Singaporean wishes MM Lee a happy retirement!

Temasek Review
July 31, 2010

Dear MM Lee,

We Singaporeans are a simple lot: we are merely seeking new management.

If Singapore today is somewhat the same as it was 20 years ago, you would probably be even more popular than Jay Chou, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson & Oprah all put together, period! However, times have changed. Singapore has advanced at such a velocity that even Carl Lewis has a problem keeping up, much less you.

While your methodology & system are sound, it has, unfortunately, become very unsuitable in the 21st & 22nd century’s context. Running a country is much less a single man’s job today. Teamwork is of the utmost importance. If a team cannot work well together, something has to give. Either you change the unhappy citizens (& end up having monkeys for your subjects) or change the mentally-challenged lot that are currently running the country.

Singapore requires the average Singaporean to work his hardest. At the other end, its leaders have to work at their maximum capacity as well. This cohesion of efforts between the two ends of the workforce make up “Team Singapore”.

It is, with bitter regrets, that not everyone is 100% capable of performing their duties. In a profit-driven organisation (which Singapore so obviously is), those who do not cut it are told to leave.

Looking back at recent events, it is very obvious that certain heads should roll. R&D conducted by our Environment Ministry generated findings that were already well-known facts. Primary school students would be able to tell you confidently that floods are caused by intense storms, coupled with drainage issues. The A-star student would even be able to tell you that rain/thunderstorms are acts of nature, not God. The scholar would add that sufficient engineering would be able to avert most, if not all calamities.

With all due respect, the entire department just does not cut it. We urge those responsible for making “ground-shaking” statements be removed from our “board” & replaced with genuine talent.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines “talent” as a natural ability &/or attractive person(s). It will be rather scandalous to have a country run by pretty boys & sexy women. So we are left with the other alternative: leaders with natural abilities. As the current “board’s” only natural ability is to receive obscene pay cheques & humiliate the people who pay them, I sense the time has indeed come for a complete revamp.

Dear MM Lee, should you still insist on working (post-retirement occupation), I’m sure the country is more than gracious to offer you a relatively slow, easy & less demanding job. How does “Facebook correspondence” sound to you? There won’t be the necessity to travel long punishing distances just to attend press-conferences or interviews. However, should you feel the need to be a little more active, how does child-minder sound to you? I’m sure your great-grandchildren will be more than sufficient to cause you to break sweat every once in awhile. The most beautiful thing is, you could work from home!!!!

To be brutally honest, you have little or no talent (if according to the Cambridge’s definition). At 86, you have definitely lost your natural ability (to do anything & everything). On the other hand, you are neither attractive (have you seen yourself of late?).

Hence, the axe should be brought upon you, apart from many others within your cabinet. It is a win-win situation as far as Singapore is concerned (that is the whole point we are arguing about in here). We spend less on excessive employment, & for those that we replace, we get value-for-$ talents. Only thus will Singapore be further propelled into the future – 101% efficiency. This will ultimately pave a golden path for the current & future generations.

They say karma is, more often than not, executed upon our following generations. Let us protect them now. I do not wish for what we do wrong today, to come back & punish our descendants.

Please MM Lee, if forecasting is your forte, keep it to yourself & perhaps forecast how your next medical appointment will turn out. Leave the larger & heavier stuff to the professionals. There is absolutely no sense in overworking yourself.

Singapore will be very upset should you go & wreck your health, doing what is absolutely pointless, for her. Think of the amount of security (apart from costs) required for one of your interviews, which lately have become non quote-worthy. The by product of your speeches is deeper misunderstanding between the common man & the government.

It has long since not been your responsibility (or jurisdiction) to “look after” Singapore & its people. We currently have a Prime Minister to do that job. Should, for any reason(s) he does not live up to the reputation, a replacement should be made ASAP, in the best interests of the country.

Male citizens suffer in the military, learning the various methods to protect & guard our land. Let us not let them down by giving them a worthless piece of land to defend. Keep up the little good work that you all have done & clear up the multitudes of rubbish you all have created.

Redistribution of wealth (your incomes): I am sure every party-member is more than willing to work for Singapore for a much less pay cheque, say SGD 500,000 per annum? We strongly believe that our politicians are not “in it” for the succulent pay. Many CEOs have reportedly worked for their company(s) for a dollar a year. While it may be ridiculous to be earning S$1 per annum, any self-righteous man would gladly carry the load of governing our Motherland for much less than S$500,000 per year. Care to disagree, MM Lee?

In conclusion MM Lee, stay healthy. Stay at home. Stay away from the press (both foreign & local). Stay away from politics already. Singapore wishes you a happy retirement. Thank you!

EDITORS’ NOTE

The above is posted as a comment on our site by a reader

Super Size Cabinet

Image by FriskoDude via Flickr

The President appoints three more deputy ministers, making his cabinet the largest since the New Order era.

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DIRECTOR-General of Higher Education Fasli Jalal picked up the phone in his office, Thursday two weeks ago. On the other end of the line was Minister/State Secretary Sudi Silalahi, who asked Fasli to report to President Yudhoyono. “I was told to bring along my CV,” he said. Monday afternoon, last week, Fasli drove to the Presidential Palace after reporting to his superior, Muhammad Nuh. At the Palace, this alumni of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA, received word from the President that he was about to become Deputy Minister of Education.

Fahmi’s inauguration took place at the State Palace, Wednesday last week. Aside from Fahmi, President Yudhoyono also inaugurated the Deputy State National Development Planning Minister for the Funding Division Lukita Dinarsyah Tuwo, and Secretary-General of the Defense Department Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, each serving as deputy minister in their corresponding government bodies. The deputy ministers’ inauguration was held at the same time with the inauguration of Dipo Alam—Deputy of the Coordinating Minister for the Economy—as the Minister/Cabinet Secretary, a position which had previously been left vacant ever since Sudi Silalahi, moved to the State Secretariat.

