text: Eric Margolis 2016-05-25T23:01:39-04:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=eric-margolis Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Eric Margolis Good old fashioned elbow grease. No Good War, No Bad Peace tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.6178870 2014-11-19T08:38:24-05:00 2015-01-19T05:59:01-05:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ The image we have of hapless soldiers being forced to climb out of their sodden trenches and attack across a hellish no-man's land pock-marked by water-filled shell holes, deep mud, thickets of barbed wire and rotten bodies is quite accurate for the Western Front. Waiting for them were quick-firing guns, heavy artillery, the greatest killer or all -- machine guns -- and, later, poison or burning gases, and flamethrowers. How could the generals of that era have been stupid enough to send waves and waves of their soldiers to almost certain death? Trench warfare in the West quickly became siege warfare in which decisive victories became almost impossible. Only in the East did the brilliant German generals Hindenburg and Max Hoffman achieve a war of movement in which they destroyed two Russian armies attacking East Prussia. Their triumphant battles at Tannenburg and Masurian Lakes were partly based on Hannibal's battlefield tactics at Cannae in 216 BC. But on the Western Front, generals on all sides kept sending their men on suicidal bayonet charges across dense wire in the face of interlocking machine gun fire and shrapnel. How could they have been so foolish? As a former instructor in military history, permit me some thoughts: most of the British, French, Belgian, Russian and many of the Italian generals had learned their profession fighting colonial wars in Africa and Asia against native levies armed only with spears and swords. They were, no surprise, wholly untrained for modern warfare against European soldiers. If the US Army, trained for colonial warfare against lightly armed enemies, ever has to fight China or Russia, it will encounter the same nasty problem. Next, most of the generals poorly understood the power of massed rifle or artillery fire. There was no excuse for this: the British has always been renowned for their iron discipline and ability to pour massive fire into advancing enemies -- a skill that won them the Battle of Waterloo. Fighting Afghans, Berber tribesmen, and Zulu dulled these skills. And even less excuse for fatally ignoring the vitally important of lessons from the first bloody, modern conflict of the 20th Century -- the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. This war, fought on China's Liaotung Peninsula and Manchuria, was the first modern war, a harbinger for the coming slaughter in the rest of the century. Ironically, though this big war was covered by very experienced war correspondents and military attachés from many nations, the dire message of the war was ignored by Western military establishments. The 1904-05 war saw the first intensive use of machine guns, barbed wire, hand grenades, body armor, searchlights, poison gas, and concentrated fire of field and heavy guns against tightly packed enemy infantry. But few took notice. The US Navy failed to remember that the 1904 war was opened by a surprise Japanese attack on the key Russian naval base at Port Arthur. Or that courage and drive -- what French called "elan vital" -- were not enough to carry heavily defended positions. What was learned was that forts were important even though guns on their parapets could not survive. That medical services had to be beefed up. And that logistics was a key component of modern warfare. Generals on the Western front ran into the same problem the Japanese did in Manchuria: they never had enough men to envelop an enemy and cut off his retreat. A capable enemy would simply retreat to avoid encirclement. Not until fluid, fast-moving German Panzer tactics of 1940 would this problem be solved. Forts, which are now considered useless military relics, assumed a prime role, first in the defense of the Belgian cities of Liege and Namur. Then more so at the Armageddon battle at Verdun where a million soldiers died on both sides in a tiny area of hell. Forts Douaumont and Vaux became the epicenter of the savage battle for Verdun. At one point, 2,000 heavy shells were landing each hour atop Vaux. After WWI, France decided to build a powerful line of forts -- the Maginot Line -- to help defend parts of its frontiers. By contrast, Germany opted for a war of movement, or blitzkrieg, to avoid ever becoming bogged down in siege warfare.]]> Fall of the Red Empire tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.6122898 2014-11-07T16:03:04-05:00 2015-01-07T05:59:01-05:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ It was also the most dangerous moment the world had faced since the 1963 Cuban missile crisis. What would the Soviet leadership do? Just peacefully give way, or use its huge Red Army and KGB to crush the uprisings? At that same moment, in a raw exposure of shameful historical enmity, Britain's prime minister Margaret Thatcher and France's president Francois Mitterand both called Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to urge him not to allow German reunification. Gorbachev refused. He could have quickly crushed the uprisings in East Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. The mighty Group of Soviet Forces (GSFG) based in East Germany had 338,000 crack troops in 24 divisions, with 4,200 tanks, 8,000 armored vehicles, 3,800 guns and rocket launchers and 690 combat aircraft. NATO planners had long believed that the elite GFSG could punch through western defenses on the North German plain and storm Antwerp and Rotterdam by D+8. Other Soviet corps in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary would strike west. Switzerland's defense planners foresaw a massive Soviet thrust through their nation and into the Rhone Valley, outflanking NATO defenses to the north. But General Secretary Gorbachev was morally opposed to the use of force and sought to end the Kremlin's long tradition of ruling through fear. True to his humanistic philosophy, the Soviet leader ordered the GFSG to stand down, pack up, and return to the Soviet Union even though there were no barracks or apartments for the returning Soviet legions. The opening of the East German wall and subsequent fall of its Communist government mixed Karl Marx with Groucho and Harpo Marx. In a comedy of errors, the bumbling East German government became paralyzed as mobs tried to storm the wall and get to West Germany. No high official wanted to give the order to shoot. The gates of the wall were opened by mistake. In the USSR, resistance among hardline Communists, the military brass and the KGB was intense. Gorbachev would have been unable to sound the retreat without the support of Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. He was a remarkable man: the tough former KGB boss of Georgia and Communist Party chief, Shevardnadze seemed an improbable reformer. But he co-authored the liberating policy of glasnost and perestroika and forced its adoption by the unwilling Soviet hierarchy. I twice interviewed Shevardnadze in Moscow: he was determined to sweep away the communist system and end the Cold War. We used to call him "Chevvy Eddy." His quick wit and sardonic humor made him very likeable. I asked him if he might consider becoming president of an independent Georgia -- which he later did, until overthrown by the US-backed 2003 "rose revolution." There is little gratitude in power politics. Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I walked through the just abandoned GFSG headquarters in Wünsdorf, near Berlin. It was a scene of utter desolation: broken windows, phones and plumbing ripped out of the walls, secret files blowing in the wind. The mighty Red Army had gone. As a veteran cold war warrior, I found it incredible that an empire could disappear so quickly. Just a few regiment of Soviet soldiers and tanks, I mused, could have stopped the East German uprising. In secret, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze agreed to a deal with US President George H.W. Bush and his senior strategy officials: the Soviet Union would pull out of Eastern Europe and the Baltic. In exchange, the U.S. vowed not to advance NATO into Eastern Europe or anywhere near Russia's borders. Equally important, Gorbachev refused to use force to keep the USSR together. The Soviet leaders believed they had an ironclad deal. They did not. The next three US administrations -- Clinton, Bush II, and Obama -- violated the original sphere of influence accord and began advancing US power east towards Russia's borders. The most recent NATO foray was the overthrow of Ukraine's pro-Russian government, a ham-handed act that nearly sparked World War III. For Washington, the temptation to kick Russia while it was down and gobble up its former dominion was irresistible. Gorbachev was mocked in western power circles -- and by many angry Russians -- as a foolish idealist: "the Soviet Jimmy Carter." Today, 25 years after the fall of the Soviet imperium, U.S. promises have been revoked. Washington appears determined to undermine the Russian Federation and further diminish it. Washington sees Russia as a has-been, a minor power unworthy of respect or amity. Russia, led by the very tough Vladimir Putin, of course sees things quite differently. The Russians have actually been told to stop complaining because the Gorbachev-Bush deal was not put in writing, only oral. A naïve oversight by the Russians. Too bad. From retirement, Gorbachev bitterly watches all he strove for turns to ashes as his countrymen blame him for destroying the Soviet Union. Shevardnadze died in Georgia last July. The Cold War is back, to the joy of many triumphant Republicans in Washington. Soon after the wall fell, I recall writing that unless the western allies and the Soviets came to a firm agreement of spheres of influence and a neutral zone in Middle Europe and the Baltic a dangerous series of clashes was inevitable. We are now there.]]> None Dare Call It a Defeat tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.6085426 2014-11-03T10:24:15-05:00 2015-01-03T05:59:01-05:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ "Lord of our far-flung battle-line, Beneath whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! Far-called, our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget!" -- Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional" The final contingent of British soldiers were airlifted out of Afghanistan last week, marking the sorry end of Britain's fourth failed invasion of Afghanistan. With them went the remaining detachment of U.S. Marines in Helmand, as the U.S. continued shrinking its presence in Afghanistan. Well has Afghanistan earned its title, "Graveyard of Empires." To be more precise, this honor belongs to Afghanistan's Pashtun (or Pathan) mountain tribes, who bend their knees for no man. In my book, "War at the Top of the World," I called Pashtun "the bravest men on earth." I'd been with them in action against the Red Army. Later, I would add the fierce Chechen to that illustrious fraternity. The old British imperialists are gone, but the occupation of Afghanistan continues. The new regime in Kabul just engineered by Washington to replace uncooperative former ally Hamid Karzai, rushed to sign an "agreement" allowing the United States to keep some 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan for years. This American garrison will be exempt from all Afghan laws. However, there's much more to this arrangement. The U.S. combat troops, tactfully labeled "trainers" or "counter-terrorist forces," are too few in number to dominate all Afghanistan. Their task is to defend Kabul's U.S.