I found this when looking for the Ratners reference in post below. It’s a captivating account of his final months at the helm of Ratners by Gerald Ratner.
It goes to show you that context is king over content – never, ever say anything without regard to the context. Gerald’s jokes were funny before the recession, but they cost him everything after it. Alas, comedy really is in the timing.
I defy you not to feel a pang of pity for the man (he subsequently launched an online jewellers – I wish you every success Gerald!).
Do America-haters care that at present, Pakistan is under Bedouin invasion, that is, Pakistani Bedouin invasion?
Who cares whether America occupies or not? It’s one Iblis after another. Both the American and the Pakistani Bedouin say, “I’m better than he,” (Iblis/Satan/Jinn to Adam, human being).
Who gives a damn?
US Plans For ‘Imperial’ Presence In Pakistan
August 30, 2009
Karamatullah K. Ghori
Pardon the Pakistani news media going gaga over Washington’s plans to beef up, extraordinarily, its diplomatic presence in Pakistan. The plans are staggering and stupendous, for want of more descriptive adjectives. But they are, for the record, just geared to Washington’s diplomatic stake in Pakistan, lest the Pakistanis routinely clobbered in the ‘civilised western world’ for their outbursts of emotions over supposedly petty little things.
‘The Americans are coming, and coming big,’ according to media pundits in Pakistan. And none should blame them for going over the top because the figures being bandied about are, to say the very least, flabbergasting.
What’s on the drawing boards in Washington and Islamabad are the blue prints for vastly increasing the number of American personnel manning one of the most important diplomatic presence in the 21st century for the Americans in Pakistan. Apparently, Washington feels that its battery of 750 men and women stocking the American Embassy in Islamabad is far too inadequate to cope with the job on their hands. They need to be given a big injection to inflate their muscles. The magic potion said to be brewing would add at least another thousand people on what’s being described as a ‘war footing.’ That would take US diplomatic presence in Islamabad way above the current largest American diplomatic mission in Beijing, China; the number there stands at a paltry 1450.
The US Congress agrees with the mandarins at the State Department and has allocated 940 million dollars for the embassy in Islamabad and a number of American consulates, particularly those in Karachi and Peshawar. The fortress-like new consulate on Karachi’s Arabian Sea is spread over six acres of prime land, given to them at a throw-away price, of course. What are friends for, after all, and the Americans, don’t forget, have powerful friends in very high places in Pakistan.
(Meanwhile, US ambassador Anne Patterson, reacting to media reports, has said that the number of Marines in the new embassy would be less than 20. They would be accommodated in a bomb-proof facility. At present the embassy has 250 regular staff, 200 visiting American staff and 1,000 local personnel. Another 500 would be added in next three years.)
The government of Pakistan is obviously chipping into these plans with a magnanimity that our ruling elite is so well-known for, as far as their overseas ‘friends’ are concerned. They may be tight-fisted and niggardly to their own people but for minders and mentors from the world beyond Pakistan, sky is the limit.
Little wonder, therefore, that a huge parcel of 18 acres of prime land in Islamabad’s exclusive diplomatic enclave has been ‘sold’ to the American Embassy for just one billion rupees, a fraction of its market worth. What is 18 acres between friends; peanuts when you think of how magnanimously Pervez Musharraf presented the whole of Pakistan to his American mentors over just a phone call from Colin Powell. It was a friendly transaction between two soldiers.
So the fortress in Islamabad, when built, will dwarf the mini-fortress of Karachi. It will be a city in its own right, a typical American enclave on Pakistan’s soil, with its own residential colony for the staff and all the requisite paraphernalia of entertainment and security to convey the American sense in spades to its denizens.
But wait. The Pakistani pundits have nothing to grudge the Americans their plans to replicate their America on a little patch of Pakistan. What worries them is what’s at the core of these huge plans of expansion, and what kind of people are coming in droves to Karachi, Islamabad and Peshawar with the obvious intent to cover all the bases in Pakistan.
Pakistan can’t seem to get rid of its perennial problem of being hyphenated with this or that of its neighbours in Washington’s esteem. It was India until not too long ago when American relations with India were taken to another, high, pedestal, with Pakistan left in a limbo to search its own station in American evaluation.
