Without a very high level excuse from U.S. officals, this will escalate into a storm on Karzai’s residence.

Three more dead in Afghan anti-US protests

Three more people were killed in eastern
Afghanistan in protests against the alleged US abuse of the Koran, raising the death toll from three days of unrest to seven, officials said.
…
The demonstrations have now spread to 10 provinces in Afghanistan, with total casualties of at least seven dead and 76 injured, he added.

On Thursday there were repeated demonstrations in the capital Kabul as well as the provinces of Nangarhar, Parwan, Kapisa, Takhar and Logar.

The protests were sparked by allegations in Newsweek magazine last week that interrogators at the US military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, desecrated a Koran by stuffing it down a toilet to rattle Muslim prisoners.

Newsweek reported:

interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur’an down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash

While more protest rises in Pakistan, the parliament there is asking for legal action. The babble of a State Department spokesman will not be enough to calm this down.

Open Thread …

US tries to staunch wasteful flow of anti-terror funds (Financial Times)

The House of Representatives is set to vote on Thursday on legislation that would require homeland security funds to be spent mainly where the risk of terrorist attack is deemed highest. If it succeeds, it would be the first step in rolling back a pattern of waste that has been egregious even by Washington standards.

Cont. reading: Waste is Patriotic

"We don’t do body counts," Gen. Tommy Franks said.

That has changed …

Cont. reading: Body Count

(yes, another oil post – it’s been a while…)

I’ve been writing about the very low spare capacity in oil production, as shown by that graph from the recent survey on oil by the Economist:

Now OPEC is admitting that there will be no spare capacity later this year.

Cont. reading: It’s That Time Again

Roundtable Interview of the President by Foreign Print Media – Mai 5, 2005

Q: Mr. President, … For instance, how does the way detainees at Guantanamo Bay are being handled, how does that relate to your promotion of democracy and the rule of law?

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate that. That, and, for example, the pictures people saw about the prison — prison abuse is different from the detainees in Guantanamo. We’re working our way forward, so that they — and our courts, by the way, are adjudicating this. It is a clear, transparent review of the decision I made by the courts, so everybody can see it. And they’re being argued in the courts as we speak. People are being treated humanely. They were illegal non-combatants, however, and I made the decision they did not pertain to the Geneva Convention. They were not — these were terrorists. Obviously, we’ve looked at Iraq differently.

Ignore the usual bullshit, but wtf are illegal non-combatants???

The British "First Past the Pole" election system again produced results that are incompatible with my understanding of democracy. Labour will rule the country against a 64% majority of the popular vote in what some call an "elected dictatorship".

The Independent today has a series of articles on election reform in the United Kingdom.
Electoral reform: Why it’s time for change, System Failure .. and While Britain lectures the world ...

The two extreme sides for election systems are total ‘proportional representation’, which is essentially voting for a predetermined party list and ‘member representation’ like the current first past the pole system.

What system would you prefer?

Some weeks ago I was experiencing problems with the Washington Post website. Smooth scrolling of pages was impossible. My keyboard and mouse seemed to work only with short interrupts.

Cont. reading: Flashblock

Embedded with US forces in Iraq KRT reporter James Janega describes some hopeless  incompetent US Marines action in Iraq.

U.S. troops launch attacks against villages along Euphrates (thanks Nugget)

A near brigade sized force is set to attack some assumed resistance hideouts across the Euphrates. A Colonel Stephen Davis explains the enemy:

Cont. reading: Signaling Hostile Intention

  … or the Betrayal of the French Social Model

[I probably will not be around much in the next 36 hours (am currently in the airport lounge) but will reply tomorrow might when I am back.]

1. The Referendum and the French Political and Social Context

One of the essential reasons why the "non" vote on the European constitution is so strong in France is that the economic outlook in France these days is not so great, with persistent unemployment, insufficient growth, and a general restlessness. And especially, there is a lot of resentment against Chirac.

Cont. reading: 10 Years of Chirac …

News, views, opinions …

lifted from a comment by Lupin:

Where the US of A is and where it’s going.

Please feel free to jump in and pick apart my short-hand graphs.

Domestic: It seems the NeoCons have either successfully staged a coup or are in the process of (cf. stolen elections, twice, filibuster, Bolton, etc.)

Economy: Don’t understand much, but it’s going to tank, not if, but when and how much? Oil: lasting emergency. Dollar sinking? Depression threatens.

Society: The very rich will grow richer (what better time to buy assets than in a recession?) while the growing poor (bankruptcy bill etc.) will make excellent cannon fodder (want a green card? your debt written off?) or will worry too much about their survival to be a nuisance. Complicit media (as always) will keep the population entertained.

Religion: As always in such periods, growth/return of Orthodoxy Faith in force, growth of intolerance, concomitant decline in Science & Innovation. US no longer "world leader".

Foreign: Overt domination of tde Middle-East sought (oil); increased antagonism towards rival powers (EU, China). As economy tanks, brute military force takes over as leverage. Add to the mix: passive opposition/sly undermining from rival powers (fearing US might) plus revenge-driven Arab para-military (so-called terrorist) strikes, pushing the US further into decline.

Psyche: Enormous disconnect/denial in US population between self-image and reality; plus historical inability to compromise; will break rather than bend.

