U.S. signs $60 billion arms deal with Saudis..another black day in world disarmament

By Robert Sheer, truthdig.com January 5, 2012
He (U.S. President Obama) entered his re-election year by signing a $662 billion defense authorization bill that strips away some of our most fundamental liberties and keeps military spending at Cold War levels, and by approving a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Those two actions represent an obvious contradiction, since the attack on American soil that kept defense spending so high in the post-9/11 decade was carried out by 15 Saudis and four other men directed by Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi primarily using funding from his native land. Now Saudi Arabia is to be protected as a holdout against the democratic impulse of the Arab Spring because it is our ally against Iran, a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. Saudi Arabia, it should be recalled, was one of only three nations, along with the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, to recognize the Taliban government that harbored bin Laden before 9/11.
This is the same Saudi monarchy that rushed its forces into Bahrain last March to crush a popular uprising. But that doesn’t trouble the Obama administration; for two years it has been aggressively pushing the Saudi arms deal, which includes $30 billion in fighter jets built by Boeing. Forget human rights or the other good stuff Democrats love to prattle on about. As White House spokesman Josh Earnest put it: “This agreement reinforces the strong and enduring relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia and demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a strong Saudi defense capability as a key component to regional security.”
The rationale for the first big arms deal with the tyrannical Saudi monarchy since 1992 is that a better-armed Sunni theocracy (Saudi Arabia) is needed to counter the threat from the Shiite theocracy in Iran. Once again the U.S. is stoking religious-based fratricide, just as we did in Iraq. Only this time, we are on the side of Saudi Sunnis oppressing Shiites both at home and in neighboring Bahrain. That oppression—along with a U.S. invasion that replaced Tehran’s sworn enemy in Sunni-led Baghdad with a Shiite leadership that had long been nurtured by Iran’s ayatollahs—is what enhances the regional influence of Iran.
If Iran ever does pose a regional military threat because of its nuclear program or any other reason, real or concocted, it will be NATO forces that will take out the threat, not the Saudis, who will still be polishing their latest-model F-15s as icons of a weird conception of modernism.
The real reason for this deal is that it is the only sort of jobs program that Democrats are capable of pushing through an obstructive Congress (high-lighting by acorncentreblog.com). The administration boasts that the arms package will result in 50,000 jobs in 44 states, underscoring the warning from Dwight Eisenhower, the last progressive Republican president, about the power of a military-industrial complex that has tentacles in every congressional district. As Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, an Armed Services Committee member who championed this sale, put it: “The F-15 is a world-class aircraft built by hardworking folks right here in St. Louis. I am thrilled for all of the skilled men and women on the F-15 line that this important, big order that I have stood side-by-side with them in working to secure is finally happening.”
A Democrat running for re-election, McCaskill added, “These are important jobs in our community. I will continue advocating for sales of Boeing products wherever appropriate.” Being a good Democrat, she doesn’t reference Boeing’s profits, which are increasingly dependent upon arming the rest of the world.
That’s the win-win of government-generated profits and jobs on which the Democrats are counting to defeat the Republicans, both through campaign contributions from the more rational among the wealthy and the votes of ordinary people who, despite being seriously hurt in this economy, have nowhere else to turn.
Jobs at home in an election year (50,000 of them in 44 states!!), plus a well-armed Sunni theocracy as ally against a Shiite theocracy in Iran...
Is Sheer right that the U.S. is stoking religious-based fratricide?
He is certainly right that jobs, even those in a defence industry like Boeing's dependence on selling military materiel to the rest of the world (Canada has apparently agreed to purchase 65 of those same F35 Fighter Jets, also from Boeing at an estimated cost, with repairs, of some $30 billion), are the single most important ticket to the President's re-election in November 2012.
But let's look at how difficult it is, and has been for the President and the Democrats in Congress to generate support from the blockading Republicans, for any other job-creation measures, like infrastructure retrofits, rapid transit, green energy projects and even digitizing medical records, all of them solid proposals, blocked by an obstructionist Tea Party cadre of intellectual flyweights, whose single purpose in seeking election was really to defeat Obama, while they argue for NO MORE TAXES ( as their signatures on The  Norquist Pledge commits them to.)
Everything is connected to everything else. Nothing is or can be considered as a single file, unattached to any other file in Washington. It is all of a single piece, a canvas with mostly spashes of dark blue and black oil, over-riding a few red and green and yellow attempts at colour from the White House.
Maybe Paul Simon was thinking, prophetically, about the Tea Party when he wrote his song, My Little Town...
In my little town
I grew up believing
God keeps his eye on us all
And he used to lean upon me
As I pledged allegiance to the wall
Lord I recall my little town
Coming home after school
Riding my bike past the gates of the factories
My mom doing the laundry
Hanging out shirts in the dirty breeze
And after it rains there's a rainbow
And all of the colors are black
It's not that the colors aren't there
It's just imagination they lack
Everything's the same back in my little town

