Politics Iran: Elections: Mir Hossein Mousava breaks with regime to advocate "personal freedoms"

Thomas Erebrink reports in WaPo (Apr7,2k9)

TEHRAN, April 6 -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's main opponent in the upcoming presidential election said Monday that he wanted to increase freedoms for Iranians, in part by curbing the so-called morality police who enforce strict interpretations of Islamic laws, such as those requiring women to cover their hair in public.

Former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, speaking at his first news conference since announcing his candidacy for president in the June election, attacked Ahmadinejad's government over its handling of the economy, the "extremism" of the president's rhetoric and the strictures that have been imposed on daily life and public discourse.

In the intraMuslim political dispute, there's no one contesting the regime's foreign policy and nuclear adventurism, policies which are "largely controlled by the country's unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a National Security Council that includes dozens of political leaders."

-- Politicarp

Asian Pacific: Indonesia: Secular parties lead 1st round of Prez vote, Islamist parties tone done their fanaticism

In Christian Science Monitor reporter Simon Montlake's article, "In Indonesia, secular parties confirm appeal" (Apr9,2k9) informs us that in early returns from the national election,

The three largest secular parties took more than half of the votes, according to projections based on poll sampling.

Meanwhile, the position of the often-rabid Islamist parties has slid. To make an international contrast, the ruling party in constitutionally-secular Turkey is an Islamic party that is neither fanatical nor rabid, and abides by the secular constitution. Perhaps that distinction -- Turkey's party is Islamic, Indonesia's have appeared to be Islamicist in the worst sense of the word-- is appropriate. Muslim-dominated Indonesia has not been the same as Muslim-dominated Turkey, but perhaps a new trend is emerging.

The Prosperous Justice Party, or PKS, the most conservative Islamist party in the race [in Indonesia], polled around 8 percent, similar to the last elections. Other Muslim parties vying for parliamentary seats saw their share of the national vote fall. A total of 38 parties contested the elections.

The country's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is running for a new term. In July, he will be ballotted against his rivals of the other leading secular parties.

I consider this development to be exceptionally good news.

-- Politicarp

Europe: Moldova: Communist-gov police take back parliament from youth protestors who used Twittert

In IrishTimes.com (Apr9,2k9), Daniel McLaughlin updates our post yesterday

MOLDOVAN AUTHORITIES cracked down on anti-government demonstrators yesterday, arresting some 200 people, threatening to use guns to quell unrest and accusing neighbouring Romania of orchestrating the protests.

Police retook control of parliament and the president’s office and arrested 193 people who had allegedly been involved in storming the buildings on Tuesday in protest at an election victory by the ruling Communist Party which they claimed was riddled with vote-rigging and fraud.

Communist president Vladimir Voronin accused his critics of staging a coup and said Romania was behind the unrest, prompting the expulsion of the Romanian ambassador to Moldova and the recall of Moldova’s envoy in Bucharest.

While Mr Voronin and his communist allies have sought to balance relations between Russia and the EU, and enjoy the support of many older Moldovans, the younger generation looks solely to the EU for its future and is deeply suspicious of the local communist elite and of Moscow.

How the younger generation registered its conflict with the Communist puppet regime (after all Moldova needs oil from Russia, but shares no border with it; Moldova shares borders with Romania, an EU and NATO member, and Ukraine--which was itself blackmailed by Russia over oil supply in the winter) has been attributed to Twitter, computers, and handhelds among the youth. Apparently they don't trust the official newspapers, radio and TV; whereas their "grandmothers" do. For one thing, the youth are concerned that Romania will have to close the border with Moldova, becoming an EU border; the door will be closed to European jobs for Moldovan youth. So, the Moldovan Communist govt is itself preparing to close the border with Romania.

Europe: Moldova: Communist-run gov sees Moldova parliament overrun by Europists

Alex Rodriguez reports that "10,000 protesters break through police lines and ransack the [parliament] building, as well as the offices of President Vladimir Voronin. They claim recent elections were rigged" (Apr7,2k9, Los Angeles Times).