For a moment Pakistan thought it had jettisoned, for good, its hyphenated syndrome. But that feeling didn’t last long. The US is immersed deep into its Afghan adventure and Pakistan is back in its role of a key, front-line, ally. Hence Pakistan can’t be separated from Afghanistan; hence it must play out to the hilt its role of a soldier in a forward trench whose mission is to pull Washington’s chestnut out of the Afghan fire.
It doesn’t matter how Pakistan got involved in the Bush war on terror, or how Musharraf succumbed to the pressure. The ground reality, no matter how tart or unpalatable to a lot of Pakistanis, is that Pakistan is up to its eyeballs into America’s war and must pay the price of the follies of its rulers, past and present.
The US drew a seminal lesson from its involvement in World War II and that’s that America can best be protected, if not insulated from the outside world, by drawing its lines of defence in far off lands, in places wherever a threat to US security or its quest for global dominance may occur and must be pre-empted with maximum force.
The American wars in Korea and Vietnam were triggered by this policy of offence-being-the-best-defence. George W. Bush, an ardent practitioner of Pax Americana couldn’t be more articulate than coining the shibboleth of ‘taking the war to the enemy.’ The invasion of Afghanistan, on the heels of 9/11 was justified on this premise, besides being a prop to Bush’s dream of an imperial America holding the world in its thrall.
Barack Obama may be poles-apart from Bush on so many other things but shares his perception of fighting the enemy on its terrain. Add to it his own vision of winning the war in Afghanistan at any cost. So no price is too high once you commit yourself to achieving a goal; and Obama has his heart set on ferreting out victory of any sort in Afghanistan after having lost the one in Iraq.
But wars can’t be won cheap. They require elaborate logistics. Pakistan has become a cockpit of conflict and chaos spawned by its involvement in the Afghan imbroglio. So Pakistan must be primed to deliver according to Washington’s expectations. Logistics must be so arranged as to deal with Pakistan’s chaotic and turbulent scenario according to Washington’s master-plan for the area.
The logistics involve the building of fortresses bristling with hi-tech gadgetry that keeps the troublesome Pakistanis, or the Pakistani Taliban and their ilk, at a safe distance. That’s an essential tool of 21st century imperialistic reach. In the olden days of imperialism they used to occupy whole countries and convert them into colonies. Technological sophistication and advancement has offered better alternatives, dispensing with the archaic practice of outright colonies to intimidate the locals. Hence the logic and imperative for modern-day fortresses like the ones springing up from one end of Pakistan to another.
Those who have followed the American adventure in Iraq know what havoc mercenary American defence contractors wreaked there. Blackwater was a principal mercenary outfit to which the State Department outsourced its obligations in Iraq. Its gung-ho mercenaries raped and murdered Iraqis at will to such an extent that even the supine government of Noori Al-Maliki was forced to impel Washington to pull Blackwater’s notorious murderers out of Iraq.
The same Blackwater is now getting ready to replicate its Iraqi tactics in Pakistan and some of its operatives are already believed to be in action in Peshawar and its environs. The word has gone out that the Americans are keen to buy Peshawar’s lone 5-star hotel in order to accommodate the likes of Blackwater in luxury for special operations within Pakistan and beyond, in Afghanistan, of course.
The State Department has obviously drawn no lessons from its skewed Iraqi operations and seems willing to retry them in Pakistan. One shudders to think of the fallout of a lethal confrontation between the rogues of Blackwater, running berserk across the troubled North West Frontier Region just as they did in Iraq, and the trigger-happy Pakistani Taliban to whom these provocative aliens would be like red rag to an enraged bull.
The US is a global power charged with a self-anointed mission to fight wherever necessary to keep the terrorists away from its shores. Its history of such messianic adventures not only justifies war by any means but also sanctifies its actions. The question troubling the Pakistani minds is why should their rulers be so blind to this deadly game being played out on the Pakistani turf?
The government pursues, with great care, its Lala Santa Claus policies.
