Anand's World - The best part of the world. » International

Leaving Afghanistan: end of the surge

Anand Patel — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 04:57:20 +0000

AFP Photo / Saul Loeb

From the White House last night, US President Barack Obama announced plans for 30,000 troops to leave Afghanistan over the next year, signaling a beginning to the end of a decade-long war.

While 30,000 is the number that Obama is going with, is it the right one? The Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano agrees that this plan for withdrawal is the beginning of the end but adds, “I Don’t think the end is going to be pretty.”

RT host Adam Kokesh says the president’s decision isn’t necessarily a military one, but more a reflection of the growing political pressure. As public opinion against the war is at a high, the voice of America is amassing on Obama’s shoulders as he starts to figure out a way out of the war. Kokesh says Americans are “wearing thin” of the whole ordeal and are realizing that the money being spent on the war could be better spent back in the States.

Both Kokesh and Carafano say that there is no reason for America to be in Afghanistan, but reveal that a withdrawal might just lead to chaos in the Middle East after troops take off. Kokesh says the whole idea of a military presence in Afghanistan is “really kind of ridiculous,” especially after bin Laden’s death which, as he points out, didn’t even happen in Afghanistan. Carafano agrees, but equates Obama’s plan as just “walking away.”

“I’m afraid,” he adds, however, “that if we walk away like the way the president outlined, in 2014 we will be right back to September 10, 2001.” Just because troops will be out of Afghanistan, he says, doesn’t mean that terrorism will be.

“The sad thing,” says Carafano, “is that there is no do over.”

Popular Front as a means “to reach every single citizen”

Anand Patel — Tue, 24 May 2011 14:31:27 +0000

“There were calls for the creation of the Popular Front based on United Russia’s need to expand its structure to a non-party mechanism.”

United Russia, Russia’s main political party, has its own electorate but needs to reach more of the population, facilitating the creation of the Popular Front, Dmitry Peskov, press secretary for prime minister Vladimir Putin, told RT.

“It goes without saying that United Russia is the dominant center of political power in this country and the most successful party,” Peskov said. However, the fact remains that it still has to enlarge its base of supporters in order to “reach every single citizen and answer their demands,” he added.

At a certain point, it became clear that United Russia needed to establish a more flexible structure which will not be limited to the party.

“There were calls for the creation of the Popular Front based on United Russia’s need to expand its structure to a non-party mechanism,” Peskov explained. “This mechanism will allow us to attract those who don’t actively support the party but share some of its ideas. It will certainly enable us to reach the majority of the population, to tackle every single question that is being raised by different political powers and by different social organizations,” he said.

When asked about preparations for the presidential election campaign, the premier’s press secretary reiterated Vladimir Putin’s stance: there is no sense in “thinking about an election that is not going to take place for another ten or eleven months”.

“We just have to stick to our usual business. The President is doing his just as the Prime Minister is. This is the reason why they are not launching their electoral campaigns, it is simply not the right time,” Dmitry Peskov went on to say, adding that their current priority is the parliamentary election in December. “We have to do what needs to be done right now,” he stressed.

Beautiful Smoke Art by Mehmet Ozgur 2

Anand Patel — Tue, 24 May 2011 14:09:30 +0000

Beautiful Smoke Art by Mehmet Ozgur

Other Part Of This Posting

Beautiful Smoke Art by Mehmet Ozgur 1

Anand Patel — Tue, 24 May 2011 14:09:09 +0000

Beautiful Smoke Art by Mehmet Ozgur

Other Part Of This Posting

Beautiful Smoke Art by Mehmet Ozgur 2

Birds And Animals Photography By Thrumyeye 2

Anand Patel — Tue, 24 May 2011 14:01:13 +0000

Birds And Animals Photography By Thrumyeye

Other Part Of This Posting

Birds And Animals Photography By Thrumyeye 1

Anand Patel — Tue, 24 May 2011 14:00:26 +0000

Birds And Animals Photography By Thrumyeye

Other Part Of This Posting

Birds And Animals Photography By Thrumyeye 2

Cosy huts in the Swiss alps

Anand Patel — Tue, 24 May 2011 13:13:45 +0000

Cosy huts in the Swiss alps

Stocks set to slide for second day.

Anand Patel — Thu, 12 May 2011 12:35:10 +0000

Wall Street Sign

U.S. stocks were poised to open lower Thursday as commodity prices sold off for a second day and investors awaited a slew of economic data.

Dow Jones industrial average (INDU), S&P 500 (SPX) and Nasdaq (COMP) futures were down between 0.6% and 0.8% ahead of the opening bell. Futures measure current index values against perceived future performance.

Stocks fell sharply Wednesday, as energy and materials stocks got slammed by a sell-off in oil and gasoline futures. That selling continued early Thursday, with oil prices down 2.6% to $95.62 a barrel in early trading.

Other commodities were also selling off in early trading, with silver futures down 8.7% to $32.44 an ounce, and gold futures dropping 1.3% to $1481.30 an ounce. Copper prices were down 0.5% to $3.89 , putting pressure on mining stocks, including Freeport Mcmoran (FCX, Fortune 500), whose stock slid 1.4% in premarket trading.