-- Politicarp

Journalism: Canada: Prestigious commentator thinks Obama suffered diplomatic defeat at London Summit

US Prez Obama went to the London Summit

looking for an international agreement to pursue stimulus measures, convinced that the approach he's pursuing domestically is the way to end the global economic crisis. In the weeks leading up to the summit, his officials had already backed off their demand for a commitment to a specific figure; namely, the IMF recommendation of 2 per cent of GDP.

Still, arriving in London, U.S. President Obama was quite isolated. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was sympathetic, but the Governor of the Bank of England had already warned the Labour government that it was out of fiscal running room and that a visit from the IMF was just around the corner.

As the OECD reported this week, Canada does have fiscal room to pursue further stimulus measures. And, aside from his own objectives related to the regulation of financial institutions, Prime Minister Stephen Harper tried to help Mr. Obama. The reality, however, is that Canada has very limited clout at these meetings.

In the end, Mr. Obama had to give way - principally to French and German objections. Worse, from the American point of view, the stimulus that was agreed to at the meeting is particularly costly for U.S. taxpayers.

The writer Norman Specter, perhaps Canada's most prestigious journalist, in his blog (Apr2,2k9).

But Mr. Specter may not understand Obama's goals, his strategy, for the Summit and his following visits to Paris, Prague, and Turkey. He advocated that the European Union admit Turkey to membership.

-- Politicarp

G20 Summit: Global Economy: new apparatus will subordinate national economic regulatory bodies to world economic law

Dick Morris has been reading the documents produced by the recently completed London G20
Summit. He pinpoints a monumental action laying out the jurdicial basis for a Global Economic Union. He writes ("The Declaration of Independence has been repealed," Apr6,2k9):

The joint communiqué [of G2 London 2k9] essentially announces a global economic union with uniform regulations and bylaws for all nations, including the United States. Henceforth, our [USA Securities Exchange Commission], Commodities Trading Commission, Federal Reserve Board and other regulators will have to march to the beat of drums pounded by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a body of central bankers from each of the G-20 states and the European Union.

One need not follow Morris all the way in his line of thawt, but he focuses us on key systemic and structural change that we need to understand. This G20 action will be the cause of many debates of philosophy of law for many Constitution-oriented Americans.

-- Lawt

Juridics: Afghanistan: World scream against Shi-ite Sharia Law on women

Washington Post's excellent report, "Afghan Law on Women Brings Societal Conflict Onto World Stage," by Pamela Constable (Apr5,2k9):

the legal repression of Afghan Shiite women has created a global uproar, bringing condemnation from Western governments and U.N. officials, just as Washington and NATO are debating their military and economic commitment to Afghanistan and the faltering war against Islamist insurgents.

Critics charge that the new Shiite Personal Status Law, signed last week by President Hamid Karzai, would enshrine the rights of Shiite men to sexually enslave their wives and keep them imprisoned at home. Western leaders have compared the law to the Taliban era of 1996 to 2001, when Sunni extremists ruled Afghanistan and banned women from work and school.

What is not mentioned in the report had been broken the day before, in "Afghan Law That Legalizes Rape Poses Problem for Obama and Clinton" (Apr4,2k9, Fox News).

-- Lawt

USA: Auto Industry: Obama govt h+prioritizes "electrification of the vehicle"

In a stunning report on not-so-micro management of the auto industry by the full-programme Obama economic-recovery policy, Jeff Green and John Hughes (Apr5,2k9, Blomberg) outline how "the Obama administration has put such a high priority on the electrification of the vehicle that it would be a very difficult policy decision to drop the Volt [GM's projected electric car, due on the market Nov2k10].

April 3 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration, pressing for more fuel-efficient vehicles, won’t block General Motors Corp.’s Chevrolet Volt electric car even after the president’s task force called it too expensive, a person familiar with the matter said.

Questions about the plug-in Volt’s future arose after the administration ousted Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner on March 27 and criticized the car in a report that said government-supported GM’s recovery plan was insufficient.

“While the Chevy Volt holds promise, it will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short-term,” according to the March 30 report by President Barack Obama’s auto task force.