-backed government from its own people and to defend the all-important U.S. airbase at Bagram. Washington clearly plans to continue dominating Afghanistan and Iraq in the same way that the British Empire did. Small numbers of British troops garrisoned the capital; white officers led the native mercenary army. But Britain's real power was exercised by RAF units based in Iraq and Northwest Frontier Province. Any native "disturbance" would be bombed and strafed by the RAF. In the 1920s, Winston Churchill authorized RAF to use poison gas bombs against restive Pashtun and Kurdish tribesmen. Ironically, seven decades later I discovered British scientists who had secretly been sent by the British government to Iraq to build germ weapons for Saddam Hussein to use against Iran. The "Pax Americana" will be similarly enforced by U.S. airpower based at Bagram. U.S. warplanes flying from Bagram, Qatar, and aircraft carriers on 24 hour call have been the only force keeping the Pashtun movement Taliban and its allies at bay. Without intense employment of U.S. air power, western occupation forces, like the Imperial British armies before them, would have been cut off and driven from Afghanistan. Without U.S. air power, American garrison troops and large numbers of "civilian contractors" and old-fashioned mercenaries the Kabul regime would soon be swept away. Afghanistan's government army is likely to collapse as quickly as Iraq's did before ISIS. Most of southern Afghanistan would declare for the Taliban which, however harsh, speaks for the majority Pashtun people. The still active Communist Party is still highly influential among northern Tajik and Uzbeks, and controls the dreaded national intelligence service. Unfortunately, the U.S. garrison in Kabul will continue to make Afghanistan safe for opium, which is the base for heroin. Americans have simply turned a blind eye to their ownership if the world's top producer of heroin. As Washington still talks about the so-called War on Drugs, Afghan opium production rose in 2013 from $2 billion to $3 billion. The UN says over 500,000 acres of land in Afghanistan are now devoted to the opium poppy -- right under the eyes of the U.S. garrison. While U.S.-installed rulers in Kabul pay lip service to opium eradication, the rural warlords who support them, and receive stipends from CIA, continue to grow rich on the opium trade. Trying to blame Taliban for the scourge of opium is dishonest: when Taliban was in power it eradicated almost all of the nation's opium production, reported the UN Drug Agency, except in the region controlled by the Communist Northern Alliance -- which today shares power in Kabul. Its most powerful member, Gen. Rashid Dostam, a notorious war criminal, was just appointed vice president in the new US-backed government. When the full history of the Afghan war is finally written, CIA's involvement in that nation's drug trade will become a notorious episode. French intelligence became deeply involved in the Laotian opium trade to pay its Lao mercenaries. The U.S. was up to its ears with its Contra allies in the Central American cocaine trade. Now, U.S. intelligence has besmirched its name once again aiding and abetting Afghan drug lords so as to supposedly wage war on "terrorists." In dirt-poor Afghanistan, there are only two sources of income: cash from Washington, and narcotics. The collusion of senior members of government, military and police is necessary to export tons of opium to either Pakistan, Central Asia or Russia -- where morphine addiction is now a major epidemic. Afghanistan's flourishing drug trade has deeply corrupted high-ranking officials in Pakistan and former Soviet Central Asia. Russia is suffering a spreading wave of opium and morphine addiction and deaths. Adding to this shameful record, the U.S. Congressional auditor for Special Reconstruction of Afghanistan just reported that much of the $104 billion appropriated for Afghan "reconstruction" has to no surprise been wasted or stolen. Some of it has been used to irrigate opium poppy fields. Spare parts are unavailable for Russian helicopters bought by the US for use in battling Taliban and supposed opium fighting. Why? Because the U.S.-imposed trade sanctions on Russia bars the US from buying the spare part. Catch-22. By now, the longest war in U.S. history has cost some $1 trillion, maybe more. No one can properly account for the billions and billions of U.S. dollars flown into Afghanistan (and Iraq) and dished out to the natives -- or the numbers of Afghans killed. For Washington's allies, like Canada and Britain, the war has been a total waste of lives and treasure. For Canada, 158 dead for nothing; for Britain 453 dead. Forget all the claims about "mission" and "nation building." This war has been a total failure for the western powers. As former president Hamid Karzai stated, the only thing that the US and its allies has accomplished in Afghanistan is to kill a lot of civilians. An exaggeration? Yes, but one believed by many Afghans and much of the Muslim world. So this war will simmer on, at least until Washington finds some face-saving way out of the mess in the Hindu Kush. It's extremely difficult for a great power and its political leaders to admit defeat at the hands of lightly armed mountain tribesmen. If the U.S. was wise, it would simply quit Afghanistan. But power, like opium, is highly addictive. So America's longest war will drag on and on.]]> The Land That God Forgot tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.5965170 2014-10-10T12:33:49-04:00 2014-12-10T05:59:01-05:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ He was not mourned. Rumor in Haiti had it that the son of "Papa Doc," the fearsome late dictator, Francois Duvalier, had died as a result of a deadly curse by one of the nation's leading "houngans," or voodoo lords. Sweet revenge said many Haitians. In the mid-1960s, my old friend Tijo Noustas and I, driven by youthful recklessness, crashed the dinner at Haiti's National Palace. We met Baby Doc, who was just a little kid back then, and had a very, very scary encounter with Papa Doc Himself. I still recall his coke-bottle thick glasses and sinister, whispering voice. Papa Doc ruled Haiti's 10 million wretched people by a combination of supernatural fear and terror. Once a simple country doctor, Duvalier became Haiti's leading voodoo houngan. Haitians believed he could turn himself into a crow, lay spells, raise the dead and kill at long distance. If Haitians were not sufficiently cowed by voodoo magic, Papa Doc had his dreaded paramilitary thugs, the TonTon Macoutes (bogeymen in Creole). Dressed in blue denim from head to foot, the heavily armed TTM's terrorized Haitians, abducting suspects, and imposing "street tax" on passersby. I had numerous run-ins with the TTM's, all near-death experiences. Papa Doc was a paranoid monster who routinely had his foes, real or imagined, shot at the yellow-painted Fort Dimanche. The executions were carried live on radio. However brutal, Duvalier was supported by Washington which feared a Cuban-style takeover of Haiti. Castro's Cuba was only 80 km from Haiti across the strategic Windward Passage and looked like heaven compared to Haitian Hell. When Duvalier died in 1971, his tubby, 114 kilo son, Jean-Claude, was put into power as a figurehead by the TonTon Macoutes, the wealthy mulatto business elite and Uncle Sam. He was a miserable creature, afraid of his own shadow, terrified, like many Haitians, that Papa Doc might rise from his grave like the evil voodoo deity, Baron Samedi. The mulattos and TTM's went on looting Haiti's meager resources while the other 99 percent lived near starvation, afflicted by parasites, typhoid, syphilis, and diseases known only in Central Africa, which rural Haiti resembled. Port-au-Prince, once a charming colonial city, became a cesspool of rubbish and swarms of diseased beggars. Many Haitians considered the era 1915-1934, when Haiti was occupied and run by the U.S. Marine Corps, as the only felicitous time in their tragic history and hoped the American military would return. In the 1780s, Haiti, then a French slave colony, was the richest nation in the Western Hemisphere, including Spain's gold and silver-producing Latin American colonies. Four crops a year of that era's version of today's oil riches- cocoa, dyes, spices, sugar, coffee and tobacco --poured into France. Bordeaux and Nantes were built on the revenues of the West Indies trade and slavery. Then came slave revolts in 1791 and 1804 that drove out even Napoleon's veteran troops. Able slave leaders like Toussaint L'Overture and J.J. Dessalines were quickly replaced by fools and mental deficients, ending in the mad emperor Henri Christophe who finally shot himself with a silver bullet outside Cap Hatien. Whites were massacred. Haiti's freed slaves relentlessly cut down its trees to make charcoal. Heavy rains washed away Haiti's rich topsoil, leaving erosion and famine, the hemisphere's worst environmental, social and political disaster. Haiti became the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The inept Baby Doc and his beautiful mulatto wife, Michelle, were finally kicked out of Haiti in 1986, taking with them steamer trunks of cash. They went into a gilded exile in Paris, then Grasse. Various inept leaders replaced the younger Duvalier, including a Marxist former priest, J.B.Aristide who was in turn deposed by a US-engineered coup and shipped off to South Africa. As a final misery, a massive 2011 earthquake devastated much of Haiti, killing tens of thousands, or even a million, no one knows. UN "rescue" troops from Nepal spread cholera; other UN troops paid girls $1 for sex. Baby Doc's wife Michel, having spent all their money on shopping, announced she was leaving him. "You can't do that," he pleaded, "I'm president of Haiti" She hissed back, "I married the president of Haiti; you're now a nobody!" And left. Baby Doc finally returned to Haiti and claimed he would face accusations of mass murder and genocide. He never did. Many Haitians knew that poor Baby Doc was no monster, just a faint reflection of his frightening father and a henpecked husband. Duvalier II was more worthy of pity than retribution. And so last week, his sad life withered away in Port-au-Prince as Haiti continued to sink ever deeper into an abyss of poverty, disease and hopelessness.]]