Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Nato's exit strategy in Afghanistan
Nato's exit strategy in Afghanistan
As Nato prepares to leave Afghanistan in 2014,
questions on how this withdrawal will logistically take place have yet
to be answered.
With the road route through Pakistan blocked, and instability and hostility from neighbouring countries making air and rail exits difficult, will it be possible to transport all the weapons and hardware of nearly 100,000 troops from this landlocked country?
Source
With the road route through Pakistan blocked, and instability and hostility from neighbouring countries making air and rail exits difficult, will it be possible to transport all the weapons and hardware of nearly 100,000 troops from this landlocked country?
Source
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
The Strange Allure of the Gold Standard
The Strange Allure of the Gold Standard
Some Republicans want to take the country forward by taking us back — way back – to the gold standard. The Republican party platform, approved on Tuesday, warns against the evils of “easy money and loose credit” and calls for a commission to ”investigate possible ways to set a fixed value for the dollar.” This proposal is clearly a sop to Ron Paul, who made “sound money” one of his big issues during his failed campaign, and has about as much chance of being enacted as Romney has of winning the African-American vote. But the mere fact of its existence is significant.
Almost everyone who is not Ron Paul, or at the very least a Ron Paul fan, thinks the idea of returning to the gold standard is daft. A recent University of Chicago poll of top academic economists found precisely zero who thought that was a good idea. Liberal commenters are aghast that the issue is even being raised. Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has described the gold standard as “an almost comically (and cosmically) bad idea.” On The Atlantic, Matthew O’Brien called the gold standard “the world’s worst economic idea.” He conceded that “[t]here might be worse ideas than this, but they generally involve jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge because everybody else is doing it.”
But aversion for the gold standard is hardly confined to the left. Economist Milton Friedman, the late king of the monetarists, argued that the idea was fundamentally “anti-libertarian because what they mean by a gold standard is a governmentally fixed price for gold.”
(MORE: Is the U.S. Headed for a Double-Dip Recession?)
Yet the gold standard still has its fans. What’s the appeal? True goldbugs have an almost religious faith in the power of the precious metal, and a deep distrust of government. To some, what they call “sound money” is the only moral solution. At a conference organized by the libertarian Cato Institute last fall, speakers denounced our current policy of “fiat money” with the fervor of preachers. As George Melloan observed in the American Spectator,
“the consensus view [as the conference] seemed to be that in these parlous times a return to the gold standard might very well be the only way to restore order in the bawdy house Washington has become.”What worries the goldbug the most is the specter of inflation, which some at the conference referred to as not only harmful but “immoral.” When the government can print money on demand — without having to back up its bucks with real gold — goldbugs warn, the end result can be hyperinflation and economic chaos.
And, as Joe Weisenthal points out on Business Insider, “the ability to create fiat money out of thin air is a stealth form of taxation, because the creation of more dollars diminishes the value of those already in existence.” This makes the gold standard especially enticing to tax-hating conservatives.
(MORE: 10 Questions for Dan Quayle)
The trouble is that the idea of gold as a bulwark against economic chaos is based on illusions. Going on the gold standard would essentially require an instant end to deficits, robbing to government of its ability to fight recessions (and possible depressions) with stimulus money. Moreover, it would link the value of the dollar to the gold supply, leaving our economic future in the hands of gold miners. If miners were to strike, as Noam Scheiber notes in The New Republic,
there [would] be too few dollars relative to the amount of buying and selling going on in the economy. When there are too few dollars, each dollar becomes more valuable, and people start to hoard them. Spending slows and the economy collapses.We all saw what happened when banks started hoarding their dollars during the financial crisis; imagine what might have happened if the rest of us had done the same.
Anyone who thinks the gold standard means stability needs only look at American history to see that theory rebutted, again and again, by the crashes and “panics” of the gilded age and afterwards. As Krugman sardonically notes, “under the gold standard America had no major financial panics other than in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1907, 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933.”
Given all this, it seems likely that any commission tasked with examining the gold standard would return with a conclusion similar to that reached by the Reagan Gold Commission back in 1982, the last time such an exercise was conducted: that a return to the gold standard “does not appear to be a fruitful method for dealing with the continuing problem of inflation.” That’s putting it mildly.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Gaza 'will not be liveable by 2020' - UN report
Gaza 'will not be liveable by 2020' - UN report
Tunnels under the Egyptian border have been a lifeline for Gaza in recent years.
The
Gaza Strip will not be "a liveable place" by 2020 unless action is
taken to improve basic services in the territory, according to a UN
report.
Basic infrastructure in water, health, education and
sanitation "is struggling to keep pace with a growing population",
according to the report.It estimates Gaza's population will rise from 1.6m to 2.1m by 2020.
Israel tightened a blockade on Gaza after the Islamist movement Hamas came to power in the territory in 2007.
Israel says the blockade, which is policed with Egyptian co-operation and has never been fully lifted, is necessary to prevent weapons reaching Hamas.
The UN report estimates Gaza will need double the number of schools and 800 more hospital beds by 2020, and says the territory is already suffering from a housing shortage.
The report also says the coastal aquifer, the territory's only natural source of fresh water, may become unusable by 2016.
Disconnected territory UN officials point to the difficulty of improving the situation given "the closure of the Gaza Strip, violent conflict, and the pressing need for Palestinian reconciliation".
"An urban area cannot survive without being connected," said Maxwell Gaylard, the UN's humanitarian chief in Gaza.
Gaza has no air or sea ports, and the economy is heavily dependent on outside funding and smuggling through tunnels under the Egyptian border.
Even though Gaza has experienced some economic growth in recent years, the report says it "does not seem to be sustainable" and finds that Gazans are worse off now than in the 1990s.
Unemployment was at 29% in 2011 and has risen since then, particularly affecting women and young people.
Traffic through the cross-border tunnels was hit in recent weeks by violence between Egyptian security forces and militants in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, which borders Israel and Gaza.
Source
Monday, August 20, 2012
How Americans view wealth and inequality
How Americans view wealth and inequality
Americans do not understand how wealth is distributed in their society
There
have been lots of questions and discussions recently about inequality
and economists often argue about what is the right level of inequality
to have in society.
