Income inequality rising in most developed countries

The divide between rich and poor is widening in developed nations, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

According to the new data, economic disparity has risen more from 2007 to 2010 than in the preceding 12 years. Over this period, the OECD has documented increasing income inequality caused by the financial crisis, which it says is “squeezing income and putting pressure on inequality and poverty.”

In 2010, the richest 10 percent of people across 33 OECD member states earned 9.5 times the income of the poorest 10 percent. That factor is up from 9 in 2007. The largest differences among OECD countries were found in Chile, Mexico, Turkey, the United States and Israel, while the lowest were in Iceland, Slovenia, Norway and Denmark.

Levels of income inequality have worsened across three-quarters of all OECD countries since 2007. This gap rose most rapidly in nations where the euro crisis has hit hardest, coinciding with soaring unemployment. For example, in Spain and Italy, the average income of the top 10 percent stayed relatively stable, but the poor became drastically poorer.

Income inequality in the United States and Latin America — particularly Chile and Mexico — has tended higher than in Europe. This trend continued into 2010. The top five most unequal countries (in descending order) were Chile, Mexico, Turkey, the United States and Israel. Portugal, the European nation with the highest income inequality, was ranked sixth.

 

(More detail in this link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient)

 

Traditionally, OECD countries have had lower levels of inequality than non-OECD nations such as India, China and Russia. Despite the economic downturn, the economies of China and India grew above the OECD average over the past decade and are continuing to develop. Though these emerging economies have reduced levels of poverty, they have also seen increased levels of income inequality.

In most OECD countries, the growing gulf between rich and poor was alleviated slightly by welfare support. While most countries experienced increases in disposable income inequality and relative poverty, the levels in 2010 were only slightly higher than in 2007, perhaps due to the deployment of fiscal stimulus packages.

The OECD report warns that if governments continue to cut benefits programs and pursue austerity policies, levels of inequality could continue to grow. Michael Förster, senior analyst at the OECD social policy division, said that they have taken this report as an opportunity to “raise the red flag” about the necessity for social welfare provisions in softening the blow of the economic downturn.

“At this stage in most countries, including most European countries, the crisis is not over. Just yesterday, France announced that it is in a recession,” Förster said. “The problem is that the focus of governments has shifted from stimulus to austerity measures.”

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría explained that governments must find ways of growing their economies while supporting individuals who are most at risk.

“These worrying findings underline the need to protect the most vulnerable in society, especially as governments pursue the necessary task of bringing public spending under control,” Gurría said in a statement. “Policies to boost jobs and growth must be designed to ensure fairness, efficiency and inclusiveness. Among these policies, reforming tax systems is essential to ensure that everyone pays their fair share and also benefits and receives the support they need.”

 

By Eliza Mackintosh, May 16, 2013, (The Washington Post)

 

Clinton, Carter, Obama, Bush at Center Dedication

Here are excerpts of the remarks by President Barack Obama and former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

I’ll be very brief. And I’ll be limiting my comments just to the things that I know personally that have been important for me and for George W. Bush.

[At the inauguration in 2001] George and Laura afterwards came up and thanked us for coming.

And so I — he said, now, if there’s anything I can ever do for you, let me know — which was a mistake he made. I said, Mr. President, the Carter Center has programs in 35 countries in the world, and the worst problem now is the war going on between North and South Sudan. And millions of people have been killed. And I’d like for you to help us have a peace agreement there. And in a weak moment, he said, I’ll do it. And I said, when can I meet your secretary of state and your national security adviser? He said, well, I haven’t even chosen them yet, but give us three weeks.

President Jimmy Carter

Associated Press

Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, arrive for the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, Thursday, April 25, 2013, in Dallas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

So three weeks later, I came up and met with Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and President Bush kept his promise. … And in January of 2005, there was a peace treaty between North and South Sudan that ended a war that had been going for 21 years. George W. Bush is responsible for that.

And that was the first of his great contributions to the countries in Africa.

President Bill Clinton

Associated Press

Former President George W. Bush, left, shakes hands with former President William J. Clinton . (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

I — you know, starting with my work with President George H.W. Bush on the tsunami and the aftermath of Katrina, people began to joke that I was getting so close to the Bush family, I had become the black sheep son. My mother told me not to talk too long today and Barbara, I will not let you down.

…There is one other connection I have that I think is largely unknown, which is that a couple of times a year in his second term, George Bush would call me just to talk politics. And a chill went up and down my spine when Laura said that all their records were digitized. Dear God, I hope there’s no record of those conversations in this vast and beautiful building.
…
I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m going to anyway. Your mother showed me some of your landscapes and animal paintings, and I thought they were great. Really great. And I seriously considered calling you and asking you to do a portrait of me —  until I saw the results of your sister’s hacked emails. Those bathroom sketches are wonderful, but at my age, I think I should keep my suit.

President Obama

Associated Press

President Barack Obama speaks during the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, Thursday, April 25, 2013, in Dallas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

When all the living former Presidents are together, it’s also a special day for our democracy. We’ve been called “the world’s most exclusive club” — and we do have a pretty nice clubhouse. But the truth is, our club is more like a support group. The last time we all got together was just before I took office. And I needed that. Because as each of these leaders will tell you, no matter how much you may think you’re ready to assume the office of the presidency, it’s impossible to truly understand the nature of the job until it’s yours, until you’re sitting at that desk.

…
The first thing I found in that desk the day I took office was a letter from George, and one that demonstrated his compassion and generosity. For he knew that I would come to learn what he had learned — that being President, above all, is a humbling job. There are moments where you make mistakes. There are times where you wish you could turn back the clock. And what I know is true about President Bush, and I hope my successor will say about me, is that we love this country and we do our best.
…

And what President Clinton said is absolutely true — to know the man is to like the man, because he’s comfortable in his own skin. He knows who he is. He doesn’t put on any pretenses. He takes his job seriously, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He is a good man.

But we also know something about George Bush the leader. As we walk through this library, obviously we’re reminded of the incredible strength and resolve that came through that bullhorn as he stood amid the rubble and the ruins of Ground Zero, promising to deliver justice to those who had sought to destroy our way of life.
…
Seven years ago, President Bush restarted an important conversation by speaking with the American people about our history as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. And even though comprehensive immigration reform has taken a little longer than any of us expected, I am hopeful that this year, with the help of Speaker Boehner and some of the senators and members of Congress who are here today, that we bring it home — for our families, and our economy, and our security, and for this incredible country that we love. And if we do that, it will be in large part thanks to the hard work of President George W. Bush.

President George W. Bush

Associated Press

Former President George W. Bush, wipes a tear after his speech during the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center Thursday, April 25, 2013, in Dallas. Left is President George H.W. Bush. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Thank you all. Please be seated. Oh, happy days. I want to thank you all for coming. Laura and I are thrilled to have so many friends — I mean, a lot of friends here to celebrate this special day. There was a time in my life when I wasn’t likely to be found at a library, much less found one. …

The political winds blow left and right. Polls rise and fall. Supporters come and go. But in the end, leaders are defined by the convictions they hold.

And my deepest conviction, the guiding principle of the administration, is that the United States of America must strive to expand the reach of freedom. I believe that freedom is a gift from God and the hope of every human heart. Freedom inspired our founders and preserved our union through civil war and secured the promise of civil rights.

