Archive for August, 2009

Air France Flt 447 Black Boxes Are Not Found: Êtes-vous surpris? Are You Surprised?

Filed under: Aviation, Economics, Government, Military, Politics, Travel — 2 Comments

August 20, 2009

franceinsummer

BEA has posted on its website:

Press release 20 August 2009 Flight AF 447 on 1st June 2009 A 330 – 200, registered F-GZCP

The second phase of the undersea search operations for the flight recorders from the Airbus A 330 that disappeared on 1st June 2009 has just been completed. The Pourquoi pas? is expected at Dakar today.

The work, undertaken with the assistance of IFREMER and SHOM, allowed completion of the exploration of the search area that had been defined after the accident, a circle with a radius of 75 km centred on the last position message transmitted by the airplane at 2h10. Bathymetry of the ocean floor was also performed over a wider perimeter.

As the searches did not make it possible to locate the airplane wreckage, the BEA will gather together a team of international investigators in the next few weeks to analyze the data collected with a view to a third search phase and to determine the requirements and means to undertake this.

SEE UPDATE

Air France Flight 447: Unsuccessful Searches And Pitot Maintenance (UPDATED) Black Boxes Located?

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Flight 447 black boxes ‘not found’

theage.com.au – August 21, 2009 – 5:49AM

French investigators say they have abandoned a second round of search efforts for the black box flight recorders from Air France Flight 447, believed to be resting in the depths of the Atlantic. The Airbus jet crashed into the ocean June 1 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 people aboard.

The flight’s voice and data recorders could provide important clues as to what precipitated the accident, whose cause has so far stumped investigators. The French accident investigation agency, known as the BEA, said in a statement that the research ship leading the hunt for the plane’s flight recorders had left the site, more than 1,400 kilometres off Brazil’s northeastern coast. The ship, the Pourquoi Pas, was to arrive in Dakar, Senegal, on Thursday.

The statement said the second phase of search efforts, focusing on the underwater hunt for debris and the black boxes, “has finished”. Investigators and experts will gather in the coming weeks to determine whether to launch a third phase. “We have not found the wreckage, we have not found the recorders,” BEA spokeswoman Martine del Bono said.

She said the BEA would gather a team of about 10 specialists from several countries including Brazil, France, the United States and Germany, to study the data gathered from the second phase and decide what a third search phase would cost and require. She gave no estimate on when an eventual third mission might begin. The investigation “is far from finished,” she said. “We must find” the black boxes, she added.

During the first phase of the search, rescuers recovered 50 bodies and more than 600 pieces of the plane scattered on the sea. The second phase of the search began after the black boxes stopped emitting signals, about a month after the crash. Airbus promised to help fund a third phase of the search over a wider area if necessary.

A preliminary report into the crash said the plane hit the ocean intact and belly first at a high rate of speed. But without the flight recorders, investigators may never fully understand what happened. Investigators have said there were no signs of explosion or terrorism.

Response to Airbus Pitot Tube Incidents Under Scrutiny

Aviation Week and Space Technology

By Jens Flottau

Is Europe’s aviation safety system proactive enough to head off safety concerns? That has become a question in the wake of how regulators and other stakeholders have dealt with problems linked to Thales pitot tubes on Airbus aircraft…

… French accident investigators insist they have no evidence to lead them to conclude the pitot tubes were responsible in any way for the crash, a point Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon has also emphasized.

Another big unknown is whether pilot performance may have been a factor; flight crew workload increases while navigating near severe weather. Since the crash of Flight 447, EASA and Airbus have reminded operators of the need to ensure that pilots are skilled in techniques to maintain level flight.

Air France underwent an extensive review of its safety operations following the 2005 crash landing of an A340 in Toronto. The report was highly critical of its safety and pilot training standards. Executive Vice President of Operations Gilbert Robetto says 90% of the recommendations have been implemented.

But four of Air France’s pilot unions recently demanded further changes, including more simulator time… Thales did not respond to Aviation Week’s questions. Airbus would not comment, citing the ongoing investigation of Flight 447.

EASA stopped short of banning the Thales probes outright, allowing operators to continue to use the so-called -BA standard as a third sensor on Airbus widebodies. A regulatory official says continued use of one Thales -BA probe is “probably acceptable.”

