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Not My Job, Mon

The United States condemned the bombing that killed the top Shi'ite Muslim political leader in Iraq on Friday and said the attack would not deter Washington from attempts to build a "free and stable country." But U.S. officials distanced Washington from an investigation into the bombing, which killed some 75 people near the shrine of the Imam Ali in the holy city of Najaf. US President George W Bush said he had ordered U.S. officials to "work closely" with Iraqi security officials and the Iraqi governing council to find those responsible for the blast. Reuters, August 29, 2003

From Human Rights Watch:

International humanitarian law, as reflected in the U.S. military's own guidelines, obliges the occupying power to restore and ensure public order and safety. Law enforcement must, itself, be conducted in conformity with international human rights law standards. These standards apply to all those acting under U.S. authority, including non-U.S. members and coalition armed forces, Iraqi police, and any international law enforcement officers who may eventually serve in Iraq.

The duty to provide security for civilians attaches as soon as the occupying force exercises control or authority over civilians of the occupied territory-that is, at the soonest possible moment. (This principle is stated in U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 as well as the Fourth Geneva Convention, art. 6.) Military commanders on the spot must prevent and where necessary suppress serious violations involving the local population under their control or subject to their authority.45

45 This principle was clearly stated in the aftermath of World War II. See for instance United States v. List, et al., 11 Trials of War Criminals 757 (1948), where a military tribunal stated: "A commanding general of occupied territory is charged with the duty of maintaining peace and order, punishing crime, and protecting lives and property within the area of his command."

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:13 PM

Leading Indicators?

Headline in the business section of this morning's Japan Times,
Spending slashed as incomes fall again. Wage earners
tightened their belts by a mind-boggling 6% in July.

The lead reads, "Spending by wage-earning households fell 6 percent in July in real terms from a year earlier for the largest monthly contraction in nine years and reversing the previous month's 0.4 percent increase, the government said Friday."

A headline in the overseas stocks/finance section reads, 'Jobless recovery' offers no lasting cheer for stocks.

Second graph in story picked up from Bloomberg reads, "A 'jobless recovery' is Topic A in many Wall Street commentaries marking the traditional business New Year at Labor Day. They say economic conditions that leave workers unhappy don't promise much lasting cheer for the investment markets."

The opinion page gives top left space to a column by Washington Post Group writer Robert J. Samuelson, who seems to have discovered at last that demographics has something to do with economics. Headline reads, Boomer shopping spree fueled economy..

The headline triggers recall of a recently read, very important book by Japanese marketing researcher Atsushi Miura, Kore kare no 10 nen dankai jyunia 1400 man nin ga koa shijo ni naru! (During the next decade the Baby Boomer Jrs. will become a core market of 14 million people).

Miura argues that during the 1970s and 80s, Japan's economic growth was fueled by expansion in the number of Baby Boomer nuclear families and the sluggishness of the 1990s reflects the maturing and shrinking number of those families. In the 1970s, these then "new families" were starting from scratch, living in cramped apartments, looking to buy their first consumer durables. Their avid desire for material well-being drove an on-going spiral of rising sales and rising wages. Now, however, they have what they wanted, and confronted with stagnant wages and worries about retirement are becoming increasingly likely to save instead of to spend.

The only hope for businesses that want to prosper in Japan is to look to the grown-up children in the Boomer Junior generation. Increasingly, however, they marry late or not at all, and even when they do marry have already acquired the basic equipment for setting up their new households (increasingly the issue for young couples is whose stuff to throw away). Marketers must thus look beyond the shrinking family market to the needs of individuals.

And what are those needs? Care and relief from anxiety. Care isn't just an issue for elderly shut-ins. It's the need of increasingly isolated individuals of all ages for the laundry, meals, nursing, and counseling services that Mom used to provide. Relief from anxiety means having something on which you can depend in an increasingly chancy world.

This is a Japanese author writing about Japan. But doesn't it sound awfully familiar?

Could this be what that "jobless recovery" is going to do to us all? To everyone, that is, but the porkers who've had their place at the trough and see the rest of us as runts.

posted by John 9:46 PM

So, Who's in Charge Here?

This snippet from an AP story on Washington's reaction to the latest bombing illustrates the question I'm asking in the earlier post below:

A senior administration official called the bombing a horrible incident and said it really was an attack on the Iraqi people.

The United States has offered to assist the Iraqi Interior Ministry in its investigation, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Can this unnamed idiot really be saying, hey, guys, it's an internal Iraqi government problem but we're willing to help out?

Let's get real. There is no Iraqi government; there is a U.S.-led occupation force that is responsible under international law for everything that happens in the country. This is not the Iraqi Interior Ministry's problem; it's Paul Bremer's and the Bush administration's hot tamale.

posted by Jerry Bowles 5:17 PM

Blood on Our Hands

The toll in Najef--now approaching 80 dead, including Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim--is a bloody affirmation of what everyone who doesn't report to Donald Rumsfeld has been saying for weeks--there are not enough occupation forces on the ground to maintain even a semblance of order and security in Iraq. None of us are lawyers so the legal beagles over at Volokh will have to help us out, but I believe the Geneva Conventions require occupying forces to protect "liberated" citizens from themselves and each other. That means that capturing and bringing to justice (not just shooting) the persons responsible for this horrible act of terrorism is OUR responsibility. There are three obvious groups of suspects: some Iraqis will claim that Americans did it but that doesn't seem likely since kicking a hornet's nest a second time only triggers a new round of stings; some will say the Sunnis did it to stir up trouble among the different Shi'ite factions; but, most likely, this is the work of the young hot head cleric Moqtada Sadr. Occupation forces have needed to clamp down on young al-Sadr for weeks. Now is the time to bite the bullet and do it.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:22 PM

The Shiite Hits the Fan

A car bomb exploded today outside the entrance of the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, Iraq, one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines, at the end of noon prayers, according to coalition officials and a Shiite spokesman. Arabic language news channels reported at least 17 deaths. Other sources said the number of dead and injured could reach 100 people.

