Arctic Sediments Show That 20th Century Warming Is Unlike Natural Variation

PNAS paper indicates that changes since the middle of the 20th century are unprecedented

Since the mid-20th century, changes seen in Arctic sediments retrieved by UB geologist Jason Briner and his colleagues, are unprecedented in the last 200,000 years.

Contact

Ellen Goldbaum

goldbaum@buffalo.edu

716-645-4605

Release Date: October 19, 2009

Buffalo, N.Y. – The possibility that climate change might simply be a natural variation like others that have occurred throughout geologic time is dimming, according to evidence in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper published today.

The research reveals that sediments retrieved by University at Buffalo geologists from a remote Arctic lake are unlike those seen during previous warming episodes.

The $200,000 Insult: Come to Chicago

By Dean Baker - October 22, 2009, 10:03AM

Kenneth Feinberg, President Obama's compensation czar for bailed out banks, appears to have taken some genuine steps to rein in excessive executive compensation at the basket case banks that received the most TARP money. He cut cash salaries by 90 percent in some cases and reduced overall compensation for the top executives at the seven institutions that received the most government money.

This is a good first step, but it is only a first step. The pay caps involve only a relatively small number of people in an industry where hugely bloated salaries are the norm. Even in these cases it is too early to know that the pay caps will actually prove to be binding. After all, Wall Street's main craft is evading regulations and taxes. It is entirely possible that those clever Wall Street boys will find a way to get around whatever pay restrictions Mr. Feinberg puts in place.

Paul Krugman: The Chinese Disconnect

Senior monetary officials usually talk in code. So when Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, spoke recently about Asia, international imbalances and the financial crisis, he didn’t specifically criticize China’s outrageous currency policy.

But he didn’t have to: everyone got the subtext. China’s bad behavior is posing a growing threat to the rest of the world economy. The only question now is what the world — and, in particular, the United States — will do about it.

Some background: The value of China’s currency, unlike, say, the value of the British pound, isn’t determined by supply and demand. Instead, Chinese authorities enforced that target by buying or selling their currency in the foreign exchange market — a policy made possible by restrictions on the ability of private investors to move their money either into or out of the country.

McCain introduces bill to block Net neutrality

Republican strategy is to paint Net neutrality as government 'control' of Internet

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) introduced a bill in the Senate on Thursday that would effectively allow Internet service providers to slow down or block Internet content or applications of their choosing.

The move came the same day as the federal government decided to move forward on an official Net neutrality policy that would prevent ISPs from making those types of decisions.

The Organic Revolution: How We Can Stop Global Warming

by Ronnie Cummins

"Let us not talk falsely now, for the hour is getting late."

Bob Dylan, "All Along the Watchtower"

* * *

Beyond the gloom and doom of the climate crisis, there lies a powerful and regenerative grassroots solution: organic food, farming, and ranching. Even as politicians and the powerful fossil fuel lobby drag their heels and refuse to acknowledge that we have about ten years left of "business as usual" before we irreversibly destroy the climate and ourselves, there is a powerful, though largely unrecognized, life-force spreading its roots underground.

Millions of organic farmers, ranchers, conservationists, and backyard gardeners (supported by millions of organic consumers) are demonstrating that we can build a healthy alternative to industrial agriculture and Food Inc. Our growing organic movement is proving that we can not only feed the world with healthy food, but also reverse global warming, by capturing and sequestering billions of tons of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases in the soil, through plant photosynthesis, composting, cover crops, rotational grazing, wetlands preservation, and reforestation.

Wall Street's Naked Swindle

A scheme to flood the market with counterfeit stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers — and the feds have yet to bust the culprits

MATT TAIBBI

Posted Oct 14, 2009 9:30 AM

On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — "like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets," according to one financial analyst.

But what's even crazier is that the bet paid.