Despite the higher propensity for icing, EASA officials have also allowed the -BA probes to continue to be used on A320s. An agency official says tests indicate that most failures occurred at Flight Level 35 (35,000 ft.) or higher and temperatures of -50C or lower. These results could be a hint that extreme weather conditions could have played a role in the Flight 447 crash, he adds. The aircraft had almost traversed an area of severe weather in the intertropical convergence zone when the ACARS failure message regarding unreliable airspeed data was sent.

What is raising eyebrows is that EASA and Air France officials say they tried to get clarification from Airbus as to how to handle problems with the probes long before the Flight 447 crash. An overview of the past 18 months also indicates that operators have been expressing concern about the issues with Airbus for at least this period.

… In a June 8 service bulletin, Airbus reiterated that both of Thales’s -AA and -BA and the Goodrich P/N 0851HL could still be operated.

That assessment came in spite of one incident on May 21: A TAM A330-200 temporarily lost all speed indications on a Miami-Sao Paolo flight. In a June 23 event, a Northwest A330 en route from Hong Kong to Tokyo experienced a temporary failure of speed and altitude indicators. Both inflight upsets could potentially be linked to pitot probe icing, although the U.S. National Transportation Bureau investigations are ongoing.

At that point, Airbus again changed its view on the issue by issuing a safety telex to operators on July 30. The telex stated that “dedicated wind-tunnel tests will be conducted under conditions more severe than currently applicable certification requirements to consolidate the knowledge of the behavior of each type of probe under extreme conditions.”

Airbus recommends installing Goodrich-built probes into the No. 1 and 3 positions (Captain and standby) (see photo, p. 24) while the probe serving the first officer’s instruments can remain Thales-equipped. The recommendation “is not applicable to A320-family aircraft at this stage.”

Following the 2008 incidents, EASA claims to have asked Airbus for more details about how the manufacturer planned to deal with the problem – but long after dangers of pitot probe icing were known to its own experts. The effort came after Air France saw increased probe failure rates and Air Caraibes suffered its inflight problem. That is also when the agency said it asked the manufacturer to come up with proposals about how the probe reliability issues could be resolved.

Airbus, meanwhile, plans to review recurrent pilot training programs for unreliable airspeed conditions and hands-on flying, particularly at high altitude. Also, the manufacturer “will encourage at industry level the review of applicable certification requirements for icing conditions.”

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Rectification – KLM Grounding A330 Fleet

Worldwide Aviation Net

Rectification following an article earlier today with regard to KLM suspectingly grounding its A330 fleet. Confirmed sources around the airline have told Worldwide-Aviation.net that all Airbus A330 in service of KLM are still in operation. Replacement of the pitot probes is an ongoing process and it is not expected that this would form a problem maintaining the current flight schedule.

Replacement of the pitot probes follows after an Airworthiness Directive (AD) publication by EASA stating that the currently installed probes from Thales should be replaced by those produced by Goodrich (at least two of three used on the A330). In response KLM has announced installation of the new tubes will be accomplished as soon as possible. In addition, KLM states that installation of the new probes is a preventative measure and that safety has never been, and will be, compromised in any way.

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Aero-Instruments to offer pitot tubes for Airbus aircraft

Flightglobal – By John Croft

Ohio-based Aero-Instruments has received US FAA parts manufacturer approval (PMA) to market retrofit pitot probes for a large variety of Airbus aircraft, giving operators another provider to choose from along with Thales and Goodrich for the devices.

Interest in pitot tubes is reaching a zenith as European safety regulators have decided to require Airbus A330 and A340 operators to replace their Thales pitot probes in the wake of the Air France A330-200 accident over the South Atlantic on 1 June. Based on automated maintenance data transmissions sent before the crash, investigators have determined that the aircraft’s velocity measurements were in error, perhaps due to icing.

The Aero-Instruments probes are approved as direct replacements on more than 4,500 Airbus aircraft, including the A320 family as well as the A330 and A340 series aircraft. Airbus uses Goodrich probes on factory built aircraft, and says that 80% of the 1,000 A330 and A340 aircraft delivered aircraft continue to use Goodrich probes. Thales pitot tubes are sold as an option.

An EASA directive expected to be issued in the coming weeks will require operators to change out at least two of the three Thales probes on each aircraft, though officials at Airbus say the devices meet certification standards as written. Pitot tubes measure the pressure of the incoming ram airstream and compare the reading to static (non-moving) air pressure measured elsewhere to derive airspeed. Airbus uses readings from three pitot tubes on the aircraft’s nose to derive airspeed. The devices include a heating element that prevents the tube from freezing closed when moisture is present.