Let’s take for instance… air conditioners…
Abhisit decided to remove the 15 % excise tax on air-conditioners (read here), to boost… local sales (from local manufacturers)
But then a few days later we learn :
“For a particular category, a Chinese air-conditioner retails for Bt8,000, against Bt20,000 for a Thai unit. This FTA will cause difficulties for domestic sales and exports to neighbouring countries” (Nation)
It’s obvious : the problem is not this tax, the problem is first the crisis (people and businesses have less money to spend, even if there is discount)… and then the competition. Eventually, to remove the tax is a nice gift made to the… chinese manufacturers !
Don’t get me wrong : I do not believe government should impose a tax on air-conditioners… What I criticize is the timing and then the fact that they don’t think about the consequences of such decisions.
There is no coherence, whatsoever. The government just adds some inane policies on top of each other, like gifts, without any broad analysis.
Let’s take the latest example… spas.
The Finance Ministry will soon discuss whether to waive the 10percent business tax on spas, to promote Thailand as a spa hub. Such a move is expected to draw more tourists and create jobs. (Nation)
Once the laugh is over about the “hub” obsession… the government shows again that it’s totally clueless.
The problem of the spa industry is not a tax. The problem is that… virtually all hotels in Thailand now are “spa” ! (and “boutique” too).
I mean It couldn’t be more ridiculous. As ridiculous as increasing the number of 5 stars hotels for instance.
The market is totally overwhelmed by spas. And the demand can’t follow. It’s just impossible. Few people can afford to pay several thousands of THB for one hour of “spa”.
The bottom line is : with all those idiotic tax cuts, the government will lose precious ressources ( in a budget deficit situation)… and meanwhile will achieve zero, NIL, nada as far as “job creation” or “stimulation of the economy” is concerned.
Abhisit and his ministers are like headless chicken, running amok, agitated, and taking decision for the economy like… taking a dump.
The troubled asset Relief Program, the controversial $700 billion package passed last fall in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse, wasn’t pitched as a bailout. Rather, then–Treasury secretary Henry Paulson presented it as an opportunity for the taxpayer to profit by making investments in name-brand companies. Indeed, during the Great Panic of 2008, American taxpayers reluctantly made a series of very expensive investments in blue-chip companies—Fannie Mae, AIG, General Motors. But it’s been hard to see the returns of these efforts, since they were designed to avert a total meltdown. Placing a value on an outcome that’s been avoided is the sort of counterfactual exercise ice-blooded economists process with alacrity, but is harder for emotional humans to deal with.
And yet. As we approach the anniversary of the Great Panic, some of the investments are clearly paying off in ways you and I can comprehend. The final cost of TARP will be a fraction of the original $700 billion, and taxpayers are turning a profit from its central component: the Capital Purchase Program.
Paulson’s initial efforts, continued by the Wall Street sharpies who succeeded him, had the characteristics of an investment fund. Under the CPP, the government would lend money to banks at 5 percent, through the purchase of preferred shares. As investors in troubled companies do, the government demanded an extra ounce of flesh: warrants, which are the right to buy a stock at a set price. It’s like lending money to a financially troubled friend to buy a house, but getting ownership of the kitchen
Lubbock gets ripped by lots of folks in Texas and the Southwest for a variety of reasons—it’s too isolated, it’s too flat, it’s too windy, it’s too conservative, it’s racist, it’s too (fill in the blank).
Certainly we have our problems, and we can’t do anything about our location on the planet, our topography, or our wind. But when one looks around at the important things of life, Lubbock and the South Plains come out pretty well when compared to other places.
While no one would argue that our schools can’t be improved, our young people receive a pretty good education. The Lubbock Independent School District has been struggling for several years because many of the families who can provide extra training and resources for their children are moving to suburban school districts. Wayne Havens is a great person and very good administrator who gave his life to education and young people, but it appears that our new superintendent brings new energy and new ideas to the system that may payoff in the classroom.
Central Texas residents love to poke fun at us because of our reputation for dust storms. I was in Austin last week, though, and when I walked out of the motel room at 7:30 a.m. the temperature already was into the 80’s and the humidity was so high that my eyeglasses immediately fogged up. Compare that to this morning’s conditions here where it’s about 65 degrees, little humidity and virtually no wind.
