With an 8.9 Earthquake in Japan today...and its dire consequences on Japan's economy...., there goes the dream of USA/DOD in desperately trying to have Japan INC, do more in terms of defense and military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific theater....Up in flames....more QE4 coming....http://blogs.forbes.com/beltway/2011/03/28/the-real-cost-of-u-s-in-libya-two-billion-dollars-per-day/
Scandals strain US-Japan relations
Divisions from this week's firing of the US State Department Japan policy chief Kevin Maher for derogatory comments about Okinawans and the resignation of Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara over a domestic scandal are unfortunate. From the military rise of China to warmongering on the Korean Peninsula and territorial disputes, closer cooperation, not damage control, is the order of the day....
Divisions from this week's firing of the US State Department Japan policy chief Kevin Maher for derogatory comments about Okinawans and the resignation of Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara over a domestic scandal are unfortunate. From the military rise of China to warmongering on the Korean Peninsula and territorial disputes, closer cooperation, not damage control, is the order of the day....Japan hit by political quake prior to earthquake. Prime Minister Naoto Kan admits receiving campaign donation from South Korean businessman. Donations fromn South Korean forced Foreign Minister to resign....
.LINK: Earthquake series listed
8.9 mega-quake hits Japan. Buildings on fire in Tokyo, oil refinery ablaze. 5th most powerful quake in recorded history. Death toll expected to mount amid devastating destruction. Tsunami inundates Japanese coastal cities. Tsunami waves hit Kuril Islands of Russia. Tsunami warning extended throughout Pacific Ocean: Japan, Russia, Marcus Is., N. Marianas, Guam, Wake Is., Taiwan, Yap, Philippines, Marshall Is., Palau, Midway Is., Pohnpei, Chuuk, Kosrae, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Johnston Is., Solomon Is., Kiribati, Howland-baker, Hawaii, Tuvalu, Palmyra Is., Vanuatu, Tokelau, Jarvis Is., Wallis-futuna, Samoa, American Samoa, Cook Islands, Niue, Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, Tonga, Mexico, Kermadec is, Fr. Polynesia, New Zealand, Pitcairn, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Antarctica, Panama, Honduras, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Alaska, Canada, Oregon, Washington state, California. Evacuations of coasts underway. Tuvalu, Kiribati, and other low-lying islands may be totally inundated.
.LINK: Earthquake series listed
- Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan and especially our friends and colleagues with the Washington bureaus of Mainichi Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, Nikkei, and other news bureaus, as well as the Japanese embassy.
- Mount Kerangetang, Sulawesi, Indonesia erupts. Eruption occurred hours after Japanese mega-quake. Mount Bromo, east Java, continues to erupt. Increased seismic activity along the Cascade Range, including Mounts Rainier, St. Helens, Hood, Baker, and Adams. Two volcanos erupt in Far East Russia at same time of Japan mega-quake.
- New 6.2 quake hits off west coast of Honshu.Very shallow depth.
- BREAKING: PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER UPGRADES JAPAN QUAKE TO 9.1 FROM 8.9. 9.1 IS TWICE AS POWERFUL AS 8.9. FOURTH STRONGEST QUAKE IN WORLD RECORDED HISTORY. WORST IN JAPAN IN 2000 YEARS.
- Official missing count in Japan: 88,000. Number reported by Kyodo News Agency.
United States forces have an apt name for the barren land where annual exercises are now taking place with South Korean troops. Tension is palpable, despite the war games, and "fight-tonight" readiness is maintained with good reason: In the words of one observer, the Korean Peninsula is now as dangerous a place as it has been at any time since conflict ended in 1953. -
- Defense Department hires contractors to perform oversight on contractors. Mother Hen, Mr. Fox is here to see you.
- Pentagon buys false personae software. Operation Earnest Voice uses Ntrepid software and is a favorite of David Petraeus.
- House cuts funding to NPR. GOP prefers Fox propaganda over news. It's what Nazis do: Goebbels, Murdoch, it's the same old story.
DOD and choosing your brand of opium, crack cocaine and more....in 2011.....