Aero-Instruments, which has been developing the PMA pitot probe for the past 18 months, is best known for its Embraer and Bombardier regional aircraft pitot tubes as well as its general aviation line. The company produces about 15,000 pitot tubes per year, says Ryan Mifsud, Aero-Instruments vice president and general manager.

Mifsud says it does not yet have an Airbus customer for the PMA pitot tubes, but the PMA will “open the door” for discussions.

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Probe Finds Airspeed Sensors Failed on at Least 12 U.S. Flights

Fox News (via AP), Friday, August 07, 2009

On at least a dozen recent flights by U.S. jetliners, malfunctioning equipment made it impossible for pilots to know how fast they were flying, federal investigators have discovered. A similar breakdown is believed to have played a role in the Air France crash into the Atlantic that killed all 228 people aboard in June.

The discovery suggests the equipment problems are more widespread than previously believed. And it gives new urgency to airlines already scrambling to replace air sensors and figure out how the errors went undetected despite safety systems.

The equipment failures, all involving Northwest Airlines Airbus A330s, were brief and were noticed only after safety officials began investigating the Air France crash — on a Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight — and two other recent in-flight malfunctions. The failures were described by people familiar with the investigation who spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

While a car’s speedometer uses tire rotation to calculate speed, an airplane relies on sensors known as Pitot tubes to measure changing air pressure. Computers interpret that information as speed. And while a car with a broken speedometer might be little more than an inconvenience, many airplane control systems rely on accurate speed information to work properly.

Like the fatal Air France flight, the newly discovered Northwest incidents and the two other malfunctions under investigation all involved planes with sensors made by the European electronics giant Thales Corp. The Air France crash called into question the reliability of the sensors and touched off a rush to replace them.

Many companies, however, simply replaced them with another Thales model. As it became clear the problem was more widespread, Airbus and European regulators told companies to replace at least two of the three sensors on each plane with models made by North Carolina-based Goodrich Corp. The planes are allowed to continue flying while the switch is made.

Thales officials declined to comment. The company has previously said its sensors were made to Airbus specifications. The Northwest incidents were discovered when Delta Air Lines, which merged with Northwest last year, reviewed archived flight data for its fleet of 32 Airbus A330s, the people close to the inquiry said. All the planes involved landed safely.

Aviation experts said the discovery could provide clues to what caused Air France Flight 447 to crash into the Atlantic en route from Brazil to France on June 1, and what might be done to prevent future tragedies. French investigators have focused on the possibility that Flight 447′s sensors iced over and sent false speed information to the computers as the plane ran into a thunderstorm at about 35,000 feet.

An important part of the investigation focuses on 24 automatic messages the plane sent during its final minutes. They show the autopilot was not working, but it is unclear whether the pilots shut it off or whether it shut down because of the conflicting airspeed readings. Three weeks after the Air France crash, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board announced it was investigating two other A330 flights that experienced a loss of airspeed data.

The most recent was on June 23, when a Northwest flight hit rain and turbulence while on autopilot outside of Kagoshima, Japan. According to an NTSB report, speed data began to fluctuate. The plane alerted pilots it was going too fast. Autopilot and other systems began shutting down, putting nearly all the plane’s control in the hands of the pilot, something that usually happens only in emergencies.

In May, a plane belonging to Brazilian company TAM Airlines lost airspeed and altitude data while flying from Miami to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Autopilot and automatic power also shut down and the pilot took over, according to an NTSB report. The computer systems came back about five minutes later.

“These two cases we know were dealt with effectively by the crew, and we think this happened in Air France and maybe wasn’t dealt with effectively,” said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va., an aviation safety think tank.

Morgan Durrant, a spokesman for the only other U.S. airline that operates A330s, US Airways, said it had not seen similar problems in its 11-plane fleet of the jetliners. Delta/Northwest and US Airways recently completed replacing older Thales tubes with new Thales tubes. The companies say they are now replacing them with Goodrich tubes.

In June, the Air France pilots’ unions urged its members to refuse to fly Airbus A330s and A340s unless their Thales sensors had been replaced. The Federal Aviation Administration hasn’t issued a safety directive, but spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency hopes to have one soon.

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ON-LINE AVIATION CHATTER /

MSG BOARDS / DISCUSSIONS

Below are on-line aviation chatter and message board discussions which I found to be interesting. Please understand the below are only chatter/discussions among aviation professionals world-wide and should not be considered fact until all official information is released by BEA.