Freedom sustains dissidents bound by chains, believers huddled in underground churches and voters who risk their lives to cast their ballots. Freedom unleashes creativity, rewards innovation and replaces poverty with prosperity. And ultimately, freedom lights the path to peace.

Ultimately, the success of a nation depends on the character of its citizens. As president, I had the privilege to see that character up close. I saw it in the first responders who charged up the stairs into the flames to save people’s lives from burning towers. I saw it in the Virginia Tech professor who barricaded his classroom door with his body until his students escaped to safety. I saw it in the people of New Orleans that made homemade boats to rescue their neighbors from the floods, saw it in the service members who laid down their lives to keep our country safe and to make other nations free.

I dedicate this library with an unshakable faith in the future of our country. It was the honor of a lifetime to lead a country as brave and as noble as the United States. Whatever challenges come before us, I will always believe our nation’s best days lie ahead. God bless….

 

Source: The White House, Federal News Service (www.fednews.com)

 

Diplomats Staying Put, EU Tells North Korea

 European Union embassies in the North Korea will remain open for business, despite a proposal from Pyongyang for them to evacuate staff over mounting tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the UK’s Foreign Office said on Wednesday.

“The EU does not share the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) views on the current situation and does not recognize the nature of threat as described,” the EU statement read.

North Korea proposed on Tuesday that foreign embassies evacuate, saying it could not guarantee their safety after April 10.

There have been no evacuations, however.

The North Korean proposal came shortly after the isolated north-east Asian country threatened to launch nuclear attacks on both the US mainland and American military bases in the region.

South Korea’s foreign minister said on Wednesday Pyongyang could carry out a test firing of an intermediate-range ballistic missile at any time.

 

The North Korean threats came as US and South Korean forces carried out annual joint military exercises, some of them near the maritime border between the two Koreas. The United States responded by deploying F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and B-2 and B-52 bombers to the region.

Analysts say North Korea is unlikely to launch a full-scale attack on either US forces or South Korea, but concerns persist that rising tensions could spark hostilities.

 © RIA Novosti ,Moscow, April 10, 2013)

 

Obama Invokes Newtown Dead in Pressing for New Gun Laws

President Obama came here on Monday before a roaring, enthusiastic crowd to remember the tragedy of 20 children and 6 educators slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School and put new pressure on a recalcitrant Congress to honor them with gun-control legislation.

In an impassioned speech that at times took on the tone of a campaign rally, Mr. Obama told an audience of 3,100 at the University of Hartford that he came to Connecticut to ensure that the deaths in the school in Newtown would not recede and to remind Americans how important their voice is as the gun debates unfold.

“If you’re an American who wants to do something to prevent more families from knowing the immeasurable anguish that these families here have known, then we have to act,” Mr. Obama said. “Now’s the time to get engaged. Now’s the time to get involved. Now’s the time to push back on fear and frustration and misinformation. Now’s the time for everybody to make their voices heard, from every statehouse to the corridors of Congress.”

But as Mr. Obama spoke, Republicans on Capitol Hill were threatening to prevent a gun-control measure from even coming up for debate.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, announced Monday that he would join at least 13 other Republicans who have vowed to block consideration of gun legislation passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee and assembled by the Democratic leadership. That effectively made the threatened filibuster a test of Republican unity.

Mr. McConnell made his announcement as the Senate returned from recess and the legislative struggle over new gun safety legislation entered a critical phase. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, took steps to force a vote to start a broad review of gun-control proposals and accused those threatening a filibuster of “blatant obstruction,” even as they showed no signs of backing down.

“Shame on them,” said Mr. Reid, a Democrat.

Mr. Obama spoke in Hartford less than a week after the Connecticut General Assembly passed a sweeping package of gun and mental health legislation with bipartisan support.

The president was introduced by Nicole Hockley, whose first-grade son, Dylan, was killed at Sandy Hook. She recalled her life with her two sons before the tragedy and said she no longer had the option of turning away from the effects of gun violence. She said she was convinced that she and others had approached Connecticut lawmakers with the “love and logic” that persuaded them to pass the bill. She believed that approach could work with Congress, she said.

“If you want to protect your children, if you want to avoid this loss, you will not turn away either,” Ms. Hockley said. “Do something before our tragedy becomes your tragedy.”

Mr. Obama, who last visited Connecticut for a raw and emotional memorial shortly after the Dec. 14 shootings in Newtown, met again with the victims’ relatives before his speech. Afterward about a dozen family members left with him from Connecticut on Air Force One to make their case in Washington to members of Congress this week.

Mr. Obama, who was wearing a green Newtown bracelet, made reference in his speech to the brutal cases of recent mass violence from Aurora, Colo., to Virginia Tech. He pushed for a broad agenda that would include universal background checks for gun buyers, restraints on gun trafficking and a ban on assault weapons. But he focused on the background checks, which he said were supported by 90 percent of Americans. “There’s only one thing that can stand in the way of change that just about everybody agrees on, and that’s politics in Washington,” he said.

Mr. Obama, who included remarks respectful of gun owners, said “common-sense” gun measures could be enacted that would acknowledge the rights of gun owners and the Second Amendment. But he said that at the very least, Newtown and similar tragedies demanded a vote in Congress on gun control issues.

“If our democracy’s working the way it’s supposed to and 90 percent of the American people agree on something, in the wake of a tragedy, you’d think this would not be a heavy lift,” Mr. Obama said. “And yet some folks back in Washington are already floating the idea that they may use political stunts to prevent votes on any of these reforms. Think about that.

“They’re not just saying they’ll vote no on ideas that almost all Americans support,” he said. “They’re saying they’ll do everything they can to even prevent any votes on these provisions. They’re saying your opinion doesn’t matter, and that’s not right.”

Still, Democrats said they were encouraged that senior Republicans, including Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, had indicated that a filibuster of gun legislation would be a mistake.

Connecticut has enormous symbolism in almost every way in the gun debate. Beyond the tragedy, the state legislature last week passed a major package of new gun laws, joining states — including Colorado, Maryland and New York — that have moved to enact strong gun legislation as efforts have largely stalled in Washington. But bipartisan talks on Capitol Hill were continuing in an attempt to reach a compromise on background checks that could lead to a breakthrough.

The bills before Congress would make penalties for buying guns illegally more onerous, address trafficking, and greatly expand the number of sales covered by background checks, which gun control advocates see as an essential component. The fight over background checks has been about the balance between how far to expand the current checks at licensed dealers and conservatives’ fears over a paper trail that they insist could lead to a de facto national gun registry.

Mr. Obama said, as he has in the past, that the day of the Newtown massacre was the toughest of his presidency. He said that a failure to respond on gun issues would be tough, too, but that he believed the nation was not as divided as its political culture could seem.

“We have to believe that every once in a while we set politics aside, and just do what’s right,” Mr. Obama said.

After the speech, as the Newtown family members boarded Air Force One, one mother wiped away tears and another held up a notebook. On it were written two words: “Love Wins.”

When the president’s plane landed at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, Mr. Obama could be seen through its windows gathered with the families. A White House official said he was telling them where matters stood in Congress ahead of their lobbying this week.

Then they exited together, the president standing at the portal as each passed to descend the Air Force One stairs. He returned to the White House by helicopter; they were driven in government vans to Washington.