> China Changes the Guard tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2118341 2012-11-12T15:47:12-05:00 2013-01-12T05:12:01-05:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ On Thursday, China's new supreme leader is expected to be named in Beijing's Great Hall of the People. Almost everyone expects top Communist Party secretary Xi Jinping to be named party head and, a bit later, president of China. China's once-in-a-decade change of Communist Party leadership may prove even more important than the U.S. election: it will determine the course over the next ten years of the world's most populous nation whose economy is set to overtake America's before the decade is over. While the United States and Europe are in an economic mess and crippled by debt, China's long march out of dire poverty continues apace. During the past ten years of outgoing President Hu Jintao's leadership, China's economy has grown 400 percent. China is well on the way to becoming a modern nation with growing military power and technology. When I was covering Moscow in the late 1980s, a popular joke making the rounds went: "the East Germans are the only people who can make Communism work." Today, a similar statement could be said about China: it has made capitalism work better than in the capitalist west. I cannot look at today's China without vividly recalling my first trip there in 1975, a year before the Red Emperor, Chairman Mao, died. China looked like a vast concentration camp. A few gangs of Red Guards still rampaged. Everyone wore dirty green or blue quilted outfits. Hardly any private cars were seen, except for those of party officials. A few bluish fluorescent feeble lights lit the grim scene of fear, poverty and depression. The only more depressing place I ever saw was Stalinist Albania under Enver Hoxha -- who was, in fact, a close ally of Mao. On my subsequent twice-yearly visits to China, I marveled at the changes I saw: it's as if some wizard waved a magic wand and from the ground sprouted skyscrapers, high-speed trains, new cities and giant factories. Where, I keep wondering, did all the money come from? Maybe Chinese, like East Europeans, buried all their gold in the ground when the Communists took power and only dug it up when the coast was clear. The wizard, of course, was Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping who was, in my humble view, a greater and certainly more effective revolutionary than Mao. Deng broke the power of China's crackpot leftists and released his nation's vast productive power. Interestingly, the only title Deng held when he was ruling China was "chairman of the Chinese Bridge Association." He didn't need a title, everyone knew who was boss. Under Dengs' inspired leadership, China finally managed to escape the chain of its past two centuries. Until the early 1800s, China, then with 400 million people, was the world's leading economic power, but a military midget. An increasingly corrupt, feckless Manchu (Qing) Dynasty presided over China's decay. In 1839, the British pounced on prostrate China, waging two opium wars that caused tens of millions to become drug addicts. Britain seized Hong Kong. France, Russia and Japan fed like wolves on helpless China. Many of the greatest fortunes of today's Britain were based on the narcotics trade. In 1850, a Chinese farmer declared himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ and launched the frightful Taiping Rebellion that in 14 years led to 20 million deaths. In 1894, Japan seized Korea and Taiwan from China and humiliated the Imperial armies and fleets. China's calamitous 19th century engendered an even more bloody 20th century: 1920s civil wars; the Japanese invasion of 1937; a fight to the death between Mao's Communist and the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek. In 1958, Mao's Great Leap Forward, a crazy attempt to modernize the economy, wrecked China and caused 30-60 million peasants to starve. Mao's equally daft Cultural Revolution almost finished off China. Seen in the retrospective of this grim history, China's rise to become the world's second most important power is even more miraculous. The deep-seated fear of chaos and government weakness, of being surrounded by rapacious foes, underlies much of China's current political thinking and allows acceptance of authoritarian rule and lack of human rights taken for granted in many other nations. Chairman Mao used to read himself to sleep late at night poring over the history of China's civil wars between rival kingdoms and peasant uprisings. Nearly all dictatorships make use of this argument; so do too many democracies. There are other choices: look at the way Imperial Japan gave way to a democratic system, however flawed. China can take this same road, but it will take a long time for it to develop democratic confidence and a nation under law. Beijing will probably continue its historic foreign policy of allowing its neighbors complete autonomy provided they acknowledge fealty to the China emperor. China wants to push the U.S. back into the Pacific, but it has no discernible territorial ambitions aside from regaining Taiwan and turning the China Sea into a mare nostrum. Today's China, however admirable in many aspects, remains one of the world's harshest police states. I've spent my career covering nasty third world despotisms and can say that China remains a leading example of iron-fisted control, both evident and hidden. I've also experienced the wrath of the secret and military police. But for all its intimidation and occasional scariness, China is clearly well advanced on the long march to modernity and becoming the first or second world power. In fact, China may soon attain the same level of economic development and wealth it enjoyed in the 1700s -- before the outside world fell on it. Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2012.]]> Who Really 'Won' the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1981613 2012-10-19T11:46:21-04:00 2012-12-19T05:12:01-05:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ But this missile, and 41 others (including some longer-ranged SS-5's) terrified the United States during the October 1962 missile crisis -- 13 days that shook the world. Each of them could have delivered a one megaton warhead onto America's East Coast cities, starting with Washington D.C. One megaton is a city-buster. When the Cuban missile crisis erupted 50 years ago this month, I was a student at Washington's Georgetown University Foreign Service School. Cuba was headline news. The Cold War was at its peak. A CIA-operation to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro's Marxist government had spectacularly failed at the Bay of Pigs. The new, inexperienced U.S. president, John Kennedy, got cold feet in the last minute and called off vital air cover for an invasion by Cuban exiles. Deprived of air cover, most were killed or captured. The Pentagon urged a full-scale U.S. invasion of Cuba, backed by massive naval and air power. The Kennedy administration wavered. Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev seized the moment by sneaking 42 medium-ranged missiles and smaller tactical nukes into Cuba, right under the nose of the Americans. When U.S. U-2 spy planes finally spotted the Soviet missile bases all hell broke loose. U.S. forces went to DEFCON 3, then DEFCON 2 -- the highest readiness stage before all-out war. Six U.S. army and Marine divisions moved to South Florida and Georgia. Nearly 600 U.S. warplanes were poised to attack. On 25 Oct. nuclear weapons were loaded onto U.S. B-47 and B-52 bombers. Seventy five percent of the Strategic Air Command's bombers were airborne or poised to attack the USSR. Hot-headed Fidel Castro furiously demanded Khrushchev launch a preemptive nuclear strike on the U.S. Decades later, Castro admitted this was a terrible mistake. Fortunately, the Soviet leadership said "nyet!" A nuclear exchange in 1962 between the U.S. and USSR would have killed an estimated 100 million people on each side. As Soviet freighters steamed towards Cuba, the Kennedy White House imposed a naval and air blockade on Cuba. But it was called a "quarantine" since under international law a blockade is an act of war. Today, in the undeclared war against Iran, the favored term is "sanctions." I watched all this from Washington, knowing the city was the first target for a Soviet nuclear strike. Some wise people left town. Wealthy Latin American families chartered aircrafts to bring their children home. The university chapel was filled with students on their knees, many weeping, and saying Hail Marys. Looking back, I don't know why my friends and I didn't high tail it out of Washington. I guess we simply could not believe that nuclear Armageddon was at hand. But it was. Soviet and U.S. forces were heading for a collision. Then, the blustering but crafty Khrushchev offered to take Soviet missiles out of Cuba if the U.S. pledged never to invade the island. Kennedy readily accepted the deal. In a secret codicil, Kennedy agreed to quietly withdraw U.S. nuclear-armed Thor and Jupiter missiles targeted on the USSR from Turkey and Italy. The deal was done. Washington hailed it as a huge victory for President Kennedy, who became a national hero and icon. This mythology persists in the U.S. today. The American public is still largely unaware of the secret deal. In the end, the Soviet Union came out ahead. Cuba was saved from a U.S. invasion, which was Moscow's principal strategic goal, along with preserving the Castro regime. U.S. missiles in Turkey and Italy (and likely Britain) threatening the USSR were removed, but the story remained secret for decades. Unaware of it, the Soviet politburo ousted Khrushchev a year later for "reckless, hare-brained schemes" and made the dim Leonid Brezhnev chairman. Fortunately, the U.S. military was not allowed to invade Cuba: Unknown at the time, Soviet troops there were authorized to use 100 tactical nuclear weapons against any invading force and their bases in South Florida. As Wellington said after Waterloo, "it was a damned near-run thing." But this "victory" misled America into hubris and over-relying on military action to resolve its future political problems. Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2012.]]