International Uncle Sam

___

White House Warns Against Iraq Pullout

By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Brushing aside criticism from the White House, Senate Democrats said Friday their next challenge to President Bush's Iraq war policy would require the gradual withdrawal of U.S. combat troops beginning within 120 days.

The draft legislation also declares the war "requires principally a political solution" rather than a military one.

The provisions are included in a measure that would repeal the authority that lawmakers gave Bush in 2002, months before the invasion of Iraq, and replace it with a far more limited mission.

Democrats have said they are likely to seek a vote on the proposal within two weeks. The odds against it ever becoming law are high, and the White House and Senate Republicans were quick to denounce it.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the administration "of course" would oppose an attempt to alter the existing authorization, and he warned that a pullout of U.S. troops could bring chaos to Iraq. "We're operating under a mandate," he said.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky dismissed the proposal as an attempt by Democrats to produce "what could best be described as a Goldilocks resolution: one that is hot enough for the radical left wing, but cool enough for party leaders to claim that they are for the troops.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the White House is not only confused, but in denial.

"They can spin all they want, but the fact is that President Bush is ignoring a bipartisan majority of Congress, his own military commanders, and the American public in escalating the war," said Jim Manley. "The American people have demanded a change of course in Iraq and Democrats are committed to holding President Bush accountable."

As currently drafted, the Democratic legislation says the military "shall commence phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq not later than 120 days" after the bill's enactment. The goal is to complete the withdrawal by March 31, 2008.

In the interim, the military would be required to transition to a new mission involving "targeted anti-terrorism operations," as well as providing training and logistical support for the Iraqis and helping them protect their own borders.

The measure also pledges that Congress will "continue to support and protect" the armed forces, renewing a commitment that was included in an earlier nonbinding measure that also criticized Bush's plans to deploy an additional 21,500 troops.

Republicans blocked action on the measure last week, demanding that Democrats allow a vote on an alternative that would rule out cutting off funds for the troops.

At the White House, Fratto said that changes in the existing authority for use of military force were unnecessary even though it dates from the days when Saddam Hussein was in power and there was an assumption - later proved false - that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The White House said that Democrats were in a state of confusion about Iraq but left room for compromise.

"There's a lot of ... shifting sands in the Democrats' position right now," Fratto said. "We'll see what Democrats decide to do."

He said the president would judge anything that comes out of Congress by whether it gives him "the flexibility and resources" necessary to proceed with Bush's decision to send 21,500 additional combat troops to Iraq to secure Baghdad and Anbar Province.

"It's clear that if there are efforts to remove troops out of Baghdad, there are consequences for Baghdad," Fratto said. "The only credible analysis that we've seen - the (National Intelligence Estimate) report and others - are pretty clear on this, that it would bring chaos to Baghdad."

Senate Republicans recently thwarted two Democratic attempts to pass a nonbinding measure critical of Bush's troop-increase plan. Asked if Bush would oppose any effort to revoke his war authorization, Fratto said, "Of course we would."

In the House, a nonbinding anti-war measure was approved last week. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she expects the next challenge to Bush's war policies to be a requirement that the Pentagon adhere to strict training and readiness standards for troops heading for the war zone.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the leading advocate of that approach, has said it would effectively deny Bush the ability to proceed with the troop buildup.

But Bush's Republican allies on Capitol Hill have fought that as denying reinforcements to troops already in the war zone, leading to the alternative approach in the Senate.

The measure Bush won from Congress in 2002 authorized the president to use the armed forces "as he determines to be necessary and appropriate ... to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq" and to enforce relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.

At the time, the world body had passed resolutions regarding Iraq's presumed effort to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Associated Press Special Correspondent David Espo contributed to this report.

___

When America first invaded Iraq, many Iraqis supported it. After a decade of cruelty handed down by Saddam, many Iraqis found America as the tool to pry open Saddam's evil grasp. Since 2003, however, opinions have changed. Articles about bomb blasts, gunfire and deaths in Iraq have become a daily occurrence in the news. However, this time the story does not just have a single protagonist, but many groups of them.

Many say that America themselves are causing this violence. The insurgents are doing so in a bid to drive America out of their homeland. They feel that America has no business staying in Iraq except to tap on their oil. They are also using this opportunity to continue their religious war on the largely Christian America. But while the Iraqis want America out of the country to stop the violence, there is a larger picture to look at.