By PETER APPLEBOME and JONATHAN WEISMAN, Published: April 8, 2013

Peter Applebome reported from Hartford, and Jonathan Weisman from Washington. Jackie Calmes contributed reporting from Hartford, and Jennifer Steinhauer from Washington.

 

Diplomat Killed on Afghan Mission She Coveted

Family and friends said Anne Smedinghoff had chafed at the restrictions that American diplomats can face in Afghanistan, where the excitement and passion for foreign service are often dampened by lives circumscribed by blast walls and checkpoints and fortified compounds.

 

(Anne Smedinghoff, 25, died in a bomb attack Saturday while delivering donated books to a new school in Zabul Province.)

 

Ms. Smedinghoff joined the Foreign Service three years ago, straight out of Johns Hopkins University, and moved to Kabul in July. Being locked in the embassy compound, though it kept her largely safe from suicide bombers and rocket attacks, was not for her, her family and friends said. She longed to be out among Afghans, helping to ease the tumult of their lives.

On Saturday, Ms. Smedinghoff, 25, got her chance. She joined a delegation accompanying the governor of Zabul Province to inaugurate a new school in Qalat, the provincial capital. She was to help deliver donated books.

At 11 a.m., a suicide car bomber detonated explosives that ripped into the convoy, killing Ms. Smedinghoff and four other Americans — a civilian and three soldiers — in the deadliest day for Americans in Afghanistan this year. The names of the other four victims had not been released Sunday night.

The attack reverberated from Afghanistan to Ms. Smedinghoff’s family home in the Chicago suburb of River Forest, Ill. In her honor, friends and relatives this weekend replaced their profile photos on Facebook with a picture of a black ribbon embossed with the State Department seal.

For Ms. Smedinghoff, the Foreign Service was a calling, her parents, Tom and Mary Beth Smedinghoff, said in a statement. Afghanistan was her second deployment, an assignment for which she had volunteered after a tour in Caracas, Venezuela. She died, her parents said, doing a job she thought must be done.

“She particularly enjoyed the opportunity to work directly with the Afghan people and was always looking for opportunities to reach out and help to make a difference in the lives of those living in a country ravaged by war,” they said. “We are consoled knowing that she was doing what she loved, and that she was serving her country by helping to make a positive difference in the world.”

Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois issued a statement on Sunday praising Ms. Smedinghoff for having lived a “purposeful life.”

“Only 25 years old, this brave young woman knew social justice was her calling, and selflessly lost her life while serving others in a war-torn country,” the governor said. “She was devoted to protecting America and improving the lives of others.”

Ms. Smedinghoff was the first American diplomat to be killed on the job since Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others were killed last Sept. 11 in an attack on a United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Sam Hopkins, a lawyer and a friend of Ms. Smedinghoff’s from her college days, described her as a “very focused very disciplined and very calm” woman who had breezed through a panoply of examinations to enter the Foreign Service at an unusually young age. On her first posting to Caracas, he said, she expressed strong desire to leave the embassy compound and plunge into the city’s gritty, often dangerous streets.

“She said she wanted to get a car and drive around,” Mr. Hopkins said. “She had no fear.”

As a public diplomacy officer, Ms. Smedinghoff was on the front lines of an effort to move Afghanistan beyond its decades-long struggle with war and oppression to a place where women might walk openly in the streets and where children, including young girls, might go to school.

It is a job fraught with dangers and frustrations that have been compounded as the United States, along with its NATO allies, has shrunk its military footprint. Bases have been scaled back and ground and air transports reduced, meaning less security for development work.

With most American and NATO troops preparing to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the prospects for continued civilian aid of the kind Ms. Smedinghoff was helping to provide are now in doubt.

Yet in an emotional homage on Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry held up Ms. Smedinghoff’s work as an example of the importance of the continued American effort in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the face of “cowardice” and “nihilism.”

“A brave American was determined to brighten the light of learning through books written in the native tongue of the students that she had never met, but whom she felt compelled to help,” Mr. Kerry said in Istanbul, where he is on a diplomatic trip. “And she was met by cowardly terrorists determined to bring darkness and death to total strangers.”

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ, Published: April 7, 2013

Correction: April 9, 2013

An article on Monday about the death of Anne Smedinghoff, a young American diplomat in Afghanistan, misstated the number of diplomats killed along with Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens during the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on a United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Three others died, not four.

 

 

 

Tell Me How This Starts

What war on the Korean Peninsula would look like.

 

The Korean Peninsula is on a knife’s edge, one fateful step from war. While Koreans are accustomed to periodic spikes in tensions, the risk of renewed hostilities appears higher than at any time in the past 60 years, when American, North Korean, and Chinese generals signed an armistice agreement. Far more than 1 million people died in the Korean War, with at least that many troops and civilians injured over the course of the three-year campaign.

The exact leadership dynamics at play in Pyongyang remain mysterious, but the domestic survival of the Kim family dynasty appears to hinge on maintaining a credible nuclear and missile threat — backed up by a local great power, China. To achieve the former, Kim Jong Un appears willing to risk the latter. His regime’s unrelenting verbal threats are intended to rally domestic support, and its reckless brinksmanship is aimed at forcing the outside world to back down and back off. In the past days and weeks — adding to the tension created by its recent nuclear and missile tests — Pyongyang has severed a hotline with Seoul, renounced the 1953 armistice, conducted cyberattacks, and, against its own financial interests, closed down the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which is the only economic thread holding together relations with the South.

There is no single red line that, when crossed, would trigger war, but the potential for miscalculation and escalation is high. North Korea has a penchant for causing international incidents — in 2010 alone it used a mini-submarine to sink the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan and shelled South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island. The brazen and unprovoked killing of military personnel and civilians shocked many South Koreans, some of whom faulted then-President Lee Myung Bak for a tepid response. The new president, Park Geun Hye (South Korea’s “Iron Lady”) is determined not to echo that weakness and has vowed a strong response to any direct provocation. Meanwhile, the United States, via the annual Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises, has many troops, ships, and planes on maneuvers in the region and, as an additional show of resolve, flew long-range B-2 stealth bombers from Missouri to Korea and dispatched F-22 fighter jets as well.

The desire to show strength, the fear of looking weak, and the presence of tons of hardware provides more than enough tinder that a spark could start a peninsula-wide conflagration. An accident — such as a straying missile, an incident at sea or in the air, a shooting near the Northern Limit Line or the Demilitarized Zone — could trigger an action-reaction cycle that could spiral out of control if Pyongyang, running out of threats or low-level provocations, were to gamble on a more daring move. It might calculate that a bold gesture would sow doubt and dissent in South Korea, drive a risk-averse United States to back down and restrain its eager ally, and hand China a fait accompli in which Beijing has no alternative to protecting its upstart neighbor. It might be very wrong.

Let’s say that the North decides to fire its new mobile KN-08 intermediate-range ballistic missile, capable of reaching U.S. bases in Guam. An X-band radar based in Japan detects the launch, cueing missile defenses aboard Japanese and U.S. ships. The U.S.S. Stetham, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer equipped with Aegis phased-array radars, fires its SM-3 missiles, which hit and shatter the KN-08 warhead as it begins its final descent. The successful intercept is immediately touted internationally as a victory, but, now desperate for tactical advantage that will allow it to preserve its nuclear and missile programs, the North Korean leadership orders an assault on South Korean patrol vessels and military fortifications built after the 2010 shelling incident.