Big meat tries to spin new antibiotics report

The American Academy of Microbiologists (“the world’s oldest and largest life science organization”), just issued a major report on antibiotic resistance which, among many recommendations, calls for decreasing or eliminating the use of antibiotics in animal production. The report adds more support for the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), Rep. Louise Slaughter’s (D-N.Y.) bill before Congress that would end sub-therapeutic doses on antibiotics for livestock.

Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act

S. 909, H.R. 1913

Hate Crimes in America

Every hour, a crime motivated by the perpetrator’s bias against the victim occurs in the United States. These hate crimes terrorize whole communities by making members of certain classes - whether racial minorities, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, religious minorities or people who are perceived to be members of these groups - afraid to live in certain places and be free to move about in their community and across the country.

Because perpetrators commit hate crimes to send a message and express anger or hatred for the victim, they often involve more violent acts than it takes to subdue or incapacitate the victim. Sometimes they involve mutilation, torture or holding the victim captive, such as in a car trunk.

Johann Hari: The three fallacies that have driven the war in Afghanistan

Case for escalating the war is based on premises that turn to dust on inspection

Wednesday, 21 October 2009

Is Barack Obama about to drive his Presidency into a bloody ditch strewn with corpses? The President is expected any day now to announce his decision about the future of the war in Afghanistan. He knows US and British troops have now been stationed in the hell-mouth of Helmand longer than the First and Second World Wars combined – yet the mutterings from the marble halls of Washington DC suggest he may order a troop escalation.

Obama has to decide now whether to side with the American people and the Afghan people calling for a rapid reduction in US force, or with a small military clique demanding a ramping-up of the conflict. The populations of both countries are in close agreement. The latest Washington Post poll shows that 51 per cent of Americans say the war is "not worth fighting" and that ending the foreign occupation will "reduce terrorism". Only 27 per cent disagree. At the other end of the gun-barrel, 77 per cent of Afghans in the latest BBC poll say the on-going US air strikes are "unacceptable", and the US troops should only remain if they are going to provide reconstruction assistance rather than bombs.

Fate of White House Counsel Is in Doubt

By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — Every morning, Gregory B. Craig, the White House counsel, sits at the conference table of the Roosevelt Room with the rest of the president’s senior staff members.

His colleagues greet him, friendly as always. He updates the room on his issues and listens as they update him on theirs.

The one issue that does not come up? Mr. Craig himself.

As President Obama’s top lawyer, Mr. Craig has been at the center of thorny decisions on closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and revising interrogation and detention policies, problems that have bedeviled the new administration and generated fierce battles inside and outside the White House. And for months now, he has endured speculation in print and around the White House about whether he is on the way out.

Trigger Troubles—And Why the Senate Can’t Fix Them

By Jacob S. Hacker

Created 10/22/2009 - 1:54pm

As closed-door discussions continue in the Senate, the resilient bad idea of triggering the public plan is once again on the table. Advocates of the trigger cast it as a compromise that will attract the support of the small number of conservative Democrats who have expressed reservations about the public option, as well as Republican Olympia Snowe, who has proposed a trigger.

But to be a compromise between public-plan skeptics and the majority of senators who support a public plan because it is central to ensuring affordable coverage while limiting the budgetary costs of reform, a trigger must have some prospect of working—and a trigger inserted into the two Senate bills now being merged would not.

Survey: Many Americans Now Plan to Work Past 67

About two-thirds of American workers now believe they'll have to delay their retirement by at least one year, with 27% expecting to work at least five years longer than planned because of the debilitating economy and stock-market losses, according to a new survey.

Michael Moore: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now

Friends,

It's the #1 question I'm constantly asked after people see my movie: "OK -- so NOW what can I DO?!"

You want something to do? Well, you've come to the right place! 'Cause I got 15 things you and I can do right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken system.

Here they are:

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.

Where Will the Jobs Come From?

They are popping the bubbly on Wall Street. Million-dollar bonuses, the Dow at 10,000, the casino is open again. Forget President Obama, who says we can't go back to an economy where finance pockets 40 percent of the profits. We're already headed there.