The administration’s concerns about the Volt were offset by its belief that GM needs cleaner, fuel-efficient vehicles to succeed in the long term, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the task force’s deliberations are private. GM’s problems may mean the company won’t meet its timetables for producing and selling the Volt though, the person said.

The automaker said yesterday it still plans to deliver the vehicle to showrooms in November 2010, as planned.

For those interested in Christian social philosophy from the reformational standpoint, this particular issue of how green policy becomes more important to the making of cars, than the bad-business-as-usual of General Motors and United Auto Workers. These latter are a decade late in making the transition to electric battery driven vehicle engines. The govt has had the wisdom to displace the regime of whimpering drones at GM, and to guide the GM bureaucracy into making electrocars instead of simply catering to an ignorant public's current tastes. The issue may well reveal how focal the problem of "realizing the norm" and "simultaneity of norm-realization" have to become in the theorizing about societal spheres, and the general philosophical doctrine of societal-sphere sovereignty.

-- EconoMix

Further Research:

Obama uses taxes to push electrocars
Obama/Schwarzenegger push electrocars

NATO: Leadership: Denmark's Anders Fogh Rasmussen takes over as Secretary General of NATO, adopts Obama's Afghan agenda

With the North Koreans apparently completing their attempted satellite-emplacement, only to be awarded a lacklustre failure, but still offering to the world a strange cocky visual contrast (TV) to the G20 other industrialized countries. The Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors was in meeting to forfend a worsening of the world economic crisis; NATO's moves in conjunction with Obama's world anti-terrorist policy would just not be put totally into news-eclipse, as perhaps the NorKors had caculated, mistakenly.

Still, it remains to be seen how much re-inforcement a Denmark-led NATO can muster against those Afghanis and Pakistanis who led worldwide extremist Muslim-mass anti-Denmark demonstrations, a result of the Danish government's previous failure to protect Muslims from the Prophet-insulting cartoons two or so years ago, the Danes being led at the time by none other than former Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, now headed to NATO.

Our title-link to this blog-entry will take you to a fine article, "Denmark’s New Premier Faces Sliding Polls, Deepening Recession" by Christian Wienberg (Apr6,2k9; Bloomberg). The report covers the background of the elder Rasmussen, and an assessment of his successor's situation. The former Finance Minister has succeeded the new NATO official. From cabinet status to new Prime Minister, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, has problems enuff (besides carrying the same surname as his NATO-bound predessor).

-- Politicap

Further Research:

London G20 Summit website
G20 Info Centre

Asia: Missile Launch: Japan supine under NorKor's overpass (no new satellite set yet)

BBCNews reports "North Korea 'has launched rocket' (Apr5,2k9):

North Korea says it is sending a satellite into orbit, but its neighbours suspect the launch is a cover for a long-range missile test.

Japan, South Korea and the US condemned the launch as a provocative act.

America would take "appropriate steps to let North Korea know that it cannot threaten the safety and security of other countries with impunity", a US state department spokesman said.

Japan says it is seeking an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

A more geospecific geopacific thawt is reported by Linda Sieg and Jack Kim in Reuters (Apr5,2k9).

The United States, South Korea and Japan say the launch is actually the test of a Taepodong-2 missile, which is designed to carry a warhead as far as Alaska.

I can't help thinking that NorKor's strategic planners chose the date on which they would today overpass Japan (without permission to do so,of course), chose the date to eclipse the news-worthiness of the society of industrial nations at the forefront of the world economy, meeting vaingloriously at the G2 Summit.

But the overpassing of the country of Japan, whether or not one NorKor intention may be true in regard to the G2 conference on the world economic crisis, certainly the fly-over "the air space" of Japan--dropping 1st-stage rocketry before arc-ing over Japan's territory, then overpassing the furious country below it; and then the NorKor Missile also dropped its used-up 2nd-stage rocketry, plop into the Pacific, somewhere in the vast oceanic space between North Korea and the United States of America and Her Majesty's Dominion of Canada.