The regime feels safe in striking out along the maritime boundary because the two sides have repeatedly skirmished in the area in the past 15 years. But President Park, determined to show backbone, dispatches on-alert F-15K fighter aircraft armed with AGM-84E SLAM-Expanded Response air-to-ground missiles to destroy the North Korean installations responsible for the latest assault. For good measure, they also bomb a North Korean mini-submarine pier as belated payback for the sinking of Cheonan. North Korean soldiers and military officers are killed in the attack. Pyongyang vows a merciless response and launches a risky salvo of rockets into downtown Seoul, in hope of shocking the Blue House into seeking an immediate cessation of fighting. But far from ending the tit-for-tat attacks, North Korean actions have now triggered the Second Korean War.

U.S. and ROK Combined Forces Command implements a pre-arranged plan — perhaps using submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs dropped from a B-2 — to eliminate North Korea’s two major missile launch facilities: Tonghae in the northeast and Sohae in the northwest, both of which are fairly close to the Chinese border. North Korea responds with more rockets and Scud missiles, accompanied by North Korean Central News announcements suggesting that they could be armed with biological agents. China, seeking to restrain all sides, pours troops and materiel across the border to protect its interests and instigates a secret plan to replace Kim Jong Un with a senior general who understands the North’s total dependence on its only ally. The resulting confusion leads to a belief that North Korea, and not just the Kim regime, is collapsing. Meanwhile, the United States quietly embarks on a secret mission to secure North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

Even now, however, the Second Korean War has only just begun because, as conflict breaks out, all participants expand their strategic goals. South Korea — which initially had hoped only to force North Korea to calm down enough to re-enter negotiations on nuclear weapons, expanded inter-Korean economic ties, and human rights — now believes North Korea is going to collapse and starts to implement an assertive reunification policy. The U.S. policy of deterrence and strategic patience has failed, so Washington decides to pursue active denuclearization and regime change. It joins with Seoul in planning postwar reconstruction in which the peninsula is reunified.

China, which was slow to curb its ally’s proliferation and never had a good handle on Kim Jong Un, seeks to ensure that the new leader of North Korea can restore stability. China also wants a new leader in Pyongyang to adopt a pro-China policy — one which includes continued preferential access to North Korean mineral deposits for its state-owned enterprises. Russia supports China, and it is promised unfettered access to the warm-water port in the Rason Special Economic Zone in northeastern North Korea.

It is easier to start a war than to stop one, but in the best case the Second Korean War might end with an international conference — perhaps in Jakarta under the auspices of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations — in which the United States and South Korea come to a modus vivendi with China and a greatly weakened North Korea over the country’s future, addressing succession and confederation with the South,  as well as the verified destrcution of nuclear weapons. In the worst case…well, an awful lot more people would die.

The Korean War began in June 1950 as a result of a conscious policy choice on the part of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung. With the Chinese civil war successfully concluded and authoritarianism on the rise, Kim concluded the time was ripe to deliver a knock-out blow and bring a long Korean civil war to a similar conclusion. He spent 10 days amassing 900,000 soldiers near the 38th Parallel, and in the pre-dawn hours on June 25, he ordered the invasion of the South. Hiding in plain sight, the troops nonetheless surprised the Republic of Korea Army, because the presumption was that Kim would never launch a full-scale war that could embroil a war-weary region in another major conflagration.

The presumption, as we know now, was dead wrong. The United States mobilized a formidable international coalition under U.N. auspices and, together with the ROK Army, regrouped and launched their own counteroffensive. American leadership, too, was susceptible to overtly optimistic appraisals. By October, General Douglas MacArthur was so confident of rapid victory that he assured President Harry S Truman that the war would be over by Christmas. But the ferocity of inter-Korean tensions, mixed with Cold War superpower aims, assured the war slogged on until 1953.

The war’s renewal would be more likely to result from miscalculation than from deliberate choice. Kim Jong Un may not want war, but amid heightened tensions there are many ways one could start — and it could well be that it is the United States that miscalculates. There is no sound empirical method for identifying the particular catalyst that would trigger war, but should war begin again in earnest, its intensity and its duration could prove a nasty surprise, as it did the first time. And the consequences could affect Northeast Asia for the rest of the century.

 

BY PATRICK M. CRONIN | APRIL 3, 2013

 

Graphic Humor 207 (Gop)

 

Iraq, Afghan wars will cost to $4 trillion to $6 trillion, Harvard study says

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting, according to a new study by a Harvard researcher.

Washington increased military benefits in late 2001 as the nation went to war, seeking to quickly bolster its talent pool and expand its ranks. Those decisions and the protracted nation-building efforts launched in both countries will generate expenses for years to come, Linda J. Bilmes, a public policy professor, wrote in the report that was released Thursday.

“As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives,”the report says. “The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.”

Bilmes said the United States has spent almost $2 trillion already for the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those costs, she said, are only a fraction of the ultimate price tag. The biggest ongoing expense will be providing medical care and disability benefits to veterans of the two conflicts.

“Historically, the bill for these costs has come due many decades later,” the report says, noting that the peak disbursement of disability payments for America’s warriors in the last century came decades after the conflicts ended. “Payments to Vietnam and first Gulf War veterans are still climbing.”

Spending borrowed money to pay for the wars has also made them more expensive, the study noted. The conflicts have added $2 trillion to America’s debt, representing roughly 20 percent of the debt incurred between 2001 and 2012.

Bilmes’s estimate provides a higher range than another authoritative study on the same issue by Brown University’s Eisenhower Research Project. Brown researchers put the price tag at roughly $4 trillion.

Both figures are dramatically higher than what U.S. officials projected they would spend when they were planning to go to war in Iraq. Stephen Friedman, a senior White House official, left government in 2002 after irking his colleagues by publicly estimating that the Iraq war could end up costing up to $200 billion.

It’s unclear how long Washington will keep paying bills for that conflict, which dragged on for nearly a decade and became deeply unpopular at home and in Iraq. Judging from history, it could take quite awhile. The Associated Press recently found that the federal government is still cutting checks each month to relatives of Civil War veterans nearly 150 years after the end of that war.

 

By Ernesto Londoño, March 28, 2013

 

Immigration reform could spark a $1.4 trillion boom

A study finds that granting citizenship to undocumented workers would increase pay, tax revenue and overall spending.

© Elaine Thompson-AP Photo

Adding 203,000 new jobs, $184 billion in tax revenue and $1.4 trillion to the nation’s overall economy seems like a pretty good idea for a country clawing its way out of an economic downturn.Would Americans still think it’s a good idea if that boom required granting undocumented immigrants immediate citizenship? The answer might be less than unanimous, but the folks at the Center For American Progress say it’s an idea worth considering sooner rather than later.

Five years after gaining citizenship, undocumented workers would make 25.1% more annually, according to a study obtained by The Huffington Post. That raise will “ripple through the economy” as immigrants use their income to buy goods and pay taxes.

The plan, as with nearly any mention of immigration reform in the U.S., has drawn its fair share of criticism. In his book “Immigration Wars: Forging An American Solution,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush insists that the economic benefits of a path to citizenship are outweighed by the potential damage to the “integrity of our immigration system.”

