• Fifteen per day – Record bombs dropped in Afghanistan in April – (Navy Times)
• Your money – Afghan war to cost more than Iraq in 2010 – (The News)

• Walt thinks Obama has no strategy (I'm not sure that he is right) – Confidence game – (FP)
• On AfPak – China voices concern over growing US influence – (Dawn)
• 'The Everyday Extremism of Washington' – Secretary Doomsday and the Empathy Gap – (Tom Dispatch)

• Sidelining the State Department – Behind the scenes of the Peres-Obama meeting – (FP)

• Add a zero for the real number – U.S. Says Ailing Banks Need $75 Billion – (NYT)
• Krugman on lack of a serious reform – Stressing the Positive – (NYT)
• Even the right is criticizing this – Banks Need Fewer Carrots and More Sticks – (WSJ)
• Speculation, not demand – Oil rises to six-month high near $58 – (AP)

Over the last month I have written lots of pieces on Pakistan and U.S. interference there. In the 'Links' posting I titled pieces about the administration's talk on Pakistan as War propaganda, Pakistan panic and War preparation campaign. The build up was obvious to me, but I missed the rest of the blogsphere on this theme.Now finally others are waking up too.

Junah Grundberg wrote yesterday:

The danger here is how similar the rhetoric about Pakistan is beginning to resemble the rhetoric in the run up to the Iraq War: a potentially mortal threat to the U.S. that the government in question is unwilling to address, while the region and world look on helplessly.

…
It increasingly appears that we're in the second phase of an opinion-shaping effort whose only outcome, short of Pakistan acting in ways that betray its core interests, is an escalation of American military involvement in the region.

Chris Floyd in today's Counterpunch:

We are now in the midst of a full-blown campaign to "roll out the product" for a new war: this time, in Pakistan. Anyone who lived through the run-up to the invasion of Iraq should be able to read the signs — anyone, that is, who is not blinded by partisan labels, or by the laid-back cool of a media-savvy leader far more presentable than his predecessor.

Pepe Escobar today with a bright piece at ATOL on how very much Obama's words and actions on Afghanistan and Pakistan now resemble Bush's war on terror and Iraq campaign and on how much this is again very much about the control of hydrocarbons and over Baluchistan as the strategic prize in the U.S.-China contest.

Pat Lang chips in with AfPak and the Neoconization of Obama.

Welcome folks. This campaign has been going on for months. The New York Times has spewed out propaganda piece after propaganda piece about the 'Talibanisation' of Pakistan. The gray lady never disappoints when a president wants to launch a new war. Obama now talks about fighting al-Qaeda – whatever that may be – in Pakistan. Clinton sees mushroom clouds on the horizon. It is all the same systematic play again.

But unlike during the campaign for the war on Iraq, there is no resistance today to this new and much wider war. The domestic U.S. discussion and the rest of the world is distracted with economic issues. The U.S. 'left' is silent as it is a 'left' president now that is running the U.S. into another war it will lose.

Zardari will get his blood money, Karzai may be allowed to keep his job if finally shuts up. Pakistan may end up in a civil war and a lot of dirt poor peasants on both sides of the Durand line will die for the glory of commander in chief Obama and the enrichment of the empires elite. Years from now the U.S. will limp out of the area again. Defeated like so many empires who have been defeted in that special place of this world.

• Spot-on about the war preparations – Opinion Shaping and the Pakistan Threat – (WPR)

• On Gitmo: Obama=Bush? – New Chief Prosecutor Appointed For Military Commissions At Guantánamo – (Andy Worthington)

• A very telling graph on media bias and Africa – Congo Ignored, Not Forgotten – (FAIR)

• This might get interesting – Weapons grade uranium found in Egypt – (PressTV)

• Accelerating colonization – Settlement expansion seeing biggest boost since 2003 – (Haaretz)

On Israel as “the State of the Jewish People”

• Tony Karon – Can Bibi Force Abbas to ‘Recognize’ an Oxymoron? – (TK)
• Uri Averny – Netanyahu's Plan – (Counterpunch)

• Roubini: Let them fail – Insolvent banks should feel market discipline – (FT, alternative link)

The Associated Press wants us to believe that Arabs and Israeli are on one page with regards to Iran:

The concerns being raised [about Iran] by Arab leaders sound strikingly like those coming from the mouths of Israeli officials.