Meanwhilew, the NorKor Missile (NKM) is reportedly speeding on its way, presumably carrying a satellite to set into some strategic space-place, an orbit for possible 24-hour transmission. But, with the world press agog, no new NorKor satellite has yet appeared in the Heavens in orbit around Earth and independent of the rocket which may yet accomplish its stated mission. The latter's remains perhaps to later splash down somewhere on Earth again.

I'm watching this ongoing news-story with considerable interest (agog?)

-- Politicarp

Brits: Brilliant Kooks: Pundit Christopher (Atheist) Hitchens defaces odious poltcl sect in Beirut, gets smashed (nearly)

Late last month, Beirut (in the persons of 6 Syrian Social Nationalist Party adherents -- were they the same "burly youths" of everlasting sociliast fiction?) attacked the redoubtable stalwart and always-somewhat drunk Christofer Hitchins, a laudable Trotskyist writer most closely associated with a militant Kurdish social revolutonary party.

His travelling companion and fellow freelance reporter of the world's political hotspots, Michael Totten, who recounted this latest obyssey most vividly (or is that most bonvivantly?), tells well the story that self-satirizes its own narrative, and gently lets Hitchens off without a hitch.

--Politicarp

Pop Music: Lionel Richie: Dancin' on the Cielin'

USA: Economy: Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner in crucible, Obamonomics in question

The New York Times article by Jackie Colmes, "Treasury Secretary facing defining moment" (Mar18,2k9), is the first profile of the Treasury Department's head that I've read to date. I found this Colme's item quite interesting. First, it gives us some specificities regarding Geithner's achievements and overall "career path" to his present Cabinet-status in the US government of these 'troubling times.' Second, Colmes attempts to be precise about the Secretary's immediate political situation; so, to an avid political reader who reflects on wide-reading, the Colmes piece has verisimilitude. For now, I'll just trust the basic informativity of Geithner's profile here established.

The piece doesn't take up the matter of Timbos unpaid income taxes, belatedly now repaid. He also apologized. It was a lapse of memory, he felt.

--EconoMix

International: Economy: Read about the Gaussian math that "Whiz" applied to credit risk -- refWrite page 2

USA: Economy: Christian political leader blasts American financial & business leadership of 'collapse'

In a recent article, Dr James Skillen (executive director of Citizens for Public Justice USA until October 2009) bristled indignantly, "Can Trust Be Restored?" (Root & Branch (Feb23.2l9).

Let me put it more bluntly. People are not just angry about bankers’ big bonuses and auto company CEOs’ private jets; they are angry that they got taken by “the system” — by banks, by mortgage companies, by investment advisers, and by the government that aided and abetted and gave no warning of the coming collapse. As in a stagecoach robbery, writes Janet Tavakoli, “Wall Street bankers made off with the loot without firing a shot. They were enabled by Washington overseers and financial regulators who—when not beneficiaries of the good times—behaved like ostriches. Meanwhile, news of the fact that no one in the US has been brought to justice has not escaped notice” (Financial Times, 2/5/09). The authorities oversaw and even encouraged the increasing leveraging of debt until the whole country was overextended, leading to the crash. One of the biggest culprits, according to John Kay, was the “diversified financial conglomerates” created after Washington abolished the Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial and investment banking. The conglomerates, says Kay, “are riddled with conflicts of interest” and their growth “served only the ambitions of the greedy men who ran them and the financial interests of traders, who were allowed to play with sums of money that should never have come into their hands” (Financial Times, 2/11/09). With government having not yet done much to change the system and after several months of trying to prop up all kinds of financial services companies, the hole is getting deeper. Even two months ago, Niall Ferguson could write, the Fed itself “increasingly resembles a public hedge fund, leveraged at more than 50:1” (Financial Times, 12/19/08).

International: Economy: Bailout billions paid to French & German big banks by AIG

BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, blogs on the nexus between these corporate entities: Goldman Sachs (USA), American International Group (USA), Societe General (France), Deutsche Bank (German), and Barclays (Brit)... "and the whole world" (quips Fox's early morning show host Doucey) -- all these, say Peston and Doucey, were getting paid off by AIG with tax monies. "The Goldman infallibility myth" (Mar16,2k9).