But Mike Norton, professor at Harvard Business School, and I
decided to take a different path and we decided to ask people what
inequality they would want.Now, there are lots of ways to ask this question and we used the philosopher John Rawls.
Rawls said that "a just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you'd be willing to enter it in a random place". And it's really a beautiful definition.
He called it a veil of ignorance, because if you're very wealthy, you might want the wealthy people to have lots of money and the poor to have very little; and if you are very poor, you might want the poor to have more money and the wealthy to have less.
But in Rawls' definition, you don't know where you'll end up, you have to consider all the different options and therefore you have to think about what is good for society as a whole.
Incomprehension So, we took the American society and we asked people to imagine it divided into five buckets, the wealthiest 20%, the next 20%, the next, the next and the poorest 20%.
First of all, we asked people: how much wealth do you think is concentrated in each of those buckets?
It turns out people get it very wrong.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Even Americans understand that inequality is not a good idea and principle”
The reality is that the bottom
two buckets together, the bottom 40% of Americans, own 0.3% of the
wealth; 0.3%, almost nothing, whereas the top 20% own about 84% of the
wealth.
And people don't understand it. They don't understand how
much wealth the top have and in particular, they don't understand how
little the bottom has.But then we described to people Rawls' definition, the veil of ignorance, and the idea they could end up anywhere. And we said: What society would you like to create? How much wealth? How would you like to distribute the wealth?
And it turns out people created a society that is much more equal than any society on Earth. It was much more equal than Sweden.
Blind tasting In fact, when we did this experiment another way and we showed people two distributions of wealth, one based on the wealth distribution in the US and the other based on the wealth distribution that is more equal than Sweden, 92% of Americans picked the improved Swedish distribution.
So this suggests to me that when people take a step away from their own position and their own current state, and when people look at society in general terms, in abstract terms, Americans want a much more equal society.
How would you judge a wine if you didn't know where it came from or how much it cost?
And all this makes me wonder, how can it be that in our studies people seem to want such equal society but when you look at the political ideology, people don't seem to want that?
And I think it is a little bit like blind tasting of wine.
When you taste wine and you know the label and you know the price, you are going to be influenced by that. And when you are tasting wine in a blind way, now you don't have anything to base it on and you have to really use your senses.
I think the same thing happens with thoughts about just societies. When we are in the regular world, we are using our current position, our ideology and the labels that politicians give us, and they obscure reality and obscure what we really want.
But Rawls' definition really lets us strip all this away, lets us focus on what is really important and how people actually want something very different from what we have.
The question, of course, is how do we get people to think about this to a higher degree and how do we get them to act on that for a better future?
Dan Ariely is the James B Duke professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University in North Carolina.
Source
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Republicans attack Bachmann Muslim conspiracy letter
Republicans attack Bachmann Muslim conspiracy letter
Huma Abedin worked with Secretary Clinton in the Senate as well
Senior
US Republicans have strongly condemned former presidential candidate
Michele Bachmann for attacks on a long-time aide to Hillary Clinton.
She said Huma Abedin had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and implied she was part of a wider conspiracy.Mrs Bachmann was first criticised by Senator John McCain, then by House Speaker John Boehner and others.
Minnesota congresswoman Mrs Bachmann rose to prominence criticising President Barack Obama in 2008.
She branded the president "un-American" in a TV interview, later becoming a darling of the Tea Party, and founding the Tea Party caucus in the House before launching a presidential bid in 2011.
But her latest statements appear to have angered her party colleagues.
"These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis and no merit, and they need to stop now," veteran Senator John McCain said on Wednesday.'
Mrs Bachmann, along with four other Republican legislators, wrote a letter to the State Department, along with other government agencies, calling for a probe of Muslim Brotherhood influence in the US government, singling out Ms Abedin.
The letter alleged that she had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood through her family.
'McCarthy level' "From everything I do know of [Huma Abedin], she has a sterling character, and I think accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous," House Speaker John Boehner said.
Senator Lindsay Graham told Politico the charges were "ridiculous" and that Ms Abedin "is about as far away from the Muslim Brotherhood view of women and ideology as you possibly could get".
Mrs Bachmann also received calls to apologise from Representative Keith Ellison, a Democrat who is a Muslim. On cable network MSNBC, he rejected her accusations that the letters had been distorted.
In addition, Mrs Bachmann's former campaign manager Ed Rollins wrote a scathing attack on Fox News' website, saying the Minnesota congresswoman "sometimes has difficulty with her facts, but this is downright vicious and reaches the late Senator Joe McCarthy level".
Sen McCarthy became infamous for his false charges in the 1950s that Communist spies had infiltrated the state department.
As of Wednesday, Mrs Bachmann refused to apologise, saying she would "not be silent as this administration appeases our enemies instead of telling the truth about the threats our country faces".
Ms Abedin, who was also Mrs Clinton's aide during her Senate term, is a Muslim of Pakistani descent who was born in Michigan.
She is married to former Representative Anthony Weiner, who resigned in disgrace last year after sending lewd online photos to other women.
"My family and I are grateful to Senator McCain," Mr Weiner said to the Washington Post on Wednesday. "I think he spoke for many Americans in expressing his disgust for the charge against my wife."
Source
Saturday, June 16, 2012
DEAR AMERICA: You Should Be Mad As Hell About This [CHARTS]
Friday, June 8, 2012
The Price of Inequality
The Price of Inequality
Joseph E. Stiglitz
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, has pioneered pathbreaking theories in the fields of economic information, taxation, development, trade, and technical change. As a policymaker, he served on and later chaired President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, and was Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is currently a professor at Columbia University, and has taught at Stanford, Yale, Princeton, and Oxford.He is the author of The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future.
05 June 2012
NEW YORK – America likes to
think of itself as a land of opportunity, and others view it in much the
same light. But, while we can all think of examples of Americans who
rose to the top on their own, what really matters are the statistics: to
what extent do an individual’s life chances depend on the income and
education of his or her parents?
Nowadays,
these numbers show that the American dream is a myth. There is less
equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in
Europe – or, indeed, in any advanced industrial country for which there
are data.