And yet, perhaps it is like a river running through the American psyche, as Simon also captured in the next few lines of his song....that never-ending twitching finger on the trigger of a gun and dreamin' of glory...partly because "nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town".....

In my little town I never meant nothing
I was just my father's son
Saving my money
Dreamin of glory
Twitching like a finger on a trigger of a gun

Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town

Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town
Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town

International Relations:"means AND ends" plus a committed national culture

By Irvin Studin, Globe and Mail, January 4, 2012
Irvin Studin is editor-in-chief and publisher of Global Brief magazine. He is also program director and assistant professor in the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto.
The core of the foreign policy and larger international affairs debate in Canada should not be about the ends we may wish to pursue as a collective, but rather about the means necessary to advance the ends legitimately chosen by any elected government. The desired ends will clearly change according to the times and government, but the means to success for Canada are stable and undifferentiated, and they need to be built up.

Without this reversal of strategic logic (means before ends, rather than ends dictating means), we Canadians are left talking to ourselves about problems in the world we’re interested in but typically incapable of solving – for lack of the requisite means to do so.
One is reminded of the 2007 speech by Prime Minister Stephen Harper about Canada’s intending to become a leader in the Americas (a perfectly legitimate “end” goal for a wealthy, reputable country such as Canada). Some years from now, historians in Latin America may wonder just how Canada planned to achieve its stated end of regional leadership. Answer: With no Spanish speakers! Or Portuguese speakers, for that matter. (By the time Australia had determined it wished to be a player in Asia, future prime minister Kevin Rudd – then chief of staff to the premier of Queensland – had already convinced the federal and state governments that the country needed a national Asian languages strategy.)
So what’s the nature of the “means” debate that Canada needs to have to be a major (and credible) global player this century? Two interrelated “means” levers need to be addressed: national culture and national capabilities. A country that’s serious about advancing ambitious ends in the world – defending minority religions or, say, brokering peace and transforming impoverished countries, or even fighting a just war – requires a public culture that can properly assess happenings beyond North America, and can support sustained engagement by Canada beyond our borders. More concretely, it needs the practical capabilities to advance these ends: talent (in key positions), assets (intelligence, military, diplomatic), money and, to be sure, differentiated relationships with players in the world.
To be a leader not only in the Americas but also in the world, Canada needs more foreign affairs culture, and certainly more capabilities. We might start by creating that army of Spanish and Portuguese speakers that the federal government surely requires to advance its stated ends. Let’s add some Mandarin and Arabic speakers for good measure.
None of this is possible without a brave political leadership that applies pressure over time to build the culture and capabilities today that will allow us to score major foreign policy achievements in the long term. But we can be confident that transformation of the Canadian means to regularly realize great projects in the world will make small potatoes of the current argument over the Office of Religious Freedom.
Thanks to Mr. Studin for this insightful brief about the need to look at how we achieve some legitimate foreign policy goals...if we could ever have the kind of national debate about those goals in the first place.
Flexing our muscle in foreign affairs, while "going through" literally an auditorium of ministers of foreign affairs in a revolving door reality check is certainly one way to preclude such a national debate. This revolving door has been a staple of Canadian governments for decades.