> The Cultural Revolution Still Haunts China tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1761186 2012-08-09T16:51:43-04:00 2012-10-09T05:12:04-04:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ Madame Gu, as widely reported, was charged with poisoning Neil Heywood, a British businessman, fixer and possibly her former lover. Gu is the wife of the recently disgraced powerful Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai, who, until the scandal, appeared set to be elevated to a senior role in China's leadership. Bo was regarded -- and feared -- by many as a dangerous opportunist bent on reviving Maoism. Gu's trial was the biggest sensation in China since the trial of Mao's shrewish, scheming wife Jiang Qing, leader of the notorious Gang of Four. Reviled as "the white-boned demon," she and her leftist allies were blamed for the ghastly Cultural Revolution. Beidaihe, along with the lovely northern port of Dalian, are traditional summer venues for the pampered Communist Party leadership. This year's meeting is extremely important as it will likely determine the shape of China's next round of leaders at this fall's 18th party congress, a once-in-a-decade seismic event. President Hu Jintao will step down and is likely to be replaced by rising star Xi Jinping. A peaceful, choreographed change is key to the Communist Party's hold on power. The trial of Gu raised memories of the Cultural Revolution that still haunt China. In 1966, Chairman Mao Zedong had been kicked upstairs by more pragmatic comrades after his calamitous Great Leap Forward starved to death some 30 million Chinese and wrecked the economy. The aging revolutionary was determined to regain full power. He unleashed armies of credulous students known as Red Guards to tear down the government and purge the party. China's president, Liu Shaoqi, and senior leader Deng Xiaoping, were denounced as "capitalist roaders" and "bourgeois revisionists." Liu died in jail; Deng was sent to forced labor. Mao declared war on all remnants of China's glorious past and any foreign influences. Mao's new revolution began, oddly, with posters at Beijing University, and Jiang Qing's attacks on "deviant" intellectuals, writers and playwrights. These obscure attacks were harbingers of the coming tempest. At the time, hardly anyone could understand what was going on in China. Chaos and anarchy swept China as rival armies of Red Guards waving Mao's Little Red Book battled one another and publicly humiliated and assaulted former leaders and scholars. I was in China in 1975 and vividly recall the gangs of Red Guards rampaging, burning and smashing. Watching a great nation run amok was a terrifying experience. Mao's China looked like a vast concentration camp filled with demented inmates. In one of history's worst acts of vandalism, much of China's glorious art and ancient temples were destroyed as remnants of "feudalism" by mobs of fanatical teenagers. China was virtually paralyzed from 1966-1976: the economy broke down, education ceased, millions starved or were thrown into grim labor camps. A failed coup against Mao in 1971 by Marshall Lin Biao furthered the chaos and tumult. After a decade of civil strife and national madness, in 1976 the People's Liberation Army and centrist reformers like Deng Xioping and the dying Zhou Enlai managed to wrest power away from the aging Mao, who was showing increasing signs of dementia and paranoia, and broke the Gang of Four. The arrest and isolation of Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai suggests the party leaders feared he might have planned to ignite another wave of Maoism among China's youth. His failure to follow the party line was a major heresy. The old adage about standing together or hanging separately surely applies to China. All its miraculous economic and social progress, and its rock-hard political stability since 1976 could be swept away by power struggles within the party leadership and challenges from the military. Madame Gu's trial and the sacking of her ambitious husband will sharply remind the Communist brass that they must keep a united front or else China's ancient curse -- separatism, regionalism, warlordism -- could rise from the grave. For Chinese, who have a good grasp of their turbulent history, instability is the greatest of all dangers.]]> Why Kick Sand in Moscow's Face? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1597448 2012-06-14T17:19:35-04:00 2012-08-14T05:12:09-04:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ The reason is obvious: Russia and the United States have thousands of nuclear warheads targeted on each other. Many are ready to launch in minutes. Compared to this threat, all of America's other security issues are minor. Avoiding confrontations with a major nuclear power is obvious. Yet the United States and Russia are ignoring such common sense in their increasingly heated war of words over Syria's civil war. The US and its allies have been actively trying to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria for over a year. They have been pouring arms, money, communications gear and fighters into Syria to take advantage of a popular Sunni uprising against the Alawite-dominated regime. Washington's intervention in Syria is driven by its obsession to undermine Iran by bringing down its most important Arab ally. Israel, which exerts enormous political pressure over US Mideast policy in an election year, sees destabilizing Syria as a triple win: a blow to its arch enemy Iran; a blow to Syria's efforts to regain its strategic Golan Heights that Israel captured in 1967, then annexed; and wrecking the key backer of Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinians. Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose presidential ambitions are increasingly evident, accused Russia of selling MI-24 helicopter gunships to Syria. Russia angrily denied the charge and asserted that US anti-riot gear was being used against demonstrators across the Mideast. Washington scourged Syria for attacking civilian targets. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. The same week, the US-installed president of Afghanistan pleaded with Washington to stop its air strikes that are killing many civilians. Pakistan's feeble government begged Washington to halt its drone attacks. The angry Russians could have added that the US has been buying rocket-armed Russian-made MI-17 combat helicopters from them for use by Afghan government forces, and using helicopter and AC-130 gunships in Afghanistan. Or citing US sales of advanced Apache attack helicopters to Israel that were used to attack civilian targets in Gaza. Syria has long been a close ally of Moscow. US attempts to overthrow the Assad regime were sure to infuriate and alarm Moscow, which sees US plots everywhere to undermine Russia. The Kremlin must find a way to answer the US challenge or lose face. Meanwhile, another US-Russia fracas is brewing up in the Caucasus. Relations between the two great powers are still raw due to the 2008 mini-war between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia. Washington helped overthrow the former Georgian government of Eduard Shevardnadze in the so-called "Rose Revolution," replacing him with close US ally, Mikheil Saakashvili. The new Georgian leader quickly turned his small Caucasian nation into a base for US and Israel intelligence and military operations. In 2008, Shakashvilli foolishly picked a fight with Russia. US warships were moved into the Black Sea, setting of a war scare in the region before tempers cooled. Now, the US is back playing the Great Game in the Caucasus while the Georgia feud still simmers. This time it's in oil-rich Azerbaijan, which has become a key American and Israeli ally. The Baku regime just bought $1.6 billion worth of Israeli arms. Azerbaijan and Armenia, a close Russian ally, have been warring for a decade over disputed Nagorno-Karabakh. This obscure conflict is heating up again as Russia and the US back opposite sides. CIA has been busy for some time trying to stir up Azeri separatists in northern Iran. The US and Israel could use Azerbaijan as a base to attack Iran. As if Russo-American relations were not bad enough, US Republicans demand President Barack Obama "get tough" with Moscow. Threats fly back and forth over the planned US missile defense shield in Eastern Europe that enrages the Kremlin. Provoking or antagonizing Russia over areas that are of no vital US strategic interest is dangerous and childish. Moscow and Washington should be seeking peaceful resolutions in Syria and the Caucasus, not playing silly Cold War games. Hopefully, Presidents Obama and Vladimir Putin will sit down and talk some grown-up sense when they meet at a summit this week in Mexico.]]> The Great "Pivot to Asia" tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1580853 2012-06-08T11:53:16-04:00 2012-08-08T05:12:10-04:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ says the major portion of US naval power will shift to the Pacific by 2020 as part of the Pentagon's new "pivot to Asia" strategy. Though not totally unexpected, this news has caused quite a stir across Asia and raised tempers in China. However, there's rather less to this redeployment of naval forces than meets the eye. The US Navy has long kept half of its warships, aircraft, and logistics vessels in the Pacific. The new plan will see a modest increase in US naval forces in Asian waters; the ratio of Pacific to Atlantic naval units will increase to 60/40 or slightly more. More of America's 11 attack carriers will sail the Pacific. The Marine Corps, with its own air wings ("the Navy's army," as wags call it), will increase its presence in the Pacific theater. A 2,500-man US Marine expeditionary force is being stationed in remote northern Australia. It is far enough from China to be of little military use, but close enough to raise tensions with Beijing and Jakarta. Its mission, besides bracing Aussie spirits, is uncertain. But US grand strategy is clear. Just as the US sought to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War by surrounding it with American allies and bases, so Washington plans to do with China. America is creating a sweeping arc of allies and bases that begins in Singapore, and moves northeast to the Philippines, then Taiwan, Okinawa, Japan and South Korea, neatly bottling up China's expanding naval forces. India is being encouraged to build powerful naval forces that can threaten China's oil routes to the Mideast and keep its navy out of the Indian Ocean. Other US naval forces -- the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, and units patrolling the Indian Ocean -- will support the US 7th Fleet that has ruled the western Pacific since 1944 after the US Navy won its most glorious victories and swept the Imperial Japanese Navy from the seas. Shifting naval units from the Atlantic to Pacific is not a major undertaking for the US. After the severe decline of Russia's once mighty Red Banner Northern and Baltic fleets, there is no longer any major naval threat in the Atlantic. The days when packs of Soviet submarines were poised near Iceland to break into the North Atlantic to cut North America's links with Europe are long gone. The Mediterranean is an American lake. But even with the new Pacific redeployment, the US Navy will be hard-pressed to maintain its former domination of the region. America's navy has shrunk to fewer than 300 warships and 3,700 aircraft from the 600 ships planned during the 1980's. Even so, the mighty US Navy remains larger than the next 13 navies combined. As a French admiral told me, the US Navy's budget exceeds France's total defense budget. China's rapid development of anti-ship missiles, submarines, space-based sensors and a new anti-carrier ballistic missile, the DF21-D, increasingly alarms the US Navy and may force its attack carriers to operate far from Asia's coasts. In fact, huge aircraft carriers are ever more vulnerable to attack and will eventually be made obsolete by drones and missiles. However, naval forces are no longer the primary expression of America's power. The US Air Force has dominated much of the non-communist globe since the 1950's and serves America's strategic interests in the same way the Royal Navy imposed the British Empire's military and commercial power. Air power has played the decisive role in all of America's military victories since World War I. The Pentagon plans to strengthen its Pacific air power. This likely includes re-establishing US air bases in the Philippines and Australia, and expanding air bases in Guam, Okinawa and South Korea. America has been at war for decades. Its aircraft and warships are aging rapidly. Equally threatening, Congress may force deep military spending cuts as deficits worsen -- at a time when the US military is being ordered to keep China bottled up on the Asian mainland. China need only build its military power close to home. The United States must project and maintain its naval and air power 10,000 km across the Pacific Ocean, a hugely expensive, complex undertaking that gives cash-rich China an important, even decisive advantage.]]