Minister of Education Muhammad Nuh warmly welcomed Fasli, his new deputy. “He would surely help me in doing my work,” said the former Minister of Communication & Information. Fasli has been around in the Education Department for a while. He joined the department a decade ago, as a senior staff who served under Minister Yahya Muhaimin during Abdurrahman Wahid’s presidency, leading a number of directorates general. When drafting began for the United Indonesia Cabinet II, Fasli was one of the most favored candidates nominated to replace the predecessor, Bambang Sudibyo.

Like Nuh, Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro was delighted with Sjafrie’s appointment. “In my opinion, there has to be a deputy minister because we have lots of work and budget,” said this Minister of Energy & Mineral Resources from 2000-2009. According to him, Sjafrie will deal with matters related to the army and police, including foreign affairs whenever the minister is unavailable. Former Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono considers Sjafrie as the right man for the job due to his knowledge of military techniques.

Following the president’s announcement of his cabinet members last October, Nuh and Purnomo were among the ones who received the most attention because they were considered as not having enough experience to be placed in their positions. Politics observer Arbi Sanit thinks that Nuh’s experience—despite he once became a dean—is still insufficient. “He was chosen due to his closeness to SBY, he has no outstanding qualities,” said Arbi. While Jaleswari Pramowardhani, a military observer from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, thinks that Purnomo has a technocratic tendency and lacks military knowledge. “He did serve as deputy chair of the National Resilience Institute in 1998, but things are different now,” she said.

Deputy appointments for these two ministers raises suspicion that the president wants to provide some cover for his less capable cabinet members. However, the president has come up with his own answer. President Yudhoyono said the deputy minister appointment for some departments was based on the consideration of the heavy workload and the target of his current cabinet. According to SBY, he expects the Deputy Minister of Defense to help formulate policies and defense strategies, as well as modernize the defense system primary tools. As for the Deputy Minister of Education, SBY expects him to help with the education reforms.

Deputy minister appointment is the president’s privilege as mentioned in the State Department Law No. 39/2008. Its Article 10 says, “In case of heavy workloads which require special treatment, the president may appoint deputy ministers for corresponding deprtments.” Member of the House of Representatives (DPR) Agun Gunandjar Sudarsa said that the deputy minister appointments might actually help with the overgrown bureaucracy in several departments. “There are departments that have more than ten Echelon 1 officers,” said the Chairman of the State Department Law Special Committee.

Last week’s three deputy ministers appointment was the third wave of similar actions. Triyono Wibowo, appointed as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in September 11, 2008, was the first. Slightly different from the two following appointments, Triyono—then the Ambassador for the Republic of Austria and the Republic of Slovenia, and also acted as a UN Representative in Vienna—was appointed by Minister Hassan Wirajuda in the Department’s office at Pejambon, Central Jakarta.

In the second wave in November 11, 2009, more deputy ministers were appointed: Bayu Krisnamurti (Deputy Minister of Agriculture), Bambang Susantono (Deputy Minister of Transportation), Mahendra Siregar (Deputy Minister of Trade), Alex Retraubun (Deputy Minister of Industry), and Hermando Dardak (Deputy Minister of Public Works). That time, the President also appointed Gita Wirjawan as Chairman of the Investment Coordinating Board. It means the United Indonesia Cabinet II now has nine deputy ministers.

According to plan, the number should have grown to 11, had the President inaugurated Fahmi Idris as Deputy Minister of Health and Anggito Abimanyu as Deputy Minister of Finance. Appointments for the 2006-2009 Chairman of the Indonesian Medical Association and Chairman of Fiscal Policy Board of the Department of Finance were cancelled due to administrative reasons. According to the Minister/State Secretary Sudi Silalahi, the two candidates have not met the requirement of occupying an Echelon 1-A structural position. “If that has not been fulfilled, we cannot proceed. We do not want to break the rules,” he said. Sudi offered no explanation on when the two would be inaugurated either.

Even as it is only an administrative one, politics observer Eep Saefulloh Fatah said the mistake is serious and fatal. “The president is reckless when taking such important policies,” he said. A day before the intended appointments, presidential spokesperson Julian Aldrin Pasha revealed the appointment plans to reporters. Although he mentioned no specific name, Julian nodded when Tempo asked him whether Fahmi Idris and Anggito Abimanyu were amongst the list. According to Julian, the deputy minister candidates have signed their performance contracts and integrity pacts.

On the deputy minister appointments, Eep thinks of it as a proof of the president’s lack of commitment towards bureaucracy reforms. “This is the most overcrowded cabinet in the reform era. It even has more people than the entire New Order cabinets,” he said. This deputy minister appointment is a different matter compared to when Suharto appointed his junior ministers. Junior minister was a position formed in preparation of a new department. For example, Cosmas Batubara was appointed Junior Minister of Public Housing before he occupied the position as minister in the next period.

According to Eep, there are some positions which actually require deputy ministers, like the Department of Defense and the Department of Finance. The many deputy ministers today shows that there is no clear criteria as to which department requires one. He further added that if such notion continues, soon there would be no reason not to appoint deputy minister in every department. “This is a fatal political mistake, one which clearly shows the President’s terrible imagination. His creativity is questionable,” he said.

As Eep said, the president is facing multiple choices. Included in his array of choices are the options to select between a competent, but non-partisan individual, a partisan individual who is also competent, or whether to adopt accommodation politics. “But the President could not decide between the three options,” he said. It later resulted in an overcrowded cabinet.

Constitutional law expert Irman Putra Sidin said that an overcrowded cabinet goes against the spirit of decentralization. “An officer who finds little to do in Jakarta will be looking for work, like getting his hands on something which should have been the portion of the regional administration,” he said.

Adek Media, Gunanto, Cornila Desyana

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Why Is the Gulf Cleanup So Slow?

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By PAUL H. RUBIN

Destin, Fla.