Another is for Canadian newspapers and televisions stations not to devote specific and sizeable time blocks for foreign affairs exclusively. While reporters like former CBC foreign affairs reporter Joe Schlesinger brought the world to Canadian viewers with frequency, regularity, detachment and insight, we need a cadre of such reporters in the ilk of Nahlah Ayed, Adrienne Arsenault, Peter Armstrong (now on CBC Radio). And we need foreign affairs to be moved from radio, where only a miniscule audience finds it, to primetime television, and even internet streaming.
Not only would these chanages in our media "leadership" help to focus on the means, it would bring about a much more healthy debate about the goals themselves.
However, in a more general perspective, we need a culture that is not focused on the next stock market quote, or the next disaster, whose individual "media" lifespan might run to 5 or 6 days, and certainly not the required 5 to 6 months or even years that are required for any story to develop an audience, a cadre of active learners and an informed body of opinion among Canadian observers.
And such a culture would require all governments to focus on something seemingly alien to their psyches: the long-term interests, values and legitimate goals of Canada on the world stage. Given the maximum length of governmental perceptions at the next election, (and we have had far too many over the last decade-plus) and the need to manage the next headline in the next edition of the daily "media cycle," we are a long way from achieving such a perspective.
And then there is always that inevitable comparison with our U.S. neighbours, whose media's foreign desks have been gutted by recent staff cut-backs and whose parochialism in the hinterland far exceeds that of Canada, thanks mostly to the CBC (just another important reason not to see the CBC budget gutted as part of the "manage the message" campaign of the current government.
We can hope that as mega-corporations find new markets in new countries, they will demand that the CBC, CTV and Gobal Television, along with The Globe and Mail, The National Post, the Montreal Gazette and the Vancouver Sun will establish strong vibrant and intellectually rigorous foreign bureaus in several significant cities, so that globalization can in fact be democratized into every Canadian living room, and so that while bloggers are leading the way, formally trained and disciplined reporters can provide the kind of insight and documentation needed for a healthy national debate on foreign affairs.
It is not merely a "means vs ends" debate, especially made exclusive to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
It is a national culture and perspective to suppport an intelligent and intelligible conversation as the norm, not the "fringe" of Canadian political discussions.

U.S. needs secret envoy talking to Iran NOW!

By Shawn McCarthy, Globe and Mail, January 3, 2012
The United States has got a tiger by the tail as it ratchets up the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program while attempting to avoid an oil-price shock that would seriously damage the fragile global economy.

Iran has responded to the U.S. move to tighten sanctions by threatening to close the strategically crucial Strait of Hormuz, a key gateway from the Persian Gulf through which much of the world’s oil trade passes.
The rising political tensions roiled the global crude markets on Tuesday, as the benchmark North American oil price jumped more than $4 (U.S.) a barrel crude to $102.96. Traders are betting that prices would spike dramatically – perhaps as high as $150 (U.S.) a barrel – if the standoff escalates into an actual military conflict.

Higher crude costs would reduce household spending on others goods and services; drive up other prices, especially food, and batter the confidence of long-suffering consumers.
U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law on New Year’s Eve a series of new sanctions that would prohibit any foreign bank or institution that continues to do transactions with the Iranian central bank from having access to the U.S. financial system. The sanctions – which Mr. Obama can apply selectively – hit directly at Iran’s weakened financial state and its ability to sell oil on the international market.
The European Union is scheduled to debate tougher sanctions later this month, including similar financial measures to those taken by the United States, and an embargo on importing Iranian oil.
In response, Iranian military officials have warned that the country will close the Straits of Hormuz, and have backed up that threat with a series of missile tests and naval manoeuvres that ended Tuesday....
The Strait of Hormuz – a mere 34 kilometres wide at its narrowest spot – is the world’s most critical choke point for crude-oil trade.