> Time Bomb on the Nile tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1563056 2012-06-01T15:48:47-04:00 2012-08-01T05:12:19-04:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ almost certain the vote was manipulated. A huge popular explosion in Egypt will very likely ensue. Egyptians are already furious their first democratic election of a president was distorted by the state election commission, a tool of the military junta now ruling Egypt. The commission vetoed many popular and capable candidates from the election for spurious reasons, corrupting the election in advance. The vote was set up to split the votes of Islamists between numerous candidates. In the end, two candidates, the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi and former Maj. General Ahmad Shafiq, were left facing one another in the runoff vote. I observed Egypt's parliamentary vote that began at the end of 2011 and ended in early 2012. This vote was fair, open and laudably democratic. Its outcome was only a surprise to the western media, which routinely misunderstands or misreports the Mideast. The Islamists -- the Brotherhood and orthodox Salafist al-Nur Party -- won a landslide with 66% of the popular vote. In other words, two of three Egyptians voted for parties advocating government under Islamic principles. Horrified, Egypt's military, backed and financed by western powers and some conservative Arab allies, set about trying to split the Islamists, reinvigorating the Mubarak regime, and making sure the presidential election would be an uphill struggle for the Islamists. The first round of the presidential election was clearly tainted by vote rigging, a specialty of the old Mubarak regime. The military's candidate, Shafiq, won easily in districts that had given landslide victories to the Islamists. The Islamists were to blame for some of this. They failed to unite, splitting the vote. They failed to convince deeply worried Coptic Christians, who comprise 10% of Egypt's population, that Islamists would not be a threat to Christianity or enforce draconian Salafist practices. They did not sufficiently emphasize their commitment to democracy or youth issues. Another key factor that I witnessed across Egypt was the military junta's ploy of withdrawing police from the streets and actually encouraging a crime wave to develop in a nation that was one of the world's most crime-free societies in spite of its grinding poverty. Many Egyptians were frightened by the rising crime wave into supporting Shafiq and his military backers who vowed to crush crime with an iron first. Even so, it strains comprehension that Shafiq is now running neck-and-neck with Islamist Morsi. There is even talk that if Shafiq wins, he will name the hated former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as prime minister. A Shafiq victory would mean a return to absolute Mubarakism, without Mubarak. Egypt did not stage its revolution so that Mubarakist autocracy and the fierce police state that kept it in power could return. So that the circles of corrupt businessmen and cronies around Mubarak could resume their plundering of the economy. Or so that Egypt could remain under the thumb of the United States and, indirectly, Israel. But that's what could happen. In fact, a big question is how Egypt's Islamist-nationalists could get by without some $1.3 billion in US annual military and economic aid. Morsi should vow to appoint popular Nasserist Hamdin Sabahi as his prime minister and name Copts to senior positions. He will have to quickly seek economic aid from the EU -- at a time when it is awash with troubles. Washington is deeply alarmed the Brotherhood may abrogate the hated, one-sided 1979 Camp David treaty with Israel. Most Egyptians rightly see the treaty as void because Israel violated one of its most important provisions: that Israel would withdraw from the West Bank and permit creation of a Palestinian state. But in a US election year in which pro-Israel forces dominate the Republican Party, Egypt's nationalists and Islamist are well advised caution. It's no coincidence young Egyptians dismiss the Brotherhood, "your grandfather's party." Its conservative members, many engineers and academics, have little experience in the dirty game of politics and often appears stuffy and slow. But if Shafiq and the military win the next vote, Egyptians could turn dangerously radical as the revolution that began in Tahrir Square goes violent.]]> Let Greece Do Debt Cold Turkey tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1527935 2012-05-18T16:52:36-04:00 2012-07-18T05:12:06-04:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ The last time Greece faced a crisis of this magnitude was in 490 BC when the armies and fleets of the Persian Empire were converging on Athens. The great Athenian leader Themistocles rallied his countrymen and defeated the Persians. Alas, this time Greece has no Themistocles to save the embattled nation. Unlike the incompetent Persian Emperor Darius, the Greeks now face Germany's very tough, stern and able Frau Doktor Angela Merkel who has vowed to impose zucht und ordnung (order and discipline) on the unruly Greeks. "Get a government," she is telling them. A potentially fatal run on Greece's banks is underway, with over 800 million euros withdrawn in one day this week. The sky is indeed falling. Greek banks are entwined with banks across Eastern Europe and Cyprus. So if they go down, the tsunami waves will spread far and wide. Who can blame Greek depositors for running? Default and an exit from the eurozone appear likely, meaning their money in Greece's wobbly banks could end up being converted into re-born drachma, worth only 30-50 percent of the euro. Greece's recent political turmoil and inability to form a government shows its voters want the benefits of staying in the eurozone, but don't want to pay their dues through taxes and slashing deficits. New elections scheduled for June 17 are unlikely to resolve this Greek drama. Leftist parties that stoutly reject the austerity program agreed upon by the last government in Athens are leading the polls. On top of this, Greeks, who look way down on their neighbors, the Turks and Albanians, have to suffer through watching these nations grow and manage their finances pretty well. Maybe Turkish financial advisors for Greece? Angela Merkel insists Greece will stay in the euro. But that's more hope than fact. German voters are in no mood to bail out the happy-go-lucky Greeks or swallow more austerity, judging from last week's important regional vote in North Rhine-Westphalia. French voters said the same thing last week when they elected moderate Socialist Francois Hollande over Monsieur Austerity, Nicholas Sarkozy, who was last seen jogging in the park. What would happen to Greece if it quit the euro? Financial chaos, capital flight, riots and bank failures... maybe. But after the apocalypse, Greece would eventually revert to its 1960's status: a poor but proud nation living off tourism, shipping, agriculture and fishing. Devaluing a new drachma won't do much for a nation whose main export is olives and feta cheese. Besides, the Greeks have severely damaged their tourist industry by endless strikes and surly service. Angela Merkel is rightly concerned that Greece's exit from the euro would be a blow to Europe's political unity. This aspect of the crisis is as important as the economic/financial dimension. But Merkel should also recall the timeless dictum of Prussia's king and renowned general Frederick the Great: "He who defends everything, defends nothing." Greece should never have been admitted to the euro. It snuck into the currency union by hiring those miscreants at Goldman Sachs to falsify its financial books. Admitting Greece to the eurozone was a bridge too far. Euro membership should be limited to those nations that have solid finances and honest reporting. In short, a club of northern European nations that follow Germanic good government. Unprepared nations, like Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Moldova or Ukraine, do not belong in the eurozone. Most have no business in the EU either. The European Union and eurozone expanded too far, too fast. Retrenchment is now in order. As the French say, "Fall back to better leap forward." Amidst this crisis, what many forget is that it was caused by politicians borrowing too much to buy votes and shady bankers lending recklessly to boost their own bonuses. If there is one thing we learn from the Euromess it is the Golden Rule: governments must raise any and all funds they spend. Borrowing from the money lenders is poison. More empires and nations have been ruined by unsustainable borrowing than by wars. Politicians should not be allowed to borrow except for well-defined, long-term projects, likes roads or bridges, in which revenue streams and repayment schedules are clearly defined. There's not much the western leaders can do right now to save Greece. More important, Spain's banks, who loaned vastly too much to property developers, are threatening to go down like dominos. Portugal and Italy are showing severe strains. The debt chickens are homing to roost. President Barack Obama keeps urging more debt creation in a vain effort to resolve the crisis originally brought on by too much debt in the first place. The real answer is that nations that erected a house of financial cards must go through a long, painful, cathartic period of rehabilitation and fiscal dieting to break debt addiction.]]