This is one of
the reasons that America has the highest level of inequality of any of
the advanced countries – and its gap with the rest has been widening. In
the “recovery” of 2009-2010, the top 1% of US income earners captured
93% of the income growth. Other inequality indicators – like wealth,
health, and life expectancy – are as bad or even worse. The clear trend
is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing
out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.
It
would be one thing if the high incomes of those at the top were the
result of greater contributions to society, but the Great Recession
showed otherwise: even bankers who had led the global economy, as well
as their own firms, to the brink of ruin, received outsize bonuses.
A
closer look at those at the top reveals a disproportionate role for
rent-seeking: some have obtained their wealth by exercising monopoly
power; others are CEOs who have taken advantage of deficiencies in
corporate governance to extract for themselves an excessive share of
corporate earnings; and still others have used political connections to
benefit from government munificence – either excessively high prices for
what the government buys (drugs), or excessively low prices for what
the government sells (mineral rights).
Likewise,
part of the wealth of those in finance comes from exploiting the poor,
through predatory lending and abusive credit-card practices. Those at
the top, in such cases, are enriched at the direct expense of those at
the bottom.
It might not
be so bad if there were even a grain of truth to trickle-down economics –
the quaint notion that everyone benefits from enriching those at the
top. But most Americans today are worse off – with lower real
(inflation-adjusted) incomes – than they were in 1997, a decade and a
half ago. All of the benefits of growth have gone to the top.
Defenders
of America’s inequality argue that the poor and those in the middle
shouldn’t complain. While they may be getting a smaller share of the pie
than they did in the past, the pie is growing so much, thanks to the
contributions of the rich and superrich, that the size of their
slice is actually larger. The evidence, again, flatly contradicts this.
Indeed, America grew far faster in the decades after World War II, when
it was growing together, than it has since 1980, when it began growing
apart.
This shouldn’t come
as a surprise, once one understands the sources of inequality.
Rent-seeking distorts the economy. Market forces, of course, play a
role, too, but markets are shaped by politics; and, in America, with its
quasi-corrupt system of campaign finance and its revolving doors
between government and industry, politics is shaped by money.
For
example, a bankruptcy law that privileges derivatives over all else,
but does not allow the discharge of student debt, no matter how
inadequate the education provided, enriches bankers and impoverishes
many at the bottom. In a country where money trumps democracy, such
legislation has become predictably frequent.
But
growing inequality is not inevitable. There are market economies that
are doing better, both in terms of both GDP growth and rising living
standards for most citizens. Some are even reducing inequalities.
America
is paying a high price for continuing in the opposite direction.
Inequality leads to lower growth and less efficiency. Lack of
opportunity means that its most valuable asset – its people – is not
being fully used. Many at the bottom, or even in the middle, are not
living up to their potential, because the rich, needing few public
services and worried that a strong government might redistribute income,
use their political influence to cut taxes and curtail government
spending. This leads to underinvestment in infrastructure, education,
and technology, impeding the engines of growth.
The
Great Recession has exacerbated inequality, with cutbacks in basic
social expenditures and with high unemployment putting downward pressure
on wages. Moreover, the United Nations Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System,
investigating the causes of the Great Recession, and the International
Monetary Fund have both warned that inequality leads to economic
instability.
But, most
importantly, America’s inequality is undermining its values and
identity. With inequality reaching such extremes, it is not surprising
that its effects are manifest in every public decision, from the conduct
of monetary policy to budgetary allocations. America has become a
country not “with justice for all,” but rather with favoritism for the
rich and justice for those who can afford it – so evident in the
foreclosure crisis, in which the big banks believed that they were too
big not only to fail, but also to be held accountable.
America
can no longer regard itself as the land of opportunity that it once
was. But it does not have to be this way: it is not too late for the
American dream to be restored.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
How Israel might strike at Iran
How Israel might strike at Iran
An Israeli attack would have to cope with a variety of problems For all the myriad challenges facing Israel over the past decade it is the potential threat from a nuclear-armed Iran that has preoccupied the country's military planners.
It is this that in large part has guided the development of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) over recent years.
The IAF has purchased 125 advanced F-15I and F-16I warplanes, equipped with Israeli avionics and additional fuel tanks - tailor-made for long-range strike missions.
In addition, Israel has bought specialised bunker-busting munitions; developed large, long-endurance, unmanned aircraft; and much of its training has focused on long-range missions.
Israel has a track-record of pre-emptive strikes against nuclear targets in the region.
Israel has a track-record of pre-emptive strikes against nuclear targets In June 1981, Israeli jets bombed the Osirak reactor near the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
More recently, in September 2007, Israeli warplanes attacked a facility in Syria that Israel, the US and many experts believed was a nuclear reactor under construction.
However, a potential strike against Iran would be nothing like the attacks in Iraq and Syria. These were both against single targets, located above ground, and came literally out of the blue.
An Israeli attempt to severely damage Iran's nuclear programme would have to cope with a variety of problems, including range, the multiplicity of targets, and the nature of those targets.
Many of these problems are daunting in themselves, but when put together, they only compound the difficulties facing Israeli military planners.
How to get there?For a start it is a very long way from Israel to Iran. As a rough estimate many of the potential targets are some 1,500km (930 miles) to 1,800km (1,120 miles) from Israeli bases. Israeli warplanes have to get to Iran and, equally important, get back.
At least three routes are possible.
- There is the northern one where Israeli jets would fly north and then east along the borders between Turkey and Syria, and then Turkey and Iraq
- The central, more likely route would take Israeli warplanes over Iraq. With the US military gone, the Iraqi authorities are far less able to monitor and control their air space, effectively opening a door to an Israeli incursion
- The third, southern route would take Israeli jets over Saudi air space. Would the Saudis turn a blind eye to such a move given their own concerns about Iran's nuclear programme? Could this route be used by Israeli aircraft on the return leg of their journey? We just do not know
What we do know, given the range, is that Israeli aircraft will have to be topped up with fuel en route.
Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, says that "air-to-air refuelling will be critical".
Israel is believed to have between eight and 10 large tankers based on the Boeing 707 airframe "Israeli aircraft," he says, "need not just to get in and out of Iranian air space; they need to have enough fuel to provide time over their targets and they need sufficient fuel to cover any contingencies that might arise during the mission."