USA: Economy: like alchemical formula 'as below, so above' the rot at the top was reflected far down the wealth chain

Reuters offers a very fact-assertive and thawt-provoking news report on an aspect of the American economy at this point in its upheaval, and the onslawt of "depression"; the article is reported by Emily Kaiser and edited by David Dalgleish ("edited" here means Dalgleish removed something from Kaiser's article). "U.S. household wealth falls $11.2 trillion in 2008," (Kaiser, Mar12,2009):

Home mortgage debt fell at a 1.6 percent pace -- the third consecutive quarter of declines -- and consumer credit dropped at a 3.2 percent rate.

The build-up in household debt was one of the most striking elements of the five-year housing boom, which peaked in 2006. Consumers recorded double-digit annual increases in mortgage debt from 2001 through 2006, some of that in the form of cash-out refinancing that helped fuel strong spending.

Just how much rising wealth contributed to consumer spending is a subject of much debate but it is thought to be somewhere around 5 cents on the dollar. It is less clear how much households will cut back now that their wealth has been depleted.

Is this 'the unmasking of capitalism' that Goudszwaard 'radical Christians' are nowadays talking about?

Terrorism: Northern Ireland: IRA resurgents kill Brit soldiers, policeman

I've been hearing thru blogs (closer to the situation in Ulster), there seems to be widespread discontent in the working-class ranks of the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party members and their more independent brethren ("the prods"). But word most timely now comes via BBC that the Loyalists 'will not strike back' at the IRA resurgent terrorist splinter-groups (Mar11,2k9). At least so says Frankie Gallagher of the Ulster Political Research Group (UPRGP) who had met Sinn Fein's Tom Harley on Wednesday. Gallagher advises the "loyalist paramilitary UDA.

--Politicarp

Calendar: Lent Music: Thankyou Bob Dylan

Here's a snippet of the lyrics by Bob Dylan for his great song, Knockin' on Heaven's Door (original version with HT to Maggie's Farm

Mama, take this badge off of me
I can't use it anymore.
It's gettin' dark, too dark for me to see
I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door

Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can't shoot them anymore.
That long black cloud is comin' down
I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door."

Knockin' knockin' ....


Owlb

Politics USA: Economy: Prez signs hugenormous Spending law in political-economic experiment

USA President Obama has responded to the spending/stimulus law written by the House of Representatives and the Senate.

"I do think that the possibilities of thinking inwardly are very great," he said. "And you see it happening. You see it happening to presidents. You see it happening to members of Congress and the Senate."

The president has also learned quickly that achieving a spirit of bipartisanship in Washington may be easier said than done. Obama's economic stimulus bill, which passed the Senate today in a vote of 61-37, has been widely criticized by Republicans.

Obama stressed that, given the current economic climate, "not doing anything is simply not an option."

"I think there are a number of different arguments that have been leveled at, at this recovery package," he said. "There are a set of folks who just don't believe in government intervening in the marketplace, period. ... I think that fight's already been won; the American people certainly think so. That's not the argument that makes much sense to them."

The tiny datestamp on the article cited and livelinked says Feb18,2k9; so I'll go with that. "Obama: 'There is no easy way out' for Wall Street," ABC News in assocation with USA Today, unsigned interview. So it's much like an editorial.

Demurring from the logic of the presidential criticism, here I just want to point out that the law, tho written at the President's behest by the Democratic Congressional leadership, House Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Majority leader Reid with their in-place Democrat-led committees, willynilly produced a "package" that may or may not lead to or achieve "economic recovery," a law the text of which inherently depends upon the validity of certain unarticulated assumptions--not least regarding overall presuppositions about the USA political economy. The nature of the law's confectioning requires acknowledgement of its quality as an experiment in whether the Pelosi-Reid law's newly-instituted expenses, grants, and porkupiney delicacies will actually work well together to buy the envisioned recovery of the economy.

Politicarp