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/17683
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/17683
Michael Brenner
The defense budget in back in the news – the perennial harbinger of Spring like the first crocuses. This year’s version of the ritualized passion play on Capitol Hill features Secretary Robert Gates’ highly publicized proposal to trim military spending by $78 billion over the next five years. That would amount to roughly $15.5 billion per annum. A closer look reveals that the numbers refer only to the fixed Pentagon budget while excluding the ‘off the books’ outlays for the war/occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Even the official fixed budget greatly understand outlays for our military establishment. Were we to include lifetime medical care, interest on debt, etc. some reasonable calculations that I’ve seen place the aggregate annual cost at $1 trillion+). Conservative estimates of those costs, which assume a steady drawdown of forces and expenditures, pretty much match the projected $78 billion cuts. So, in truth, this heralded bold step to rein in defense spending is a bit of legerdemain. That’s to be expected. These annual exercises usually are little more than stylized Kabuki....
There are obvious reasons for that. One is the powerful vested interests who resist making consequential changes. The other is intellectual. It is impossible to think seriously about defense budgets and Pentagon resource allocations without a clear idea of what we expect our military to do – and why. In other words, the place to begin is with interests, needs and means. We don’t do that. The production of strategic statements has become an art form for obfuscating half-baked ideas and flawed logic. Its main reference points, beyond an extrapolation of the status quo, are domestic politics and intra-governmental turf battles. This holds for budgetary plans as well. To be honest, we’re navigating without a strategic gyroscope and only the most primitive of compasses. There is no strategic design – certainly not an explicit one - that is coherently articulated. Instead, there is an arithmetic tabulation of threats. There’s the Islamic terrorists. There’s China. There’s defending Latvia from the Russians. Then there’s oil from the Persian Gulf. Then there’s the Western Hemisphere with Hugo Chavez and drug cartels. Then, then…. Implicit in this iterative approach is the assumption that our tolerance for any magnitude of threat is zero, that we must prepare for threats ‘over the horizon,’ and that we must be pro-active. There is a logic to this way of thinking, however rudimentary. But only if you can count on infinite resources - and if you cannot imagine that any of our actions may be counter productive for national security. Alas, neither is correct. Any tacit recognition of the former is unaccompanied by any strategic assessment worthy of the name. The 9/11 decade has been dominated by the ‘war on terror.’ Its huge appetite for resources, including time and energy, has been matched by the progression of perceived security needs it has spawned. The commitment to a dominant physical presence in Southwestern and Central Asia is the outstanding example. Let’s look at each in turn. Our vast expenditures in Afghanistan and Iraq to little beneficial effect testify to the obsession with Islamic terrorism. They are explicable only in terms of the Twin Towers trauma and the newfound sense of vulnerability it created. Looked at objectively, the losses we suffered - however dramatic - do not figure high on a scale of possible attacks against to the United States. Certainly not compared to what a couple of thousand Soviet nuclear warheads could do to us. The terrorist threat is exceptional, though, in two respects. First, it is the greatest threat out there in an otherwise benign international environment. Second, those who attacked us were manifestly successful rather being just a potential or latent threat. That counts at the political as well as emotional level. Theoretically, the worst we can anticipate in the future is another try at doing something similar. A level headed analysis points to the conclusion that al-Qaida and its affiliates do not have anything like the capability to mount such an effort. For nine and a half years, no evidence of even a half-way serious plot on that scale has surfaced. Moreover, we should be able to assume that our police and intelligence agencies are no longer working at the abysmal level of incompetence that permitted 9/11 to succeed. In Afghanistan, the old home base, the al-Qaeda core is broken and its members dispersed. And that was worth doing. Where the organization exists at all is across the border in Pakistan. There are sound reasons to judge that the Taliban has greatly loosened if not actually severed their ties with al-Qaeda. Nor are the Taliban in a position to recreate the conditions that existed in 2001 in the unlikely event that they were inclined to do so. Indeed, that is true regardless of the current civil war’s progression. Yet we remain dedicated to the objective of eliminating all Taliban influence in Afghanistan. Until they are rendered impotent forevermore, we will pour men and money and political capital into the effort – attendant risks (such as destabilizing a nuclear Pakistan) are discounted. Following