The current-account deficit is down as Americans have cut back spending. But the deficit with China is hitting new records; companies are still shipping manufacturing jobs over there. The dollar is down, but not against the Chinese currency. Forget about Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, who warns against going back to the unsustainable trade imbalances that led us over the cliff. The old patterns are coming back.

Thomas Frank: From John Birchers to Birthers

The right's paranoid political style has gone mainstream.

By THOMAS FRANK

Next month will mark the 45th anniversary of the publication by Harper's Magazine of Richard Hofstadter's famous essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," a work that seems to grow more relevant by the day.

I was not always a fan. When I first read it two decades ago, I thought Hofstadter was being needlessly insulting by equating political views with mental illness—despite his insistence that he wasn't using the word that way. Besides, I thought, who really cared about the strange notions that occurred to members of marginal groups like the John Birch Society? Joe McCarthy's day was long over, and even in the age of high Reaganism, I thought, the type of person Hofstadter described was merely handing out flyers on street corners.

As the historian himself admitted, "in America it has been the preferred style only of minority movements." Why bother with it, then?

Beck, others use climate trade negotiations to fearmonger about world government, communism October 20, 2009 8:18 pm ET — 9 Comments Glenn Beck and o

October 20, 2009 8:18 pm ET — 9 Comments

Glenn Beck and other media conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin, seized on comments by British lord Christopher Monckton to fearmonger that if the United States agreed to a treaty dealing with climate change, it would be signing its sovereignty away to a "world government." Beck and others have previously fearmongered about the possibility of world government and the loss of U.S. sovereignty.

Hersh: Military waging war with White House

10.14.09 - 12:23 am

By Neil Offen

noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646

DURHAM — The U.S. military is not just fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s most renowned investigative journalist says.

The army is also “in a war against the White House — and they feel they have [President] Obama boxed in,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh told several hundred people in Duke University’s Page Auditorium on Tuesday night. “They think he’s weak and the wrong color. Yes, there’s racism in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it’s true and we all know it.”

CBO finds Dem bill with public option reduces deficit

From Deirdre Walsh
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A preliminary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office projects that the House Democrats' health care plan that includes a public option would cost $871 billion over 10 years, according to two Democratic sources.

Nancy Pelosi, right, here with Harry Reid, proposes a "more robust" public option. The CBO analyzed the plan.

CBO also found that the Democrats' bill reduces the deficit in the first 10 years.

Gloating with Wall Street's goodfellas

By Julian Delasantellis

Let's say that living on your block is a friendly, easygoing, always ready to lend a hand to a guy in trouble fellow we'll call Mr Tarp. In September of last year, another neighbor, we'll call him Mr Bank, came to him with a tale of woe.

Ah, it had been hard times for Mr Bank. Speculating in wild, hare-brained financial schemes had left him destitute and on the brink of eviction and ruination. A little assistance, a few bucks, would help a lot.

Which Came First: Government Ownership or Catastrophic Losses?

Companies like Citi and GM were failing before we took over.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Monday, Oct. 19, 2009, at 4:02 PM ET

---

In the past year, taxpayers and government agencies have engineered optimal conditions for bankers to score. To use a metaphor bankers could understand (golf), by supporting markets, taking interest to zero, and providing legions of subsidies, the government has widened the fairways, enlarged the greens, and dug holes the size of bomb craters. Some bankers are playing the redesigned course like Tiger Woods. JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs each earned more than $3 billion in the last quarter. But other huge banks are playing like Ted Knight's Judge Smails in Caddyshack. Citi scratched out a mere $101 million in earnings and suffered heavy credit losses, while Bank of America lost $1 billion. A similar dynamic is evident in the domestic auto industry. Cash for Clunkers and government support for auto lenders has helped prop up demand. In September, Ford saw sales rise 5 percent from September 2008, and the company gained market share. But sales at General Motors and Chrysler were off 45 percent and 42 percent, respectively, from a year before.