“Prices got to somewhat of a bubble level,” said Jeffrey Sica, president and chief investment officer at SICA Wealth Management. “Volatility is a major concern,” he added.

A big part of the question mark lies with what will happen to the economy once the Federal Reserve ends its $600 billlion bond buying program, known as QE2, at the end of June. “Will the economy slow down too quickly?” is what’s on everybody’s mind, said Sica.

As investors try to assess the underlying strength of the economy, reports like weekly unemployment claims “come under a microscope,” he added.

Meanwhile, gas prices at the pump rose for a second day: the national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline increased 2.2 cents to $3.984 a gallon, according to motorist group AAA.

to $3.984 a gallon, according to motorist group AAA.
Big Oil showdown

Oil executives from Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500), Shell (RDSA), BP (BP), Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500) and ConocoPhillips (COP, Fortune 500) are headed to Washington to testify before Congress.

Economy: The Labor Department will release its producer price index for April and weekly initial jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. ET. Also coming at 8:30 a.m. ET is a Commerce Department report on monthly retail sales.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com expect weekly jobless claims to have dropped to 423,000 from 474,000 last week. Initial unemployment claims have been stuck above the key 400,000 level for four weeks.

April retail sales are expected to have risen 0.6%, compared with March’s rise of 0.4%. For producer inflation, economists surveyed expect April’s PPI to be 0.5%.

Out shortly after the bell at 10 a.m. ET are March business inventories data from the Commerce Department.

Companies: Companies scheduled to report quarterly results on Thursday include department store chains Kohl’s (KSS, Fortune 500) and Nordstrom (JWN, Fortune 500). Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect Kohl’s to post a profit of 73 cents per share. Nordstrom is expected to earn 67 cents per share.
Triple-digit stock winners

After the closing bell Wednesday, Cisco Systems (CSCO, Fortune 500) posted fiscal third-quarter profit and earnings that beat expectations. Executives atthe tech giant also issued tepid guidance for the coming quarter.

Shares of Cisco were down more than 3% in premarket trade.

World markets: European stocks were all lower in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 lost 1.1%, the DAX in Germany fell 1.4% and France’s CAC 40 dropped 1.3%.

Asian markets ended the session the session lower. The Shanghai Composite fell 1.4%, the Hang Seng in Hong Kong lost 0.9% and Japan’s Nikkei plunged 1.5%.

The People’s Bank of China, once again, raised the bank reserve rate by 0.5 percentage points as it continues to work on reeling in its red hot economy.

According to its most recent figures, China’s economic growth slowed in April, with the country’s inflation rate easing a bit but it’s not clear if that’s the start of a prolonged cooling period or not.

Currencies and bonds: The dollar gained on the the euro and the British pound but lost ground against the Japanese yen.

The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury rose, pushing the yield down to 3.17%. To top of page.

The Port Authority has struggled to create an elegant and secure skyscraper while also containing costs.

Anand Patel — Thu, 12 May 2011 04:54:53 +0000

building

It was supposed to be an elegant solution to a very large problem: how to disguise the 185-foot-tall fortified concrete base of 1 World Trade Center so it does not look like a gigantic bunker.

The plan was to drape the base with 2,000 clear prismatic glass panels and welded aluminum screens to create, in the words of the architect, “a dynamic, shimmering glass surface.”

But the glass has proved difficult to manufacture at that scale. In trials, the refinishing required for the prismatic effect has left the glass brittle and prone to shatter. With the steel frame of the building now rising to the 65th floor, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has scrapped the idea and sent the architects back for yet another revision.

“As design moved to the testing phase, it became clear that the prismatic glass simply had too many technical problems to overcome and at a budget that was not cost effective,” said John Kelly, a spokesman for the Port Authority. “We have been finalizing a design that will be far more practical while being both distinctive and magnificent.”

About $10 million had already been spent on the glass. David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who designed the tower and the prismatic glass covering, did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.

Douglas Durst of the Durst Organization, which owns a 10 percent stake in the building and is in charge of leasing it, said the switch in plans should have no effect on the timetable for the building, scheduled to open in January 2014. The new facade is likely to be made of more traditional clear glass panels, possibly with granite elements to tie it into the surrounding plazas.

The problem with the glass illustrates the tension inherent in the entire $3.2 billion project: how to create a skyscraper that is at once iconic and defended against terrorism, while also containing costs.

In 2003, Daniel Libeskind, the master planner for the trade center site, designated the northwest corner of the 16-acre property for a 1,776-foot tower, which was named the Freedom Tower by Gov. George E. Pataki and later renamed 1 World Trade Center.

Larry A. Silverstein, who was the building’s developer at the time but later relinquished control to the Port Authority, brought in Mr. Childs, a renowned architect who designed the Time Warner Center, among other notable buildings. But Mr. Childs’s design went back to the drawing board in 2005, after the New York Police Department warned of the dangers posed by a vehicular bomb. Mr. Childs, who friends say sees the tower as a legacy project, redesigned the building, shifting the base away from West Street and inserting a thick concrete podium designed to lift the tower out of the path of a blast.