As the oil spill continues and the cleanup lags, we must begin to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions. There does not seem to be much that anyone can do to stop the spill except dig a relief well, not due until August. But the cleanup is a different story. The press and Internet are full of straightforward suggestions for easy ways of improving the cleanup, but the federal government is resisting these remedies.

First, the Environmental Protection Agency can relax restrictions on the amount of oil in discharged water, currently limited to 15 parts per million. In normal times, this rule sensibly controls the amount of pollution that can be added to relatively clean ocean water. But this is not a normal time.

Various skimmers and tankers (some of them very large) are available that could eliminate most of the oil from seawater, discharging the mostly clean water while storing the oil onboard. While this would clean vast amounts of water efficiently, the EPA is unwilling to grant a temporary waiver of its regulations.

Next, the Obama administration can waive the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from operating in U.S. coastal waters. Many foreign countries (such as the Netherlands and Belgium) have ships and technologies that would greatly advance the cleanup. So far, the U.S. has refused to waive the restrictions of this law and allow these ships to participate in the effort.

The combination of these two regulations is delaying and may even prevent the world's largest skimmer, the Taiwanese owned "A Whale," from deploying. This 10-story high ship can remove almost as much oil in a day as has been removed in total—roughly 500,000 barrels of oily water per day. The tanker is steaming towards the Gulf, hoping it will receive Coast Guard and EPA approval before it arrives.

In addition, the federal government can free American-based skimmers. Of the 2,000 skimmers in the U.S. (not subject to the Jones Act or other restrictions), only 400 have been sent to the Gulf. Federal barriers have kept the others on stations elsewhere in case of other oil spills, despite the magnitude of the current crisis. The Coast Guard and the EPA issued a joint temporary rule suspending the regulation on June 29—more than 70 days after the spill.

The Obama administration can also permit more state and local initiatives. The media endlessly report stories of county and state officials applying federal permits to perform various actions, such as building sand berms around the Louisiana coast. In some cases, they were forbidden from acting. In others there have been extensive delays in obtaining permission.

As the government fails to implement such simple and straightforward remedies, one must ask why.

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One possibility is sheer incompetence. Many critics of the president are fond of pointing out that he had no administrative or executive experience before taking office. But the government is full of competent people, and the military and Coast Guard can accomplish an assigned mission. In any case, several remedies require nothing more than getting out of the way.

Another possibility is that the administration places a higher priority on interests other than the fate of the Gulf, such as placating organized labor, which vigorously defends the Jones Act.

Finally there is the most pessimistic explanation—that the oil spill may be viewed as an opportunity, the way White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said back in February 2009, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Many administration supporters are opposed to offshore oil drilling and are already employing the spill as a tool for achieving other goals. The websites of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, for example, all feature the oil spill as an argument for forbidding any further offshore drilling or for any use of fossil fuels at all. None mention the Jones Act.

To these organizations and perhaps to some in the administration, the oil spill may be a strategic justification in a larger battle. President Obama has already tried to severely limit drilling in the Gulf, using his Oval Office address on June 16 to demand that we "embrace a clean energy future." In the meantime, how about a cleaner Gulf?

Mr. Rubin, a professor of economics at Emory University, held several senior positions in the federal government in the 1980s. Since 1991 he has spent his summers on the Gulf.

WSJ, July 2, 2010

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2 Leaders Vie for Loyalty in the Caucasus - NYTimes.com

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By ELLEN BARRY

MAGAS, Russia — Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the president of the Russian republic of Ingushetia, was sitting in his gold-domed palace, a warren of cool, empty marble halls surrounded by rings of gunmen.

Bodyguards stood outside the door, and an aide delivered tea and honey. The place seemed sealed off from the muddy chaos of the Caucasus, to say nothing of the guerrilla war being staged in the wooded foothills to the southeast.

And yet he talked about Doku Umarov, who claimed responsibility for last month’s double bombing in Moscow’s subway, as if the rebel leader were standing in the room.

“His time will come,” said Mr. Yevkurov, 46, who is scarred from an assassination attempt last June that Mr. Umarov claimed to have organized.

“Whether it’s tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, whether he dies of natural causes in the woods or in a cave, whether he is blown up or shot up, or if he is caught and locked away in a death cell,” Mr. Yevkurov said. “If he is still alive and walking around, that does not simply mean he has managed to survive. The Almighty is giving him the chance to find the strength to acknowledge the evil he has brought to people.”

“But he is not using this chance,” he said. “Retribution will reach him sooner or later.”

Moscow suddenly focused on Mr. Umarov last month, after he announced that he had ordered the bombings that killed 40 people in the subway. Russian leaders scrambled to sever his links to the public by pressing Google to remove his video messages, and they circulated a bill in Parliament that would ban the media from quoting him.

But Mr. Yevkurov was addressing an old enemy. He and Mr. Umarov, 46, were born within months of each other, in closely related ethnic groups that share an archaic wariness toward Moscow. Both were in their 20s when the Soviet Union fell, forcing young men in the Caucasus to choose sides in a separatist war. There they diverged, and two decades later the loyal Russian soldier and the battered rebel are still fighting.

Now the prize is something more slippery than territory: the loyalty of a generation that grew up in the chaos of those wars.

“In the Caucasus, a leader’s personality really matters,” said Ramzan R. Ugurchiev, 29, the chairman of Ingushetia’s youth committee. “There is a saying: If the leader is a wolf, we will be a pack of wolves. If the leader is a jackal, we will be a pack of jackals.”

Mr. Ugurchiev, like any young man here, could reel off a list of acquaintances who had “gone to the forest,” or joined the rebels. He guessed that 15 percent of his classmates had done so, vanishing with so little warning that their parents could never accept that they left voluntarily.

In some cases, he said, a voice simply reached them at the right time. Rebel recruiters like Said Buryatsky, killed in a special forces operation last month, tapped into the sense of injustice seething beneath the surface here, where the official unemployment figure is around 50 percent and young men chafe at heavy-handed treatment by federal counterterrorism troops.