that same logic, the security of the United States demands that we make a similar commitment to eradicate both al-Qaeda affiliates and sympathetic Islamic radicals in Pakistan (including those who are Punjabi based), in Yemen, in Somalia, in Mali and Niger, - or in Europe for that matter. For today those threats are roughly equal to what might emanate from Afghanistan. The Bush/Obama line that ‘we are fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here’ carries no geographical distinctions. Are we prepared to invest ourselves militarily without limit in all those places? If not, the case for an open ended commitment to total victory in Afghanistan collapses. If we are, then we better admit the grandiosity of our ambition along with the onerous costs it will impose on the nation and on our standing in the world. Then there is Central Asia. Suddenly this remote region has emerged as an area critical to American security. No one tells us why. Certainly that parcel of strategic reviews doesn’t. It may simply be that we’re there because “it’s there.” Anything is possible in today’s Washington. But let’s try and think it through logically. Is it to serve as a springboard for an air assault on Iran? We already have ample means to do that. Is it to outflank China in the event of an all out war circa 1942? Is it to outflank Russia in the event that the neo-Red army casts covetous eyes on the Baltics? Is the true stake Central Asia’s oil and gas reserves? If so, exactly how can a network of expensive airbases bring American influence to bear? Will we threaten the governments of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan with invasion or airstrikes unless they open the door to American energy corporations and restrict Chinese control? Well, the pipelines running east are already built; Chinese economic influence is mounting in ways that a bankrupt United States cannot match; and Beijing cleverly doesn’t meddle in local politics so long as the powers that be do business with them. There is one potential, diabolically cunning strategy we may be following which makes a modicum of sense out of our massive military build-up in the region. It goes like this. The one conceivable avenue for expanded American influence is via native military elites. Lavish aid and training programs, officer exchanges, access to our well equipped base facilities, etc. Since all of these countries are liable to suffer political instability, we could have the inside track with the one group that has the means to impose order. One possible source of that instability is revived insurrections by Islamic radicals. Then our supposed technical expertise becomes all the more valuable. Thought of this way, our ham handed interventions in the region serve our larger strategic purposes by fueling those violent jihadist movements across the region. The longer we stay in Afghanistan and arouse the hatred of Muslims everywhere, the better the chance of spreading terrorism and provoking indigenous threats to existing governments. The better the chance that those beleaguered governments will see salvation via an anti-terrorist alliance with the U.S. The better the chance that ‘our guys’ in khaki will come out on top. The better the chance that they’ll favor doing energy deals with us rather than with the Chinese. Fanciful? By all means. After all, we tried this with the Pakistani military and General Kayani stubbornly refuses to take our instruction while amusing himself by setting ablaze NATO fuel trucks. Also, all of those radical Islamists we’ve been inspiring may decide to have a try at killing Americans. The answers: “nobody said this would be easy. Anyway, by flushing ‘them’ out we can better destroy ‘them’.” When national security strategy resembles a pipe dream, it’s just a matter of choosing your brand of opium.....
My mention of natural disasters and DoD funding may have been a bit obtuse. My memory is that almost all of the war-fighting supplementals for both Iraq and Afghanistan were also inclusive of replenishment of the President's DRF [Disaster Relief Fund] a revolving fund not tied to any given fiscal year. DoD of course would love to have the entirety of the DoD budget a revolving fund....
The US$36 billion air tanker award to Boeing is merely the latest instance of the ubiquitous crony capitalism that undermines the United States economy. The squawking against the necessary changes to economic legislation to curb this waste will be the loudest from those whose unjustified privileges would be abolished..... -
The largest Vishnu mandiram of the world is NOT in India. It is in Cambodia.... The concept paper is on page 1 of IOC website.
Indian ocean rim countries will become a powerful 6 trillion dollar GDP nation....
READ & LEARN
Indian ocean rim countries will become a powerful 6 trillion dollar GDP nation....
READ & LEARN
The DoD is desperately trying to get out from under the CR [Continuing Resolution]now extended to March 18th by having the DoD 2011 Appropriations bill enacted. This is not going to happen IMO. So some real cutbacks in certain DoD programs, functions, and activities might take place even this year. The fact that a supplemental may include some DoD funding may well depend on what kind of Natural Disasters occur between March 18th and the end of the Fiscal Year on September 30th...