The Global Poverty Paradox

Nicholas N. Eberstadt, Commentary Magazine

For a brief, glorious, and unforgettable moment 20 years ago, it seemed as if a great and terrible question that had been perennially stalking humanity had finally been answered. That profound question was as old as human hope itself: could ordinary men and women, regardless of their location on this earth or their station in this life, hope that deliberate social arrangements could provide them—and their descendants thereafter—with permanent and universal protection against the grinding poverty and material misery that had been the human lot ever since memory began? For those exhilarating few years back in the 1990s, it seemed to many of us that the 20th century had indeed answered this age-old question: decisively, successfully, and conclusively.

Brute facts, after all, had demonstrated beyond controversy that human beings the world over could now indeed create sustained explosions of mass prosperity—rather than temporary and transient windfalls—that would utterly transform the human material condition, relegating the traditional conception of desperate want from a daily personal concern to an almost abstract textbook curiosity.

According to estimates by the late economic historian Angus Maddison, the world's average per capita output quadrupled between 1900 and 1989/91, with even greater income surges registered in the collectivity of Western societies where the process of modern economic growth had commenced.1 Membership in this "Western" club, though, manifestly did not require European background or heritage, for the Asian nations of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan had come to embrace political and economic arrangements similar to those pioneered in Western Europe and its overseas offshoots, and had in fact enjoyed some of the century's fastest rates of long-term income growth.

The formula for generating steady improvements in living standards for a diversity of human populations, in short, had been solidly established. The matter at hand was now to extend that formula to the reaches of the earth where it could not yet be exercised—most obviously at that time for political reasons, given the fact that nearly a third of the world's peoples were still living under Communist regimes in the late 1980s.

By the early 1990s, with the final failure of the Soviet project and the widely heralded idea of the "End of History," it suddenly seemed as if the liberal political ideals that promoted the spread of the Western growth formula would no longer encounter much organized global resistance. It now seemed only a matter of time until every part of the world could join in a newly possible economic race to the top. Prosperity for all—everywhere—no longer sounded like merely a prayer. Quite the contrary: the end of global poverty was increasingly taken to be something much more like a feasible long-term-action agenda.

Alas, in the years since, new brute facts have asserted themselves, while other awkward facts of somewhat older vintage have reasserted themselves, demanding renewed attention. All too many contemporary locales have managed to "achieve" records of long-term economic failure in our modern era. The plain and unavoidable truth is that countries with hundreds of millions of inhabitants today are not simply falling behind in a global march toward ever-greater prosperity: they are positively heading in the wrong direction, spiraling down on their own distinct, but commonly dismal, paths of severe, prolonged, and tragic retrogression.

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Woman sentenced to death for blasphemy

By Michael Rosch, Examiner

Asia Bibi is no fan of Islam, and she didn't mind telling Muslim women why while working in a field with them in a Pakistani village southwest of Lahore:

She said that "the Quran is fake and your prophet remained in bed for one  month before his death because he had worms in his ears and mouth. He married  Khadija just for money and after looting her kicked her out of the house," local police official Muhammad Ilyas told CNN.

Bibi is a Christian and unfortunately, she chose the wrong country to speak her mind as now she's been sentenced to death for the crime of blasphemy.

Muhammad Iqbal, a senior police official in the district of Nankana Sahib, said she also was fined the equivalent of $1,100.

Oh yeah, and she was fined $1,100, presumably because the death sentence isn't harsh enough for those who would dare express their opinions about Islam.

The official charge is breaking section 295-C of the Pakistani penal code, which says:

'Whoever ... defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.'

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CIA Psyops: Hiding the Headley Game

According to The Hindustan Globe:

...In our assessment, the CIA & FBI were clearly aware of the detailed plans for the attack on Mumbai.

HEADLEY A STRATEGIC & INVALUABLE ASSET: Undoubtedly the CIA-FBI have gone to preposterous levels to protect Headley & have repeatedly refused his extradition to India . Thus his limited & controlled access by Indian Intel is clearly a farce & of no consequence whatsoever, apart fro m the fact that is now being used to cover-up the crimes of the Intelligence Bureau, as well as that of the Police that indulge in encounter killings & the cover-up of the terror attack by the Brahmanical terrorists, within the Abhinav Bharat & the Sanatan Sanstha.