In both banking and autos, the companies that are partially government-owned are flailing while the independent firms are thriving. But the results raise a financial version of the age-old question: Which came first? Are these companies losing market share and facing mounting losses because they have big-government ownership and oversight? Or do they have government oversight and ownership because, for years, they lost market share and racked up losses? For folks who believe that government caused the crisis—i.e., that the Community Reinvestment Act somehow caused Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. to destroy themselves—it's the former. For those of us who believe that the crisis was largely the making of wealthy CEOs who had every incentive to see their companies succeed but simply failed (and that their poor choices were abetted by poor regulation), it's the latter. Put more simply: Government ownership doesn't cause catastrophic losses; catastrophic losses cause government ownership.

One in six Americans in poverty, new study finds

The level of poverty in America is even worse than first believed.

A revised formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations show that approximately 47.4 million Americans last year lived in poverty, 7 million more than the government's official figure.

The disparity occurs because of differing formulas the Census Bureau and the National Academy of Science use for calculating the poverty rate. The NAS formula shows the poverty rate to be at 15.8 percent, or nearly 1 in 6 Americans, according to calculations released this week. That's higher than the 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million, figure made available recently under the original government formula.

Carbon-offsetting and conservation can both be winners in rainforest

Logged rainforests can support as much plant, animal and insect life as virgin forest within 15 years if properly managed, research at the University of Leeds has found.

Because trees in tropical climates soak up large amounts of carbon dioxide, restoring logged forest through planting new trees could also be used in carbon trading, according to Dr David Edwards, from University's Faculty of Biological Sciences.

Bill Moyers: How Can the U.S. Be an Empire and a Democracy at the Same Time?

By Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal
Posted on October 20, 2009, Printed on October 21, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143377/

The following is a transcript from Bill Moyers' interview with journalist Mark Danner on his new book, Stripping Bare the Body, broadcast on PBS's Bill Moyers Journal.

Bill Moyers: President Obama has been holding one meeting after another trying to decide whether to escalate the war in Afghanistan. He would do well to hold off another discussion until he has sent everyone home for the weekend to read this new book with the provocative title, Stripping Bare the Body, and a cover that holds the eye like a magnet.

The subject is politics, violence, and war, and running through it is an old truth often forgot: you start a war knowing what you are fighting, but in the end you find yourself fighting for things you had never thought of.

Study: States can't afford death penalty

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- At 678, California has the nation's largest death row population, yet the state has not executed anyone in four years.

But it spends more than $130 million a year on its capital punishment system -- housing and prosecuting inmates and coping with an appellate system that has kept some convicted killers waiting for an execution date since the late 1970s.

Hurdles remain as FCC ponders Internet data rules

JOELLE TESSLER, AP News
Oct 18, 2009 11:57 EST

With Democrats in charge in Washington, supporters of so-called "net neutrality" rules seem poised to finally push through requirements that high-speed Internet providers give equal treatment to all data flowing over their networks.

These rules — at the heart of a five-year policy debate — are intended to guarantee that Internet users can go to any Web site and access any online service they want. Phone and cable companies, for instance, wouldn't be able to block subscribers from using cheaper Internet calling services or accessing online video sites that compete with their core businesses.

Yet making that happen is proving thorny — and it's likely that the courts and perhaps even Congress will ultimately get involved.

Paul Krugman: The Banks Are Not All Right

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. O.K., maybe not literally the worst, but definitely bad. And the contrast between the immense good fortune of a few and the continuing suffering of all too many boded ill for the future.

I’m talking, of course, about the state of the banks.

The lucky few garnered most of the headlines, as many reacted with fury to the spectacle of Goldman Sachs making record profits and paying huge bonuses even as the rest of America, the victim of a slump made on Wall Street, continues to bleed jobs.

Will Beck denounce conservatives who've cited Mao, Lenin, Viet Cong?

