“If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best-quality healthcare — if they tell us that they're offering a good deal — then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business?” Obama asked. “That's not logical.”

via LA Times

I do know with certainty that we can defeat al Qaeda.  Because the terrorists can only succeed if they swell their ranks and alienate America from our allies, and they will never be able to do that if we stay true to who we are, if we forge tough and durable approaches to fighting terrorism that are anchored in our timeless ideals.  This must be our common purpose.

via White House transcript 5-21-09

The Dalai Lama has launched a fierce attack on Chinese rule in his Tibetan homeland, describing its people's lives as “hell on Earth”.

Five decades of Chinese rule had caused “untold suffering”, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader said, accusing Beijing of creating a climate of fear.

He also repeated his demand for Tibet's “legitimate and meaningful autonomy”.

His words came on the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese troops which led to his exile. Via BBC

President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.

The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.

(…) Moscow has not responded, but a Russian official said Monday that Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov would have something to say on missile defense to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton when they meet Friday in Geneva. Via NY Times

While it has been known for some time that the CIA had destroyed tapes of interrogations with terrorism suspects, Monday's news that 92 videotapes had been destroyed by the agency was still shocking. Via Raw Story

Oasis debut concerts in China have been cancelled after the authorities revoked the bands licences to play, deeming them “unsuitable”.

Shows in Beijing and Shanghai due to take place next month have been pulled, and fans are to be reimbursed.

Concert promoters said the Chinese culture ministry recently found out that Noel Gallagher played at a Free Tibet benefit in the US in 1997. Via BBC

Renegade soldiers have shot dead the president of the West African country of Guinea-Bissau, officials say.

The killing of Joao Bernardo Vieira is thought to have been a revenge attack, after the army chief of staff died in an explosion a few hours earlier.

The army denies there is a coup, and the capital Bissau is said to be quiet. Via BBC

Bloomberg put this excellent, and quite extencive story together that deals with the problems and possible solutions (if there are any) to such water shortages.

In most cases the shortages lead to tensions as water rights have been allocated a long time ago. In the US it is only now that such rights are contested (Atlanta is suing the surrounding areas for water) by various interested parties, but internationally such disputes will (or already have) also lead to international tensions.

Foreign Policy 101: resources, such as water, are called “global commons” as more than one country, party, or even just individuals, have “rights” to it. In most cases controlling access can be hard, if not impossible.

Read the article here.

Debswana, a joint venture between De Beers, the company founded by Cecil Rhodes, and the government of Botswana, produces a fifth of all the world's diamonds – around half of de Beers' global output – from four open-cast mines in the arid country.

Work will be suspended for the rest of the year at two of them, Damtshaa and Orapa No 2, while Orapa No 1 and Jwaneng, the planet's single most valuable diamond mine, will stop activities until at least mid-April.

(…) The shutdowns will be a crushing blow to the economy of Botswana, which has used its diamond wealth as the bedrock of one of sub-Saharan Africa's most successful and stable countries. Diamonds account for 70 per cent of its exports and 30 per cent of government revenues.

Gem diamond sales over Christmas in America, the world's biggest market for the rocks, were down around 25 per cent on last year.

“There won't be any carats produced by Debswana,” said Lynette Gould, a spokeswoman for De Beers. The last time the firm completely shut down production at any of its mines was in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, she added.

Analysts said the move was “a major chunk of worldwide production”, but would bring demand and supply more into line. Via Telegraph

George W Bush has paid a jokey visit to a hardware store in Dallas, Texas, which offered him a job as a greeter.

The former US president entered the Elliott's outlet with his security detail saying “I'm looking for a job”, store manager Andrea Bond said.

The owner of the Texas chain made the offer earlier this month in a letter published in a Dallas newspaper.

But despite not yet having a publisher for his memoirs, Mr Bush decided on reflection to turn the job down.

Equipped with a name tag reading “W”, Mr Bush spent an hour there with his secret service security detail, chatting to customers and doing a little shopping. Via BBC

Naturally the rest of America isn’t laughing. It was, after all, Bush’s lack of leadership that allowed the mess we are in now.

Ironically the rest of the Bush Administration is largely finding that out for themselves now:

The jobless rate is hanging high — for many of the roughly 3,000 political appointees who served President George W. Bush. Finding work has proved a far tougher task than those appointees expected.

“This is not a great time for anyone to be job hunting, including numerous former political appointees,” said Carlos M. Gutierrez, Mr. Bush's commerce secretary. Previously chief executive of cereal maker Kellogg Co., he hopes to run a company again because “I have a lot of energy.”

Only 25% to 30% of ex-Bush officials seeking full-time jobs have succeeded, estimated Eric Vautour, a Washington recruiter at Russell Reynolds Associates Inc. That “is much, much worse” than when Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton left the White House, he said. At least half those presidents' senior staffers landed employment within a month after the administration ended, Mr. Vautour recalled. Via Wall Street Journal

The BBC has some nice quotes here, taken from a BBC Today interview with Ridge.

It would be nice if the BBC could post such interviews completely, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the right-of-centre Likud party, has been asked to form Israel's next government.

Mr Netanyahu said Israel faced “great challenges” including the global economic crisis and what he said was Iran's wish to obtain nuclear weapons.

He said he would try to form a unity government with his political rivals.

But Tzipi Livni, leader of the centrist Kadima, has suggested she would rather be in opposition than join a government led by Mr Netanyahu.

via BBC

(…) I never imagined in my worst dreams that I would live to see the day when the United States would abrogate the rule of law and habeas corpus as has happened in the case of those described as “enemy combatants” incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay. Or that I would hear an American government and its apologists use exactly the same justification for detention without trial, as had been used by the apartheid government of South Africa - a practice that the United States at the time condemned roundly, as was so utterly right to have done.

