOL contracts

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Micah Zenko, “CIA in Pakistan, Syria, Special Ops in Trans-Sahara,”  Council on Foreign Relations, July 26 2013

Department of Defense, Contracts, July 24, 2013.

U.S. Transportation Command

Berry Aviation Inc., San Marcos, Texas, is being awarded a $10,725,000 fixed-priced, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract for Trans-Sahara short take-off and landing (STOL) services.  The Trans-Sahara STOL contract provides for casualty evacuation, personnel airlift, cargo airlift, and air drop services.  Work will be performed throughout the recognized political boundaries of Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, South Sudan, Tunisia, and Uganda, with an expected completion date of June 27, 2017. Continue reading →

What the N.S.A. Wants in Brazil

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Ryan Lizza, “What the N.S.A. Wants in Brazil,” The New Yorker, July 24 2013

a German reporter rose and asked Alexander this: “Why are you focusing so much on gathering data also from Brazil, since there’s not too much terrorism going on in Brazil as far as I know?”

Alexander’s answer was somewhat elliptical (emphasis mine):

You know, the reality is we’re not collecting all the e-mails on the people in Brazil nor listening to their phone numbers. Why would we do that? What somebody took was a program that looks at metadata around the world that you would use to find terrorist activities that might transit and leaped to the conclusion that, aha, metadata—they must be listening to everybody’s phone; they must be reading everybody’s e-mail. Our job is foreign intelligence.

I’ll tell you, 99.9 and I don’t know how many nines go out of all that, whether it’s in German or Brazil, is of no interest to a foreign intelligence agency. What is of interest is a terrorist hopping through or doing something like that.

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Unleashing Delhi’s solar potential

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“Delhi can make hay in power sector while the sun shines,” The Economic Times, July 23 2013

As per the report ‘Rooftop Revolution: Unleashing Delhi’s solar potential’ published by NGO Greenpeace, Delhi’s rising power demand could be met by exploiting the solar power potential.

“The city can generate 2,557 MW by using 4.42 per cent of total rooftop space available for photo voltaic systems,” the report, released by former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court A P Shah, said. …
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Melting Arctic May Cost Global Economy $60 Trillion

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Kiley Kroh, “New Research Finds Melting Arctic May Cost Global Economy $60 Trillion,” TP Climate Progress, July 24 2013

In findings published in the journal Nature, economists and polar scientists from the University of Cambridge and Erasmus University Rotterdam found that the ripple effects of climate change in the Arctic — unlocking frozen reserves of methane that speed global warming and cause destructive and costly climactic changes across the planet — could deal a severe blow to the global economy.

The release of methane from thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea, off northern Russia, alone comes with an average global price tag of $60 trillion in the absence of mitigating action — a figure comparable to the size of the world economy in 2012 (about $70 trillion). The total cost of Arctic change will be much higher.

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Boris’ Curious Use of Facts in Attacking the Robin Hood Tax

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Simon Chouffot, “Boris’ Curious Use of Facts in Attacking the Robin Hood Tax,” The Huffington Post UK, 24/07/2013

But Boris’ speech nonetheless got my blood boiling. In taking a swipe at the proposal for a European Financial Transaction Tax – every City fat cat’s favourite bug bear at the moment – he chronically misrepresented how it works.
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Rise of the Warrior Cop

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Radley Balko, “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” The Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2013

Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.
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Goldman and other firms accused of costing consumers billions

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David Kocieniewski, “A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold,” The New York Times, July 20 2013

Hundreds of millions of times a day, thirsty Americans open a can of soda, beer or juice. And every time they do it, they pay a fraction of a penny more because of a shrewd maneuver by Goldman Sachs and other financial players that ultimately costs consumers billions of dollars.
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