There are hints that America wants to pull out of Iraq with the daily increasing and ever rising death figures. They are already doing so. They are also training the Iraqis to manage their own country. Yet, while Americans and Iraqis want a pull-out, it is easier said than done. If America were to leave Iraq as it is today, under the hail of bullets and bombs that are occurring daily, then they themselves would be under a hail of criticism. The Iraq today cannot be left to its own defences—they do not have one. They cannot manage the violence that is happening in Iraq, much less about the “violence” they would face outside Iraq.

While many Iraqis do not see it, they need America to stay. At least, America with their wealth of experience can provide some support. The self-proclaimed policemen of today continue to have responsibilities in Iraq. While we criticise America for sparking these problems in the first place, we cannot just ask them to leave Iraq. That would be to say, running away from the problems. Right now, America can only find a way out—that is to calm the violence in Iraq so that an Iraqi government can run it, without the Americans sticking their big nose in. But that does not happen overnight. America have put themselves, not Iraq, into a hole.

However, do not mistake me. Though Singapore is heavily influenced by the western mindset, I am not fully supportive of the international policing work done by the self-declared international police. I am only looking at the Iraqi situation from a practical aspect. Of course there are assumptions in my argument, such as the fact that America do really intend to pull out of Iraq. After all, their reasons for invading Iraq, because of the weapons of mass destruction, had been deemed void as they eventually did not find such weapons. Hence, many speculate about the underlying intentions of invading Iraq. Therefore, I am merely posing another problem that many do not realize may occur as a result of an American pull-out.

(499 words)

Little Pay For The Dirty Jobs

___

the article


A poisonous mix of inequality and sluggish wages threatens globalisation

Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition

James Fryer

GLUERS and sawyers from the furniture factories in Galax near the mountains of Virginia lost their jobs last year when American retailers decided they could find a better supplier in China. At the other end of the furniture industry Robert Nardelli lost his job this month when Home Depot decided it could find a better chief executive in his deputy. But any likeness ends there. Mr Nardelli's exit was as extravagantly rewarded as his occupation of the corner office had been. Next to his $210m severance pay, the redundant woodworkers' packages were mean to the point of provocation.

That's the way it goes all over the rich world. Since 2001 the pay of the typical worker in the United States has been stuck, with real wages growing less than half as fast as productivity. By contrast, the executive types gathering for the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland next week have enjoyed a Beckhamesque bonanza. If you look back 20 years, the total pay of the typical top American manager has increased from roughly 40 times the average—the level for four decades—to 110 times the average now.

<A TARGET="_blank" HREF="http://ad.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh=v8/34f6/3/0/%2a/b%3B56757737%3B0-0%3B0%3B14737134%3B4307-300/250%3B19101602/19119497/1%3B%3B%7Efdr%3D52128318%3B0-0%3B1%3B7046656%3B799-350/300%3B18978878/18996773/1%3B%3B%7Esscs%3D%3fhttp://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Imports/challenges_global/05.html"><IMG SRC="http://m1.2mdn.net/1326551/commongood_300x250.gif" BORDER=0></A>

These are the glory days of global capitalism. The mix of technology and economic integration transforming the world has created unparalleled prosperity. In the past five years the world has seen faster growth than at any time since the early 1970s. In China each person now produces four times as much as in the early 1990s. Having joined the global labour force, hundreds of millions of people in developing countries have won the chance to escape squalor and poverty. Hundreds of millions more stand to join them.

That promises to improve the lot of humanity as a whole incalculably. But in the rich world labour's share of GDP has fallen to historic lows, while profits are soaring. A clamour is abroad that Mr Nardelli and his friends among the top hundredth—or even the top thousandth—of the population are seizing the lion's share of globalisation's gains. Meanwhile everyone else—not just blue-collar factory workers but also the wider office-working middle class—shuffles along, grimly waiting for the next round of cost-cuts. They are not happy.