So, it was a devastating case of deja vu for some of us, thoroughly disillusioning.

The Bush administration managed to rile people everywhere. Its bully-boy attitude sadly polarised our world.

Against all that, the election of Barack Obama has turned America’s image on its head.

On US election night last November, I wanted to jump and dance and shout, as I did after voting for the first time in my native South Africa on 27 April 1994.

(…) In the midst of this celebration, however, a word of caution is appropriate. In the first days after 9/11, the United States had the world's sympathy, an unprecedented wave of it. President Bush squandered it.

Obama too could easily squander the goodwill that his election generated if he disappoints.

It would be wonderful if, on behalf of the nation, Obama apologises to the world, and especially the Iraqis, for an invasion that I believe has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.

The complete column can be found here.

The US was secretly flying unmanned drones from the Shamsi airbase in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan as early as 2006, according to an image of the base from Google Earth.

The image — that is no longer on the site but which was obtained by The News, Pakistan's English language daily newspaper — shows what appear to be three Predator drones outside a hangar at the end of the runway. The Times also obtained a copy of the image, whose co-ordinates confirm that it is the Shamsi airfield, also known as Bandari, about 200 miles southwest of the Pakistani city of Quetta.

An investigation by The Times yesterday revealed that the CIA was secretly using Shamsi to launch the Predator drones that observe and attack al-Qaeda and Taleban militants around Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. Via Times Online

Ecuador has expelled a second American diplomat in just over a week, accusing both officials of interfering in its internal affairs. Via BBC

Pakistan's leaders have publicly denounced U.S. missile strikes as an attack on the country's sovereignty, but privately Pakistani military and intelligence officers are aiding these attacks and have given significant support to recent U.S. missions, say officials from both countries.

American unmanned Predator aircraft have killed scores of Islamic militants in Pakistan in more than 30 missile strikes since August, provoking outrage in the South Asian nation. Two in the past four days have killed more than 50 suspected militants. Yet, with the Taliban pushing deeper into the country, Pakistan's civilian and military leaders, while publicly condemning the attacks, have come to see the strikes as effective and are passing on intelligence that has helped recent missions, say officials from both countries.

As a result, “the Predator strikes are more and more precise,” said a Pakistani official.

Eleven of al Qaeda's top 20 commanders have been killed or captured since August because of the Predator missions conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to the Pakistani official, and current and former U.S. intelligence officials. Via Wall Street Journal

Kathy Lovelace lost her job and was about to lose her house, too. But then she made a seemingly simple request of the bank: Show me the original mortgage paperwork.

And just like that, the foreclosure proceedings came to a standstill.

Lovelace and other homeowners around the country are managing to stave off foreclosure by employing a strategy that goes to the heart of the whole nationwide mess.

During the real estate frenzy of the past decade, mortgages were sold and resold, bundled into securities and peddled to investors. In many cases, the original note signed by the homeowner was lost, stored away in a distant warehouse or destroyed.

Persuading a judge to compel production of hard-to-find or nonexistent documents can, at the very least, delay foreclosure, buying the homeowner some time and turning up the pressure on the lender to renegotiate the mortgage. Via AP

Anti-terror measures worldwide have seriously undermined international human rights law, a report by legal experts says. Via BBC

But don’t just listen to an international group of legal experts, listen to the former head of the British Security Service MI5:

Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, has accused the Government of exploiting public fear of terrorism to restrict civil liberties.

Her comments came on the same day as a report published by international jurists suggested that Britain and America have led other countries in “actively undermining” the rule of law and “threatening civil liberties” in the guise of fighting terrorism.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, Dame Stella said that a series of increasingly draconian policies have led British citizens to “live in fear and under a police state”.

The 73-year-old said: “Since I have retired I feel more at liberty to be against certain decisions of the Government, especially the attempt to pass laws which interfere with people's privacy.

“It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state.”

Dame Stella, who became the first female head of MI5 in 1992 and held the position until 1996, has long been a vocal critic of the Government's plans to introduce ID cards and lengthen the amount of time terror suspects are held without charge to 42 days. In the interview yesterday, she also criticised the United States. Via The Independent

If you still question what Dame Stella is talking about, consider the law that came into effect earlier this week that could land you into prison for 10 years if you take photos at demonstrations or other public events at which police happens to be present. This also means you can forget about taking photos of illegal arrests as the police now has the right to arrest photographers:

A new British anti-terrorism law went into effect Monday that could effectively bar photographers from taking pictures of police or military personnel — a move that prompted some 200 photographers to protest outside of Scotland Yard's headquarters.

(…) Photographers who refuse to stop taking pictures after a warning face arrest, up to 10 years in prison or unspecified fines. Via AP

Still a long way to go to reverse the limitations of civil rights, but at least a critical discussion is now taking place that has been sorely lacking for far too long.

In his first major military move, President Barack Obama Tuesday approved the deployment of 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, saying they were needed “to stabilize a deteriorating situation.”

“There is no more solemn duty as president than the decision to deploy our armed forces into harm's way,” Obama said in a statement.

“I do it today mindful that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action.”

Obama said the deployment orders were in response to a months-old request by the US commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, who had asked for 30,000 more troops.

“To meet urgent security needs,” Obama said he had approved a request by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to deploy a Marine Expeditionary Brigade in the spring and an Army Stryker Brigade and support forces later this summer.

The White House said some 17,000 troops will deploy to Afghanistan ahead of the Afghan elections scheduled for August 20, significantly building up the 38,000 US force already on the ground battling a growing insurgency. Via AFP