The junior senator from Bush’s state, Republican Marco Rubio, flat-out disagrees and has joined Arizona Sen. John McCain in calling for a clear and immediate path to citizenship for undocumented workers. They wouldn’t be the first or even the most high-profile Republicans to make that call, either.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan made immigration a priority of his presidency by instituting the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which National Public Radio recently spotlighted for granting amnesty and, eventually, citizenship to undocumented workers who had been in the country since 1982.

How did that work out? Ask the Department of Labor, which reports that immigrants granted citizenship under Reagan’s plan got a 15.1% bump in pay immediately afterward.

But what if Americans just aren’t ready for such a sweeping change in immigration policy? Then they’re going to have to wait a whole lot longer for a payout while they make up their minds. The Center For American Progress study showed that delaying the citizenship process could put off benefits for both workers and the greater economy by a decade or more.

 

Poorest Americans give much more to charity than rich

When Mort Zuckerman, the New York City real-estate and media mogul, lavished $200 million on Columbia University in December to endow the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, he did so with fanfare suitable to the occasion: the press conference was attended by two Nobel laureates, the president of the university, the mayor, and journalists from some of New York’s major media outlets.

 

Many of the 12 other individual charitable gifts that topped $100 million in the U.S. last year were showered with similar attention: $150 million from Carl Icahn to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, $125 million from Phil Knight to the Oregon Health & Science University, and $300 million from Paul Allen to the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, among them. If you scanned the press releases, or drove past the many university buildings, symphony halls, institutes, and stadiums named for their benefactors, or for that matter read the histories of grand giving by the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Stanfords, and Dukes, you would be forgiven for thinking that the story of charity in this country is a story of epic generosity on the part of the American rich.

It is not. One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest percentage of their income. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns.

But why? Lower-income Americans are presumably no more intrinsically generous (or “prosocial,” as the sociologists say) than anyone else. However, some experts have speculated that the wealthy may be less generous—that the personal drive to accumulate wealth may be inconsistent with the idea of communal support. Last year, Paul Piff, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, published research that correlated wealth with an increase in unethical behavior: “While having money doesn’t necessarily make anybody anything,” Piff later told New York magazine, “the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people.” They are, he continued, “more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes.” Colorful statements aside, Piff’s research on the giving habits of different social classes—while not directly refuting the asshole theory—suggests that other, more complex factors are at work. In a series of controlled experiments, lower-income people and people who identified themselves as being on a relatively low social rung were consistently more generous with limited goods than upper-class participants were. Notably, though, when both groups were exposed to a sympathy-eliciting video on child poverty, the compassion of the wealthier group began to rise, and the groups’ willingness to help others became almost identical.

Last year, not one of the top 50 individual charitable gifts went to a social-service organization or to a charity that principally serves the poor and the dispossessed.

If Piff’s research suggests that exposure to need drives generous behavior, could it be that the isolation of wealthy Americans from those in need is a cause of their relative stinginess? Patrick Rooney, the associate dean at the Indiana University School of Philanthropy, told me that greater exposure to and identification with the challenges of meeting basic needs may create “higher empathy” among lower-income donors. His view is supported by a recent study by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, in which researchers analyzed giving habits across all American ZIP codes. Consistent with previous studies, they found that less affluent ZIP codes gave relatively more. Around Washington, D.C., for instance, middle- and lower-income neighborhoods, such as Suitland and Capitol Heights in Prince George’s County, Maryland, gave proportionally more than the tony neighborhoods of Bethesda, Maryland, and McLean, Virginia. But the researchers also found something else: differences in behavior among wealthy households, depending on the type of neighborhood they lived in. Wealthy people who lived in homogeneously affluent areas—areas where more than 40 percent of households earned at least $200,000 a year—were less generous than comparably wealthy people who lived in more socioeconomically diverse surroundings. It seems that insulation from people in need may dampen the charitable impulse.

 

 

Wealth affects not only how much money is given but to whom it is given. The poor tend to give to religious organizations and social-service charities, while the wealthy prefer to support colleges and universities, arts organizations, and museums. Of the 50 largest individual gifts to public charities in 2012, 34 went to educational institutions, the vast majority of them colleges and universities, like Harvard, Columbia, and Berkeley, that cater to the nation’s and the world’s elite. Museums and arts organizations such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art received nine of these major gifts, with the remaining donations spread among medical facilities and fashionable charities like the Central Park Conservancy. Not a single one of them went to a social-service organization or to a charity that principally serves the poor and the dispossessed. More gifts in this group went to elite prep schools (one, to the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York) than to any of our nation’s largest social-service organizations, including United Way, the Salvation Army, and Feeding America (which got, among them, zero).

Underlying our charity system—and our tax code—is the premise that individuals will make better decisions regarding social investments than will our representative government. Other developed countries have a very different arrangement, with significantly higher individual tax rates and stronger social safety nets, and significantly lower charitable-contribution rates. We have always made a virtue of individual philanthropy, and Americans tend to see our large, independent charitable sector as crucial to our country’s public spirit. There is much to admire in our approach to charity, such as the social capital that is built by individual participation and volunteerism. But our charity system is also fundamentally regressive, and works in favor of the institutions of the elite. The pity is, most people still likely believe that, as Michael Bloomberg once said, “there’s a connection between being generous and being successful.” There is a connection, but probably not the one we have supposed.

 

By Ken Stern’s book, With Charity for All: Why Charities Are Failing and a Better Way to Give, was published in February 2013

 

Senator: Should hourly minimum wage be $22?

Elizabeth Warren said that a much higher baseline would be appropriate if wages were tied to productivity gains.

Digital Vision-Getty Images-Getty Images

What if U.S. workers were paid more as the nation’s productivity increased?
If we had adopted that policy decades ago, the minimum wage would now be about $22 an hour, said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last week. Warren was speaking at a hearing held by the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Warren was talking to Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor who has studied the issue of minimum wage. “With a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75?” she asked Dube. “It sure didn’t go to the worker.”

The $22 minimum wage Warren referred to came from a 2012 study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. It said that the minimum wage would have hit $21.72 an hour last year if it had been tied to the increases seen in worker productivity since 1968. Even if the minimum wage got only one-fourth the pickup as the rate of productivity, it would now be $12.25 an hour instead of $7.25.

Some of the news media took this to mean that Warren is calling for a minimum-wage increase to $22 an hour. That doesn’t appear to be the case. She seems to be merely pointing out that the minimum wage has grown more slowly than other facets of the economy.

Warren is taking some hits on Twitter for her comments. One user describes her as “clueless and out of touch” while another calls her “delusional.” But other users are praising her arguments as “compelling,” saying she is “asking the right questions regarding minimum wage.”

By Kim  Peterson

 

Costs of US wars linger for more than 100 years

Time Life Pictures photo. US war costs: Abraham Lincoln with his bodyguard Allan Pinkerton and Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand in Antietam, Md., shortly after the battle there. IMAGE

Post-service compensation costs for U.S. veterans have totaled more than $50 billion since 2003, a new study by The Associated Press shows.

If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century as service members and their families grapple with the sacrifices of combat.

An Associated Press analysis of federal payment records found that the government is still making monthly payments to relatives of Civil War veterans — 148 years after the conflict ended.

At the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, more than $40 billion a year is going to compensate veterans and survivors from the Spanish-American War from 1898, World War I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the two Iraq campaigns and the Afghanistan conflict. And those costs are rising rapidly.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said such expenses should remind the nation about war’s long-lasting financial toll.