****Contains Speculative Analysis****

PPRuNe Forums Poster/Comments:

Careful examination of the OSCAR/NOAA surface current data provides 065°T x 22.5cm/sec at 3°N 31°W over the 5 day period centered on 2 June 2009.

I have therefore examined the positions in which bodies were recovered from on 6/7/8 June and constructed a likely current line based on what we know, i.e. that for the 3 days just mentioned and a calculated rate for the 5 – 6 June of 19cm/sec (9NM/day) back to the time of the accident at about 02:14:30Z on 1 June of 22.5cm/sec (10.5NM/day).

The reason for using the bodies as a check on the current is that they will have initially sunk to a point of equilibruim, and provided the depth was not too great, the water temperature would have commenced the decomposition process.

Then over a period of time each of these bodies would have gained enough buoyancy to become visible on or near the surface – which explains the number of days it took to find those that they did.

The point is that the bodies will have been subject to little or no leeway effects due to the surface wind. SHOM data shows that large easterly vectors on the surface become small westerly vectors the deeper you go, which helps to explain why some debris items floating with possibly little or no windage have been found to the east of the general drift line in which the bodies were found.

The graphic below shows 2 significant cumulonimbus cells, the one on the track and another left of the track shortly after passing ORARO. It seems that each of these mesoscale cells has played a part in this incident.

af447-lkp-lge-3b

I surmise that for some unknown reason the WX radar has not revealed the presence of the cell the a/c penetrated at around 0209, but when everything turned pear shape at 0210 the PF made a decision to get out of the ITCZ and commenced a lefthand 180 and descent hand flying the a/c with somewhat degraded control systems provided in Alternate/Direct law.

The lefthand turn was unfortunately taking the a/c toward the Cb cell NNW of ORARO.

What happened during the SATCOM outage between 0213 and 0214 is of course speculative, but at some point in this rapid descent it can be assumed that IAS became available and an effort was made to stabilize the rate of descent. If a nose up attitude was adopted, the updraft associated with the next Cb cell may have resulted in a flameout of both engines.

Well the graphic shows the general idea, but if the current vector at 3°N 31°W was in fact 055°T x 20cm/sec, the impact point would have been about 10NM further east. This would give better GS but with a tighter turn – to be expected if the speedbrakes were deployed.

Thank you for this nice work.

I visualize the final trajectory in a very similar way than yours, two aspects expected maybe:

- this large route deviation would be unvoluntary, this would be the horizontal trace (large roll perturbation) of the high altitude cruise loss of control, this would occur as a consequence of a large exceedance of the MMO (Mach>0.89-0.90) and this severe overspeed would require ~1mn or over to occur [*]: the tight turn would start around ~02:11:00Z

- this turn would not be a constant load factor turn (a part of a circle) with such a high constant curvature radius but a trajectory where the shortest radius (highest load factor, highest roll) is at the beginning of the initial route departure and where it decreases (roll is being controlled) in less than one minute.

This tight turn would probably go with a rapid loss of lift/altitude ? Once the roll is back under control, the pilots were in position to try to regain control in the vertical plane ?

(AoA/incidence, pich). This would be the final part of the trajectory: rather linear in the horizontal plane and in the vertical plane, a rapid loss of altitude (~10 000 fpm), the AoA/incidence decreasing in a first time to regain the aerodynamical authority (also with the loss of altitude and the increasing air density – stall recovery) and increasing again to generate enought vertical Gs to try to break the catastrophic descent.

The plane being “en ligne de vol” (straight horizontal trajectory / wings leveled, small horizontal speed component / speed mostly vertical, possibly a slight nose up)

finalhorizontaltrajecto

Indeed the drifting of the bodies or of the debris can be very different if you look where was recovered the left wing spoiler (this latter, recovered north of TASIL, seems like an outlier in the debris distribution, it has not been much deviated westward by the westernly surface winds derived from the satellite scatterometers, see windscat).

I will have another look to the surface current values over the first days of June since I have used values slightly lower than yours (and much lower than the SHOM values). I am studying the slopes distribution of the seabed in the area where the debris should have been colocated the 1st of June at 02:15Z.