The initial tanking, Mr Barrie says, might be done over the Mediterranean or even in Israeli airspace. "One option," he notes, "would be to take off with a full bomb load and drop tanks containing additional fuel; to climb to cruising altitude and then at this point to replenish their tanks, before setting course for their targets in Iran."
Israel is believed to have between eight and 10 large tankers based on the commercial Boeing 707 airframe, but experts believe that tanking capacity will prove one of the limiting factors in the scope of any operation.
What targets to hit?The problems of range, the nature of some of the targets, and the availability of tanker aircraft will determine the nature and scope of any Israeli operation.
Continue reading the main story 
Iran nuclear sites
Natanz - Uranium enrichment plant
Fordo, near Qom - Uranium enrichment plant
Arak (pictured) - Heavy water plant
Isfahan - Uranium conversion plant
Parchin - Military site
Douglas Barrie, of the IISS, says that "Israeli planners will be looking for where they can do most damage with the limited number of platforms at their disposal".
"They'll be asking where the main choke points are in the Iranian programme. Clearly, striking enrichment facilities makes a lot of sense from a military point of view," he adds.
So the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, south of Tehran, and Fordo, near the holy city of Qom, would almost certainly be prominent on the target list.
The heavy-water production plant and heavy-water reactor under construction at Arak, in the west, might also figure, as would the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan.
It is unclear whether Israel would have the capacity to strike a range of other targets associated with Iran's missile programmes and explosives testing.
But this target list raises another set of problems. The enrichment facilities at Natanz are underground and the new plant at Fordo is buried deeply into the side of a mountain.
Can Israel destroy buried targets?For an attack like this, says Douglas Barrie, you need good intelligence information. "You need to know", he says, "about the geography of the target site; its geology; the nature of the earth; and the details of the design and construction of any buried reinforced concrete chambers."
"You can assume," he asserts, "that the Americans and the Israelis have been watching these sites closely over time."
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Robert Hewson IHS Jane's Air-Launched WeaponsThe target would have to be attacked from relatively close range, meaning any attacking force will have to fight its way in and out of heavily-contested airspace”
To reach buried targets you need special kinds of munitions. Deeply-buried facilities are not exclusive to the Middle East. There is a kind of race between the diggers and the weapons designers and it is one where the Americans have considerable experience.
The main weapon in Israel's arsenal is the US-supplied GBU-28. This is a 5,000lb (2,268kg) laser-guided weapon with a special penetrating warhead. For an assessment of its capabilities I turned to Robert Hewson, the editor of IHS Jane's Air-Launched Weapons.
"The GBU-28," he told me, "is the largest penetrating weapon available for a tactical aircraft and, since it was first used by the US in 1991, it has been improved with better warheads and more accurate guidance.
"However, Israel's use of this weapon would be hindered by several key operational factors. Realistically, the F-15I - the only delivery platform - can carry only one bomb, so a sizeable attack force would be required - demanding tanker and other support assets that Israel does not have in large numbers.
"The target would have to be attacked from relatively close range, meaning any attacking force will have to fight its way in and out of heavily-contested airspace."
Furthermore, he says that "very accurate targeting data is required to use a weapon like GBU-28 to best effect".
"The potential for success of a GBU-28 attack is not determined by the 'book' performance of the weapon alone."
Of course, the great unknown question is how capable these weapons would be against buried Iranian enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo.
Continue reading the main story 
Israel's 'Bunker Buster' bomb
1. The bombs are carried by Israeli F-15Is - but only one per aircraft, which would mean a large attack force for multiple attempts on numerous targets
2. Bomb is released almost vertically over the target, and guided by lasers
3. The bombs can penetrate up to 6m of concrete or about 30.5m of earth before detonating the 4,400lb warhead
Mr Hewson says that the GBU-28 is "effective against any hardened or deeply buried target - up to a point".
"For a weapon like the GBU-28, velocity and angle of impact determine the penetrating effect, so the ideal drop is made from high altitude at maximum speed and hits the target at a near vertical angle," he explains.
"This is less easy to do against a cave or mountainside, so the weapon will be less effective - but still more effective than pretty much any other available munitions."
Indeed, as Douglas Barrie notes, one weapon might be insufficient.
"You could", he says, "attempt to 'dig your way in' using several weapons on the same impact area to try to get through the soil, rock and concrete. Or you could try to block access to the facility by destroying tunnel entrances.
"In addition," he says, "all of these facilities are power hungry, so you could attempt to destroy power supplies and any buried cabling.
"The aim would be to present the Iranians with a compound problem of blocked entrances, no power and collapsed underground chambers."
Does Israel have other military options?So far we have discussed only the known elements of Israel's capabilities, mainly US-supplied aircraft and munitions. But Israel has a hugely advanced aerospace and electronics industry of its own and this may well have produced systems relevant for an attack against Iran.
The Eitan, the Israeli Air Force's latest generation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Douglas Barrie says that there is much about Israel's capabilities, especially its home-grown technology, that we do not know.
"Israel's long-range Heron or Eitan drone could be used to gather an assessment of the damage done by any strikes, but perhaps could also be put to use helping to spoof air defences," he adds.
"Indeed, this kind of deception or cyber-operation will likely be an integral part of the mission with the aim of blinding radars or generating a false picture of what was going on."
What about Iran's air defences?Iran's air defences are largely Russian-supplied systems familiar to Israeli pilots, though Iran also deploys the US-built Hawk system dating back to the days of the Shah.
Continue reading the main story 
Iran's defences
Surface-to-air missiles - Hawk system (pictured)
For high altitude targets - SA-5 or S-200
For low level targets - Tor-M1/SA-15 Gauntlet
Long-range systems - S-300
Iranian Air Force - Russian-built Mig-29s, US-built F-14 Tomcats
Some of its most capable defences are Russian SA-5 missiles intended to target high-altitude threats, while it also deploys the mobile Tor-M1/SA-15 Gauntlet system optimised to engage targets at lower level.
Russia has consistently refused to supply Iran with the much more capable S-300 long-range system, though the Iranians claim to have procured some batteries elsewhere.