> France Veers Right tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1510378 2012-05-11T16:06:15-04:00 2012-07-11T05:12:13-04:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ After me, the deluge. So said French king Louis XV, and was he ever right. His successor faced the French Revolution and lost his head. Much the same can be said of France's outgoing president, Nicholas Sarkozy. The victory of his Socialist rival François Hollande in last week's presidential election not only eclipsed the political career of the widely unloved Sarkozy, it left his clumsily-named political party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), facing its own deluge. As Europe's conservatives watch in dismay and even horror, the second big shoe is about to drop in French politics. Far-rightist Marine Le Pen appears set to emerge triumphant from the wreckage of France's defeated center-right. France holds two-round elections for its lower house, the National Assembly, on June 10 and 17. Polls show Hollande's Socialists and their left-wing allies winning some 44% of the seats; the center-right UMP, 36.5%. The Left already controls the upper house, the Senate. Control of both houses would allow Hollande's Socialists to implement their vow to impose punitive taxes on the wealthy, hire 60,000 teachers (all Socialist stalwarts, of course), reject the EU austerity pact, boost spending and return the minimum retirement age to 60 from 62. Meanwhile, the UMP faces questions of life and death. The party was cobbled together from four center-right parties made up of Gaullists, Liberal Gaullists, Liberal Radicals and Christian Conservatives. Sarkozy, made giddy by the pomp and power of the royal presidency created for Charles de Gaulle, long neglected party affairs, choosing to run France like Louis XV. As a result, the party became a squabbling collection of egos without any core philosophy or direction. The June election could inflict the coup de grâce on the floundering UMP. Not only could it be swamped by the Socialists, it must face a Faustian existential choice. France's electoral laws mirror the complex nature of its people. Nothing is simple or straightforward. Assembly elections will be a three-way race between Socialists, UMP and Le Pen's far-right National Front. With the Socialists holding a strong lead, UMP and National Front risk splitting the center-right vote. So electoral logic demands that they collaborate in many voting districts and agree to support a common candidate. But the National Front -- xenophobic, racist, violently anti-Muslim and anti-Europe -- is poison to moderate French and many members of the UMP. To no surprise, UMP may split, or disintegrate, over the issue of joining forces with the National Front, seen by many French as a reborn fascist movement. In fact, it's not really fascist, but an avatar of the old 1940 far-right, ultra-conservative, ultra-Catholic movement. National Front leader Marine Le Pen is clearly calculating that June elections will see the UMP crushed. This, in turn, may lead to massive defections of former UMP deputies to the National Front. Meaning that the National Front could become France's official opposition to the ruling Socialists. Talk about déjà vu. Such a sweeping change would return France to its pre-war political landscape, when hard Left and hard Right were locked in bitter confrontation. Marine Le Pen could well emerge as the angry voice of many Europeans -- a prospect that causes shudders across conservative-ruled Europe. She could also prove the nemesis of the European Union. Le Pen has vowed to oppose austerity pacts, quit the Euro, restore the franc and follow economic mercantilism. Her anti-EU, anti-free trade policies are attracting many people across Europe and even in Russia. Fortunately, François Hollande could prove a counter-balance to the ascendant Right. He is a moderate, cautious, centrist politician given to pragmatism rather than ideology. His popularity and image of geniality and caring about people will help him withstand the forces of both Left and Right trying to pull him in different directions. Even so, Marine Le Pen and her aggressive rightists are likely to become an ever-increasing threat to the French Republic as economic conditions worsen. It seems only a matter of time before ultra-conservatism rears its head again in Spain, Italy and Portugal. Greece is already on the way. Failure to implement austerity plans will bring economic convulsions and with them the bullies.]]> India Missile Test: Wake Up, Washington! tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1441128 2012-04-20T16:01:20-04:00 2012-06-20T05:12:02-04:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ called its "first intercontinental ballistic missile." India did indeed launch a new, 5,000 km-range Agni-V missile that can deliver a nuclear warhead to Beijing and Shanghai. Previously, India's 3,500-km Agni-III did not have the range to hit China's major coastal cities. But Agni-V is not an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), as wrongly reported. Nor was the missile North Korea launched on 15 April that fell apart soon after lift-off. Some media wrongly claimed it was an ICBM that could hit the United States. One longs for the days when media employed real war correspondents who understood military affairs. A true ICBM has a minimum range of at least 8,000 km and more likely 12,000 km. India and North Korea's missiles were medium-ranged ballistic missiles (MRBM's). The difference is important because MRBM's are theater weapons while ICBM's threaten the entire globe. India crowed with pride over the nuclear Viagra of its Agni-V launch. One government scientist claimed Agni-V made India "a major missile power." By contrast, India's growing rival, China, dismissed the launch with a disdainful sniff. North Korea was blasted by just about everyone for trying to launch its MRBM. As this column has been writing for years, India is indeed emerging as a major military power. In 2000, my first book, War at the Top of the World, began examining the growth of India's military and postulated that India and China would one day go to war over their ill-defined Himalayan border and Burma. Today, India has become the world's largest importer of arms. India's navy is to deploy three aircraft carriers, nuclear-powered submarines with ballistic missiles, a powerful air force, and armed forces of 1.3 million. India has long land and maritime frontiers and needs large, well-equipped military forces. India and China have long been locked in an arms race, though neither will admit it. China holds a lead over India in modernized armed forces, but India is catching up. India is deeply concerned over China's land, air and missile forces on the Tibetan Plateau overlooking the plains of India, and by China's development of blue water naval forces that are edging into the Indian Ocean. Yet almost unnoticed by the outside world, India has also been long working to develop a true ICBM that can reach North America, Europe and Australia. Why India, a nation of deep poverty, needs a missile that can deliver nuclear warheads to New York or Paris, remains a mystery. US security officials appear blissfully unaware of the looming Indian missile challenge, or preferring to ignore it while fulminating against Iran, which poses no threat at all to North America. The most likely reason India would want an ICBM is prestige and a seat on the UN Security Council. But there is the possibility that one day India may confront the United States over Mideast oil, or confront Russia and China in Central Asia. India's deliverable nuclear arsenal, like those of all other nations, is designed to be a strategic deterrent -- a national life insurance policy. Delhi has masked development of an ICBM behind its space launch program. As Washington tartly noted last week about North Korea's attempt to put a satellite into orbit, a booster that can place a satellite in orbit can just as well deliver a nuclear warhead. The same applies to India. For now, India is a close US ally, and the recipient of US and Israeli help in building its nuclear arsenal. Washington has closed its eyes to India's refusal to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has tacitly blessed Delhi's extensive nuclear program as a regional counter-balance to China. India's purported ICBM is named "Surya" and is believed to have a planned range of 12,000 km. The missile is said to be composed of the main stage of its PSLV space launcher and Agni-V. Its development remains shrouded in secrecy. The program has had many failures and misfires. India is also deploying nuclear ballistic missiles on its growing submarine forces, including the 7,500-km-range K-15 and 3,500-km range K-4, and well as cruise missiles and a range of deadly anti-ship missiles designed to sink aircraft carriers. The US Navy is the only power operating large attack carriers in the Indian Ocean or Arabian Sea. Indians still angrily recall a US carrier group, Task Force 74, which steamed menacingly off its coast during the 1971 India-Pakistan War. The third maritime leg of India's nuclear triad provides a secure second strike capability after a surprise nuclear attack. But is also gives India to ability to attack most of the world capitals from the sea. Is anyone listening in Washington?]]