Leon Panetta: 'slightly' late

Leon Panetta and the Flag of al-Qaeda

The new US secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, didn't waste time in Arlington, VA or across the Potomac river and was quickly on the ground in Afghanistan.

Furthermore he seems to have a strategy against Al-Qaeda!

Panetta says that the defeat of al-Qaeda is within reach. For this goal to be achieved he gathers killing or capturing "around 10 to 20 key leaders" of Al-Qaeda and its branches will suffice.

All very well, but did Panetta look at the calendar lately?

This strategy is almost 10 years late! Such actions should have been done long ago, before any invasion, when Al-Qaeda was still emerging.

The misguided decision to declare war on terror opened a huge Pandora box with many sub-compartments. Full scale warfare created more more enemies of the West than it eliminated, while sacrificing the moral high-ground  in places like Guantanamo bay. The declaration of war made a rag-tag bunch of Islamic militants once financed, armed and trained by the US feel that they could fight a war with the West on equal terms. This empowerment was fundamental for Al-Quaeda. Should an approach based on intelligence, the judiciary and the modern tools of special-ops have been used from the start, terrorists would never have been given the glamour and glorification they got, they would be simple criminals and we would be re-assured of our values.

The acts of the US government since 9/11 have resulted in the alienation of the Muslim world against the west. Every Muslim can become a Jihadist by his own decision at any moment, Al-Quaeda is now a personal affair and an organized framework in not a requirement. This is now almost irreversible. If 10 or 20 leaders are killed, the odds are even more will take their place.

Still it is good to see that someone with a background in intelligence, justifies the word. A clever Sicilian-American, probably signore Panetta has preached this gospel before (in his CIA hat), to deaf ears and empty brains in DC. Probably this idea entered presidential circle "brains" only after the Abbottabad raid.

We are not optimistic, but we sincerely wish Mr Panetta, the best of luck!
His luck is also the luck of the Western world.

South Sudan: welcome to the world

A bit of Africa that manages to escape the Islamic sphere!
That is worth celebrating!
Not since the liberation of East-Timor from Indonesia have we seen such an event!
Lets home some decent governance will follow...

Best wishes for South-Sudan!

... and don't forget: make it simple for visitors, e.g. visas on arrival at Juba airport would be a good sign!
A few tourists won't harm the economy, or do you intend to live only from oil and food aid?

man holds a Southern Sudan Flag

The Japanese find vast deposits of Rare Earths in the Pacific

With China enjoying a near monopoly over Rare Earths' production, news of alternative sources are very welcome.

The deposits we located following a survey by a team from the University of Tokyo. The Rare Earths are in the bottom of the Pacific, in international waters east and west of Hawaii, and east of French Polynesia, at depths of 3,500 to 6,000 metres.

However finding new reserves means nothing if their recovery costs are not competitive, as vast other sources exist on shore that are not being exploited (because both costs and environmental issues). Technology for recovery of such deposits is in its early stages, so cost are bound to be non-competitive with the prices offer by the People's Republic.

Anyway in a crisis situation, where like last year, China imposed a short lived embargo on Japan, alternative sources may be the only sources, so there is on more backstop solution.

Furthermore the scale of the discovery may be a game changer in terms of physical scarcity considerations: the University of Tokyo estimates these deposits to contain 80 to 100 billion tonnes of Rare Earths, while current viable reserves are about 110 billion tonnes (USGS). Nevertheless one major issue is still unclear: exactly which elements were found.

As time progresses we'll see how important this discovery will be, but as usual in Economics, the "crisis" will probably solve itself. Prices are rising, and less competitive mines will be competitive again entering the positive rents area. Molycorp is already restarting operations at the Mountain Pass mine in California, certainly others will follow. No physical scarcity is in sight!

table of rare earth elements

See this older post for more on rare earths.

US: 50% of black men without a high-school diploma spend time in jail

The ever reliable, pro-American and far from any suspicion of being liberal, "The Economist", publishes a tongue-in-cheek ironic article on today's US penal system, "Sing Sing or the lash". However one must draw conclusions that go far beyond crime and punishment, and enter the sphere of a failed society.

The numbers are unpalatable, and seem to be conveniently ignored by political leaders, inteligentsya, the vast middle-class and minority leaders. They shame all of them:

• In the US the incarceration rate is five times the world average;
• One in every 31 Americans is under some form of correctional control;
• One in every 11 blacks is under some form of correctional control;

and most shockingly:

• 50% of black men without a high-school diploma spend time in jail!

Such figures would in any self-conscious country create a large brouhaha, massive doses of self-analysis and endless debate. Not so in the land of the brave and free!

A country that spends many times more money on its military establishment, allegedly trying to fix other countries, than on education at home should stop and re-think its priorities.