Conclusion: This reminds me of the Pre-Fall of the USSR, with better TV. I need not elaborate here. Worse in some respects because of oil (or lack thereof).

I think the US is already on a course that cannot be reversed. Or can it? I don’t think so. Most of the factors listed above are already set.

So we are watching the beginning of the Fall and Break-Up of the USA in real time, as we watched that of the USSR 20 years ago.

What Russia became – oligarchs, broken military, disguised autocracy, massive pauperization, ec. – is likely the future of the US of A in the next decade.

As even Ukraine eventually chose to split, I’m not even taking the option of some States (California?) seceding off the table.

Planet-wise, I’d guess there’ll be massive reorganization of all flows following large-scale disruptions.

Steve Clemons of The Washington Note (aka Bolton central) reports:

The word is out.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will not get the much-wanted National Security Agency intercepts in which John Bolton expressed so much interest during his tenure as Under Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control. Under Secretaries with questionable intentions can get the transcripts — but Senators with Constitutional oversight responsibilities seemingly cannot.

Bolton was successful in requesting the names of Americans who where part of international communication the NSA intercepted in at least 10 cases.

It is unknown why Bolton asked for these names to be revealed to him, but it seems likely that he did use them to undermine those persons reputations or their politics.

If the Republicans on the Committee cave in to the Executive’s stand by consenting on Bolton for the UN ambassador position without knowing the NSA transcripts, the names revealed to Bolton and the reasons for Bolton’s requests, they will lose the last bit of their autonomy and authority in the US government.

But then, why should should they hang on to such archaic concepts like seperation of powers?

kONTRAdICTION plays unplugged, THC influenced, energetic reggaehiphoprock&roll on the roads of Europe. As they often perform at the local marketplace here to promote their Saturday night club gigs, some people changed their Saturday shopping time to the late afternoon – just in case the band might be there …

Princess (mp3) is one of the few studio pieces they ever did. Piece State (mp3) is a club recording of a song based on a local ‘chartbreaker’ written 1911 by Ludwig Wolf.
(Some may know Dan Wolf of the bay-area band Felonious who is the great-grandson of Ludwig and was part of a recent film and music project woven around the original song.)

Some background on kONTRAdICTION by Yeshua, the bands poet from Utah. Pictures and other stuff can be found on their (flash infested) website.

The Chicken and the Egg, Part II

I think there is a global “glut” of savings, one which has made it possible for the United States to finance its gluttonous appetites at interest rates I would never have believed possible when I first started thinking about this topic more than a decade ago.

However, I agree with Roubini that the Fed is whistling past an economic graveyard if it thinks the savings glut will allow America to continue sucking up 70-80% of all global capital flows for many years to come. The financial conditions that made that possible are on artificial life support.

Part I; Part I – Discussion

The number of US soldiers killed in Iraq has reached about 1,600. In the Vietnam war the number of local casualties was about 50 times the numbers of Americans killed.

The protection and medical care for GIs is now more advanced. If we assume a likely factor of 75 for local casualties at least 120,000 Iraqis have died in the war by now.

But aside from these painful  numbers, the United States will lose this war, the Iraqis will win. I was struck how well this (shortened and adapted) resistance strategy paper I read today fits the situation.

America’s manpower, her raw materials, and her financial resources are all inadequate and insufficient to maintain her in protracted warfare or to meet the situation presented by a war prosecuted over a vast area.

Cont. reading: Strategy Paper

Billmon’s Whiskey Bar piece The Grand Delusion has by now generated some 350 comments.

(You may want to download this PDF file (760 KB) (right-click and ‘Save as..’) with Billmon’s piece and the first comment thread.)

For a continued discussion here, alabama’s recent remarks might be a good hook:

Call me unimaginative, citizen, but I find it inconceivable that Strauss could be compared to Marx in any way. To Weber, perhaps, or Durkheim–but then I don’t see the point of comparing these two founders of sociology with a classical scholar who bases his occasional put-downs of sociology on his understanding of the Hebrew Bible. When Strauss takes an occasional shot at sociology, which he really doesn’t bother to study.

Unlike Strauss, Marx and Nietzsche are major minds,working on the level of Kant and Hegel.

Cont. reading: Billmon: The Grand Delusion (cont.)

An interesting discussion has started in my home country: Germany in throes of class debate

Germany’s debate started last month when Mr Müntefering [chairman of the ruling Social Democrat Party] condemned the "anonymous faces" of capitalism.

He accused international investors of being "capitalist locusts" chewing up and then spitting out companies.

"I am criticising all those who think they can pick whatever they need out of any company … and they do it without thinking about the employees and all the people who are affected by their decision".

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder also entered the fray by speaking out against an "unrestrained neo-liberal system".

Of course Müntefering and Schröder do some electioneering here and should be asked what they have done during the last six years of their ruling to stop the "locusts" and to "restrain the neo-liberal system".

But anyhow – sentiment polls show some 73% agreement to this and the discussion is heating up. It will put some restriction on a further move to the economic right and if France and the Benelux countries pick up on this, it could result in a sea change in Europe.

Or maybe I am not yet disillusioned enough to still believe in real change.

News, views, opinions plus a link to the elder one.