Fear and clothing

Signs of a backlash abound. Stephen Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, has counted 27 pieces of anti-China legislation in Congress since early 2005. The German Marshall Fund found last year that, although most people still say they favour trade, more than half of Americans want to protect companies from foreign competition even if that slows growth. In a hint of labour's possible resurgence, the House of Representatives has just voted to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade. Even Japan is alarmed about inequality, stagnant wages and jobs going to China. Europe has tied itself in knots trying to “manage” trade in Chinese textiles. The Doha round of trade talks is dying.

What is to be done about this poisonous mix? If globalisation depends upon voters who, as workers, no longer think they gain from it, how long before democracies start to put up barriers to trade? If all the riches go to the summit of society and that summit seems beyond everybody else's reach, are the wealth-creators under threat?

Should you blame China or your computer?

The panic comes in part from a rush to lump all the blame on globalisation. Technology—an even less resistible force—is also destroying white- and blue-collar tasks in a puff of automation and may play a bigger role in explaining rising wage inequality and the sluggish growth of middling wages. The distinctions between technology and globalisation count, if only because people tend to welcome computers but condemn foreigners (whether as competitors or immigrants). That makes technology easier to defend.

For economists, the debate about whether technology or globalisation is responsible for capital's rewards outpacing those of labour is crucial, complicated and unresolved. One school, which blames globalisation, argues that the rocketing profits and sluggish middling wages of the past few years are the long-lasting results of trade, as all those new developing-country workers enter the labour market. This school says that technology helps workers by increasing their productivity and eventually their wages. The opposing school retorts that technology does not increase wages immediately, and some sorts of information technology seem to boost the returns to capital instead (think of how much more a dollar's worth of computing power can do these days). And it questions whether Western incomes will remain flat: recent wage rises in America and pay claims in Europe and Japan may start to reverse the balance back away from capital.

In practice, it is hard to parcel out the blame between technology and globalisation, because the two are so intertwined. Ask IBM, which is hastily shipping bits of its services arm to India; or the call-centre worker who sees off the threat of his job going abroad by settling for only a tiny pay rise. And from a policymaker's point of view, it matters little what is causing the pain: the remedies are broadly the same.

The first rule is to avoid harming the very miracle that generates so much wealth. Take for instance the arguments about high executive pay. Some say this is simply a matter of governance—and forcing company boards to work better. If only it were that simple. High pay is, by and large, the price needed to attract and motivate gifted managers, as our special report argues in this issue. The abuses of companies such as Home Depot obscure how most high pay has been caused not by powerful bosses fixing their own wages, but by the changing job of the chief executive, the growth of large companies and the competitive market for talent. Executive-pay restrictions would not put that horse back in its box, but they would harm companies.

If the winners are difficult to curb without doing damage to your economy, the losers are tough to help. Doling out aid for the victims of trade makes sense in theory; but in practice it is increasingly hard to do. When the jobs going abroad are not whole assembly lines, but bits of departments, how exactly do you pick out the person who has lost his job to globalisation from the millions of people changing jobs for other reasons? And, hardhearted though it may sound, most of the gains from trade and technology alike come from the way they redeploy investment and labour to activities that create more wealth. That, like all change, can be painful; but it is what makes a country richer. A policy locking people into jobs that could be better done elsewhere is self-defeating.

The same goes for protectionism—especially now that the victims of globalisation are so scattered throughout the rich world, not camped in embattled industries. Trade has always created losers and it has always been in their narrow interest to seek protection (even if it hurts everyone else). But if many workers across many different industries were to demand protection at once, the selfish appeal of such a shield would fade.

Because hardship from globalisation is so difficult to distinguish from hardship in general, it would be open season to put up trade barriers in industry after industry. Widespread protection would surely meet with retaliation from abroad. Even if people gained as workers they would lose as consumers, investors and future pensioners. Moreover, the protection of jobs and pay would be short-term, because it would gradually lead to companies losing competitiveness as rivals in India and China innovated. Paradoxically, therefore, the greater the number of people threatened by globalisation, the less each of them is likely to gain from getting their governments to stand in its way.

The limits of redistribution

If protectionism will not help the losers, what about using the tax system? Some argue that redistributing more cash from the Nardellis to the Galaxians would not just make society less unequal; it would also buy middle-class support for globalisation. In fact the two arguments should be kept separate.