I wish to validate my computations before I produce any graph results (missing values in the numerical terrain model) but it appear that between 5% and 10% of the seabed slopes are between 25° and 50°, using a 1.25km square bin resolution (narroy faults, slope details finer than this 1.25 km are lost/not observable). This bathymetry must be a real pain: towing up and down the multibeam sounder with the relief, varying scanning speed/resolution as a function of the slope, etc… Would it be a luxury to send another high resolution sounder to probe this area ?

The spoiler you referred to was I think the starboard outer which was picked up by a merchant ship north of TASIL on 13 July. If it had detached on account of an overspeed event, then that would help to explain its recovered position not falling within the range of expectation provided by the surface current/wind data.

This would also fit in with the high Gs roll/bank to port and the high speed descent toward the suspected crash site as postulated by you in a recent post.

af447-quikscat-1

I have extracted the Quikscat mean surface (+10m) winds from the NOAA site and determined that the mean surface wind at 3°N 30°W for the period 1 – 7 June was from 079.3°T x 11.06 knots (5.69m/sec). The vertical stabilizer has a very low profile to windage, in fact the only significant airfoil was the small piece of empennage skin rolled up and inward on the forward end.

The leeway for the v/s shown on the graphic below was 221°T x 11.1NM with reference to the general position of the 5 bodies recovered on 7 June. Without knowing the precise timings for either position (which could have been any time between sunrise and sunset) there is some room for positional error.

af447-lkp-lge-3

The effective windage factor calculated from the graphic is 0.74% which doesn’t seem unreasonable. Applying the same factor to the Quikscat data provides a leeway of 259.3°T x 12.8NM over 6.5 days. Sun shadow on a photo taken at the time of the v/s recovery indicates that the sun was near or on the meridian, i.e. 1400z.

However, when comparing the Quikscat data with the MSL analysis during the period in question, the wind vector should be more northerly. Putting that aside, the calculated result puts the v/s where it should be +/- a couple of miles.

Sino American Dreams: Like Sharing The Cave with A Dragon?

Filed under: Business, Education, History, Photography, Travel — Leave a comment

August 19, 2009

China/U.S. Relations: Current Economics Issues & Implications for U.S. Policy — China’s Currency — US China Policy Under Obama Video — China Naval Modernization — Military Power of the People’s Republic of China — China’s Military & Security Relationship with Pakistan

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空穴来风未必无因

“If the wind comes from an empty cave, it’s not without a reason”

(Moral: There is no smoke without fire!)

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China-U.S. Relations:

Issues and Implications for U.S. Policy

Kerry Dumbaugh, Specialist in Asian Affairs, April 2, 2009

The bilateral relationship between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is vitally important, touching on a wide range of areas including, among others, economic policy, security, foreign relations, and human rights. U.S. and PRC interests are bound together much more closely now than even a few years ago.

These extensive inter-linkages have made it increasingly difficult for either government to take unilateral actions without inviting far-reaching, unintended consequences. The George W. Bush Administration addressed these increasing inter-linkages by engaging with China, regularizing bilateral contacts and cooperation, and minimizing differences.

The Administration of President Barack Obama has inherited not only more extensive policy mechanisms for pursuing U.S.-China policy, but a more complex and multifaceted relationship in which the stakes are higher and in which U.S. action may increasingly be constrained.

Economically, the United States and the PRC have become symbiotically intertwined. China is the second-largest U.S. trading partner, with total U.S.-China trade in 2008 reaching an estimated $409 billion. It also is the second largest holder of U.S. securities and the largest holder of U.S.

Treasuries used to finance the federal budget deficit, positioning the PRC to play a crucial role, for good or ill, in the Obama Administration’s plans to address the recession and the deteriorating U.S. financial system. At the same time, the PRC’s own substantial levels of economic growth have depended heavily on continued U.S. investment and trade, making the Chinese economy highly vulnerable to a significant economic slowdown in the United States.

Meanwhile, other bilateral problems provide a continuing set of diverse challenges. They include difficulties over the status and well-being of Taiwan, ongoing disputes over China’s failure to protect U.S. intellectual property rights, the economic advantage China gains from not floating its currency, and growing concerns about the quality and safety of exported PRC products.

The PRC’s more assertive foreign policy and continued military development also have significant long-term implications for U.S. global power and influence. Some U.S. lawmakers have suggested that U.S. policies toward the PRC should be reassessed in light of these trends.

During the Bush Administration, Washington and Beijing cultivated regular high-level visits and exchanges of working level officials, resumed military-to-military relations, cooperated on antiterror initiatives, and worked closely on the Six Party Talks to restrain and eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons activities.