On his Fox News program, Glenn Beck aired a clip of White House communications director Anita Dunn calling Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa two of her "favorite political philosophers" and used those comments to falsely link Dunn to the murder of tens of millions of Chinese under Mao's reign. But numerous conservatives have approvingly cited the tactics of Mao, Vladimir Lenin, and the Viet Cong, stated that they had used those tactics in their political work, or have otherwise highlighted their philosophies -- leading Media Matters for America to question whether or not Beck will denounce them next.

Shifting the world to 100 percent clean, renewable energy as early as 2030 -- here are the numbers

Most of the technology needed to shift the world from fossil fuel to clean, renewable energy already exists. Implementing that technology requires overcoming obstacles in planning and politics, but doing so could result in a 30 percent decrease in global power demand, say Stanford civil and environmental engineering Professor Mark Z. Jacobson and University of California-Davis researcher Mark Delucchi.

To make clear the extent of those hurdles – and how they could be overcome – they have written an article that is the cover story in the November issue of Scientific American. In it, they present new research mapping out and evaluating a quantitative plan for powering the entire world on wind, water and solar energy, including an assessment of the materials needed and costs. And it will ultimately be cheaper than sticking with fossil fuel or going nuclear, they say.

Report examines hidden costs of energy production and use

WASHINGTON -- A new report from the National Research Council examines and, when possible, estimates "hidden" costs of energy production and use -- such as the damage air pollution imposes on human health -- that are not reflected in market prices of coal, oil, other energy sources, or the electricity and gasoline produced from them. The report estimates dollar values for several major components of these costs. The damages the committee was able to quantify were an estimated $120 billion in the U.S. in 2005, a number that reflects primarily health damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation. The figure does not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security, which the report examines but does not monetize.

Requested by Congress, the report assesses what economists call external effects caused by various energy sources over their entire life cycle -- for example, not only the pollution generated when gasoline is used to run a car but also the pollution created by extracting and refining oil and transporting fuel to gas stations. Because these effects are not reflected in energy prices, government, businesses and consumers may not realize the full impact of their choices. When such market failures occur, a case can be made for government interventions -- such as regulations, taxes or tradable permits -- to address these external costs, the report says.

Race and the Right's Paranoid Obama Conspiracies

Late last week, Democratic-leaning pollster Stan Greenberg released a focus group study showing that conservative GOP base voters live in an alternative universe of their own political paranoia. In this world, President Obama is ruthlessly advancing a secret agenda to ruin -- yes, ruin -- the economy so he can impose socialism upon the United States and destroy the core civil liberties of American democracy. And in this covert crusade, Obama is no more than a frontman for unseen interests aiming to annihilate the United States.

Letting Goldman roll the dice

On this morning’s conference call, David Viniar, Goldman Sachs’ chief financial officer, emphasized the bank’s valuable social role. His bank made markets and provided credit when other financial players were suffering.

But is Goldman really such an indispensible financial intermediary? One look at the firm’s revenue breakdown shows that it’s more casino than anything else, and some of the markets it makes still put the economy in danger.

With markets recovering and competitors falling away, Goldman’s trading and principal investment revenue through the first nine months of the year was nearly $24 billion, on pace to break the $30 billion record set in 2007.

Frank Rich: Goldman Can Spare You a Dime

AT the dawn of the progressive era early in the last century, muckrakers attacked the first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, for creating capitalism’s most ruthless monster. “The Octopus” was their nickname for Standard Oil, the trust that controlled nearly 90 percent of American oil. But even in that primordial phase of the industrial era, Rockefeller was mindful of his public image and eager to counter it. “His great brainstorm,” writes his biographer, Ron Chernow, “was undoubtedly his decision to dispense shiny souvenir dimes to adults and nickels to children as he moved about.” Who could hate an octopus tossing glittering coins?

It was hard not to think of Rockefeller’s old P.R. playbook while watching Goldman Sachs’s behavior when the Dow hit 10,000 last week. As leader of the Wall Street pack, Goldman declared surging profits, keeping it on track to dispense a record $23 billion in bonuses for 2009. But most Americans know all too well that only the intervention of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailout money saved Goldman from the dire fate of its less well-connected competitors. The growing ranks of under-and-unemployed Americans, meanwhile, are waiting with increasing desperation for a recovery of their own.