Iran's surface-to-air missile force may be old but still represents a threat. Look at how much effort Nato and the US put into taking down Libya's similar vintage air defences last year.
Israel will not have the time or the resources to embark upon this kind of protracted air campaign and thus the electronic element of any strike to suppress Iranian defences is likely to be as important as the actual dropping of weapons.
Israel's small submarine force could potentially play a role here too. Douglas Barrie says that "there must be a reasonable assumption that Israel has an operational sea-launched cruise missile capability based upon their German-built Dolphin submarines".
Israel's small submarine force could play a role "These could be used to go after older but capable SA-5 air defence sites and big search and surveillance radars."
But, he notes: "Adding a naval dimension complicates the co-ordination of any attack."
Iran's air force is seen by experts as being totally outclassed by its Israeli counterpart.
It has a small number of US-built F-14 Tomcat fighters and a significant number of relatively more modern Russian-supplied MiG-29s.
But the potential threat from Iranian aircraft again complicates Israeli planning and any air-to-air combat might place additional strains on the limited fuel supplies carried by the attacking aircraft.
Would an Israeli strike succeed?Most experts agree that Israel could hit multiple targets in Iran and do considerable damage to its nuclear programme. They would, however, do much less damage than a full-scale US attack using all of the resources at Washington's disposal.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Douglas Barrie International Institute for Strategic StudiesEven if successful, it would only delay Iran's nuclear programme”
The Israelis would be operating at the very limits of their capabilities. "If they pulled it off," says Douglas Barrie, "it would be an impressive display of power projection against a difficult and dispersed set of targets."
Only a small number of air forces in the world, he notes, could mount such an operation. But, Mr Barrie stresses: "Even if successful, it would only delay Iran's nuclear programme."
It is a point echoed by IHS Jane's Robert Hewson.
"Israel does not have the mass of forces and will not be given the operational freedom [by Iran] required to destroy Iran's nuclear complex," he says. "If you bury enough stuff deep enough, enough of it will survive. Any Israeli attack can only damage and possibly not even slow the Iranian effort.
"The consequences of such an attack would be dire and global. It is impossible to see any up-side to this venture."
That's a view shared for now by Israel's most important ally.
Only a few days ago, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of staff, Gen Martin Dempsey, said that an Israeli attack would not be prudent.
Such a strike, he said, "would be destabilising and would not achieve their long-term objectives".
However Israel's calculus is very different. Knowing all their operational limitations, might they launch such an operation anyway?
What can political donors learn from history?
What can political donors learn from history?
Adelson could probably finance an entire presidential campaign on his own, Forbes Magazine says A billionaire Las Vegas casino magnate has said he might donate $100m (£64m) to support Republican Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign. He joins history's long list of great - and ignominious - political money men.
Sheldon Adelson, who is worth an estimated $25bn, is almost single-handedly responsible for keeping Mr Gingrich's bid for the Republican nomination afloat, analysts say.
He and his wife have already donated $10m to a nominally independent political fund that has bought adverts for the former House speaker's campaign.
"What scares me is the continuation of the socialist-style economy we've been experiencing for almost four years," Mr Adelson told Forbes Magazine.
"That scares me because the redistribution of wealth is the path to more socialism, and to more of the government controlling people's lives."
Mr Adelson's big contributions place him among a new generation of US political money men freed to donate millions by recent Supreme Court decisions that overturned campaign finance restrictions.
But he is part of a long tradition - stretching back into antiquity - of wealthy men who used their cash to buy political influence.
Here are some lessons he could heed:
Lesson 1: Patronage can yield profits
Crassus, seated, enabled Caesar's rise by backing his debts and funding his campaign for consul Known to historian Plutarch as "the richest of the Romans", Marcus Crassus got even richer by staking Julius Caesar's military career and his later election as Roman consul.
"We never would have heard of Caesar without Crassus," says Philip Freeman, chairman of the classics department at Luther College in the US state of Iowa and author of a recent biography of Caesar.
Born in a household of relatively modest means, Crassus aligned himself with Roman dictator Sulla and grew rich by taking property Sulla had expropriated from his own political enemies.
He made "the public calamities his greatest source of revenue", Plutarch wrote, and also made lots of money as a contract tax collector.
In 61BC, Caesar was named to a military post in Spain, but his creditors sought to prevent him from leaving Rome.
Crassus guaranteed his debts - to the sum of about $23m (£14.6m) in 2012 figures, by Prof Freeman's calculation.
Two years later, Caesar ran for election as consul, the highest political office in the Roman republic. Crassus funded his campaign, which depended on officially condemned but widespread vote-buying, Freeman says.
In return, Caesar pushed through legislation giving the contract tax collectors a break in the amount of money they had to return to the central government.
"It's like if Mr Gingrich got to be president and passed a bill making casinos tax exempt - for his benefactor back in Las Vegas," says Prof Freeman.
"It was a great financial play for Crassus purely in monetary terms."
Lesson 2: Have an exit strategy
Sir William de la Pole of Hull was a 14th-Century wine importer, wool merchant and financier who lent staggering sums of money to King Edward III to finance his lavish lifestyle and his wars in France and Scotland.
"There's no doubt that Pole did acquire a great deal of wealth, and wealth brought him social status," says Jonathan Sumption, a historian and jurist who has written three volumes about The Hundred Years War.
"His sons went on to become Earls of Suffolk, noblemen, which nobody would have accused William of being. You couldn't do much better than that. This was simply the normal way in which money was converted into status."
Pole's involvement with the crown began in earnest in 1327, when he lent Edward III £2,001 (about £1.4m in today's money, according to Measuringworth.com, a calculator devised by economists at the University of Illinois at Chicago) to hire mercenaries to fight the Scots.
In 1336-1337, Edward III sought to exploit the wool industry to finance the start of the Hundred Years War with France.
Pole organised other wool growers into the Wool Company, in effect purchasing from Edward III the right to export wool on privileged terms, Mr Sumption says.
Between June 1338 and October 1339, he lent the crown £111,000 (more than £86m in 2012 figures).
For Pole himself, the story did not end well.
Edward III grew resentful at his dependence on Pole and imprisoned him for two years. He was released because the king again needed his help raising money.
