counter Asia : MGx – Musings, Essays & Ballads

All Posts Tagged With: "Asia"

Asian American soldiers believe in the Constitution

February 21st, 2008 • magix • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

The occu­pa­tion of Iraq and the Bush admin­stra­tion have put to the test the met­tle of many sol­diers who swore first to uphold the con­sti­tu­tion. Among them are sev­eral Asian Amer­i­can sol­diers who have an inter­est­ing his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive on the use of torture.

“Tor­ture is un-lawful”, are the first words of his keynote address, part of the “War on Ter­ror” lec­ture series pre­sented by the Human Rights Cen­ter at Berke­ley. In 2004 Taguba was lead inves­ti­ga­tor into con­di­tions at the US military’s Abu Ghraib facil­ity in Iraq. His highly crit­i­cal report was pub­li­cized through­out the world. The 6,000-page report gave evi­dence of tor­ture, pris­oner abuse, and a fail­ure of lead­er­ship and respon­si­bil­ity at the high­est lev­els of author­ity. The report was hailed as a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion com­pleted in only 30 days. But in Jan­u­ary 2006, Taguba received a phone call from the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff who offered no rea­son but said, “I need you to retire by Jan­u­ary of 2007.” This Taguba did after 34 years of active duty.

Other casu­al­ties of their con­science are Lt Ehren Watada and Cap­tain James Yee who have not only ques­tioned tor­ture but the legal­ity of the war itself.

In my inter­views with war resis­tor First Lieu­tenant Ehren Watada; James Yee, the for­mer cap­tain and Mus­lim chap­lin at Guan­tanamo Bay Prison; and Taguba, they all remain strong believ­ers in the US con­sti­tu­tion, its prin­ci­pals and the abil­ity of the US mil­i­tary to pro­tect them. Despite the dif­fer­ent ways they acted on their beliefs and despite dif­fer­ing opin­ions, what remains is their com­mit­ment to a firm set of ideals and their will­ing­ness to pay a price for it.

US dollars while world holds its breath">China dumps US dollars while world holds its breath

January 21st, 2008 • magix • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

From the Exis­ten­tial­ist Cowboy

Highly lever­aged US expan­sion, growth and empire are about to be swept away like a bam­boo hut. As China leads the world in dump­ing dol­lars, the US appears to have exhausted the means by which it can con­tinue to lever­age or finance expan­sion and imperialism.

Bush could not have picked a worse time to ratchet up his anti-Iran rhetoric. China’s dis­en­chant­ment with US dol­lars is a reac­tion to Bush’s bel­li­cose rhetoric. Iran’s strate­gic posi­tion was rec­og­nized by Alexan­der the Great, sig­nif­i­cantly the last “con­queror” to have suc­cess­fully invaded from the west.

As this blog reported recently, Bush promised that the US would join an Israeli nuclear strike on Iran. It is impos­si­ble to tell if the US rhetoric is in response to Iran­ian threats to dump dol­lars or Iran’s response to Bush’s promise to join an Israeli nuclear strike on Iran. The GOP seems uncon­cerned as Bush’s big mouth con­tin­ues to make the rest of world jittery.

Asia isn’t the only one skit­tish, Europe and the UK are trem­bling as well.

The stock mar­ket was in melt­down today as nearly £60billion was wiped off Lon­don shares.

A com­bi­na­tion of poor eco­nomic fig­ures and the wors­en­ing global credit crunch sent the FTSE 100 plunging.

At one stage the drop was the biggest since 9/11 in 2001, although the index of Britain’s biggest com­pa­nies later clawed back some of the losses. At lunchtime the Foot­sie was down 250.1 points to 5647.8.

Yes, this is all in response to the failed finan­cial strate­gies of the Bush administration

The fall came as Asian mar­kets tum­bled overnight fol­low­ing losses for the Dow Jones Indus­trial Aver­age on Fri­day, when investors were left unim­pressed by the US Government’s tax-relief plans to spur on the economy.

(hat tip/ Excu­u­u­u­u­use me!)

UPDATE:More panic from Inter­na­tional Her­ald Tri­bune

http://iht.com/articles/2008/01/21/business/markets.3–208777.php