But then Headley is a unique asset. He is White, yet of a mixed Muslim-Jewish parentage. He knew English, Urdu, Farsi, Pashto & a smattering of Arabic.

And then he had very deep connections with the drug-underworld & the narco-terror networks.

Headley's father & his religion are often discussed, but when it co mes to his mother, there is a studied silence & it is only fair that this angle be delved into as well. In fact the Wikipedia insists that he acquired a "Christian sounding na me ", even though his mother was Jewish.

David Coleman Headley was a child of a broken family & around the age of sixteen Serrill Headley (Jewish by faith), took him to away to the US . It was after 9/11, when Headley began to work for the CIA, that he changed his name from Daoud Gilani, to David Coleman Headley, which the Wikipedia wrongly refers to a Christian name. Clearly the Wikipedia is trying to mislead for a purpose.

The point is that clearly Gilani wanted a new identity after 9/11 & since he was now working for the CIA-FBI as an undercover agent, he could have taken on any identity, but yet he chose to take his mother's Jewish identity & the Coleman surname.

All the reports state that Headley traveled with a Jewish prayer book with him. Was it because he had abandoned the faith of his father & had taken the faith of his mother which is normally the case of children of divorced families? I believe that was precisely the case.

Again, Headley operated out of the key Zionist strongholds in the US , namely Chicago & New York & in India from Goa , Mumbai, Pushkar (Rajasthan) & Himachal Pradesh.

In Goa he was in regular touch with an American agent who was living there for nine years but has disappeared after 26/11 & our police could not locate him. Though, when it comes to arresting innocent Muslim youth they have proved to be efficient & ruthless as well.

In Pushkar, whilst Headley was staking out the targets, he stayed in a hotel where two other Israeli's were also present at that very time. So the role of Mossad agents in the 26/11 attack needs to be investigated as well. ( http://criminalstate.com/2009/08/how-israel-wages-game-theory-warfare/ )

Also another question is as to whether Headley was a Chabad Lubavitcher by sect. The Chabad Lubavitch is one of the most powerful of the Jewish sects & has interests across the world ( http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.com/2010/07/chabad-at-hubs-of-power-around-world.html ) . The Chabad Houses are known to be used by Mossad operatives as safe houses to conduct their nefarious activities, ranging from drug & weapon smuggling, to espionage, fomenting terror & assassinations.

Despite certain limited warnings in May, September & November 2008, that did emanate from the sections of the US & provided to Indians authorities, the identity of whom is yet not known.

Yet, Headley was left untouched as no information was provided. Headley had been provided a visa from the Indian consulate in Chicago with all waivers despite his record of drugs smuggling & his Pakistani origin. Thus Headley enjoyed patronage at the highest levels, even within sections of the Indian security & Intelligence. (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Headleys-visa-papers-vanish-from-consulate/articleshow/5345798.cms )

And after 26/11, the government & the corporate Media, barring a few exceptions, are satisfied with the Kasab story. The Plea bargain deal in the words of MK Bhadrakumar (ex-ambassador) "was a deal that enables the US government to hold back from formally producing any evidence against Headley in a Court of Law that might have included details of his links with US intelligence ", which will now remain classified. He also said that the Obama administration was "behaving very strangely" & had something "explosive to hide".

The former counter-terrorism chief (RAW) & security analyst, Bahukutumbi Raman was of the opinion that, "the mishandling by the US is due to it's anxiety to prevent public admission of the links of the US Intelligence community with Headley & protect Pakistan from the legal consequences of its role in the 26/11 terror attack. He further stated that "the FBI wants to avoid a formal trial & that "the feeling in India is that the US has not been transparent as it is almost certain that the CIA was aware of Headley & his movements across the sub-continent"...

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No more rage against the machine

Mark LeVine, Al-Jazeera

Dishearteningly unsurprising.