“When we decide to go to war, we have to consciously be also thinking about the cost,” said Murray, D-Wash., adding that her WWII veteran father’s disability benefits helped feed their family.

Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator and veteran who co-chaired President Barack Obama’s deficit committee in 2010, said government leaders working to limit the national debt should make sure that survivors of veterans need the money they are receiving.

“Without question, I would affluence-test all of those people,” Simpson said.

AP Chart: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. War costs: Chart showing U.S. government veteran expenditures. IMAGE

With greater numbers of troops surviving combat injuries because of improvements in battlefield medicine and technology, the costs of disability payments are set to rise much higher.

The AP identified the disability and survivor benefits during an analysis of millions of federal payment records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

To gauge the postwar costs of each conflict, the AP looked at four compensation programs that identify recipients by war: disabled veterans; survivors of those who died on active duty or from a service-related disability; low-income wartime vets over age 65 or disabled; and low-income survivors of wartime veterans or their disabled children.

THE IRAQ WARS AND AFGHANISTAN

So far, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the first Persian Gulf conflict in the early 1990s are costing about $12 billion a year to compensate those who have left military service or family members of those who have died.

Those post-service compensation costs have totaled more than $50 billion since 2003, not including expenses of medical care and other benefits provided to veterans, and are poised to grow for many years to come.

The new veterans are filing for disabilities at historic rates, with about 45 percent of those from Iraq and Afghanistan seeking compensation for injuries. Many are seeking compensation for a variety of ailments at once.

Experts see a variety of factors driving that surge, including a bad economy that’s led more jobless veterans to seek the financial benefits they’ve earned, troops who survive wounds of war, and more awareness about head trauma and mental health.

VIETNAM WAR

It’s been 40 years since the U.S. ended its involvement in the Vietnam War, and yet payments for the conflict are still rising.

Now above $22 billion annually, Vietnam compensation costs are roughly twice the size of the FBI’s annual budget. And while many disabled Vietnam vets have been compensated for post-traumatic stress disorder, hearing loss or general wounds, other ailments are positioning the war to have large costs even after veterans die.

Based on an uncertain link to the defoliant Agent Orange that was used in Vietnam, federal officials approved diabetes a decade ago as an ailment that qualifies for cash compensation — and it is now the most compensated ailment for Vietnam vets.

The VA also recently included heart disease among the Vietnam medical problems that qualify, and the agency is seeing thousands of new claims for that condition. Simpson said he has a lot of concerns about the government agreeing to automatically compensate for those diseases.

 

“That has been terribly abused,” Simpson said.

Since heart disease is common among older Americans and is the nation’s leading cause of death, the future deaths of thousands of Vietnam veterans could be linked to their service and their benefits passed along to survivors.

A congressional analysis estimated the cost of fighting the war was $738 billion in 2011 dollars, and the postwar benefits for veterans and families have separately cost some $270 billion since 1970, according to AP calculations.

WORLD WAR I, WORLD WAR II AND THE KOREAN WAR

World War I, which ended 94 years ago, continues to cost taxpayers about $20 million every year. World War II? $5 billion.

Compensation for WWII veterans and families didn’t peak until 1991 — 46 years after the war ended — and annual costs since then have declined by only about 25 percent. Korean War costs appear to be leveling off at about $2.8 billion per year.

Of the 2,289 survivors drawing cash linked to WWI, about one-third are spouses, and dozens of them are over 100 years in age.

Some of the other recipients are curious: Forty-seven of the spouses are under the age of 80, meaning they weren’t born until years after the war ended. Many of those women were in their 20s and 30s when their aging spouses died in the 1960s and 1970s, and they’ve been drawing the monthly payments since.

CIVIL WAR AND SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

There are 10 living recipients of benefits tied to the 1898 Spanish-American War at a total cost of about $50,000 per year. The Civil War payments are going to two children of veterans — one in North Carolina and one in Tennessee— each for $876 per year.

Surviving spouses can qualify for lifetime benefits when troops from current wars have a service-linked death. Children under the age of 18 can also qualify, and those benefits are extended for a lifetime if the person is permanently incapable of self-support due to a disability before the age of 18.

Citing privacy, officials did not disclose the names of the two children getting the Civil War benefits.

Their ages suggest the one in Tennessee was born around 1920 and the North Carolina survivor was born around 1930. A veteran who was young during the Civil War would likely have been roughly 70 or 80 years old when the two people were born.

That’s not unheard of. At age 86, Juanita Tudor Lowrey is the daughter of a Civil War veteran. Her father, Hugh Tudor, fought in the Union army. After his first wife died, Tudor was 73 when he remarried her 33-year-old mother in 1920. Lowrey was born in 1926.

Lowrey, who lives in Kearney, Mo., suspects the marriage might have been one of convenience, with her father looking for a housekeeper and her mother looking for some security. He died a couple years after she was born, and Lowrey received pension benefits until she was 18.

Now, Lowrey said, she usually encounters skepticism from people after she tells them she’s a daughter of a Civil War veteran.

“We’re few and far between,” Lowrey said.

 

U.S. ramping up missile defense to meet North Korea threat

The Pentagon announced Friday it will spend $1 billion to add 14 interceptors to a West Coast-based missile defense system, responding to what it called faster-than-anticipated North Korean progress on nuclear weapons and missiles.

 

Threats will only “further isolate” North Korea, Carney says

Citing a “series of irresponsible and reckless provocations” by Pyongyang, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said he is determined to ensure protection of the U.S. homeland and stay ahead of the North Korean missile threat.

“We will strengthen our homeland defense, maintain our commitment to our allies and partners, and make clear to the world that the United States stands firm against aggression,” Hagel told a Pentagon news conference.

The Pentagon intends to add the 14 interceptors to 26 already in place at Fort Greely, Alaska. That will expand the system’s ability to shoot down long-range missiles in flight before they could reach U.S. territory. In addition to those at Greely, the U.S. also has four missile interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon, Friday, March 15, 2013. / AP Photo/Cliff Owen

James Miller, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said the project would cost about $1 billion. CBS News correspondent David Martin reported that how much added security that will buy is subject to debate, since the interceptors have an uneven test record.

“The reason we’re advancing our program here for homeland security is to not take any chances, is to stay ahead of the threat and to assure any contingency,” Hagel said.

The Pentagon announced on March 15, 2013 it will spend $1 billion to add 14 interceptors to a West Coast-based missile defense system, responding to what it called faster-than-anticipated North Korean progress on nuclear weapons and missiles.

Martin also reported that U.S. intelligence does not believe North Korea yet has a nuclear-armed missile capable of reaching the U.S. But a photo of a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile in a military parade last year heightened concerns they are working hard to develop one.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates once said North Korea could have an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) by 2016, added Martin, but the extra interceptor missiles to shoot it down won’t all be in place until 2017.

Miller and Hagel said the U.S. will conduct environmental studies on three additional potential locations for interceptors in the United States, including on the East Coast, as required by Congress. Hagel said no decision on a particular site has been made, but the studies would shorten the timeline should a decision be made.

Miller said that would provide options for building an interceptor base on the East Coast or adding more interceptors in Alaska, should either approach become necessary due to further future increases in the threat from Iran and North Korea.