“The harder you press down, the more we will press up against you,” Mr. Ugurchiev said. “It’s the Caucasus. It was always this way.”

Mr. Yevkurov — one of 12 children born to a peasant family — seemed to address this resentment head-on. He refused a lavish inauguration, saying he preferred to greet the public at evening prayers, and combines the suit and tie of a Moscow-backed bureaucrat with a traditional skullcap. Though counterinsurgency operations continued, he won over much of the opposition with open-handed gestures like giving out his cellphone number and responding to complaints personally.

That was part of his strategy. A career military intelligence officer, he said he had long believed that counterterrorism was mainly a matter of soft power.

“The most severe punishment, that should make up 1 percent,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent should be persuasion, persuasion, persuasion.”

His project was interrupted by a roar of flames last June, when a suicide bomber swerved into his motorcade, killing two in his party and badly wounding his brother. Mr. Yevkurov was still in a coma when the rebel Web site Kavkaz Center published a letter saying the bombing was ordered by Mr. Umarov, a former separatist leader who has embraced global jihad as his new ideology.

The letter professed special hatred for Mr. Yevkurov because he fought for Moscow in the second Chechen war, calling him “the faithful dog of Russia.”

“From the moment Yevkurov came to power,” the letter read, “we wanted to kill him.”

The attack gave Mr. Yevkurov a reason to hate Mr. Umarov — but he had reasons already. The Ingush people share a religion and a language with Chechens but have traditionally been more loyal to the federal center; they bristle when Chechens try to take control of their territory, as Mr. Umarov has. He also attended school in Beslan, where in 2004 separatists took more than 1,000 children and teachers hostage.

Mr. Umarov, meanwhile, has good reason to fear Mr. Yevkurov and his experiment in persuasion, said Sergei M. Markedonov, a Caucasus expert at the Institute for Political and Military Analysis, in Moscow. To survive, the insurgents need the support of 15 or 20 percent of the public, combined with a mood of “passive neutrality,” he said. Mr. Yevkurov is bidding for this percentage — and, critically, for the allegiance of people in their teens and 20s.

“That is the main force, of course,” Mr. Markedonov said. “Whoever wins over the young generation will win.”

That competition goes on, invisibly, in the pauses between explosions. When a counterterrorism operation in February killed four civilians who were in the forest gathering wild garlic, Mr. Yevkurov expressed regret over the deaths. He said that 180 garlic pickers had been evacuated in a sincere attempt to avoid killing civilians and that 18 militants had been killed in the attack.

But he was not the only one who recognized a public-relations moment. Moscow was still reeling when Mr. Umarov announced that the bombings there were revenge for the garlic pickers, “mercilessly destroyed, killed by those bandit groups under the name of the F.S.B.,” Russia’s security service.

Mr. Yevkurov responded with disdain, saying Mr. Umarov “portrays himself as a kind of Robin Hood, who defends people.”

“An opponent is an opponent,” he said.

“Had he been some enemy who came from outside I might have valued him, respected him,” he continued. “But this is an enemy who kills his own people and covers it up with ideas. I have no respect for him, despite all his abilities to hide.”

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Deal Making in Sudan | Enough

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Deal Making in Sudan | Enough

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CQ - Behind the Lines, Wednesday, March 17, 2010

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By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

Three dead in Juarez: "The most imminent and certainly dangerous war threatening Americans today finally made its way home" . . . Department of reasonable questions: Could parachute-wearing bears sniff out Osama bin Laden? Just ask the Pentagon . . . OK, everyone strip: O'Hare TSA chief predicts all boarding airline passengers will eventually be required to undergo a full-body scan. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage.

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“The most imminent and certainly dangerous war threatening Americans today finally made its way home,” Conchita Sarnoff writes in The Huffington Post, characterizing the gunning down of U.S. consulate officials in Juarez last weekend. The escalating drug cartel conflict sparks fear amongst Americans living in the Rio Grande Valley who have relatives just across the border or worry about spillover violence, The Brownsville Herald’s Ildefonso Ortiz surveys — while The Texas Tribune’s Brandi Grissom has Gov. Rick Perry activating a secret spillover contingency plan and seeking federal reinforcements, which request was brushed off by DHS’s Janet Napolitano, The Dallas Morning News’ Todd J. Gillman adds.

Homies: Napolitano also announced yesterday that DHS will halt new work on the so-called virtual border fence, diverting $50 million in planned economic stimulus funds for the project to other purposes, The Washington Post’s Spencer Hsu reports. President Obama’s vow to double U.S. exports over the next five years would create more work for ICE, the enforcer on intellectual property theft and sensitive technology controls, top cop John Morton, reminds Homeland Security Today’s Mickey McCarter. “The quality of Obama’s nominees to head the TSA has been so poor that even a normally compliant Senate is refusing to roll over and accept his picks,” James Corum chides in The Daily Telegraph.

Feds: A House homeland hearing slated for today relies upon “witnesses sympathetic to Islamist extremist organizations here in America,” IPT News complains. Following a federal air marshal case, Congress is moving to give whistle-blowers better safeguards against retaliation, USA Today’s Peter Eisler reports. Obama probably will veto legislation authorizing the next intel budget if it mandates a new probe of the 2001 anthrax attacks, Bloomberg’s Jeff Bliss relates — while the Post’s David Ignatius sees the outsourcing of counterterror ops highlighting “some big problems that have developed in the murky area between military and intelligence activities.” New internal e-mail messages suggest his superiors had reason to suspend the Fort Hood shooter’s training, and perhaps re-evaluate his suitability as a military physician, but failed to do so, The Washington Times’ Rowan Scarborough recounts.