…
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit conveyed the concerns this week when U.S. envoy Dennis Ross, who is dealing with Iran, visited Cairo.

"Iran's behavior in the region is negative in many aspects and does not help in advancing security, stability and peace," he told Ross.

The spokesman of the Egypt's foreign ministry as well as the Egyptian president himself recently expressed something very different than what the AP writer tries to disseminate:

Cont. reading: Is the U.S. Stand on Israel’s Nukes Changing?

The New York Times gives us the official version of a mutiny in Georgia:

According to the Georgian account, 25 miles from Tbilisi, the capital, government forces during the day surrounded a tank battalion whose leaders were planning the uprising. A few hours later, most of the unit’s 500 soldiers surrendered, and several of their commanders were detained.

President Mikheil Saakashvili said Russia was hoping to derail the NATO exercises, which he called a “symbolic event.”

Saakashvili is of course a notorious liar and what really happened is much different.

Since April 9 the opposition to Saakashvili has launched daily protests and mass rallies against Saakashvili, accusing him, rightly, to have launched last years disastrous little war against South Ossetia. They also accuse the state run media of unfair reporting and the interior ministry of letting it goons pick out and brutalize demonstrators.

The opposition planned and announced to temporarily blockade the east-west main highway of Georgia beginning yesterday afternoon.

Then yesterday morning the commander of a battalion stationed near the planned protest site, Col. Gorgiashvili, contacted the media:

Cont. reading: The Georgian Mutiny That Wasn’t

Open Threads are back and you will always find the most recent one linked in the top left box on the mainpage of this blog.

New open threads will get launched when the most recent one fills up with about 50 comments.

Use them to post and comment on whatever you like.

• Missed this one yesterday – Billmon: The Chair Recognizes the Grand Dragon . . . – (DKos)

• This lobbying for torture lawyers … – Bush Officials Try to Alter Ethics Report – (WaPo)
• … was successful – Torture Memos Will Not Result in Prosecutions – (NYT)

• The result of 'surgical' U.S. airstrikes – Truckloads Of Dead Civilians After Afghan Battle – (Reuters)

Cont. reading: Links May 6 09

Two meta issues:

1. This is a part of a screenshot of the lower left of the homepage here.

It is the sitemeter counter for this blog and it now shows more than two million total visits since this blog started on June 30, 2004.

Here is another screenshot. This one from the MoA typepad statistics:

Also, since its inception this site published 4,107 posts and 127,402 comments.

A big thanks to you, readers and commentators. You are the ones that keep this going!

2. Now, as this is already a meta-thread, please let me know your opinion about the "Links" versus "Open Thread" issue here.

Cont. reading: Moon of Alabama Statistics

Last September I argued that creative destruction of houses could better the economic situation in the United States. The financial and social costs for keeping empty houses is higher than their value. Tear them down.

Some now seem to agree with that perspective:

[T]he two-story residence and three other luxurious model homes were crushed and hauled off for scrap, the latest fallout from Southern California’s real estate crash.

The homes were part of a planned 16-unit project in this community 100 miles north of Los Angeles. The Texas bank that owns the failed development decided to demolish the houses, a cheaper alternative to completing and selling them.

…
The four finished homes, however, were richly appointed with granite countertops, whirlpool bathtubs and dual-pane windows.

…
Construction halted in the summer of 2008, and the homes became a nuisance, attracting vandals and squatters, Hester said. The city first cited the developer for failing to maintain the property in July, [city spokeswoman] Hester said.

“People were taking sinks, the air conditioners. For someone who wanted to do no good, it provided an opportunity,” she said.

The bank repossessed the development in August, Hester said. Demolition permits were granted April 9.

Cities with too many empty houses should attempt to re-concentrate their suburbs. If a majority of houses in an area is empty, the local government should help people to move out from the rest too and then take down all the houses. That will be much cheaper in terms of fireguards, police and general infrastructure costs than attempting to keep those areas alive.

Creative destruction is best and easiest to do to right the wrongs of exaggerated construction.