Edward defaulted on his debts because the wars cost more than his tax revenue, Mr Sumption says, and Pole and his partners went bust.
"Lending to the king was a mug's game," Mr Sumption says. "The problem was that if you didn't you were likely to be ruined anyway."
Lesson 3: The stakes are high
When Seymour's political intrigue failed, he lost more than his shirt When Edward VI ascended to the throne in 1547 at the age nine, members of the Tudor court began jockeying for position and influence.
Two of the top intriguers were his uncles Edward and Thomas Seymour.
Edward Seymour managed to have himself declared Lord Protector of the Realm, Governor of the King's Person and later Duke of Somerset, making him the most powerful man in the court.
But Thomas Seymour, who had been well placed under Henry VII, found himself increasingly frozen out.
Among his several schemes to gain influence over the boy king, Seymour began supplying him with pocket money, telling him "you are a beggarly king, you have no money to play or to give".
Edward VI, who had reportedly complained to Seymour that Somerset "deals very hardly with me and keeps me so straight that I cannot have money at my will", wanted the cash to pay for musicians in his court and to reward his personal servants, says John Cooper, a lecturer in early modern history at the University of York.
Seymour gave the king £188 (about £70,400 in today's value), funnelled in part through Edward's personal servants and his tutor.
"It's a political gamble that fails very dramatically," Mr Cooper says.
When Somerset found out about that and other intrigues (Seymour also flirted with the teenaged Princess Elizabeth, whom he may have hoped to marry), he had him arrested and charged with treason.
He was beheaded at the Tower of London.
On hearing of his execution, Elizabeth said: "This day died a man with much wit, and very little judgment."
Lesson 4: Be prepared to lose big
Among the liberals incensed about the Vietnam war in the late 1960s and early 1970s was Stewart Mott, the black-sheep son of a wealthy Detroit car manufacturing family.
Mott, who described himself as an "avant-garde philanthropist", donated more than $200,000 to the 1968 presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy, and about $400,000 in 1972 to George McGovern, the Democratic challenger to President Richard Nixon, according to Mr Corrado, the campaign finance expert.
His big contributions in part led Congress to enact strict limits on direct contributions to political campaigns that remain in effect to this day (though giving to independent committees are unlimited).
"He identified with their politics, and whatever one means by progressive, he was it," says Victor Navasky, professor of journalism at Columbia University.
"He cared about them, and he hoped to help them attain the White House."
Despite Mott's seed money, Mr McGovern suffered one of the greatest political defeats in American history, winning only the state of Massachusetts and Washington DC.
Mott's support for liberal candidates earned him a spot on Nixon's infamous enemies list. Nixon aide Chuck Colson listed him as "nothing but big money for radic-lib candidates".
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Surprise in store for Republican race? Surprise in store for Republican race?
Surprise in store for Republican race?
Will there be a hot political night this summer in Florida's Tampa?
The Republican party's rolling roadshow of internal democracy known as the primaries has many surreal aspects.
One of the oddest is that it is all about winning votes for a contest that no-one thinks is going to happen.
Except now things are so feverish that there is chatter that the vote might actually take place.
If Mitt Romney loses the Michigan primary on 28 February, that talk will reach a new and shriller pitch.
There will be desperate calls for a new candidate to enter the race. One anonymous but apparently senior senator has told ABC that he will lead the charge.
That would inevitably lead to a political brawl in Florida's summer heat.
Let me explain.
The state-by-state caucus and primary contests are all about winning delegates to vote at the Republican Convention in Tampa, Florida, in August. That is in theory.
In practice it hasn't actually reached a vote since 1972, although that contest was pretty sewn up.
But further in the past, conventions were nail-biting affairs with all the decorum of a wild-west cattle sale.
Desperate and sweaty men pace around each other in hotel suites, threatening and tempting by turns.
City and state power brokers dangled "their" delegates, holding out for more bourbon and bigger bribes.
In every race since then it has operated on a "it's-a-knockout" principle.
The convention hasn't had to choose because long before the summer one candidate has emerged as a clear winner, and the others have dropped out.
This time it is possible that neither Mitt Romney, nor Rick Santorum, nor Newt Gingrich nor Ron Paul will have enough votes to look like a clear winner.
Equally, none may look so much like a loser that they are forced out. That is partly down to the personalities and dynamics this time around.
But it is also compounded because the Republicans have moved from "winner takes all" to "proportional representation". So states divide up their delegates between the candidates making a knockout victory less likely.
There's also the separate, but linked, theory that if none of them looks like a winner someone else, like Jeb Bush, will emerge and take them all on.
This is hard to do, playing by the rule book, but anything is possible if the political will is there.
Wise heads now point out that every four years someone will write up the "brokered convention" story, but it doesn't happen.
This is true. But it is not a prediction.
In every British election I have covered, there has been a flurry when someone talks up the chances of a coalition with the Lib-Dems, or at least highlighted the dilemma for the party.
In the 20 years I reported on British politics it never happened. Then in 2010 it did.
There is very little smart money on a Florida showdown.
But it isn't at all obvious how, and when, this race will end. I wouldn't rule out the answer being a hot night in Tampa.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Pakistan helping Afghan Taliban - Nato
Pakistan helping Afghan Taliban - Nato
The report comes at a sensitive time in Pakistan-Nato relations
The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC.
The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people.
A BBC correspondent says the report is painful reading for international forces and the Afghan government.
A Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman called the accusations "ridiculous".
"We are committed to non-interference in Afghanistan and expect all other states to strictly adhere to this principle," Abdul Basit told the BBC.
"A stable and peaceful Afghanistan is in our own interests. We cannot indulge in any activity which takes us away from achieving that objective," he added.
The report alleges that Pakistan knows the locations of senior Taliban leaders.
"We have long been concerned about ties between elements of the ISI [Pakistan's intelligence service] and some extremist networks," said US Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby, adding that the US Defence Department had not yet seen the report.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar is currently in Kabul for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
'Informational' Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Senior al-Qaeda detainee, quoted by the reportThe Taliban are not Islam - the Taliban are Islamabad”
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says the report - on the state of the Taliban - fully exposes for the first time the relationship between the ISI and the Taliban.
The report is based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians.