This newspaper has long argued that a mobile society is better than an equal one: disparities are tolerable if combined with meritocracy and general economic advance. For decades America has shown how dynamic economies are better than equality-driven ones at generating overall prosperity. That still leaves plenty of room to debate how progressive to make taxation (some of George Bush's tax cuts were needlessly regressive), or how lavish to make public services (American welfare is hardly generous). But a society would want compelling evidence that the social contract had been torn up before flexing the tax system to offset what may turn out to be only temporary fluctuations in relative incomes. And it makes little sense for free-traders to use taxes to buy off people from voting for protectionism, when doing so would in any case be against their interests.

Active, not reactive

Instead, the way to ease globalisation is the same as the way to ease other sorts of economic change, including the impact of technology. The aim is to help people to move jobs as comparative advantage shifts rapidly from one activity to the next. That means less friction in labour markets and a regulatory system that helps investment. It means an education system that equips people with general skills that make them mobile. It means detaching health care and pensions from employment, so that every time you move your job, you are not risking an awful lot else besides. And for those who lose their jobs—from whatever cause—it means beefing up assistance: generous training and active policies to help them find work.

None of that comes cheap—and much of it takes years to work. But an economy that gains from globalisation can more easily find the money to pay for it all. The businesspeople and politicians gathering on their Swiss Alp next week should certainly spend more time worrying about the citizens of Galax; but they also need to be far more courageous about defending a process that can do so much good even if its impact can sometimes appear so cruel.

____

The review

The innocent me never felt it fair that the common labourer has such a low pay even in today's world. The writer in the article centers around globalisation and technology being the main culprit behind the widening of income gap. But i find more reasons to it than just that, of course reasons that i do not think fair.

The skilled-professional world of today looks at whether you are skilled and whether the service you provide is skilled labour. The fact is that the world today looks mainly at paper qualifications. But i feel that the skills you possess do not justify the amount of pay one gets for the effort one gives. Look at construction sites next to your house, around the world. The one who moves his arms and legs and carries heavy materials under the burning hot sun is paid less than he who moves his hands and fingers and carries sheets of paper in the air-conditioned office. The unskilled labourer is breaking more sweat than the skilled one. On top of that, in cases such as the construction of buildings the superiors (who are not far above the common worker in terms of company rankings) do not actually have more skill than those who work on site. So why should the labourous worker be paid more than the thinking office man? The world should look at both the amount of effort put in and work produced as well as the amount of skill one has.

However, to every black, there is a white. The idea of skill versus unskilled is that if you are skilled, not everyone can do the job. If you are unskilled, then everyone can do the job. So why would one invest money into an unskilled labourer if everyone is capable of doing that same job? I also concede that it would be difficult judging how much effort one has put in and how much work one has produced. Also, i have just named a few exceptions in my earlier view. Most occupations, especially those whose workers labour in an air-conditioned office, are correctly justified based on the amount of skill one has and hence cannot be faulted. In some other occupations, the amount one is paid is already based on effort/work produced, such as truck driving, etc. They are all paid based on amount of hours spent, which is representative of work produced.

Therefore, while the innocent me finds the world of worker's salaries unfair, i guess it is not totally unfair either. And even if it is, this world is sometimes hard to change.

(441 words)

Craving for Alphabets.

Its a yearning urge.
A sudden and prolonged appetite for words.
Its just a sudden impulse to want to write.

The beauty of Churchill's writing (courtesy of teachers who teach english) stimulates all this yearning, all this urge.
You just fancy writing something as beautiful, as interesting as he who had learnt english and not latin nor greek.
Whether you can actually conjure something as tasty is a different cook-book all together.
But its just the belief that you can.

And of course there is that empty pink space on your blog.
The inability to move your page down, the lack of a scrolling tool.
Its all caused by one reason and one reason only--having only one post and one post only.
But then you don't want to empty your internal rubbish here. Its under tight scrutiny (though they may claim otherwise).

So, i decided to pin something that had at least some meaning.
What's more, it satisfies my craving, yearning, urge, appetite, impulse...(the word "and'' will never appear)...

Premier Listings

Premier Listings.

The first of the lot.
The first post from the post.

News from the press.
News in English.
News with alphabets.
News is new.

But all new things come with defects.
And new news has no exceptions.

Views will be heard.
Thoughts will be penned.

With new news comes new posts.
With new posts comes new analysis and commentry.

The easiness of abc changes lives.