How Moody's sold its ratings -- and sold out investors

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- As the housing market collapsed in late 2007, Moody's Investors Service, whose investment ratings were widely trusted, responded by purging analysts and executives who warned of trouble and promoting those who helped Wall Street plunge the country into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

A McClatchy investigation has found that Moody's punished executives who questioned why the company was risking its reputation by putting its profits ahead of providing trustworthy ratings for investment offerings.

The ACORN Standard

By Jeremy Scahill

October 14, 2009

The nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight and Reform recently revealed that the top 100 government contractors made nearly $300 billion from federal contracts in 2007 alone. Since 1995 these same contractors have been involved with 676 cases of "misconduct" and paid $26 billion in fines to settle cases stemming from fraud, waste or abuse. Fines and other penalties, it seems, are simply the stunningly small price of doing government business.

Take the case of the top three war contractors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. These companies have engaged in 108 instances of misconduct since 1995 and have paid fines or settlements totaling nearly $3 billion. In 2007 they won some $77 billion in federal contracts. Or consider pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which in September paid $2.3 billion to settle a slew of criminal and civil cases, including Medicaid fraud. According to the Justice Department, this was "the largest healthcare fraud settlement" in its history. Yet Pfizer made more than $40 billion in profits last year and won $73 million in federal contracts in 2007; it continues to do robust business with the government. Not bad for a "corporate felon."

Agent Orange in Vietnam: Ignoring the Crimes Before Our Eyes

by Dave Lindorff

On Oct. 13, the New York Times ran a news story headlined "Door Opens to Health Claims Tied to Agent Orange," which was sure to be good news to many American veterans of the Indochina War. It reported that 38 years after the Pentagon ceased spreading the deadly dioxin-laced herbicide/defoliant over much of South Vietnam, it was acknowledging what veterans have long claimed: in addition to 13 ailments already traced to exposure to the chemical, it was also responsible for three more dread diseases-Parkinson's, ischemic heart disease and hairy-cell leukemia.

Under a new policy adopted by the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, the VA will now start providing free care to any of the 2.1 million Vietnam-era veterans who can show that they might have been hurt by exposure to Agent Orange.

Obama Threatens Insurers’ Anti-Trust Exemption

By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — President Obama mounted a frontal assault on the insurance industry on Saturday, accusing it of using “deceptive and dishonest ads” to derail his health care legislation and threatening to strip the industry of its longstanding exemption from federal antitrust laws.

In unusually harsh terms, Mr. Obama cast insurance companies as obstacles to change interested only in preserving their own “profits and bonuses” and willing to “bend the truth or break it” to stop his drive to remake the nation’s health care system. The president used his weekly radio and Internet address to challenge industry assertions that legislation will drive up premiums.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s bogus. And it’s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, ‘Take one of these, and call us in a decade.’ Well, not this time.”

Sudan’s Critics Relieved That Obama Chose a Middle Course

By GINGER THOMPSON

WASHINGTON — A day after the first details began to emerge of the Obama administration’s long-awaited policy for Sudan — one that proposes working with the government rather than isolating it — advocates of a tougher approach toward Khartoum said they wished the administration had been stronger.

But they also expressed relief at what has been released so far, saying they had feared the White House would take an even more conciliatory line toward the government, whose leader has been charged with crimes against humanity.

Going 'deep', not 'big', in Afghanistan

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - A veteran United States Army officer who has served in both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars warns in an analysis now circulating in Washington that the counter-insurgency strategy urged by General Stanley A McChrystal is likely to strengthen the Afghan insurgency, and calls for withdrawal of the bulk of United States combat forces from the country over 18 months.

In a 63-page paper representing his personal views but reflecting conversations with other officers who have served in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L Davis argues that it is already too late for US forces to defeat the insurgency.