It notes: "Pakistan's manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly".
It says that Pakistan is aware of the locations of senior Taliban leaders.
Continue reading the main story 
Analysis
Pakistan is finding it harder to convince outsiders it is not helping the Afghan Taliban and giving safe haven to its leaders.
In effect, the accusation is that Pakistan is betting on the insurgents being the strongest power in Afghanistan and most likely ally once Nato leaves - something Islamabad of course strenuously denies.
The leak of this report comes at a particularly sensitive time. Pakistan is already blocking the supply route to coalition forces in Afghanistan, following a Nato attack in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed.
With increasing pressure being heaped on Pakistan, public support here for formally ending co-operation with the West simply grows.
"Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad," it said.
It quotes a senior al-Qaeda detainee as saying: "Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can't [expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them watching."
"The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad."
Our correspondent says the report seems to suggest that the Taliban feel trapped by ISI control and fear they will never escape its influence.
However, it states: "As this document is derived directly from insurgents it should be considered informational and not necessarily analytical."
Despite Nato's strategy to secure the country with Afghan forces, the secret document details widespread collaboration between the insurgents and Afghan police and military.
Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan, said the document was "a classified internal document that is not meant to be released to the public".
"It is a matter of policy that documents that are classified are not discussed under any circumstances," he said.
The report also depicts the depth of continuing support among the Afghan population for the Taliban, our correspondent says.
It paints a picture of al-Qaeda's influence diminishing but the Taliban's influence increasing, he adds.
Taliban influence
Villagers often prefer the Taliban to "corrupt" Afghan authorities, the report alleges In a damning conclusion, the document says that in the last year there has been unprecedented interest, even from members of the Afghan government, in joining the Taliban cause.
It adds: "Afghan civilians frequently prefer Taliban governance over the Afghan government, usually as a result of government corruption."
The report has evidence that the Taliban are purposely hastening Nato's withdrawal by deliberately reducing their attacks in some areas and then initiating a comprehensive hearts-and-minds campaign.
It says that in areas where Isaf has withdrawn, Taliban influence has increased, often with little or no resistance from government security forces. And in many cases, with the active help of the Afghan police and army.
When foreign soldiers leave, Afghan security forces are expected to take control.
The report says that surrender is far from their collective mindset.
"For the moment, they believe that continuing the fight and expanding Taliban governance are their only viable courses of action," it adds.
According to the report, rifles, pistols and heavy weapons have been sold by Afghan security forces in bazaars in Pakistan.
The report adds that Taliban members "do not receive salaries or other financial incentives for their work", but their operations are funded by the narcotics trade and they frequently take a cut from the trade.
Their main revenue, though, is from donations, and they travel around the country from door to door making no secret of their affliation, it says.
Follow BBC Kabul correspondent Quentin Sommerville on Twitter @mrsommerville
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Santorum Hits Gingrich at Republican Presidential Debate
Santorum Hits Gingrich at Republican Presidential Debate
Thursday, January 19, 2012
The Big Winner of the Great Recession Is … Large Corporations
The Big Winner of the Great Recession Is …
The recent recession has been the most brutal since the Great Depression and has caused enormous hardship for many American families, as well as immense financial problems for governments around the world. As a result, it’s hard to see the downturn that began at the end of 2007 as anything but a catastrophe. With household incomes generally lower and poverty rates significantly higher than they were 10 years ago, it’s easy to feel that everything is falling apart. But amid the wreckage, there are some success stories that are vitally important for the recovery and the future prosperity of America.
The big winners of the recent Great Recession have been the largest U.S. corporations. This isn’t simply because they are greedy and rapacious, or because they can steamroller everything in their path. Rather, it reflects the fact that they are in a position to use the recession as a positive opportunity to restructure and become more efficient, while government, small businesses and most American households are forced by circumstances to play defense.
In every economic system, there have to be occasional corrective phases, where inefficient and uncompetitive businesses and services are eliminated, costs are lowered, and ground is cleared for new growth. But not every part of the economy is equally well positioned to do this. Government usually has to worry first about unemployment. It therefore tries to preserve current jobs and existing businesses, rather than focusing on restructuring government services to make them more effective or reforming social programs to lower their long-term costs. Most households and many small businesses give top priority to immediate concerns in a recession, because they have to respond to the short-term pain rather than the potential for long-term gain.
(More: What S&P’s Downgrades Mean for the Euro’s Future)
The organizations that have the resources to think about the future and position themselves accordingly are typically the largest corporations. Sure, some big companies have failed – most notably banks – but most have been able to take advantage of reduced labor costs and low interest rates to boost their productivity at the same time that they are strengthening their balance sheets. Consider the following:
Labor costs are down while productivity is up. The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that quarterly productivity in manufacturing rose 5%, while unit labor costs declined 5.1%. Basically, as companies shut down their least successful business operations, they are left with the most efficient and productive ones. Moreover, wages are not keeping pace with inflation right now. In fact, adjusted for inflation, they are down 2.3% from a year ago, the biggest such decline since 1948. The overall result is that companies are getting more from their workers without having to pay them more.
Top companies are able to refinance their debt at low interest rates. The Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing has made plenty of money available at low interest rates. Giant corporations with excellent credit ratings can therefore restructure their balance sheets any way they want – boosting cash on hand or locking in long-term borrowing exceptionally cheaply. As a result, the value of corporate balance sheets has risen by 28% since late 2009. Much of the needed refinancing has now been completed, although some companies, such as GM and Ford, still have big bond offerings coming up.
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Money is rolling in. Higher productivity, moderate labor costs and restructured balance sheets combine to make companies more profitable. In fact, corporate profits are now at a peak in dollar terms and close to an all-time high as a percentage of GDP. Overall, profits have more than doubled since 2000, while stock prices are actually lower than they were 12 years ago. What that means is that lots of great stocks are now cheap by historical standards.
Corporate cash holdings are immense. Nonfinancial companies are taking in hundreds of billions of dollars more than they need to fund current operations. Total cash reserves at U.S. corporations total more than $2 trillion, close to a 50-year high in relative terms. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the companies with lots more cash on hand than they need are paying ample dividends. Oil giant Chevron, with $20 billion in cash, now offers a 3.1% yield. Chipmaker Intel, with $15 billion, now pays 3.3%. And health-care conglomerate Johnson & Johnson, with $30 billion, yields 3.5%. (I give a longer list of companies that are likely to grow dividends here.)