But it’s our economy where we really stand out. These are tough times in our country, and the economy is in the tank from coast to coast and border to border with only a few exceptions. Lubbock may be the biggest exception.
A headline in today’s Avalanche-Journal (http://lubbockonline.com/stories/082909/loc_487349910.shtml) would have you believe otherwise, but the story by new business reporter Walt Nett paints a pretty decent picture when you compare out economic condition to other places in the nation.
Walt reports that the Lubbock Economic Index, provided and reported monthly by Lubbock National Bank, was 127.2 for July, a slight downward change from June and a 4.1 percent drop from July 2008’s 132.7.
Is that good? Nope. But how many local and regional economies would absolutely love to have only a 4 percent drop in their economy during these last 12 months?
There are lots of problems to work on in this community (they’re everywhere, though), and, for some reason, we frequently like to beat up on ourselves. But as I enjoy the weather this morning on my back porch and read about our economy in my favorite newspaper, I’m going to remember the bumper sticker I saw when I moved here in 1969…
Iberostar Hotels and Resorts, based in Spain, announced that it will lay off 320 workers and temporarily close one of it’s 3 Montego Bay hotels effective September 1 (They are also closing their Riviera Maya, Mexico properties effective immediately). There has not been an announcement as to when the hotel might reopen. There is a glimmer of good news if you booked your stay at the Rose Hall Hotel, however. You will be upgraded (slightly) to the nearby Rose Hall Suites.
The Iberostar Rose Hall Hotel opened two years ago, and has not met company expectations for occupancy, and the winter season is not expected to change that, given the weak global economy. Current projections put the occupancy level at only 16% or so, according to Forbes.com.
Travel and tourism is a mainstay of the the Jamaican economy (and that of many of the Caribbean islands). According to the Jamaica Gleaner, other hotels and chains are suffering:
Grand Lido Negril – 19% occupancy
Sandals Montego Bay – 32% occupancy
Bahia Principe – 35% occupancy
Ritz-Carlton Rose Hall – 17% occupancy
RIU Palace – 38% occupancy
The upside for Amphibians like myself is that rates for these resorts are down, and may continue to fall for the foreseeable future.
It is no wonder that Sandals/Beaches Jamaica extended their summer sales through the end of the month…
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — For a majority of women, the glass is still half empty — and for marketers that could be tough to swallow. Even though they have arguably fared better in the recession, women are more pessimistic about the economy than men, according to a 300-person survey by Performics, part of Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi Nerve Center. While men appear to have improved their outlook on the economy, women have not.
Numbers On The Street: Berkshire Hathaway Regains Profitability
The Oracle of Omaha is at it again back in the land of profitability. Warren Buffet and the rest of Berkshire Hathaway enjoyed a healthy 2nd quarter gain of $2,123.00 per share or a total net income of 3.3 billion dollars. Not bad especially when looking back at last quarters loss of 1.5 billion dollars. Much of the gain is due to the vast stock portfolio of the holding giant.
President Barack Obama’s love affair with voters has hit a rough spot.
According to a Rasmussen poll released today, over 40% of Americans strongly disapprove of Obama’s job performance, compared to 28% who strongly approve.
As shown on the chart produced by Rasmussen, there is a steady decline in those who strongly approve of the President’s handling of key issues. The number has dropped from a high of 41% in January, to a new low of 28% today. That is an approval index of -12. Although his lowest index was at -14 a week ago, the graph shows a further decline is likely.
Key factors affecting Obama’s approval ratings include a stagnant economy, high-unemployment, and a failure to pass health-care reform.
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a chilling forecast, the White House is predicting a 10-year federal deficit of $9 trillion – more than the sum of all previous deficits since America’s founding. And it says by the next decade’s end the national debt will equal three-quarters of the entire U.S. economy.
But before President Barack Obama can do much about it, he’ll have to weather recession aftershocks including unemployment that his advisers said Tuesday is still heading for 10 percent.