The threat of a missile strike from North Korea was the rationale for building the missile defense sites in Alaska and California during the administration of President George W. Bush. Technical difficulties with the interceptors slowed the pace at which they were installed at Greely and Vandenberg.

“Our policy is to stay ahead of the threat — and to continue to ensure that we are ahead of any potential future Iranian or North Korean ICBM capability,” Miller said in a speech Tuesday at the Atlantic Council.

Miller noted that last December, North Korea launched a satellite into space, demonstrating its mastery of some of the same technologies required for development of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

“Our concern about Pyongyang’s potential ICBM capability is compounded by the regime’s focus on developing nuclear weapons,” he said. “North Korea’s third nuclear test last month is obviously a serious concern for all nations.”

North Korea recently threatened to reduce Seoul to a “sea of fire” and stage pre-emptive nuclear attacks on Washington.

“North Korea’s shrill public pronouncements underscore the need for the U.S. to continue to take prudent steps to defeat any future North Korean ICBM,” Miller said in his speech Tuesday.

In this handout image provided by the German Bundeswehr armed forces a patriot missile is fired during the Operation Red Arrow exercise on October 15, 2008 in Crete, Greece. Germany’s cabinet agreed on Thursday to send Patriot missiles and up to 400 soldiers to Turkey to act as a deterrent against any spread of the conflict in Syria across the border. (Photo by Peter Mueller/Bundeswehr via Getty Images)* CBS (March 15, 2013)

 

Dignitaries Pay Chávez Tribute, as Venezuelans Express Grief and Misgivings

CARACAS, Venezuela — While dignitaries from around the world attended the funeral of Hugo Chávez on Friday, Angélica Rodríguez stood in a line that stretched close to a mile in hopes of getting a glimpse of him lying in state. But her older brother, Gustavo, was much farther away, geographically and politically, having moved to Panama over a year ago because he believed there was no future in a Venezuela run by Mr. Chávez.

 

“He said we’re glorifying a man who does not deserve it,” said Ms. Rodríguez, 23, a university student who had been standing in line for 16 hours and had many hours to go.

Mr. Chávez’s death prompted a massive outpouring of grief from his supporters as thousands waited outside the funeral for a chance to enter later to see his glass-covered coffin. But many other Venezuelans stayed home and expressed hope that his passing would lead to change.

“He was a man who awoke passions, for good or bad,” said Claudia Astor, 41, who watched a television broadcast of the funeral and recounted her long-standing misgivings of Mr. Chávez. At her side was her mother, Norma Astor, 73, an ardent supporter of Mr. Chávez from the day in 1992 when he first appeared on television screens as the leader of a failed coup.

The proceedings also put on display the political alliances that Mr. Chávez assembled during 14 years as president, often with an eye toward confronting the United States, who he regularly pilloried as an imperialist force of evil.

President Raúl Castro of Cuba sat in the front row, next to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who at one point kissed Mr. Chávez’s flag-draped coffin. Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, shed some tears.

Despite years of rough relationships with the United States, including the expulsion from Caracas on Tuesday of two American military attaches who were accused of seeking to destabilize the country, there were signs that both sides were trying to put on a moderate face, at least for a day.

The United States sent Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Democrat of New York, and William D. Delahunt, a former Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, who had positive contacts with Venezuelan officials in the past.

And Nicolás Maduro, who was Mr. Chávez’s vice president until he was sworn in as president on Friday night, had kind words for the American delegation in his eulogy, emphasizing that they were sent by President Obama.

“Here there are some representatives that we greet and value,” Mr. Maduro said, naming the two American politicians and the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, who was also present, although not part of the official delegation.

In his eulogy, Mr. Maduro, Mr. Chávez’s handpicked political heir, praised his mentor for starting Venezuela down the path of socialism, although he stressed that there was still a long way to go.

“You can go in peace, commander,” Mr. Maduro said. “Mission accomplished. The battle continues.”

And while he spoke of love and forgiveness, he also touched on some of Mr. Chávez’s familiar themes, harping on enemies and the dark shadow of betrayal.

“There has not been a leader in the history of our country more vilified, more insulted and more vilely attacked than our commander president,” he said.

Mr. Maduro was sworn in as interim president in a special session of the National Assembly several hours after the funeral and then immediately put on the presidential sash. The Supreme Court had ratified the transition in a ruling earlier in the day.

But most opposition lawmakers boycotted the session, arguing that the Constitution was being violated. Henrique Capriles, who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. Chávez in October, called the swearing in spurious at a news conference. He said that under the Constitution Mr. Maduro should take charge of the duties of president while retaining the title of vice president. But the Constitution clearly bars a vice president from running for president, meaning that under Mr. Capriles’s interpretation, Mr. Maduro would have to resign from the government in order to run.

“Nicolás, no one elected you president,” a combative Mr. Capriles said. “The people didn’t vote for you, boy.”

The wrangling presaged the bitter political contest that is to come as the country heads to a special election to replace Mr. Chávez. Mr. Maduro, 50, is expected to be the candidate of the government party, while a person in the opposition coalition said that there was a consensus to name Mr. Capriles, 42, as its candidate.

Election authorities have yet to set a date for the vote.

In announcing Mr. Chávez’s death on Tuesday, a distraught Mr. Maduro described the country as a family. But on Friday it seemed like a family torn apart.

“I hate the anti-Chavistas with all my heart,” said Nancy Cadena, 45, who sells plantains and bananas in a street market in Petare, a poor neighborhood. “They don’t want the poor people to catch up.”

A few miles away in a middle-class neighborhood, Luisa Mercedes Pulido, 69, said that while she and her sister Elenora, 64, were on opposite sides of the national divide, they got along fine as long as they avoided politics.

“She has her point of view that she isn’t going to change, and I have mine that I’m not going to change,” she said. “But it seems incredible to me that intelligent, thoughtful people, at this stage, continue to think as they do when what we have received from Mr. Chávez is misery, corruption, murders and a total reduction in our quality of life and so much crime. I don’t understand how they cannot see that.”

 

Reporting (Text) was contributed by Simon Romero, María Eugenia Díaz, Jonathan Gilbert and Paula Ramón. (NYT, March 8, 2013)

 

Why Hugo Chávez Loved Les Misérables

Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president until his death yesterday, loved to read. So much so that he attributed his turn to socialism, in 2005, to the French classic Les Misérables. In a New Yorker obituary, Jon Lee Anderson, who met him several times, recalls enquiring about his political evolution. “I asked him why, so late in the day, he had decided to adopt socialism,” Anderson writes. “He acknowledged that he had come to it late, long after most of the world had abandoned it, but said that it had clicked for him after he had read Victor Hugo’s epic novel Les Misérables. That, and listening to Fidel [Castro].”

In fact, the “Comandante,” as his followers called him, spent a great deal of time quoting and analyzing Hugo’s social novel, the story of the wretched of France—Cosette, the orphan, Fantine, the prostitute, Jean Valjean, the well-intended convict—at the beginning of the 19^th century. Back then, Chávez would argue, France was very similar to today’s Venezuela—and even to Latin America as a whole. That’s what he explained during a Parisian press conference, in 2007. “You want to meet Jean Valjean?” he asked the crowd of reporters. “Go to Latin America.  There are many Jean Valjeans in Latin America. Many: I know some. You want to know Fantine? There are many Fantines in Latin America—and in Africa too. You want to know little Cosette and all the others… you want to know Marius? They’re all down there in Latin America.”