In part, these huge cash reserves reflect the uncertainty corporate executives feel about whether to expand right now. Demand is still soft, government policy on taxes and regulations is confused, and risks of a currency collapse in Europe are impossible to gauge. As a result, many U.S. companies are simply hunkering down and hanging onto their money until the picture gets clearer.
There’s no guarantee, of course, that the U.S. economy will continue to get better. Recent small improvements could suddenly be reversed – for example, by upheaval in Europe that leads to a worldwide double-dip recession. But at least most U.S. businesses are in better shape than they were a couple of years ago. And once a sustainable recovery does get under way, the companies that have been able to make the most of the recession’s opportunities are likely to prosper in the years to come.
North Korea’s Runaway Sushi Chef Remembers Kim Jong Un
North Korea’s Runaway Sushi Chef Remembers Kim Jong Un
Kenji Fujimoto is easy to recognize, if only because of the trademark disguise he has been wearing for the past decade or so. The long-time sushi chef to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, Fujimoto has been laying low since returning to his native Japan in 2001, moving house frequently and wearing a variety of head gear and dark sunglasses to avoid any unwanted attention. Indeed, Kenji Fujimoto’s name is not actually Kenji Fujimoto: that is the nom de plume he has been writing under since his first book, I Was Kim Jong Il’s Chef was published in 2003.
Despite his efforts, Fujimoto does not exactly blend in with the black-clad office crowd making their way home in the purplish light of a Tokyo dusk. Sporting a silver goatee, a blue scarf wrapped snugly around his skull and blue-tinted sunglasses, the middle-aged chef-turned-author walks past Tokyo Station with a battered brown leather briefcase in hand. In a country fixated on the behavior of its secretive nuclear-armed neighbor, Fujimoto’s years of proximity to North Korea’s first family have gained him a regular spot on Japanese television, particularly in the month since the death of the Kim Jong Il on Dec. 17.
(READ: After Kim Jong Il — a look at the Kim family tree.)
Why? Fujimoto is one of the few people outside the regime’s inner circle to have been tight with the Great Leader’s heir apparent, Kim Jong Un. So tight, he says, that he insisted to his publisher that his fourth book, Successor of the North: Kim Jong Un be published on Oct. 10, 2010 – the day he predicted, through a complicated formula having to do with Kim Jong Il’s penchant for baccarat and the number 9, that Kim would name his youngest son as the next leader of North Korea.
The announcement was made to the world that day, but Fujimoto says it was years earlier, on Jong Un’s 9th birthday, that the boy’s future came into focus. “Kim Jong Il gave him a song as a birthday gift,” he says over dinner at a Sichuan restaurant in central Tokyo. The song, whose title translates as “Sound of Footsteps,” made it clear that Jong-Un, not either of his older brothers, was the chosen one.
Fujimoto, who first moved to North Korea in 1982 and started working for Kim Jong Il in 1988, did not meet Jong Un until the boy was 7. Until then, he says, neither he nor the majority of the officials in Kim Jong Il’s entourage had even seen his two younger sons, Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Chul. (Fujimoto has never met Kim’s eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, who is estranged from his family and lives in Macau.) Their initial greeting was tense, the former chef recalls. He put out his hand, but the young Jong Un left him hanging, staring sharply up at him as if he were “one of the notorious Japanese Imperial soldiers.” Eventually, at the urging of his father, Jong Un gave Fujimoto a limp handshake.
Nevertheless, not long after, Fujimoto was chosen to be one of the boys’ regular companions, and would play with the brothers and other kids in the family every day. From that early age, he says, “Jong Un was always the leader. He decided what to play. He always spoke for the group.” And Jong Chul, who Fujimoto describes as having a “warm heart” and being “non-aggressive,” was happy to let his younger brother take the lead. “If I was their father, I would have chosen Kim Jong Un too,” he says.
Fujimoto has high hopes for the young leader’s tenure in one of the world’s most isolated and impoverished nations. In Successor of the North: Kim Jong Un, he describes how the teenager would, unbeknownst to his father, come to Fujimoto’s room to bum an Yves Saint Laurent cigarette from the chef. (The book includes a small photograph of one of the cigarette packs.) During one of these clandestine smoke breaks, Jong Un reportedly wondered aloud how, while he was enjoying rollerblading and horseback riding on the family compound , the North Korean people were faring. “He can lead North Korea in a good direction,” Fujimoto says. “What his grandfather Kim Il Sung couldn’t do, and what his father Kim Jong Il couldn’t do, will be done by Kim Jong Un… I believe he will choose a path of change and reform.” When asked about reports that he would closely follow the policy of his father, Fujimoto says, flatly, “You are wrong.”
While Fujimoto stops short of calling Jong Un bright — “he’s not the intelligent type,” he says — he clearly had a soft spot for the kid. Under increasing state surveillance, the chef decided to leave North Korea permanently in 2001. The day before, he had a bad fall off a horse. Jong Un, who was 18 at the time, called to check on him. He insisted his childhood buddy come to a nearby guesthouse in Pyongyang where he and some friends were having a get together. “I ran over there,” recalls Fujimoto, and saw that Jong Un was drinking a bottle of expensive vodka with some of his favorite basketball players from the national team. Jong Un knew Fujimoto was leaving for Japan the next day, as he regularly did to get supplies for his kitchen. “You’re coming back, right?’” Fujimoto says he asked. He told him he would. “Then he ordered me, ‘Come back.’”
Fujimoto tears up at the recollection. “I lied to him,” he says, wiping at his eyes under his glasses. “I had already made up my mind to stay in Japan… Whenever I think about that it makes me cry.” He did, however, get a last souvenir: Kim Jong Un had been looking through old photos at the guesthouse with his friends, and gave Fujimoto an old black and white photo of himself as a young boy. Jong Un told him that he could have it, but he “could never show it to the public.” The photo – a grainy headshot of a smiling Un – graces the cover of Fujimoto’s last book.
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