• 'The dark specter of preventive detention' – Obama’s First 100 Days: A Start On Guantánamo, But Not Enough – (Andy Worthington)

• On Harman et al – AIPAC Victory: Game, Set, Match – (CQPolitics)

• War preparation campaign – Porous Border With Pakistan Could Hinder U.S. Troops – (NYT)
• Stephen Walt – The threat monger's handbook – (FP)
• Naturally – Taliban prepare for U.S. surge – (Globe&Mail)
• Consequences – Pakistani army flattening villages as it battles Taliban – (McClatchy)

• Andy Xie – If China loses faith the dollar will collapse – (FT)
• Richardson & Roubini – We Can't Subsidize the Banks Forever – (WSJ)

Please share your links, news and views in the comments.

Though I do not really trust Syed Saleem Shahzad writings at Asia Times Online, he likes to exaggerate the bandit stories he heard about, but this part of today's dispatch sounds plausible:

Well-placed contacts have confirmed to Asia Times Online that as a follow-up of these warning messages from American officials, in the next few days Sharif will accept a power-sharing formula to join the government led by Zardari's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) to fight against the Taliban.

In terms of this, powerful political slots will be offered to the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) group. In principle, former premier Sharif has agreed to the terms and will add his party's weight to the battle against the Taliban. Alternatively, if either the PML-N or the PPP refuses to accept the formula, a technocratic interim government under the auspices of the Pakistani armed forces might take over.

These are probably the two worst possible solutions for Pakistan.

Cont. reading: More Meddling Plans For Pakistan

• War preparation campaign –
  Pakistan Strife Raises U.S. Doubts on Nuclear Arms – (NYT)
• More war preparations – Pakistan’s Islamic Schools Fill Void, but Fuel Militancy – (NYT)
• Even more war preparations – Pakistan Says Islamic Court Fulfills Deal With Taliban – (NYT)
• Contrasting reality check – Pepe Escobar – The myth of Talibanistan – (ATOL)

• Retreat – Captured Afghanistan outpost torn down – Hard-won ground given up in change of priorities
  – (Globe&Mail)

• Manga Wars – Nationalism and Anti-Americanism in Japan – (Japan Focus)

• Via China Matters – The Backstory of the Betancourt Release – (China hand)

• Maybe even longer – U.S. has a 45-year history of torture – (LAT)

• No – Is the Darfur bloodshed genocide? – (LAT)

• Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Too Big to Fail, Hidden Risks, and the Fallacy of Large Institutions – (NYU Poly Institute)
• 'How an American in Holland learned to love the European welfare state.' – Going Dutch – (NYT)
• Krugman – Falling Wage Syndrome – (NYT)

Please share your links, news and views in the comments.

• Bernard Chazelle – The Big Lie About Torture – (ATR)
• Insightful – torture and domestic politics – (anna missed)

• al-Sadr in Ankara and Istanbul – Reclusive Iraqi Cleric Visits Turkey – (WSL)

• As we expected – No Signs of Sustained Global Spread of Swine Flu – (NYT)

• Embarrassing – ARMS TRANSFERS DATA, 2008 – (Sipri (pdf))

• They shall have no food – Israel warplanes strike Gaza border tunnels – (LAT)
• The war lobby – AIPAC set to push Iran legislation at major conference – (JPost)

• Important distinctions: Jerome – The cost of wind, the price of wind, the value of wind – (D-Kos)

Please share your links, news and views in the comments.

There could be three motives behind all the Obama administration's talk about a new government in Pakistan.

1. To put pressure on President Zardari to make him do what the U.S. wants
2. To push the Pakistani army towards a coup against Zardari.
3. An attempt to steal Pakistan's nukes

Number two is now the most likely scenario. Writes Swoop:

A flurry of visits to Washington by senior Pakistani military officers is underway, to be followed on May 6th-7th by visits by Pakistan President Zardari and Afghan President Karzai. Neither man is held in high regard in Washington. Indeed, a prime reason for the military visits is that Administration officials believe some form of military rule is likely to emerge in Islamabad in the foreseeable future. “The Swat is a mess, Buner is still unsettled and tensions in Karachi between Pashtuns and Urdu camps are too high,” said a US senior intelligence official, “the alternative now is either Sharif with quiet arrangements of support by the army or, just the army.”

WaPo's Ignatius sees a Moment of Truth in Pakistan:

The challenge in Pakistan is eerily similar to what the Carter administration faced with Iran: how to encourage the military to take decisive action against a Muslim insurgency without destroying the country's nascent democracy.

(They had a "nascent democracy" under the Shah?)

"My biggest concern is whether [the Pakistani government] will sustain it," Mullen said. He has told his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, that "we are prepared to assist whenever they want."