State and local: “The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency misspent nearly $18 million in Hurricane Katrina reconstruction grants, federal auditors say, and they want the money back with interest,” The Jackson Clarion-Ledger leads. Local South Carolina officials dislike an amendment to a state bill allowing public access to EMS records that would withhold first responders’ names, The Columbia State recounts. The Pentagon “established the U.S. Cyber Command in 2009 based on the theory that the next war will be waged on the information superhighway [and] the bulk of that defense will be based in western Anne Arundel County,” The Annapolis (Md.) Capital crows. The Edwardsville Fire Department’s chief will step down next month to become Illinois’ first“Fire Service Intelligence Officer” on the State Terrorism Task Force, St. Louis’ KMOX Radio notes.

Follow the money: A Danish court has convicted a left-wing group’s spokesman of violating terror laws by raising funds for Marxist rebels in Colombia and Palestinian militants, The Copenhagen Post reports. Saudi Arabia has warned citizens to be wary of Web and cell phone scams involving bogus charities possibly aimed at funding terrorism, Agence France-Presse relates. In Afghanistan, “Islamic terrorists have partnered with tribe-based drug gangs to produce most of the world’s heroin. This sort of thing is nothing new,” The Strategy Page surveys. “Terrorism and militancy are being deliberately fanned to destabilize the Indian economy,” which is at the threshold of a double digit growth, Indian Express hears the home minister maintaining. An Islamist-linked Somali bizman who may have pocketed ransom bucks intended for kidnapped French aid workers was a contractor for U.N. agencies, Reuters reports.

Bugs ‘n bombs: A Florida theater student was arrested earlier this month after discovery in his car of fake dynamite, a prop project for school, prompted the evacuation of a multiplex theater, The Ocala Star-Banner reports. Taliban commanders have claimed that homemade bombs in Afghanistan are now being salted with anthrax, though there is as yet no evidence of this, Britain’s Sunday Express says. “Before we start building reactors we need to address another urgent matter. We need to make current reactors secure,” Charles S. Faddis advises in a CNN op-ed. “The slow, dull work of keeping nuclear warheads and weapons-grade uranium and plutonium protected from terrorists goes on almost unnoticed,” The Washington Post leads.

Coming and going: The Association of American Railroads has named TSA’s acting general manager of mass transit as its assistant VP for security, Progressive Railroading reports. “A visit to the driver’s license office has always been a little slice of hell. Now it’s gotten even worse,” The South Florida Sun Sentinel summarizes in re: new Real ID-friendly licensing rules. With the population of foreign citizens in Texas prisons at an all-time high and a state budget crisis looming, the idea of deporting some of them is getting another look, The Austin American-Statesman spotlights. The number and scope of pirate attacks is increasing worldwide and could trigger more joint military operations to keep shipping lanes safe, Reuters quotes a top NATO official.

Close air support: The debut of full-body scanners at O’Hare International on Monday was marked by two American Muslim groups asserting that they violate Islamic law, The Christian Science Monitor spotlights — while The Chicago Tribune has that airport’s TSA chief predicting that all boarding airline passengers will eventually be required to get virtually naked. “General aviation poses no more of a threat than any other vehicle such as a car or truck and indeed, perhaps is less of a threat,” an op-ed in The Officer soothes. The future of airport customs security could be a German company’s e-passport equipped with an AMOLED display, CNET News notes — while the Tribune, again, reports United Airlines shifting to paperless boarding passes.

Terror tech: “Could parachute-wearing bears sniff out Osama bin Laden? That’s one suggestion the Pentagon has received,” Stars and Stripes notes in a feature on tactical advice volunteered by concerned citizens. “The Internet grew 20 percent uglier last year, with terrorists and racists increasingly turning to social media sites . . . and targeting children,” FOX News relays from the “2010 Digital Hate Report.” In recent Senate testimony, an anthropologist urged the feds “to engage social scientists more directly in open, peer-reviewed studies of terrorism, rather than relying on clandestine intelligence and anti-terrorism technology,” Science Insider informs. Spotting a terrorist by reading his mind sounds like science fiction, but a University of Dayton researcher tells the Daily News technology exists for detecting brain wave patterns indicating an intent to do harm.

Gadgetronica: An Israeli start-up has developed a “potentially game-changing” surveillance camera that can both monitor a panoramic field and zoom in on details, Israel 21c spotlights. Spearheaded by DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate, an app called Cell-All aims to equip your cell phone with a sensor capable of detecting deadly chemicals at minimal cost, National Terror Alert spotlights — while The Somerville (N.J.) Courier-News profiles an iPhone app that would allow users to alert the authorities when they see potentially terroristic suspicious activity. Crowd-image analysis advances by the University of Reading’s Computational Vision Group, highlighting unusual behavior in crowds, would be ideal for securing events like the 2012 Olympic Games, Info4Security informs.

Courts and rights: A key figure in the ongoing U.S. investigation connected with the November 2008 Mumbai terror assault plans to plead guilty in Chicago this week, The Southtown Star says. An organized theft case allegedly linked to terrorism in the Middle East devolved into a racketeering case with the word “terrorism”seldom heard during sentencing, St. Louis’ KMOX Radio, again, reports. In what would be bad news for the struggling towns surrounding Illinois’ Thomson prison, possible host of a mainland terror detention center, studies suggest “prisons have done little to change the economic realities of rural communities,” The Christian Science Monitor mentions. Two of seven suspects arrested in connection with an alleged Swedish cartoonist plot have been charged in Ireland, BBC News notes.

Over there: The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan successfully lobbied for a ban on ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a common ingredient for homemade explosives, though it could be smuggled in easily enough, Danger Room discusses. Last summer, the Taliban’s Mullah Omar issued a new ethics code for Taliban fighters, but those moral guidelines are being ignored by some fighters, another CSM item recounts. A South Africa-Israel standoff continues over Johannesburg’s concern that El Al’s security operations were run by Shin Bet spooks, The Cape Argus updates. Pakistan’s annual National Games, scheduled in Peshawar this month, have been postponed because of security concerns, The Dawn hears the country’s National Olympic Committee ruling.