Tony and Uncle Junior's turf war turns real ugly.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:36 AM

New Deficit Numbers: Really Bad, and Getting Much Worse

We may not like the way the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)
treats our favorite candidate, but sometimes these guys do real good work.
For example,

The Congressional Budget Office released new budget estimates
yesterday, and the news is not good. Adjusting its "baseline" to
actual spending and revenue trends, CBO said the federal budget
deficit would grow to a new world-record $480 billion next year.
Worse yet, the number-crunchers estimated that cumulative budget
deficits over the next 10 years would reach $5.8 trillion.
Recall that CBO was estimating 10-year budget surpluses of more
than five-and-a-half trillion dollars when George W. Bush took
office, and you get an idea of the breathtaking deterioration of
the country's fiscal condition in less than three years.

The Bush administration reacted to this very bad news in its
accustomed What-Me-Worry fashion, suggesting that the economic
growth that's just around the corner will wipe out deficits, and
that after all, no one estimated the budget surpluses of the
1990s 10 years out.

These responses are, to use the online abbreviation, LOL
(laughing out loud) hilarious. The CBO estimates already assume
a big, booming economic recovery beginning next year and
continuing throughout the rest of the decade -- hardly a lead
pipe cinch, especially if public borrowing continues to spike
ever upwards. Furthermore, the surpluses of the 1990s did not
magically appear due to some fortuitous economic growth. There
was, ahem, that big deficit reduction package forced through
Congress by the Clinton administration in 1993 without a single
Republican vote (the package, you may recall, that Republicans
said would produce a deep recession), along with a balanced
budget agreement that President Clinton signed in 1997. Most
economists would say that these acts of fiscal discipline helped
produce the sensational economy of the late 1990s.

Today, if anything, CBO is underestimating the vast borrowing
binge the federal government is about to undertake so long as the
Bush administration is the drunken sailor with the national
credit card.

The story continues here.

posted by John 8:05 AM

Blair points to White House

Gave green light on Iraq WMD report after call with Shrubby

Tony Blair has mentioned the prospect of resigning twice during Lord Hutton’s Inquiry into the death of MOD weapons consultant John Kelly and the “sexed up” intelligence that became the foundation for the Shrub Club’s invasion of Iraq.

Yesterday he finally pointed his finger across the water, telling Lord Hutton that he moved ahead with the jacked intel dossier after a conversation with our lead sinner and water-walker-in-chief el lider Shrubby.

That pretty much puts the authorship of the intel scam right into the Oval Orfice. A Daily Telegraph (registration required) poll indicates that 67% of those queried believe that Blair manipulated the intelligence to overstate Saddam's WMD capabilities.

Funny that the Gepharts, Liebermans and Kerrys aren’t pressing for a congressional investigation. Buffalo Bills fan and DNC honcho Terry McAuliffe is quiet too. DLC top kick Al From, speak no evil. Ditto the bought-and-paid-for media.

Howard Dean and Wesley Clark have the cojones to step up to the plate and send this baby for a ride. The American people need to know what points were covered during that conversation between Tony Blair and Shrubby.

Starting to sound more and more like the Gulf of Tonkin, the Turner and the Maddox, fun and games around the Spratly Islands. Remember the Maine. Lord Rummy's been playing too much Jingo Bingo over at the geriatrics centre while American, British and other "coalitition of the willing" soldiers lives are on the line.

Check out the Guardian’s take that mentions Blair's testimony about his call with Shrubby. Or read the news lite that NY Timesman Warren “No” Hoge wrote in the IHT that does not mention the call. BTW, Hoge got the name no” when he was a big cheese up on the 10th floor, where part of his job as an editor was to say “no” to journalists who wanted salary increases. See Joe Lelyveld and Soma Golden for details.

Singapore slings it at Shrubby

Great commentary by Janadas Devan in the Straits Times today about why Iraq is a mess, Kosovo a success and Afghanistan is the opium capital of the world.

posted by Groom 1:35 AM

Here, My Friends, is a Voice We Need to Hear More Of

Fast-Food-Islam: How Wahhabism Feeds Our Intellectual Retardation

By Adam Misbah'ul Haqq

In the mid part of the twentieth century fast food franchises popped up all over the country. It was a time of assembly lines, burgers, fries and the ideologies of “progress” and “create the demand and fuel the supply,” ideologies which helped shape the contemporary age....

In Islam a similar occurrence has emerged. A sort of fast-food-Islam, mimicking the Western phenomenon, began to emerge in the seventies shortly after the Saudis started raking in billions in petro-dollars....

This material, which for the most part hails from the Arabian Peninsula or is funneled out of the numerous publishing houses owned by the Wahhabi press in the Middle East, is, for the most part, designed for children. One could easily argue that intellectually, only a child or young adult could really gain anything from this literature because the way in which the material is laid out and the topics are examined disengages the reader from the tradition by telling them that they basically have nothing to offer the interpretive process in Islam, but that they should simply follow what the “noble” Saudi scholars tell you Islam is....

If you believe, as I do, that supporting moderate Muslim voices is vital to combatting terrorism, do read the rest of this article. These paragraphs are only a taste.

posted by John 12:05 AM