> Lucky Sarko tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1410134 2012-04-09T10:50:36-04:00 2012-06-09T05:12:01-04:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ Enter another amazingly lucky Frenchman -- Nicolas Sarkozy. France's presidential elections are only two weeks away. President Sarkozy, who was trailing in the polls behind Socialist challenger Francois Hollande just weeks ago, is now neck-and-neck with his leading electoral rival. One suspects Sarkozy has either made a pact with the devil or should head straight to Monaco's casino. First, in an incredible stroke of luck for the wildly unpopular Sarkozy, the man who should have been France's next president, former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), was utterly ruined by a string of sordid sex scandals. Disgraced bad boy DSK is now preposterously charged with aggravated pimping. The Strauss-Kahn scandal saved "Lucky" Sarko's goat: polls showed Sarkozy would have been soundly beaten by DSK. France's judicial system is notoriously obedient to political power. Sarkozy is clearly beating political dead horse Strauss-Kahn to smear the opposition Socialist party, whose star the ex-IMF chief once was. French politics are notoriously dirty and sleazy. Strauss-Kahn's Viagra-fuelled sexual escapades with ladies of the night and females who came too close proved a major misfortune for France. Strauss-Kahn was likely the only politician with the authority to impose desperately-needed reforms on France's sagging economy and bloated welfare state. Second, the murder of seven people in Toulouse by a deranged youth of North African background that horrified France. Sarkozy, his allies and the right-wing media launched a blitz of scare stories about alleged "Islamic terrorism," the suspect's supposed links to al-Qaida, and fear of foreigners. In a scene straight from the classic film Casablanca, Sarko ordered his security forces to arrest the usual Muslim suspects who had nothing to do with the Toulouse massacre. France's Muslim-hating right loved it. Third, Sarko played to France's growing xenophobia and prejudice against Islam by warning of Muslim conspiracies and demanding the number of "foreigners" in France be curtailed. Pretty rich, considering that Sarkozy was the offspring of Hungarian Jewish immigrants. Now, Sarko and his men are crying about the dire threat to the Republic of Muslim halal meat (though not Kosher meat). France has 600,000 Jews who strongly support Sarkozy. Equally important, Sarkozy's warnings of the supposed evils of the Islamization of France are luring voters way from the far right National Front of Marine Le Pen. Sarko fears she may grab enough votes on the right to deny him a first ballot victory on 22 April, or even knock him out of the race. I extensively interviewed Marine's father, Jean-Marie. He was beating the anti-Muslim drums back in the 1980's and warning that "immigration equals invasion." He had a great one liner-for me: "You Americans took California away from Mexico. Now, by immigration, they are taking it back." Many French share his views. In the 1930's, France's right made Jews the enemies of mankind; today, the alleged culprits are Muslims. This noxious tendency has also infected US politics. The hard left has also come back to life in France, threatening to draw votes from center-left candidate Hollande. Politicians across Europe have been swept from office by a tide of anger over economic woes. Strange things could happen in France, which has a tradition of radicalism and anarchism. But as of now, the Sarko-Hollande race still looks close, but Islamophobia is allowing Sarko to nose ahead. None of the candidates have addressed France's severe economic problems or its growing lack of competiveness. Both Sarko and Hollande vow to raise taxes. Hollande promises to hire 60,000 new teachers to boost employment, a crazy scheme at a time when France has far too many sociology teachers, bureaucrats, and government employees, and spends a huge 56% of GDP on government. Hollande wants a 75% top tax. The Socialists defend their beloved and quite lunatic 35-hour work week, which has further undermined the competitiveness of French industry and its service sector. The basic problem is that in spite of chronic grumbling, the French live in one of the world's most beautiful, best-run, most civilized countries. France must slash government spending, lower sky-high taxes, liberalize the economy and stop borrowing. All candidates are dodging this existential question. French don't want to change but must at some point. Vilifying Muslims or banning halal meat is not going to address these issues. copyright Eric S. Margolis 2012 ]]> Forget the Film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: See the BBC Original tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1392437 2012-03-30T17:07:01-04:00 2012-05-30T05:12:01-04:00 Eric Margolis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is right up my dark alley. John Le Carré's Cold War espionage trilogy, which also includes, The Honorable Schoolboy and Smiley's People, is the finest work on the world of intelligence ever written. Le Carré served in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and knows of what he writes. He masterfully captures all the bureaucratic tedium and moments of terror of spy work, its lies, double-dealing, and betrayals. The 1976 BBC TV version of Tinker, Tailor and the sequel, Smiley's People, was the best thing I have ever seen on TV. It was perfect. Full stop. Only the BBC series I, Claudius came near it. John Le Carré stated the BBC version was "complete" and should not be remade. I felt the same way, fearing that a remake would inevitably disappoint. A remake should at least bring new depth or, for commercial purposes, contemporary sensibility and familiar faces. Alas, the 2011 Anglo-French film version by director Tomas Alfredson that came out recently detracts rather than adds to this epic tale. Don't get me wrong. The film is well made and interesting. But it has tried to compress Le Carré's large cast of fascinating characters and murky, jig-saw puzzle of patient detection into an all-too-brief two hours. Inevitably, the film produces only one finely-etched character, Smiley, very well played by a somber Gary Oldman. But trying to follow the genius of Alec Guinness, who played Smiley for the BBC, is an impossible act to follow. Guiness actually became spymaster George Smiley. Just as that other great British actor, Jeremy Brett, first assumed, then has taken over by the character of Sherlock Holmes. Sadly, the other wonderful characters in the BBC series that Le Carré brought to vivid life become mere cardboard cutouts in the 2011 film. The slippery Hungarian chief of the Lamplighters, Toby Esterhase; Bill Hayden, the charming seducer of one and all; insufferably pompous Sir Percy Alliline; gruff, chain-smoking Roy Bland; and Jim Prideaux, betrayed on a mission behind the Iron Curtain by the man he loved. Having grown up in New York's theater world, I've seen many moments of memorable drama, but none more so than the wonderful scene in the Smiley's People where Toby Esterhase kidnaps a Soviet diplomat wonderfully played by the Anglo-French actor Michael Lonsdale. Watching Smiley slowly, relentlessly deconstruct the blustering Soviet official into a blubbering mess is one of cinema's supreme scenes. Sadly, it's not in the 2011 film. Nor is the shadowy Karla, grand spymaster of Moscow Center. Perhaps he will reappear in future sequel to the new film? Viewers of the film won't understand the great underlying drama of the Philby treason. The fictitious Philby-like character, Bill Hayden, weakly played by Colin Firth, only hints at the monster treachery that lies beneath. The real Philby, a gifted son of Britain's elite who grew to hate the West, became a senior figure at British intelligence and its liason with CIA in Washington. Philby betrayed scores of Western operations and agents behind the Iron Curtain, some of whom were executed, including a relative of mine. Equally damaging, Philby convinced CIA's powerful chief of counter-espionage, James Jesus Angleton, that the Agency was riddled with KGB moles. As a result, both MI6 and CIA were, to use Le Carré's term, "turned inside out" and crippled by frantic witch hunts and galloping paranoia. Philby and his fellow spies in Britain's establishment, known as the "Cambridge Five," are generally considered the most destructive Soviet agents of the era. But when I was invited into the KGB's top secret museum in Moscow, the curator assured me that George Blake, who was not part of Philby's coterie, had been, in fact, the most effective Soviet spy in Britain. Reading Blake's notebooks made me feel ice cold. In Smiley's People, Smiley and his old team hunt and then trap Karla through his one human weakness, his daughter. In reality, I saw something eerily similar happen to one of the very top Soviet leaders in the 1970's. As an old Cold Warrior, I do miss the thrill and drama of the conflict each and every day. The Soviets were redoubtable, worthy foes. As Japanese samurai used to say, honor in battle is commensurate to the might of your enemy. Thank you, Le Carré for keeping these exciting memories alive. copyright Eric S. Margolis 2012]]>


text:
I do full stack web application development and dev-ops. I'm located in the San Francisco Bay Area and am available for consulting and contract work.
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I also have been passionate about aviation for many years. I started flying sailplanes and Cessna 152s. I learned to paraglide in 2007 with Fly Above All in Santa Barbara and have been working hard to build hours and increase my skill ever since. I currently compete in the monthly Northern California Cross Country League meets and fly XC whenever I get the chance.

subset: commoncrawl


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Help is available if you need assistance with any SWIFT financial or procurement process. Contact the SWIFT Help Desk via phone.
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text:
Stocks took their biggest one-day tumble in five months on Wednesday, the day after Americans re-elected Barack Obama to a second term as President.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 12,932.73, down 312.95 points or 2.4 per cent. The broader S&P 500 closed at 1394.53, down 33.86 points or 2.4 per cent – marking its biggest decline since the start of June. In Canada, the S&P/TSX composite index closed at 12,230.59, down 130.61 points or 1.1 per cent.
The dip follows U.S. election results from Tuesday night, which handed Barack Obama a second term in the White House, along with proposals for higher taxes and greater industry regulation.
But results also ensured ongoing political gridlock in Washington with Republicans maintaining control of the House – widely seen by market watchers as the worst-case scenario for stocks because it makes the upcoming fiscal cliff much more dangerous.
Mr. Obama must negotiate with Congress to avert automatic tax increases and spending cuts next year, a toxic mix that could shave up to 5 per cent from U.S. gross domestic product.
However, the election results were hardly a surprise. Some polls had shown a tight race, but various other indicators had been pointing to a Democratic victory in the White House and Senate.
U.S. financial stocks were by far the hardest hit stocks within the 30-member Dow, suggesting that investors were nervous about a government backlash against the sector after Wall Street heavily favoured the Republicans in the election. Bank of America Corp. fell 7.1 per cent and JPMorgan Chase & Co. fell 5.5 per cent.
Apple Inc. fell 4.3 per cent, bringing its overall decline from its record high in September to nearly 21 per cent – the loose definition of a bear market decline. While there are concerns about the company's ability to compete within the increasingly competitive tablet market, the latest decline might be election related: Mr. Obama favours a minimum tax on corporate financial assets held overseas – and Apple holds a bundle.
However, firearm stocks rallied on the premise that Mr. Obama could reintroduce a proposal to ban some gun purchases by civilians. Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. rose 9.6 per cent and Sturm Ruger & Co. rose 5.9 per cent.
Commodities were hit. Gold fell to $1,714 (U.S.), down $1 after erasing a gain earlier in the session. Crude oil fell to $84.44 a barrel, down $4.27, hitting its lowest level since July and marking its biggest decline in nearly a year.