Although these and other initiatives of engagement are likely to continue in some fashion under the Obama Presidency, their direction and format are still being formulated in the Administration’s early days.

Still, in what some see as a significant Administration signal about China’s importance for U.S. interests, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton included the PRC in her first official trip abroad as Secretary in February 2009, which included stops in Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and China (February 20-22).

This report addresses relevant policy questions in current U.S.-China relations, discusses trends and key legislation in the current Congress, and provides a chronology of developments and highlevel exchanges. It will be updated as events warrant. Additional details on the issues discussed here are available in other CRS products, noted throughout this report.

For background information and legislative action during the 110th Congress, see CRS Report RL33877, China-U.S. Relations in the 110th Congress: Issues and Implications for U.S. Policy, by Kerry Dumbaugh. CRS products can be found on the CRS website at http://www.crs.gov/.

See Complete Report: China-U.S. Relations: Current Issues and Implications for U.S. Policy

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China’s Currency:

A Summary of the Economic Issues

Wayne M. Morrison, Specialist in Asian Trade and Finance

Marc Labonte, Specialist in Macroeconomic Policy

April 13, 2009

Many Members of Congress charge that China’s policy of accumulating foreign reserves (especially U.S. dollars) to influence the value of its currency constitutes a form of currency manipulation intended to make its exports cheaper and imports into China more expensive than they would be under free market conditions.

They further contend that this policy has caused a surge in the U.S. trade deficit with China and has been a major factor in the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Although China made modest reforms to its currency policy in 2005, resulting in a gradual appreciation of its currency (about 19% through mid-April 2009), many Members contend the reforms have not gone far enough and have warned of potential punitive legislative action.

Although an undervalued Chinese currency has likely hurt some sectors of the U.S. economy, it has also benefited others. For example, consumers have gained from the supply of low-cost Chinese goods (which helps to control inflation), as well as U.S. firms using Chinese-made parts and materials (which helps such firms become more globally competitive).

In addition, China has used its abundant foreign exchange reserves to buy U.S. securities, including U.S. Treasury securities, which are used to fund the Federal budget deficit. Such purchases help keep U.S. interest rates relatively low.

The current global economic crisis has further complicated the currency issue for both the United States and China. Although China is under pressure from the United States to appreciate its currency, it is reluctant to do so because it could cause further damage to export sector and lead to more layoffs.

China has halted its gradual appreciation of its currency, the renminbi (RMB) or yuan to the dollar in 2009; keeping it at about 6.83 yuan per dollar (from January 1 through April 13, 2009). The federal budget deficit has increased rapidly since FY2008, causing a sharp increase in the amount of Treasury securities that must be sold.

The Obama Administration has encouraged China to continue purchasing U.S. debt. However, if China were induced to further appreciate its currency against the dollar, it could slow China’s accumulation of foreign exchange reserves, thus reducing the need to invest in dollar assets, such as Treasury securities.

China’s currency policy appears to have created a policy dilemma for the Chinese government. A strong and stable U.S. economy is in China’s national interest since the United States is China’s largest export market. Thus, some analysts contend that China will feel compelled to keep funding the growing U.S. debt.

However, Chinese officials have expressed concern that the growing U.S. debt will eventually spark inflation in the United States and a depreciation of the dollar, which would negatively impact the value of China’s holdings of U.S. securities.

But if China stopped buying U.S. debt or tried to sell off a large portion of those holdings, it could also cause the dollar to depreciate and thus reduce the value of its remaining holdings, and such a move could further destabilize the U.S. economy.

Chinese concerns over its large dollar holdings appear to have been reflected in a paper issued by the governor of the People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan on March 24, 2009, which called for the replacing the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.

China has also signed currency swap agreements with six of its trading partners, which would allow those partners to settle accounts with China using the yuan rather than the dollar. This report summarizes the main findings in CRS Report RL32165, China’s Currency: Economic Issues and Options for U.S. Trade Policy, by Wayne M. Morrison and Marc Labonte.

See Complete Report: China’s Currency: A Summary of the Economic Issues

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China Naval Modernization:

Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress

Ronald O’Rourke, Specialist in Naval Affairs, May 29, 2009

In the debate over future U.S. defense spending, including deliberations taking place in the current Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a key issue is how much emphasis to place on programs for countering improved Chinese military forces in coming years. Observers disagree on the issue, with some arguing that such programs should receive significant emphasis, others arguing that they should receive relatively little, and still others taking an intermediate position. The question of how much emphasis to place in U.S. defense planning on programs for countering improved Chinese military forces is of particular importance to the U.S. Navy, because many programs associated with countering improved Chinese military forces would fall within the Navy’s budget.