Some thing is deeply wrong, if you think that every other lower class black gent you come across on the street is a criminal. 

What did all the integration and civil rights rethoric achieve?

It has clearly failed not only black Americans, but all Americans.

Furthermore nothing seems to have changed with a mulato president, Hussein Obama, who is already dragging the country into a third self-inflicted war in Libya.

Wake up America, Tahrir Square is on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, 

DC 20500, telephone (202) 456-1414!

prisoners in the pillory with one being whipped, USA 1907

World map showing incarceration rate per 100,000 citizens, data from UN Human Development Report 2007/8

NATO: why should Europe finance America's folie?

Lord Ismay, first Secretary General of NATO, stated the mission of the organization without any ambiguity: “To keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” To this, the post 9/11 history has de facto added "support any American acts of madness across the globe".

Is this something we should spend European tax payer Euros on? Either the original mission or the new extension?


America always calls the wars to be fought; then an acquiescent NATO, waits for orders from the Pentagon, rewritten in Brussels. European forces are a mere foreign legion serving in an American imperial army.

Robert Gates

All this is bad as it is, but last week, Robert Gates, in his final days as US defense secretary, accused in a resentful tone, the European partners in Nato of not pulling their own fair share of the weight. Mr Gates stated that America is unfairly burdened with providing funding for and the muscle behind NATO.


What does Europe need the US for? Bombing civilian targets in Belgrade? Invading sovereign states under false pretenses? Practice torture and extra-judicial killings? Transforming the Muslim world into a nest of fanatics?


Has Europe forgot where the US was when needed? The French learned a lesson from the Suez crisis, but apparently not the Brits! Why do we need an "ally" that finances and trains the terrorists that massacre our civilian populations, as they did in the Portuguese colony of Angola?


We cannot criticize Mr Gates, he thinks he is acting in the best interest of America... as he did when supporting the Taliban. However we must strongly whip our politicians for their silence and inaction.


Any cent spent supporting US military action across the world is a crime against all European citizens.


Or are we in the same pathetic situation of Japan, who still pays the US for its own occupation?


Not only must NATO be consigned to history, and replaced by a European army, but all American troops must be removed from European soil.

A European Army is needed

PS: list of European countries hosting US occupation forces:
Shame you government into making them leave!

• Denmark (Greenland)
• Germany (Including nuclear weapons)
• Greece (Including nuclear weapons)
• Italy (Including nuclear weapons)
• United Kingdom (Including nuclear weapons)
• Spain
• Norway
• Sweden
• Belgium
• Portugal (mostly Azores)
• Netherlands (Including nuclear weapons)
• France 
• Poland 
• Serbia (in occupied Kosovo Metochia province)

Belgium: will someone put the sick man of Europe out of his misery?

The end of Belgium - language map

Belgians like to be a bit special and peculiar, maybe that's the only thing that unites them.
...errr that is as the saying goes, if there are any Belgians besides the king!

Today the "country" marks one full year since elections gave modest victories to the anti-Belgium NVA nationalist in Dutch-speaking Flanders and to the pro-Belgium PS Socialists in Wallonia. The two parties have been a 100% failure in forming a government during a year of either bitter talks or absolute silence.

The care-taker government deals well with non strategic issues, but only those. Similarly investors procrastinate any major decisions.

Gentlemen, lets face the facts: Belgium was never a nation, why keep the charade? For the sake of French jokes?

Will someone please put the sick man of Europe out of his misery?

Lets have a civilized Czechoslovakian divorce, having Wallonia and Flanders as nations within the European Union.

The German areas can be returned to Germany: they were stolen from it in 1929 anyway. Some southern areas should be part of Luxembourg.

Brussels can become "Brussels, FD", i.e. the Federal District for the European Capital.

As time goes by, nobody will be shocked if Wallonia and/or Flanders would like to join France or the Netherlands.

Lets get moving!

Libya - another war based on lies

William James (1842-1910), the father of modern Psychology  said "There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it." (this quote is often wrongly attributed to the Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, making it sexier).

Anyway, everywhere we turn we see NATO members stating that bombings in Libya are for the "protection of civilians", when it is in plain sight that regime change is the goal... even if the country's infrastructure is wiped out in the process and if the casualties of a full fledged war are much higher than a simple insurrection suppression by Khadaffi. Acephalous journalists echo this propaganda view like  inebriated parrots.

This protection of civilians euphemism bears a deja vu feeling when we think about the chorus line on "weapons of mass destruction" endelessly repetead by the Bush administration to get rid of Saddam Hussein. However now it is more serious, besides President Hussein Obama, such words are also coming from the European side of the Atlantic. From Sarkozy, from Cameroon... These men should know better!

Come the day when Europe actually needs to fight a war for legitimate reasons, the public will be saturated and credibility exhausted. As if no one knew about Peter and the wolf...