Among Canadian commodity producers, Suncor Energy Inc. fell 2.7 per cent but Barrick Gold Corp. rose 2.5 per cent.Report Typo/Error
- JPMorgan Chase and Co$64.45+0.99(+1.56%)
- Bank of America Corp$14.68+0.21(+1.45%)
- S&P/TSX Composite$13.98K+62.50(+0.45%)
- Dow Jones Industrials$17.69K+196.10(+1.12%)
- Apple Inc$97.62+1.19(+1.23%)
- Crude Oil Front Month Futures$48.62+0.54(+1.12%)
- Gold Front Month Futures$1.23K-16.30(-1.30%)
- Updated May 24 11:02 AM CDT. Delayed by at least 15 minutes.


text:
Thursday, March 13, 2008
0 Comments | Copyright: IANS
New Delhi, March 13 (IANS) Popular playback singer Richa Sharma, known for her folk-flavoured, lively and soulful singing, claims that her voice and style of singing are exclusive.
'I am not a regular singer,' she remarked. 'The songs that are offered to me in the industry today are especially tailored to suit my voice. And I feel blessed.
'In fact, just like Sukhwinder Singh, Shubha Mudgal and Usha Uthup, I have a unique standing in the music industry,' said Richa who is taking part in NDTV Imagine's musical reality show 'Idea Dhoom Macha De' and was here to promote it.
'This show is the right platform to judge the best live performer and I am just glad to be part of it,' she said.
Apparently, Richa is considered one of the strongest contenders. Others include talents like Jaspinder Narula, Baba Sehgal, Sapna Mukherjee and Mona Singh of 'Jassi' fame.
In one of the episodes, Richa made a bleak remark. She stated 'Ab wahi hoga jo Richa chahegi' (Now whatever Richa wants, only that will happen).
Richa explained: 'I am a bindaas (carefree) person. I only speak what comes to my mind, often without thinking.
'At that point of time I was feeling a bit restricted due to everyone's demands. I wanted to perform the way I like to and I will continue doing so,' she told IANS.
She also outright denied having any resentment for the judges panel, including singer-composer Shankar Mahadevan, veteran actor Sharmila Tagore and lyricist Prasoon Joshi.
Richa has come a long way since the time when her singing was confined to devotional songs. Although she used to sing as a child, her career as a playback took off only in 2002 with the club song 'Mahi ve' from the film 'Kaante'.
'No matter how popular I become in the playback industry, singing devotional songs will always remain my first love,' she told IANS.
Richa however feels that due to her association with the film industry, people refrain from inviting her to sing for religious functions. 'I am forever ready to sing devotional songs at any place,' she stated.
The exuberant singer has a host of songs lined up for this year. Some of the films in which she will render vocals include 'Jannat', 'Sadiyaan', 'Mahadev' and 'Chamku' among many others and she is excited for the same. The singer currently claims to have sung almost 80 songs in the course of her career as a singer.
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Home › Building Directory › Richlee Gardens - 405 First Street
Richlee Gardens - 405 First Street
405 First Street
Mineola, NY 11501
Cross streets:
Beebe Road, White Road
Mineola, NY 11501
Cross streets:
Beebe Road, White Road
Urban Edge has no apartments listed for Richlee Gardens - 405 First Street at this time.
Building Features & Amenities
- Walk-up
- Laundry in Building
- On-site Parking Lot
- Rental Property
Neighborhood / Parking / Transportation
Mineola is a village in the town of Hempstead in Nassau County. The name is derived from a Native American word meaning "pleasant place". Mineola provides easy access to the Roosevelt Field Mall, Eisenhower State Park, Garden City Golf and Cherry Valley Country Clubs, and both Adelphi and Hofstra Universities. The Richlee Gardens garden apartments are situated on park-like grounds in a family-oriented residential neighborhood near all major highways including the Long Island Expressway, Northern State Parkway, Meadowbrook Parkway and Jericho Turnpike, as well as the MTA bus hub and LIRR. The commute to Manhattan is 35-40 minutes.
Owner / Manager / Leasing Information
For more information on this building, contact:
Property Management:
Broadwall Management


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Help Center > Badges > Notable Question
Question with 2,500 views. This badge can be awarded multiple times.
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text:
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Sign-in (or register) to check out the new features we've just launched!
Differential Diagnosis For Patient/Sickle cell/anemia
Available only to registered users.
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text:
- Free-Form Fighting System: The intricate new combat system makes its way to the Playstation® Portable and allows gamers to wage battles in boundless ways
- A violent underworld revealed: Explore and conquer a breeding ground for the most brutal, unrelenting monsters to torment mankind
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Memory Stick Duo™ Compatible: 256KB
Download of this product is subject to the Sony Entertainment Network Terms of Service/User Agreement and any specific additional conditions applying to this product. If you do not wish to accept these terms, do not download this product. See Terms of Service for more important information.
One time fee for use of downloads on up to 3 activated compatible Portable Console systems.
See Health Warnings for important health information before using this product.
Library programs ©Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. exclusively licensed to Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Software Usage Terms apply, See eu.playstation.com/legal for full usage rights.
© 2008 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Based on Prince of Persia® created by Jordan Mechner. Ubisoft, Ubi.com, and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries. Prince of Persia is a trademark of Jordan Mechner in the U.S. and/or other countries used under license by Ubisoft Entertainment.


text: Just got a new Xperia NEO V and it won't connect in MTP mode any longer. It shows connected on the mobile phone except not anything on computer. On the other hand I can toggle to MSC and move things. If I switch it rear to MTP it currently shows the mobile phone except not anything in it (prior to there was the SD). Does anyone know about this?


text:
Hearing aids in Louisville, OH
We found 17 hearing clinics with 152 reviews within 46.4 miles of Louisville, OH.
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Michael Thompson, LHIS
Michael Thompson is an Ohio-licensed Hearing Instrument Specialist with years of experience helping (read more)
Genie Wendel, M.S., CCC-A
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Jill Kramer, AuD, FAAA, Board Certified in Audiology
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Michael Thompson, LHIS
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Carol Hawkins, AuD, CCC-A, FAAA
Dr. Carol Hawkins is the owner of Hawkins Hearing Center and has been involved in the hearing (read more)
Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center - Broadview Heights
Bridgid Whitford, AuD, CCC-A
Senior Educational Audiologist Au.D., Arizona School of Health Sciences, 2008; M.A., Kent State (read more)
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Allison O'Grady is a Doctor of Audiology. She has been dedicated to helping people improve (read more)
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University of Akron Audiology and Sp…
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Robinson Memorial Hospital
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Mark S. Brigham, DO, Inc.
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Saint Joseph Health Center
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Ohio ENT Associates - Solon
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Cleveland Clinic Foundation
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text:
Showing some love to her Chinese fans, Candice Swanepoel is featured on the front page of the May 2016 issue of Femina China.
Looking impeccable in a Givenchy ensemble, the pregnant poser works her magic for photographer Chen Man.
She's never been a bashful babe so it's no wonder Miranda Kerr agreed to pose topless for the Vogue Italy's latest issue.
In the intimate images, the Australian mother-of-one relies on her birthday suit beauty to do all the talking, especially considering there's not much of a wardrobe to speak of.
Picking up where pal Kendall Jenner left off, Gigi Hadid is the star of the new DenimLab Collection campaign from Penshoppe.
The much-sought-after poser lends her sexy vibe to the newly-released ads, taking a more casual approach to fashion than her usual fare.
He's experiencing some crazy success with his new band DNCE, and Joe Jonas's new music video for "Toothbrush" has him writhing around with swimsuit model Ashley Graham in bed.
During the track, the former Jonas Brothers rocker sings, "Baby, you don't have to rush / You can keep a toothbrush at my place... We don't need to keep it hush / You can leave a toothbrush at my place."
Her range as an actress is nothing short of incredible and Charlize Theron looks menacing in her new preview "Fast 8" preview photo.
The "Italian Job" babe will play the villainous Cipher in the much-anticipated racing flick, slated to hit theaters on April 14th, 2017.
David Hasselhoff has claimed he has less than $4,000 to his name.
The 63-year-old star and Pamela Bach divorced in 2006, and the 52-year-old had been receiving $21,000 a month in spousal support from her ex-husband.
Entertainment Weekly
Movie fans are chomping at the bit ahead of the May 27th release date for "X-Men: Apocalypse" and now Entertainment Weekly is joining in the celebration with four mutant covers.
Her vocal chops are second to none, and Ariana Grande gave her fans a reason to get up early today (May 20) as she performed on "Good Morning America."
The beautiful songbird hit the Central Park stage to celebrate the release of her new album Dangerous Woman, singing the title track as well as a slew of new songs while the audience erupted with applause.


text: Mitch of 700 N walks out along a beam that is 6 m long and weighs 200 N. The box at the end weighs 80 N. (a) Draw a Free-Body Diagram for the beam. (b) When Mitch is at x=1 , calculate the tension in the wire and the components of the reaction force at the hinge. (c) The wire can handle a maximum tension of 900 N. How far out can Mitch walk before the wire will break?