The plan allowed for a lobby with 50-foot ceilings, but no office space until what is essentially the 20th floor.

But Mr. Childs’s plan for a windowless metal facade for the podium prompted some critics to describe it as a “concrete bunker,” which alarmed Mr. Pataki, who was sensitive to the skyscraper’s image. In June 2006, Mr. Childs unveiled a revised design with the concrete base now clad in prismatic glass welded to aluminum screens, to give the base a feeling of transparency. In the event of a bomb blast, the inch-thick glass panels, each one 13 feet 4 inches by 4 feet, were designed to crumble into small fragments the way automobile windshields do.

To make prismatic glass, wedges are cut into the surface to create a prismlike effect, so that the glass will “reflect, refract and transmit light in various spectrums,” according to the architect, without blinding passers-by or drivers. Prismatic glass has been used as a decorative feature for more than a century in lamps and storefronts.

But the World Trade Center plan was unprecedented, at least in the United States, said William M. Yanek, executive vice president of the Glass Association of North America in Topeka, Kan. “To our knowledge prismatic glass has never been used on a building of this magnitude,” he said. Above the base, workers are installing more than 12,000 more traditional, ultraclear glass panels to the building’s steel frame.

Three companies competed for the $82 million contract to manufacture and install the base facade, and in August 2008 the Port Authority selected a joint venture of DCM Erectors and Solera Construction. In an effort to cut costs, DCM-Solera, which declined to comment, decided to manufacture the glass in China, a move that infuriated three American companies that had provided the architect with technical support for the project, as well as the governors of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, where the companies are based.

“I’m not sure a more important symbol of our nation than the Freedom Tower will be seen in my career,” Gary R. Danowski, vice president of PPG Performance Glazings, a Pennsylvania glass manufacturer, told an industry publication in 2009. “The thought that the protective skin of this icon of America will be made from glass sourced on the other side of the planet and not local material is quite a blow.”

But with the Chinese manufacturer unable to produce a glass panel that matched the sample from the architect, DCM-Solera ordered the raw glass last October from PPG’s manufacturing plant outside Carlisle, Pa.

The fabrication was still to be done in China, and some panels were sent there beginning in January. It was a complex undertaking involving cutting, as well as laminating and tempering to create the safety-glass effect. But the glass panels tended to bow after they were cut and tempered, which interfered with the lamination process. The ridges cut into the glass also proved to be too brittle and broke into large pieces, rather than tiny pellets.

It is unclear whether an American factory would have been more successful, but after two years and millions of dollars, the Port Authority decided that further trials would not be prudent, and in March it quietly dropped the idea.

Arizona liberals seek secession, new US state

Anand Patel — Thu, 12 May 2011 08:04:15 +0000

Arizona-liberals-seek-secession-new-US-state

US, Tucson : A boy walks past the flag (AFP Photo / Mamta Popat-Pool)

Liberals living in southern Arizona fed up with the overly conservative remainder of the state are seeking to secede and form their own state – America’s 51st state.

A group of Democratic lawyers from the more liberal Tucson and Pima County areas have created a petition to place a statehood question on the November 2012 ballot. If enough signatures are collected voters would have chance to decide if Arizona splits in two.

Their goal is for Pima County to separate from Arizona and form the state tentatively named Baja Arizona.

The group must collect 48,000 signatures by July 5, 2012 to place their question on the ballot. The measure is to ask residents if they support petitioning the state legislature to officially secede. In it’s early stages, the measure will be a non-binding resolution.

“We at least need to get it on the ballot, as a nonbinding resolution, to ask the people of Pima County if they want to be a part of Arizona,” attorney Paul Eckerstrom, former Pima County Democratic chairman, told Reuters. “All the stars would have to align for this to happen, but it could conceivably happen by the fall of 2012.”

“It should have been its own state from the get-go,” said attorney Hugh Holub said, who argued that the idea of Baja Arizona dates back to at least 1965. “We aren’t like the folks in Maricopa [County].”

While the country is more liberal than the rest of Arizona, it is not without a few Republican leaning neighborhoods.

“I don’t think a majority of Pima County residents want to leave Arizona,” said Republican lawmaker Ted Vogt who represents approximately a fifth of the people from Pima County.

The county hosts three more rural region which has becoming increasingly Republican – their voices, while small, will hold an impact.

If the measure is approved by voters, activists would seek approval for the separation from the state legislature and voters in the area would have to approve a new binding measure. Following that process the US Congress would then have to formally grant Baja Arizona official statehood.

If the state legislature disagreed, proponents for secession would be required to push a state-wide ballot initiative to get around the Arizona lawmakers.

Examples of states splitting into two in US history are often forgotten. Kentucky and Tennessee were created by secession. The last time a state split was when West Virginia left Virginia during the US Civil War. More recent attempts have failed, such as calls to divide California, split Washington or pull Long Island out of New York.

If created, the new state of Baja Arizona would not be a merely another minor US state, although it would be created from a single county. The new state would in fact be larger than Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut and New Jersey in geographic size. Its population would be greater than Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, and both North and South Dakota.