Spring forward and die: Citing a ‘mistake of Biblical proportions,’ the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is reporting that the famous Doomsday Clock, which measures how close humanity is to annihilation, was accidentally moved one hour forward this past weekend during the Daylight Savings Time change,” CAP News notes. “As a result, it is now 12:54am and it looks like we’re goners. ‘It appears the janitor at our doomsday offices changed the time on the microwave and the clock hanging in the lobby like he was supposed to, but he should have known not to touch the clock above the mantel, I mean, there’s a sign right below it that says Doomsday Clock — Don’t Touch’ said BAS spokesperson Dr. Philip Schnell. ‘I know it’s not good, but you’ll be happy to know that we did discipline him,’ added Schnell. ‘We docked his pay an hour and sent him home early.’ ” See also, at Glossy News: “Doomsday Clock Sold on eBay to Anonymous Bidder.”

Source: CQ Homeland Security

Obama outlines strategy to boost US exports -- and jobs

Obama is ordering the creation of an ‘export promotion cabinet’ – one of several things he described in a speech Thursday in an effort to double US exports. The goal is to create 2 million jobs within the next five years.

President Barack Obama speaks at the Export-Import Bank's Annual Conference in Washington, Thursday. He ordered the creation of a high-level team to promote US exports, with the goal of creating 2 million jobs.
(Charles Dharapak/AP)

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By Mark Trumbull Staff writer
posted March 11, 2010 at 3:17 pm EST

President Obama moved Thursday to create a high-level team to promote US exports, with the goal of creating 2 million jobs within the next five years.

The project will span from efforts to reduce hurdles for companies in shipping goods overseas, to adjusting trade policy with a blend of carrots (a push for new free-trade agreements) and sticks (tougher enforcement of trade rules). The near-term goal is to double US exports within five years.

"For the first time, the United States of America is launching a single, comprehensive strategy to promote American exports," Mr. Obama told the annual conference of the Export-Import Bank, an institution in Washington designed to promote US trade.

Getting that many more jobs from exports won't be easy, but new efforts on trade are very much needed, economists say. The most obvious reason is that America needs more jobs, at a time when consumer demand at home remains tepid. A second reason is that the world economy continues to become more competitive, which means that the US can't rest on its laurels as the world’s leading exporter of goods and services.

"Ninety-five percent of the world’s customers and the world’s fastest-growing markets are outside our borders. We need to compete for those customers. Because other nations are," Obama said. "We need to up our game."

Obama outlined a multipart "national export initiative":

• He signed an executive order "instructing the federal government to use every available federal resource" to boost exports. The order created an "export promotion cabinet," made up of the secretaries of State, Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor, plus the US trade representative and other officials.

• He revived a separate body, called the President’s Export Council, and named Boeing CEO Jim McNerney and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns as co-chairs. The panel will make recommendations on trade policy.

• Multiple cabinet departments will help create a "one-stop shop" for small employers that want help identifying opportunities and setting up operations overseas. The effort would include embassies and consulates abroad, as well as agencies like the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce.

• Obama pledged to promote new free-trade agreements while also enforcing laws on the books, such as intellectual-property rights. "China moving to a more market-oriented exchange rate would make an essential contribution" to a more-balanced global economy, he said. That move could also help narrow the large gap by which US imports exceed exports.

• The administration will increase access to trade financing. Obama commended efforts by the Export-Import Bank over the past year to step up its activities when US credit markets were impaired.

In addition, Obama pledged to be a kind of salesman in chief for US companies, with him and his cabinet members plugging the virtues of "made in America" when they travel overseas. Next week, the president will take his export evangelism to Indonesia and Australia.

The announcement about export strategy came as a government report showed a narrower-than-expected trade deficit for the US in January. Imports exceeded exports by $37.3 billion, with the volume of oil and automobile imports falling for the month.

Obama first announced the goal of doubling exports within five years during his State of the Union address to Congress in January.

Some economists, running the numbers, have said it's a difficult objective to reach.

"During the last 25 years nominal exports never grew this quickly in five years; it took an average of 11 years for exports to double," economist Sven Jari Stehn wrote in an analysis for Goldman Sachs.

Hitting the goal, he estimated, would require a combination of strong global economic growth and an adjustment of the dollar's value relative to currencies such as China's yuan.

"If global real GDP grew by an above-consensus 4.5 percent during the next five years, the dollar would still need to depreciate by about 30 percent, slightly more than the largest 5-year real depreciation on record during the last 25 years," Mr. Stehn concluded.

This doesn't mean that Obama's target is unreachable, however. And efforts to boost exports and achieve a more-balanced global economy could bring benefits even if his goal isn't reached.

Opponents File Challenges as Maliki Is Said to Hold Early Edge in Iraq Vote

Image by hbushra via Flickr

By ANTHONY SHADID and TIM ARANGO

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s major coalitions were locked in a surprisingly close race Thursday, in initial results from elections that deepened divisions across a fractured landscape. Candidates were quick to charge fraud, heightening concerns whether Iraq’s fledgling institutions are strong enough to support a peaceful transfer of power.

The day was the most tumultuous since Sunday’s vote for Parliament, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s office saying he underwent surgery, officials with his chief rival complaining their ballots were dumped in the garbage, and a leading Shiite coalition claiming they had challenged the popular mandate Mr. Maliki needed to return to power.

The turmoil deepened both anticipation and uncertainty over an election to choose a government that will rule Iraq as the United States begins its military withdrawal in earnest next month.

“It is a very close race,” said a Western official, who viewed the early results but spoke on condition of anonymity since Iraqi officials were designated to release them. “Whatever the end results, we know it will be a fierce struggle to form a government.”

The initial returns, according to officials who have seen tallies from across the country, suggested a very tight race between Mr. Maliki’s coalition; Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite and the leader of the Iraqiya coalition; and a Shiite coalition known as the Iraqi National Alliance. The Kurds, though divided, appeared poised to finish strongly as well, they said, leaving Iraq’s political map far more ambiguous than just weeks ago.