Every day, some 17 million barrels of crude is expected through the waterway from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Iran itself. That represents 35 per cent of the world’s seaborne crude export, and almost 20 per cent of total oil traded.
It’s likely not in Iran’s interest to close the Persian Gulf to oil exports since it would be hurting customers such as China and India and depriving itself of export revenues, said Bhushan Bahree, Washington-based Middle East expert with IHS CERA consultancy.

“But they can certainly make everybody think this is a dangerous situation,” Mr. Bahree said. “They could harass shipping; make it more expensive to insure; discourage ship owners from sending ships in and continuously keep the level of tension up.”
Somewhat ironic that, while scaring the world with its nuclear weapons program, Iran could effectively drive the world economy, especially those countries in the EU dependent on light crude, over the brink, without firing a single nuclear warhead.
In leadership and administrative terms, considerable time has to be spent with the most intransigent employees, unless and until their dismissal becomes inevitable and is completed.
In diplomatic terms, rogue states like Iran, North Korea, formerly Libya seem to be able, like the black sheep of any family, to attract more attention, to cause more distress and to bring about more disequilibrium, for their own narcissistic needs.
Driving the price of oil up, pushing the U.S. to the brink in the Strait of Hormuz, although the Pentagon is attempting to "cool" the conflict, playing cat-and-mouse with the IAEA and failing to disclose the true nature of its nuclear program...these moves seem fully calculated to put Iran in the forefront of the Middle East at a time when instability, fallen dictators, economic uncertainty, and quite literally chaos reigns throughout the region is another natural phenomenon....Nature abhors a vaccuum and Iran is doing everything possible to wrest control of the vaccuum it sees throughout the region, while the rest of the world watches and attempts to "shape" the future with the use of the limited levers at its disposal.
Syria is dependent on Iran for much of its military materiel; Hezbollah is a surrogate of Iran; Hamas undoubtedly has ties to Iran. And that merely scratches the surface of an extremely complicated vortex of relationships most of which spell danger for many of the traditionally accepted modes of conduct in world geopolitics.
The west can neither ignore nor inflame Iran; the west neither has control of the situation nor can it abdicate the scene. Russia and China are even more complicating, given their willingness to obstruct U.S.- led attempts to squeeze Iran into capitulation on it nuclear program.
The devil is always in the details, and this relatively small country is like a mosquito infested with insecticide scratching itself to death, while holding the world hostage to its fifteen years in the world spotlight...if it can be contained to that degree.
On the patio, on a hot summer night, most of us would slap it into oblivion; on the landscape of world economics and politics and in the current of Islamist uprisings, that is neither feasible nor ultimately desireable.
Somehow, diplomatic relations, of however secret a nature, have to be established between the U.S. and Iran, so that this centrifuge does not spin out of control, leaving us all wondering why we did not do more to prevent the disaster, while we may be in the middle of it.
Any successful denoument to this potential tragedy cannot and will not be negotiated on the front pages of our daily newspapers, but in the coffee shops of some third country, between envoys of both the power structure in Iran and the U.S. administration. And we are all watching and waiting, somewhat precariously sitting on our chairs in some anxiety, just like the markets.

Taliban to collaborate and establish embassy?

From Shaan Khan for CNN, from CNN website, January 3, 2012
Pakistani Taliban factions and their allies have set up a council of elders in hopes of coordinating efforts against NATO troops in Afghanistan, a spokesman said Monday.
The five participating factions, including the Taliban branch led by Hakimullah Mehsud and the militant Haqqani network, announced the move in a leaflet circulated in the Pakistani tribal district of North Waziristan over the weekend.
The council's creation was spurred by fugitive Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who urged the Pakistani Taliban and associated jihadist groups to put aside their internal disputes and work together to battle the U.S.-led alliance across the border, Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan told CNN.
Ihsan told CNN that Omar had sent three of his representatives to Pakistan to urge the jihadist movements there to put aside their differences and work together to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan. Ihsan said the insurgents would start moving across the mountainous border in March.

The Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan before the U.S.-led invasion that followed the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. The fundamentalist Islamic militia was quickly turned out of power but regrouped in the countryside and has been battling NATO troops and the Western-backed government in Kabul ever since.
The leaflet announcing the council calls for an immediate halt to the killings and kidnappings of innocent people. But the Pakistani Taliban will keep fighting Pakistani security forces as long as their attacks on the Taliban continue, Ihsan said.
Link this story of Taliban "collaboration" to fight NATO forces and Pakistani security forces with another out of Quatar, where reports indicate the Taliban have established an "embassy" in the hope that some discussions can begin outside Afghanistan to bring the Taliban into some kind of working agreement with the Karzai government in Kabul. The two stories, taken together, make for interesting speculation.
What to do with fundamentalist Islamic militia(s) is a question concerning many world capitals, where the chemistry and the physics and the metaphysics of terror in the name of religion have shown themselves to be deadly, deceptively surprising and relentless in the pursuit of Sharia Law.
While the U.S. and NATO have "military might" far superior to anything the Taliban can bring to the battlefield, there is a tenacity, a secrecy and a determination to drive out all "occupiers" from Afghanistan and return to power, and to take the country back to the Middle Ages, on most of which traits the NATO forces simply cannot compete.
The Russians learned this the hard way. The NATO forces will have to learn it the hard way also.
Some gordion knots simply cannot be untied; they are the facts of history that face the western world like enigmas of the universe, interesting to speculate upon, even dangerous to engage, yet nevertheless, intractable.
With considerable scientific, social, cultural and political skill and wisdom from centuries of mistakes, the "west" still does not have the wherewithall to overcome these forces, and the sooner we accept the limits to our massive military might, the sooner the world will welcome a transition to some form of dialogue "with the devil" if that is the only way the west can perceive it.

Scepticism highly warranted re: Office of Relgious Freedom project in Ottawa

By Mike Blanchfield, Globe and Mail, January 2, 2012
Alex Neve, the head of Amnesty International Canada, says that while religious persecution “is a serious human rights concern right around the world” he’s not confident about the government’s approach to the new office.

“We’re watching it with interest but also with considerable concern,” Mr. Neve said.
“There is such complete secrecy about it.”
His organization has met with Foreign Affairs officials, but questions about the office generate vague responses along the lines of “work is under way” and “you’ll be hearing more,” Mr. Neve said.
Mr. Neve said religious freedom can have a “contentious relationship” with other crucial human-rights concerns such as women’s equality, the equality rights of gays and lesbians, and freedom of expression.
“It’s an area obviously where governments need to tread carefully. They need to do so in ways where they don’t – either intentionally or unintentionally – convey a message that some religions are preferred over others.”
If the government is so concerned about the repression of religious freedom, why does it not create an office of "Human Rights Advocacy" under the umbrella of the Foreign Affairs Department? After all, religious freedom is another in a list of human rights that often are repressed, abused, trashed...and often with impunity. If the government is serious about advocating for those victims of human rights violations in other countries where repression and denial are more feasible because there is not an active and vigorous press and because there might be a repressive regime, then open the file to include all human rights and stop segregating religious freedom.
By segregating religious freedom, the government must hope there will be political benefits back home, within the religious communities.
Creating an Office of Religious Freedom keeps the government's hands clean from advocating for gays, lesbians, women and other groups whose support back home is not either desired or needed.
This project, if it were to become a reality, is a thinly veiled attempt to "massage" the religious vote back home, without having to advocate for victims of human rights abuse in all other areas.
If the government were serious about its potential to advocate for victims of human rights abuses, it would create an Office of Human Rights Advocacy, and bring all the force of the Canadian government to bear to expose human rights abuses of all varieties.
Once again, it is very difficult to help but maintain a very healthy scepticism about the project, given the high priority the government places on political advantage, and the potential for political "teflon" in areas where it might generate negative "push-back" from its neo-con base.
Religious leaders should be very wary of being used by the government, when asked for their support for the project, unless, of course, the motivations of the specific religious are congruent with those of the government, that is the perpetual re-election of the Harper government.
It is not only the appearance of the preference of some religions over others that is dangerous; it is also the appearance of specific human rights abuses (religious) that are preferred to be highlighted over other human rights abuses that can remain undetected, unrevealed and undisclosed, for the protection of this government, and potentially another government guilty of human rights abuses.

