A "difficult" day - by Richard... Tuesday, June 08, 2010

A "difficult" day - by Richard... Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Associated Press is reporting that twelve foreign troops were killed in Afghanistan yesterday in what it is calling the "deadliest day" this year.

Casualties included seven Americans, five of whom were killed in a single IED blast. Separately, a US civilian police trainer and his Nepalese security guard died in a "brazen suicide assault". One French and two Australian soldiers were killed. The nationality of the remaining two has not been specified, although the MoD is saying that no British troops were killed.

The Canadians (pictured) are counting their losses from a previous day, their total deaths now standing at 147 compared with 292 for the British and well over 1,000 for the US.

US Lt-Gen David Hurley was anxious that not to overplay the significance of the numbers, telling reporters: "I think we're just seeing a hard day in theatre," he said. "There are a lot of troops in action, a lot going on at this present time, and this has just been a difficult day for us."

However, the brazen nature of the attacks has stunned observers. The American police trainer was killed when a team of three suicide bombers attacked the main gates of the police training centre in Kandahar. One bomber blew a hole in the outer wall, enabling the two others to rush inside.

US commanders are warning of more casualties as NATO forces gear up for a major operation to secure Kandahar, but the ferocity and persistence of the Taliban attacks bode ill for the continued operations.

This type of "targeted" suicide bombing is, of course, not new – but one previous appearance of the tactic should provide some warning. Contrary to popular belief, this is not confined to Muslim or even religious groups, and was seen in the late 40s and early 50s in French IndoChina, employed by the Communist Viet Minh.

Then as now, Western forces are not dealing with an "ordinary" enemy, one which would respond to the "normal" political calculus, or even extravagant casualty rates.

And nor is the optimism of ISAF forces at all reassuring. It is germane to note that, prior to its fall, the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu had been the object of an unprecedented number of high level visits. Yet, as French Commander-in-Chief Gen Henri Navarre observed:

... not a single civilian or military authoritative person, including French or foreign ministers, or American generals ... ever to my knowledge, admitted any doubts before the attack on the ability of Dien Bien Phu to resist.

As before, one can rely on the premise that "everybody" can be wrong. What particularly marks that campaign was the dismissive treatment of the "amateur" general Vo Nguyen Giap, and the tendency to under-rate the capabilities of the Viet Minh. That gave the French in 1953 an uncomfortable number of "difficult" days and led to their eventual defeat.

More than fifty years later, we seem to be travelling the same path.

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A travesty of justice - by Richard...

For all the hyperventilation and anti British rhetoric by the American greenies over the Deepwater oil spill, they do at least have in BP a company that has devoted considerable resources and expense to dealing with the ensuing crisis – and which has taken full responsibility for the damage done by er .... US drilling contractor Transocean.

However, with a criminal investigation now in the offing, it is perhaps apposite to note the outcome of a trial in Bhopal Magistrates' Court yesterday.

This comes twenty-six years after the world's worst industrial disaster, on 3 December 1984 when 3,500 people died immediately and over 15,000 in the days afterwards when a giant poisonous cloud of methyl isocyanate leaked from the factory and rolled into a neighbouring slum.

Now, seven former managers of Bhopal's Union Carbide pesticide factory have been found guilty of causing death by negligence. But, because the charges pursued against the executives were reduced by the Indian Supreme Court in 1996 from culpable homicide to death by negligence, the local court could only hand down a maximum sentence of two years in jail (see video report below).

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Even then, the guilty men were able to leave the court after a few hours, armed with bail orders after furnishing bonds of 25,000 rupees and personal sureties of the same amount (totalling about £700 each).

Victims' relatives and activists protested that the verdict was a travesty of justice and an insult to those who died. They say up to half a million people have had their health affected, including children who continue to be born with disabilities. "For 25 years we waited and now after two hours this morning these men have effectively been set free," said one relative.

And, after all those years, there is toxic waste still on the factory premises. The state government has failed to remove huge quantities of chemicals and pesticides from the factory and its evaporation pond nearby.

No concrete steps have ever been taken to remove or detoxify the waste and, while the Supreme Court has recently ordered that the 300 tons of packaged waste should be disposed of at the district disposal facility, the incinerator there has just begun its trial run.

But what is most remarkable about this whole affair is the treatment of Warren Anderson, chairman of the US-based Union Carbide Corporation at the time of the incident. Three hours after he had been arrested amidst high drama in 1984 on the charge of causing death by negligence, a mysterious phone call to the then chief minister of the state government secured his release on a personal bond of Rs 25,000 (£350).

Anderson was put on a state government aircraft and flown to New Delhi. In his bond, Anderson promised to return to India to stand trial in the case whenever summoned. He never did. The courts failed to get him extradited and the Government of India has admitted it was impossible to bring him back. Today, he is an absconder, the only accused in the criminal case against the Union Carbide to escape trial.

Now 89, Anderson lives in luxurious retirement near New York, having taken no personal responsibility for the disaster.

With US protesters now calling for the prosecution of BP chief executive Tony Hayward , a British citizen who has been at the centre of the clean-up efforts, they perhaps should be looking a bit closer to home before they start shrieking - as they are doing - about wanting justice.

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A partial explanation - by Richard... Monday, June 07, 2010

One of the reasons why we do not yet have an all-out currency crisis (yet) is – or so it would seem – for the rather banal reason that traders are not yet quite sure what to panic about.

For sure, the euro sank again today, reaching a fresh four-year low, well under $1.19 against the dollar in early trading, egged on by Kermit leader François Fillon who saw only "good news" in euro-dollar parity. But the targeted destruction of debt-ridden economies is not proceeding apace. Instead, it seems, traders are mulling over the eurozone's prospects and the structure of the single currency, wondering what the hell to make of it all.

"I really don't know what the outcome of all this is," said Simon Derrick, a senior currencies analyst at The Bank of New York Mellon in London. "I genuinely can't see how any member of the currency union would leave -that would be like trying to unscramble an omelette. But I can't see how Germany would agree to greater fiscal union," he said, adding that for as long as these basic tensions persist, the euro is likely to keep falling.

Many analysts now believe that division amongst eurozone members about how to rescue the currency are too deep for agreement to be reached so, rather than move attention from one debtor country to the next, investors are casting a critical eye over the whole system before making their plays.

The clue as to this happening, we are told, is the movements in the eurozone bond markets over recent weeks. As nerves over the euro have intensified lately, bonds from countries that have previously proven to be immune to these stresses - notably from France, Austria, and Belgium - have all been hit.

What we have been seeing, says Steven Barrow, a currencies analyst at Standard Bank in London, was "the market pressurized the whole of the eurozone."

This, he says, "raises the rather daunting thought that rather than the crisis moving on from Greece to one other country, like Portugal, in a domino-like fashion, the market might just apply pressure to the whole euro zone bond and credit-default-swap market, looking to flatten all the dominoes at once."

There's now a "pretty good chance" of a "precipitous" decline in the euro from current levels, Barrow adds. And since key politicians appear relaxed about this possibility, and some have even welcomed it, official intervention to push it back up extremely unlikely.

Of course, the relaxed stance is predicated on the euro reaching parity with the dollar, but there is no immutable law which says that, having got to that level, the euro will bottom out there. And if it keeps going, what then?

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