Praising Hugo’s novel was a way for Chávez to show his social conscience, not only in front of the French but also before the Venezuelan masses he claimed to educate. He often evoked the book to defend his policies, reminding the public that his government was devoted to the lower classes, “those who spent much of their life in total misery, like Victor Hugo would say,” as he put it in a 2005 speech.

Yet Chávez’s literary legacy, like the rest of his governing style, did not come without criticism. Under his rule, book clubs became a political statement. The man who oncehanded Barack Obama a copy of The Open Veins of Latin America, a book by Eduardo Galeano that details how Latin countries were exploited by Europe and later the United States, offered very specific book endorsements. His “Revolutionary Reading Plan,” a program that mainly involved giant book giveaways and a list of government-recommended texts, was denounced as a form of indoctrination by the country’s opposition.

Among the Chavista-approved books that quickly filled Venezuela’s libraries were, unsurprisingly, Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto and, less predictably, Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, a novel that he believed could “feed us with a fighting spirit and the will to fix the world” (along with Les Misérables, of course). Those works were chosen to “strengthen 21^st-century socialism.” The government agencies in charge argued that they were not an arm of the thought police. “What we’re doing is putting books within everybody’s reach, including children’s literature with absolutely no political content,” saidEdgar Roa, who was in charge of the giveaways. “Or Les Misérables by Victor Hugo which can be interpreted in many different ways depending on your political colors,” he added.

But the “book squadrons” that patrolled public areas encouraging Venezuelans to read seemed to hinder the educational message behind said book plan, and looked a bit like something out of George Orwell’s 1984 (a novel that did not make it onto Chávez’s list). As the BBC reported, “Each squadron wears a different colour to identify their type of book. For example, the red team promotes autobiographies while the black team discusses books on ‘militant resistance.’ ”

As far as Hugo’s work is concerned, Chávez may have missed the fact that the French author wrote Les Misérables in part during his political exile, when he was protesting against Napoleon III’s autocratic leadership. Some of his other works, like the book of satirical poems Les Châtiments, are highly critical of authoritarian governments. As far I can tell, Chávez never read those poems.

By Daphnee Denis, Wednesday, March 6, 2013

 

Bomber Strikes at U.S. Embassy in Turkey

Turkey’s interior minister, Muammer Guler, said law-enforcement authorities had information the bomber was a member was a Turkish man in his 30s who had been previously jailed on terrorism charges and was a known member of the outlawed leftist group, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C.

In a statement on the website Halkin Sesi, which is affiliated with the group, DKHP-C said the attack was in retaliation for U.S. imperialism and Turkey’s submission to American colonialism. The website, which translates as “People’s Voice,” also posted two photos of the alleged bomber, Ecevit Alisan Sanli. The site called on followers to go to the Black Sea province of Ordu in Turkey’s northeast to attend Mr. Sanli’s funeral.

The DHKP-C, which wants a socialist state and is vehemently anti-American, according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. The group has been relatively quiet in recent years, but has used suicide bombers in the past.

The alleged bomber came from Germany via Greek islands, according to Turkey’s Anatolia news agency.

Mr. Sanli was jailed following his conviction in connection with a terror attack on a military recreational facility in Istanbul in 1997, and was released from prison in 2001, according to the Turkish Interior Ministry.

The attack comes against the backdrop of the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, assault on U.S. posts in Benghazi, Libya. In the aftermath of that attack, in which four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens were killed, lawmakers faulted State Department security procedures, while officials there said Congress had cut its security budgets.

 

 

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the fact that the bomber struck at a perimeter checkpoint showed the post in Turkey had sufficient protection. “The level of security protection at our facility in Ankara ensured that there were not significantly more deaths and injuries,” she said. She said the checkpoint where the blast occurred was “far from the main building.”

Two other guards were “shaken up” in Friday’s attack, the U.S. official said, and a Turkish visitor was in serious condition. Several U.S. and Turkish staff members at the embassy were struck by flying debris and were released after treatment at an embassy clinic.

The Ankara blast occurred on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s last day on the job. John Kerry is taking over as the chief U.S. diplomat, leaving his seat as a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry’s staff was briefed as quickly as State Department officials received information, Ms. Nuland said.

Mrs. Clinton spoke by phone with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and with U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone, Ms. Nuland said. She also spoke with senior embassy staffers.

In addition to declaring the blast a terrorist attack, the State Department said the incident illustrates the need for congressional funding for improvements in diplomatic security. Ms. Nuland said that the Ankara post has been steadily upgraded over the past decade, but that it is a 1950s building due to be upgraded.

“Ankara is one of the posts that is due for a completely new embassy compound in the future, and it is one of the posts that will go on the lists if the department gets the money that we are looking from the Congress for security,” she said.

Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), chairman of the House foreign-affairs committee, said the bombing in Turkey is another reminder of the threat against U.S. interests abroad. “Coming after Benghazi, it underscores the need for a comprehensive review of security at our diplomatic posts,” he said. “The committee stands ready to assist the State Department in protecting our diplomats.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), who was especially critical of the State Department over the Benghazi attack, said reports on Friday indicated that protective measures in place in Ankara succeeded in limiting deaths and injuries, and showed the importance of physical security standards.

“Unfortunately, it confirms in my mind … that these were the kinds of physical security standards that should have been in place in Benghazi before the September 11, 2012 attack,” she said.

In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the attack showed a need for international cooperation against terrorism and was aimed at disturbing Turkey’s “peace and prosperity.”

 

 

Yavuz Ozden/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

WSJ’s Emre Peker joins the News Hub to discuss an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Turkey by a suicide bomber. Reports list one casualty and two additional people as injured. Photo: AP Images.

Analysts said early evidence suggested the attack bears little resemblance to the Libya assault. “This attack looks amateurish and not very well organized. It seems very different from the Benghazi operation,” said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat in Istanbul, now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Analysts said that militant leftist groups, although marginal, have mobilized against Ankara’s cooperation with its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies and Washington during the Syria crisis. Some 50 alleged members of the DHKP-C, including nine lawyers who have represented it, were detained in a recent police operation.

Turkish media reported that DHKP-C members in January assaulted German troops they mistook for U.S. soldiers who were accompanying a Patriot-missile battery in southern Turkey set to be deployed along the Syrian border.

“Although such groups represent a marginal political current, they could have an outsized impact. Iranian and Russian media have covered these incidents extensively in order to feed an anti-NATO slant and increase Ankara’s political costs for supporting the Syrian opposition,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkey Research Program at the Washington Institute, a think tank. “This narrative could spur further unrest in Turkey, amplifying perceptions of instability.”

The U.S. moved its consulate in Istanbul to a safer location on top of a hill from a busy and cramped downtown district after a 2003 al Qaeda attack on the U.K. consulate a few blocks away. In four bombings during November 2003, the terrorist organization targeted two synagogues, the British consulate and the local headquarters  killing 67 people.

In 2008, three Turkish nationals fired on the policemen outside the U.S. Istanbul consulate, killing three officers. All three assailants were shot dead at the scene. There was speculation that the attackers were al Qaeda members, but local authorities never confirmed that, saying only that they were terrorists.

 

—Peter Nicholas and Siobhan Gorman in Washington contributed to this article. (Feb.2, 2013)