Deceptions and half-truths in debt/deficit debate in Washington

By Paul Krugman, New York Times, January, 2, 2012
Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.

This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.
First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.
Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.
This was clearly true of the debt incurred to win World War II. Taxpayers were on the hook for a debt that was significantly bigger, as a percentage of G.D.P., than debt today; but that debt was also owned by taxpayers, such as all the people who bought savings bonds. So the debt didn’t make postwar America poorer. In particular, the debt didn’t prevent the postwar generation from experiencing the biggest rise in incomes and living standards in our nation’s history.
But isn’t this time different? Not as much as you think.
It’s true that foreigners now hold large claims on the United States, including a fair amount of government debt. But every dollar’s worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents’ worth of U.S. claims on foreigners. And because foreigners tend to put their U.S. investments into safe, low-yield assets, America actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors. If your image is of a nation that’s already deep in hock to the Chinese, you’ve been misinformed. Nor are we heading rapidly in that direction.
Now, the fact that federal debt isn’t at all like a mortgage on America’s future doesn’t mean that the debt is harmless. Taxes must be levied to pay the interest, and you don’t have to be a right-wing ideologue to concede that taxes impose some cost on the economy, if nothing else by causing a diversion of resources away from productive activities into tax avoidance and evasion. But these costs are a lot less dramatic than the analogy with an overindebted family might suggest.
And that’s why nations with stable, responsible governments — that is, governments that are willing to impose modestly higher taxes when the situation warrants it — have historically been able to live with much higher levels of debt than today’s conventional wisdom would lead you to believe. Britain, in particular, has had debt exceeding 100 percent of G.D.P. for 81 of the last 170 years. When Keynes was writing about the need to spend your way out of a depression, Britain was deeper in debt than any advanced nation today, with the exception of Japan.
Of course, America, with its rabidly antitax conservative movement, may not have a government that is responsible in this sense. But in that case the fault lies not in our debt, but in ourselves.
So yes, debt matters. But right now, other things matter more. We need more, not less, government spending to get us out of our unemployment trap. And the wrongheaded, ill-informed obsession with debt is standing in the way.
Isn't it fascinating just how dramatically and for how long the political class in Washington will debate the phoney economics of debt/deficit and the "right's" absolute refusal to raise taxes because most Republicans in Congress have signed that contemptible "pledge" from Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, effectively emasculating themselves from responsibiltiy for providing good and needed government.
And there was Eric Cantor, last night, on CBS's 60 Minutes telling Leslie Stahl, "It's not a game; it's about doing the right thing for the American people!" Here is an admittedly ambitious, single-minded Majority Leader in the House of Representatives climbing his way to the position of Speaker of the House, a very powerful position, while effectively doing everything he can both to block any tax increase, especially for the rich, but more importantly, to block any piece of legislation that could/might/would provide credible evidence that Obama should be re-elected.
Cantor's pledge is not only to block tax increases, but also to block Obama's re-election. Did he take a pledge for the second goal, just as he did for the first?
And Ms Stahl, for her part, did not even ask Cantor about the Pledge! After all, Cantor agreed to the interview "to cast some light on his softer, more human side" so to ask tough political questions would have to be "off topic" for the interviewer. Who agrees to such pablum terms? The CBS producers? Ms Stahl? And is Mr Cantor treating CBS the same way Grover Norquist is treating Republican Congressional representatives, with papal control?
When I was a youngster in a small town in central Ontario, occasionally the "wrestling" matches would be a summer event at the local arena. Before we were 10 we all knew that the "game was phoney and fixed" and if we spent the $2 for a ticket, we were completely disabused of any notion that this was authentic competition. It was a poor man's poor theatre, nothing more, nothing less.
Seems Washington has fallen prey to the same game...pure theatre, for the essential purpose of entertaining the poor masses, only this time the "actors" are wearing the most expensive suits, the most expensive hair cuts, while occupying the most luxurious office suites (see Cantor's on 60 Minutes) all the while gaming the public with deceptions fit for the small town wrestling ring in the 1950's.
What a long way we have come in the last half-century!