This somewhat awkward phrase is, to my mind, the best description of the emotional and moral impact of Wikileak's release of 400,000 classified US military documents.

In the wake of the GOP "landslide" in the US midterm elections, most commentators have moved on from this all-too-troubling and familiar story. But their doing so only reinforces the basic problems that the release of the documents has revealed - an almost brazen disregard for reality and willingness to ignore the lessons of history for political expediency and economic and strategic gain.

And Barack Obama's post-election "move to the centre" and unwillingness to face the core systemic issues that helped lead to this electoral debacle will only strengthen the Republicans and diminish further the US' global standing.

Violating the laws of war

The individual details are bad enough. First, there are the details of hundreds of civilians killed at checkpoints and over 60,000 killed more broadly during the war; a figure the US military had refused to release and denied even having collected.

Then there is the continued torture by US troops of prisoners well after Abu Ghraib, and the even larger problem of ignoring, as a matter of official military policy per "frago 242" (Fragmentary Order 242) the even more systematic torture and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by their own jailers. And even more stunning, the cavalier manner in which military lawyers okayed the killing of Iraqis trying to surrender merely because "they could not surrender to an aircraft".

One can only wonder how the Nobel Peace Prize Committee now feels about having bestowed their most cherished prize on a president who handed over thousands of Iraqi detainees to that country's government and security forces, even though the US military had irrefutable evidence of massive, systematic torture by Iraqi security personnel. Is it time yet to ask for the medal back?

And lest we imagine things have gotten much better under Obama, the continued imprisonment of child soldier Omar Ahmed Khadr and the routine use of attack drones outside war zones with the attendant civilian casualties are both clear violations of the laws of war - and these are only the examples we know about.

Indeed, a huge share of the actions detailed by the Iraq war logs are clear violations of the laws of war, which the US is obligated by international treaty, its own constitution and customary international law to uphold (and when breached, to prosecute). That a Democratic administration, which in good measure owes its existence to Obama's early opposition to the Iraq invasion, is not merely avoiding these issues, but actively working to suppress any attempts to address them, illustrates how entrenched amorality and criminality have become within the US politico-military system.

But however disturbing, all these revelations largely confirm what anyone who has bothered to pay attention to the last eight years of invasion and occupation in Iraq already new, albeit in less detail. Indeed, throughout the worst years of the occupation, from 2004 to 2008, the US military was in routine violation of at least a dozen articles of the Geneva Conventions. And it was precisely this disrespect for these foundational international treaties that created the situation revealed in all their gory detail in the latest Wikileaks release.

Here I would like to take issue with Robert Grenier's otherwise thoughtful critique, Wikileaks: An Inside Perspective, when he downplays the significance of revelations the US turned its eyes away from Iraqi torture of prisoners by declaring that for the US to have intervened more forcefully would have been to "behave like colonialists".

In fact, as the legal occupier of Iraq, the US and coalition forces were obligated under international law to do everything possible to stop abuses, and not to turn over control of prisoners if there was evidence that they would be mistreated. It was in ignoring this obligation that the US reduced itself to the level of a typical occupying army.

Furthermore, it was very much "the fault of the Americans" that the entire situation described in the war logs was created in the first place, through its commission of the ultimate "crime against peace" - as the Nuremberg Principles adopted by the UN Charter describe it - in its unlawful invasion of Iraq.

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Suit Targets Execution Drug

By Nathan Koppel, WSJ - 3 Nov. 2010

A lawsuit filed Tuesday in London seeks to block shipment of a drug that has been used in the U.S. to execute prisoners, the latest potential roadblock to capital punishment.

The drug at issue is thiopental sodium, a barbiturate used by states to render death-row inmates unconscious before other lethal drugs are used to complete an execution.

States in recent months had to delay executions following an announcement by a U.S. maker of thiopental sodium, Hospira Inc., that it had exhausted its supply of the drug until possibly the first quarter of next year.

States have searched for alternate supplies from other states or from overseas suppliers. Arizona last week executed Jeffrey Landrigan using thiopental sodium supplied from Britain. The state will not disclose the company that supplied the drug.

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