Although officials said Mr. Maliki appeared to have a plurality in returns so far, his rivals in the Shiite coalition and Mr. Allawi’s alliance trumpeted their gains — Mr. Allawi in Sunni regions and the Shiite coalition in rural southern provinces. And the early indications suggested Mr. Maliki fell short of the mandate he might have needed to guide negotiations over a coalition government that he could lead. At the very least, the showing could weaken his caretaker government during the months of negotiations that will follow the final results, which electoral officials expect by the end of March.

Mr. Maliki has not appeared in public since the election. He entered the hospital on Wednesday for a two-hour surgery to remove a cyst in his stomach, officials said. The government confirmed the operation on Thursday, saying he had returned to work.

After the last parliamentary election in December 2005, political leaders clashed for more than five months in an effort to form a new government, a period of indecision and confusion that allowed insurgents to gain strength and religious tension to worsen. Tens of thousands were killed in the sectarian fighting that followed, and many have worried that while Iraq is more peaceful, any transition will prove fraught with danger.

“We may witness long months of problems and bargaining,” said Hazim al-Nuaimi, a political analyst. “This is the bad face of liberalism.”

Nearly everyone had expected jockeying after Sunday’s vote, Iraq’s second parliamentary election, but the frenetic feel to the deliberations was striking. Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, an ally of Mr. Allawi, held meetings with rivals, with or without Mr. Allawi’s blessing. Shiite politicians said the followers of a radical cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, had performed surprisingly well, giving them a greater voice. Already, party leaders were suggesting alternatives to Mr. Maliki if his alliance entered a coalition.

In past days, Iraqi newspapers have speculated about every possible combination, and the muddled atmosphere has exacerbated divisions that have plagued Iraq since the American-led invasion. Some Sunni politicians have insisted a Sunni Arab succeed President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. Kurdish officials themselves have worried that the entry of a dissident movement into national politics might weaken their hand in negotiations.

“Any government, to be successful, should consider the Kurds and include them in a coalition,” said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker. “That would be the logical thing, I think.” But he added, “We look to be weaker in this parliament, this time.”

Coalitions themselves already seemed to be fraying, with several politicians claiming that talks had begun this week to persuade candidates to leave their alliances.

“Many small blocs and figures will split,” said Safaauddin al-Safi, a minister and candidate with Mr. Maliki in Basra. “We are in dialogue with several of them.”

The United Nations had hoped preliminary results would be released Thursday morning, but by nightfall, only partial results from five of Iraq’s 19 provinces were made public. Electoral officials blamed the sheer logistics of the process, saying computers used to compile data were overloaded Wednesday and crashed for several hours. By early next week, electoral officials said they hoped to have 80 percent of the returns tallied.

A Western official said they had no reports of significant fraud, though some reports were being investigated. In fact, the official said, there were fewer complaints than in the provincial elections in January 2009, despite the far larger number of votes.

Since the day of the vote, several parties have complained of tampering in the count, with the Shiite coalition going as far as saying it might question the legitimacy of preliminary returns if its demands for more transparency weren’t met. But the charges by Mr. Allawi’s officials were the most extensive and almost sure to aggravate suspicions by Sunni Arabs, who have long accused religious Shiite parties of monopolizing power.

At a news conference, his representatives came armed with visual aids, including pictures and ballots, some of which they said were abandoned in a schoolyard in Kirkuk.

“Votes for the Iraqiya list are in the garbage,” said Adnan al-Janabi, a candidate from Baghdad with Mr. Allawi’s coalition. He said he did not know the extent of the alleged fraud. “One or one million, we don’t know,” he added.

In addition to claiming to have found abandoned ballots in the garbage, and boxes in some homes, the representatives also struck at the heart of Iraq’s election process, claiming that workers at the election commission, who have been entering data in to the computer systems, were caught fiddling with the tally for Mr. Allawi’s coalition.

The questions over the vote’s legitimacy, along with the uncertainty over the negotiations for a new government, have given rise to unease that violence could grow, as politicians seek leverage or as insurgents try to exploit the transition of power.

In Anbar Province, once the cradle of the insurgency, a candidate, Sheik Aiffan Saadoun al-Aiffan, said three of his men were killed by insurgents posing as policemen on Wednesday. One of them, Mr. Aiffan said, was beheaded.

“The violence is going to escalate against us,” he said. “But we’ll face them.”

Marc Santora, Riyadh Mohammed, and Zaid Thaker contributed reporting.

Op-Ed Columnist - The Up-or-Down Vote on Obama’s Presidency

Image by danny.hammontree via Flickr

By FRANK RICH

WEDNESDAY’S health care rally was one of President Obama’s finest hours. It was so fine it couldn’t be blighted even by his preposterous backdrop, a cohort of white-jacketed medical workers large enough to staff a hospital in one of the daytime soaps that refused to be pre-empted by the White House show.

Obama’s urgent script didn’t need such cheesy theatrics. At last he took ownership of what he called “my proposal,” stating concisely three concrete ways the bill would improve America’s broken health care system. At last he pushed for a majority-rule, up-or-down vote in Congress. At last he conceded that bipartisan agreement between two parties with “honest and substantial differences” on fundamental principles wasn’t happening. At last he mobilized his rhetoric against a villain everyone could hiss — insurance companies. In a brief address, he mentioned these malefactors of great greed 13 times.

There was only one problem. This finest hour arrived hastily and tardily. At 1:45 p.m. Eastern time, who was watching? Of those who did watch or caught up later, how many bought the president’s vow to finish the job “in the next few weeks”? We’ve heard this too many times before. Last May Obama said he would have a bill by late July. In July he said he wanted it “done by the fall.” The White House’s new date for final House action — specified as March 18 by Robert Gibbs, the press secretary — is already in jeopardy.

“They are waiting for us to act,” Obama said on Wednesday of the American people. “They are waiting for us to lead.” Actually, they have given up waiting. Some 80 percent of the country believes that “nothing can be accomplished” in Washington, according to an Ipsos/McClatchy poll conducted a week ago. The percentage is just as high among Democrats, many of whom admire the president but have a sinking sense of disillusionment about his ability to exercise power.