14 Asia-Pacific Countries execute more people than the rest of the world combined

Editorial, Globe and Mail, December 27,2011
The death penalty combined with unfair trials is a hallmark of the justice system in far too many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, with 14 countries executing more people than all the rest of the world combined.

Those 14 countries – including China, Pakistan, India and Japan – cover 95 per cent of the region’s population, though just a minority of the 41 countries. (India hasn’t executed anyone since 2004, but nearly 400 people are believed to be on death row.)
A report from an anti-death-penalty group in Asia makes for bleak reading. Forced confessions are a regular feature of death-penalty cases in Afghanistan, China, Japan, India and Indonesia, says the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network, which formed in 2006, with civil-society members in 23 countries. A confession may produce a conviction and a death sentence even in the absence of other evidence. Access to lawyers is spotty and in some countries it is not even possible to appeal a death sentence or conviction.
The positive news is that, while the number of abolitionist countries, at 17, is small, another nine countries have not executed anyone for at least a decade, joining an international trend against the death penalty. Singapore, once the world’s per-capita leader in executions, did not execute anyone in 2010, and just 14 in the previous three years, according to government figures. But two countries, Thailand and Taiwan, have gone back on their stated goals of abolition.
The death penalty is barbaric at the best of times; but when it is applied in an unfair justice system in which the right to counsel barely exists, in which the judiciary is not independent from government, in which torture is rife, the innocent are at high risk of being put to death. It is a stain on any country in which it exists, and on the region as a whole.
Clearly the United Nations needs to study and make public the information it uncovers on this file.
Death penalties, for forced confessions or not, help to create a culture in which human life and human dignity, and the potential for rehabilitation, and thereby redemption, are less than significant values in a national culture.

• It is not only the risk of falsely accused being executed;
• It is not only the demonstrable failures of both commission and of ommission by the justice systems that administer the criminal code;
• It is even more importantly a signal of the abuse of power by the state through the execution of select criminals, and
• It is also the inescapable fact that the death penalty does not deter others from murder and
• It is also the demonstrable fact that the way we treat the most "abject" of our citizens is an index of the kind of culture we choose to create and to live in...

All of these, and more, support the elimination of the death penalty in all countries is all regions of the world.
Recently, I was involved in a conversation with another North American male, white, retired and quite articulate. The conversation, at the moment in question, revolved around the federal government's omnibus crime bill and the need for the provinces to absorb the increased costs, without having so much as a single opportunity for legitimate imput into the decision.
The colleague, surprisingly, wanted me to be aware of the following piece of information, that seemed to govern his perception of the issue:
"Well, everyone knows it is true that approximately 1-2% of the population is criminal, and deserves to  be in prison; so what's the problem?"
I was so stunned with the observation that I was unable, and ill-equipped to respond. Such a reduction of the human source of criminality to a base of 1-2% of the total population was so ridiculous and so preposterous as to be laughable, if it were not so naive and unworthy of rebuttal.
Criminality, as most responsible research demonstrates, is a potential of most human beings. The conditions and the circumstances and the right moment of passion, loss of control, jealousy, or whatever human motivation, whether conscious or unconscious, have to align themselves in order to result in a criminal event, including murder.
And to seek to achieve the abolishing of the death penalty in all countries is not the same as being "soft on crime" as is the charge against most liberals by most conservatives who favour the death penalty.
However, if 14 countries execute more people than the rest of the world combined, that group of countries merits the spotlight of "a thumbs down" for their negative achievement in this field. We can be quite confident that some countries like Russia and Iran, for example, are unlikely ever to abandon the death penalty. We can, however, continue to work with others, in a collaborative effort, to convince other countries still ensnared in the practice, to consider the positive implications of its abandonment.And the sooner, the better.
Fear of rising crime rates, not a statistically justified reason to retain the death penalty, can no longer be accepted as a state's motivation for retention.