Assist whenever Kiyani wants …

Unlike the Obama administration I do not believe Kiyani will want to overthrow Zardari at all. He now can practically do whatever he wants anyway. And currently he can point to Zardari's when criticism from Washington comes up. If he would take over, the
pressure from Washington, the responsibility for the economic mess and the general chaos following a coup would be his problems. Why would he want those?

Nawaz Sharif first shunned and now courted by the administration, would probably like to be president. But how does the U.S. expect to put him in charge? Zardari won elections just a few month ago – with help from Washington. He is unlike to step down and even then there would be no guarantee that Sharif would be elected. His party does not have a majority and with judge Iftikhar Chaudry reinstalled at the supreme court, there will be a watchful eye over any sleazy procedure.

Of course if some Taliban would somehow kill Zardari …

Then those plans could succeed. But still, anyone taking over from him is unlikely to do what Washington wants. Why is the adminsitration incapable to see that?

The Pakistani elite as well as the people do see India (and the U.S.) as their big potential enemy, not some tribal mullahs in their backwoods. They fought three wars against India and they see no sign that the danger from there has receded. The Pakistani army can not just leave the eastern border and fight for U.S. interests against its own people along the Durand line. It depends on public opinion just as any politician.

If Washington wants Pakistan to pull back its silent support from the Neo-Taliban in Afghanistan, it will have to solve the India problem. A good first step would be a serious downgrade of India's presence in Afghanistan: no more consulates, no Indian roadbuilding and no Indian paramilitary police on Afghan ground. Then the problems in Kashmir will have to be solved. That may take a while but a Pakistan that will not have to fear a dual front war is much more likely to deliver support for the U.S. in Afghanistan. 

A coup will not achieve that.

• Yuck – Swine of the times: The making of the modern pig – (Harpers)

• Rich and corrupt – Kabul's New Elite – (Counterpunch)

• No change – U.S. May Revive Guantánamo Military Courts – (NYT)
• No change – Up to 100 inmates can't be tried or freed, Gates says – (France24)

• Putsch preparations
  1 Petraeus sees Pak gov't has 2 weeks "before next US action" – (World Bulletin)
  2 In Pakistan, U.S. Courts Leader of Opposition – (NYT)
  3 Gen. Kayani among world's most influential people: Time – (The News)

• The guy who gave them information got 12 years – U.S. drops spy charges against two ex-AIPAC officials – (Haaretz)
• Has it ever been so? – Sadly, Israel is no longer democratic – (Haaretz)

• Credit Default Swaps are moral hazardous – Derivatives and attempted state capture in Kazakhstan – (Mavercon/FT)
• "The best solution" – Berkshire's Munger Favors Ban on Credit-Default Swaps – (Bloomberg)
• Hardly enough – Citi Said to Need Up to $10 Billion – (WSJ)

Please share your links, news and views in the comments.

The problem is still with us …

bigger

… anyway, off to celebrate …

• The 'few bad apples' want justice – Abu Ghraib Guards Say Memos Show They Were Scapegoats – (WaPo)
• Only a delay – Torture tape delays U.S.-UAE nuclear deal, say U.S. officials – (CNN)
• The wrong question – When is torture legal? – (William Pfaff)

• Yoo and Bybee unlikely candidates – Justice Souter’s Retirement and Where We Go from Here – (SCOTUSblog)

• 'Swine at the Trough' – The Business of Pandemics – (Counterpunch)
• Swine flu as land-grab excuse – The Day Pigs Were Slain in Egypt – (Almasry Alyoum)

• Reasonable paranoia – India, US hand-in-hand in Balochistan – (Frontier Post)

• Sad and outrageous – Conflict over but situation of Gaza’s children still ‘precarious’ – (UNICEF)

• Obama expects a short bankruptcy-court phase, but I might be quite long
  Chrysler's bankruptcy path uncharted, but GM could follow – (LAT)
• The Auto Bailout Is Going Off the Road – (TPM)
• Honda posts record loss of $1.92 billion – (Press TV)
• Fudging the already dubious results – U.S. Bank Stress Test Results Delayed as Conclusions Debated – (Bloomberg)
• The Goldman-Sachs Congress – Senate Defeats Mortgage ‘Cram-Down’ as Democrats Balk – (Bloomberg)

Please share your links, news and views in the comments.