Image via Wikipedia

Now that we have finally arrived at the do-or-die moment for Obama’s signature issue, we face the alarming prospect that his presidency could be toast if he doesn’t make good on a year’s worth of false starts. And it won’t even be the opposition’s fault. If too many Democrats in the House defect, health care will be dead. The G.O.P. would be able to argue this fall, not without reason, that the party holding the White House and both houses of Congress cannot govern.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Obama does eke out his victory. Republicans claim that if he does so by “ramming through” the bill with the Congressional reconciliation process, they will have another winning issue for November. On this, they are wrong. Their problem is not just their own hypocritical record on reconciliation, which they embraced gladly to ram through the budget-busting Bush tax cuts. They’d also have to contend with this country’s congenitally short attention span. Once the health care fight is over and out of sight, it will be out of mind to most Americans. We’ve already forgotten about Afghanistan — until the next bloodbath.

The 2010 election will instead be fought about the economy, as most elections are, especially in a recession whose fallout remains severe. But that battle may be even tougher for this president and his party — and not just because of the unemployment numbers. The leadership shortfall we’ve witnessed during Obama’s yearlong health care march — typified by the missed deadlines, the foggy identification of his priorities, the sometimes abrupt shifts in political tone and strategy — won’t go away once the bill does. This weakness will remain unless and until the president himself corrects it.

Those who are unsympathetic or outright hostile to Obama frame his failures as an attempt to impose “socialism” on a conservative nation. The truth is that the Fox News right would believe this about any Democratic president no matter who he was and what his policies were. Obama, who has expanded the war in Afghanistan and proved reluctant to reverse extra-constitutional Bush-Cheney jurisprudence, is a radical mainly to those who believe a conservative Republican senator like Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas is a closet commie.

The more serious debate about Obama is being conducted by neutral or sympathetic observers. There are many hypotheses. In Newsweek, Jon Meacham has written about an “inspiration gap.” He sees the professorial president as “sometimes seeming to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country.” In The New Yorker, Ken Auletta has raised the perils of Obama’s overexposure in our fractionalized media. (As if to prove the point, the president was scheduled to appear on Fox’s “America’s Most Wanted” to celebrate its 1,000th episode this weekend.) In the Beltway, the hottest conversations center on the competence of Obama’s team. Washington Post columnists are now dueling over whether Rahm Emanuel is an underutilized genius whose political savvy the president has foolishly ignored — or a bull in the capital china shop who should be replaced before he brings Obama down.

But the buck stops with the president, not his chief of staff. And if there’s one note that runs through many of the theories as to why Obama has disappointed in Year One, it cuts to the heart of what had been his major strength: his ability to communicate a compelling narrative. In the campaign, that narrative, of change and hope, was powerful — both about his own youth, biography and talent, and about a country that had gone wildly off track during the failed presidency of his predecessor. In governing, Obama has yet to find a theme that is remotely as arresting to the majority of Americans who still like him and are desperate for him to succeed.

The problem is not necessarily that Obama is trying to do too much, but that there is no consistent, clear message to unite all that he is trying to do. He has variously argued that health care reform is a moral imperative to protect the uninsured, a long-term fiscal fix for the American economy and an attempt to curb insurers’ abuses. It may be all of these, but between the multitude of motives and the blurriness (until now) of Obama’s own specific must-have provisions, the bill became a mash-up that baffled or defeated those Americans on his side and was easily caricatured as a big-government catastrophe by his adversaries.

Obama prides himself on not being ideological or partisan — of following, as he put it in his first prime-time presidential press conference, a “pragmatic agenda.” But pragmatism is about process, not principle. Pragmatism is hardly a rallying cry for a nation in this much distress, and it’s not a credible or attainable goal in a Washington as dysfunctional as the one Americans watch in real time on cable. Yes, the Bush administration was incompetent, but we need more than a brilliant mediator, manager or technocrat to move us beyond the wreckage it left behind. To galvanize the nation, Obama needs to articulate a substantive belief system that’s built from his bedrock convictions. His presidency cannot be about the cool equanimity and intellectual command of his management style.

That he hasn’t done so can be attributed to his ingrained distrust of appearing partisan or, worse, a knee-jerk “liberal.” That is admirable in intellectual theory, but without a powerful vision to knit together his vision of America’s future, he comes off as a doctrinaire Democrat anyway. His domestic policies, whether on climate change or health care or regulatory reform, are reduced to items on a standard liberal wish list. If F.D.R. or Reagan could distill, coin and convey a credo “nonideological” enough to serve as an umbrella for all their goals and to attract lasting majority coalitions of disparate American constituencies, so can this gifted president.

He cannot wait much longer. The rise in credit-card rates, as well as the drop in consumer confidence, home sales and bank lending, all foretell more suffering ahead for those who don’t work on Wall Street. But on these issues the president, too timid to confront the financial industry backers of his own campaign (or their tribunes in his own administration) and too fearful of sounding like a vulgar partisan populist, has taken to repeating his health care performance.

And so leadership on financial reform, as with health care, has been delegated to bipartisan Congressional negotiators poised to neuter it. The protracted debate that now seems imminent — over whether a consumer protection agency will be in the Fed or outside it — is again about the arcana of process and bureaucratic machinery, not substance. Since Obama offers no overarching narrative of what financial reform might really mean to Americans in their daily lives, Americans understandably assume the reforms will be too compromised or marginal to alter a system that leaves their incomes stagnant (at best) while bailed-out bankers return to partying like it’s 2007. Even an unimpeachable capitalist titan like Warren Buffett, venting in his annual letter to investors last month, sounds more fired up about unregulated derivatives and more outraged about unpunished finance-industry executives than the president does.

This time Obama doesn’t have a year to arrive at his finest hour. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the clock runs out on Nov. 2.

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