China’s naval modernization effort encompasses a broad array of weapon acquisition programs, including programs for anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs), land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs), surface-to-air missiles, mines, aircraft, submarines, destroyers and frigates, patrol craft, and amphibious ships. In addition, observers believe that China may soon begin an aircraft carrier construction program. China’s naval modernization
effort also includes reforms and improvements in maintenance and logistics, naval doctrine, personnel quality, education, and training, and exercises. Although China’s naval modernization effort has substantially improved China’s naval capabilities in recent years, observers believe China’s navy continues to exhibit limitations or weaknesses in several areas.

China_Military_Power_Report_2009_Fig2

DOD and other observers believe that the near-term focus of China’s military modernization effort, including its naval modernization effort, has been to develop military options for addressing the situation with Taiwan. Consistent with this goal, observers believe that China wants its military to be capable of acting as a so-called anti-access force—a force that can deter U.S. intervention in a conflict involving Taiwan, or failing that, delay the arrival or reduce the
effectiveness of intervening U.S. naval and air forces. DOD and other observers believe that, in addition to the near-term focus on developing military options relating to Taiwan, additional goals of China’s naval modernization effort include improving China’s ability to do the following: assert or defend China’s claims in maritime territorial disputes and China’s interpretation of international laws relating freedom of navigation in exclusive economic zones (an interpretation at odds with the U.S. interpretation); protect China’s sea lines of communications to the Persian
Gulf, on which China relies for some of its energy imports; and assert China’s status as a major world power, encourage other states in the region to align their policies with China, and displace U.S. regional military influence.

China_Military_Power_Report_2009

A decision to place a relatively strong defense-planning emphasis on countering improved Chinese military forces in coming years could lead to one more of the following: increasing activities for monitoring and understanding developments in China’s navy, as well as activities for measuring and better understanding operating conditions in the Western Pacific; assigning a larger percentage of the Navy to the Pacific Fleet; homeporting more of the Pacific Fleet’s ships at forward locations such as Hawaii, Guam, and Japan; increasing training and exercises in operations relating to countering Chinese maritime anti-access forces, such as antisubmarine warfare (ASW) operations; and placing a relatively strong emphasis on programs for developing and procuring highly capable ships, aircraft, and weapons. This report will be updated as events warrant.

See Complete Report: China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress

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CHINA’S MARITIME QUEST

Dr. David Lai, Strategic Studies Institute

U.S. Army War College, June 2009

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) turned 60 on April 23, 2009. China held an unprecedented celebration on this occasion. For the first time in its history, China invited foreign navies to the PLAN’s birthday event. Chinese President Hu Jintao and all the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) senior leaders reviewed a parade of China’s major warships from a Chinese destroyer.

The column of PLAN vessels were headed by two nuclear-powered and armed submarines (the first-ever public appearance of China’s strategic submarine fleet) and 21 warships from 14 nations, including major naval powers such as the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France.

The parade took place off the coast of Qingdao, the PLAN Beihai (northern seas) Fleet Headquarters. In addition, China invited many foreign navy chiefs, most notably the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations and the Russian Navy Commander, as well as over 200 foreign military and navy attachés to the party.

The PLAN birthday celebration was like an Olympic meeting for the international navies. Yet behind the smiling faces, the world saw an ambitious Chinese navy eager to edge its way to the center stage of world maritime affairs.

Indeed, as PLAN Rear Admiral Yang Yi, a senior strategic analyst at the PLA National Defense University, noted, “the parade is not just about showing China’s accomplishments, it is more of a new start signaling where China needs to go in the future.”1 Yang did not have time to elaborate on his thoughts at the PLAN birthday party, but he and many other noted Chinese analysts have in recent years put forward an urgent agenda for China’s maritime power.

At the strategic level, China has raised the stakes of its need for great maritime power as a precondition for its becoming a full-fledged global power. The Chinese argue that all global powers are also strong maritime powers. Therefore China must follow suit.

Moreover, China’s quest for maritime power will be broad and comprehensive, going beyond the scope defined by Alfred Thayer Mahan more than a century ago. A powerful navy is still the first and foremost component. China must have a navy commensurate with its growing national power.

This means upgrading the PLAN to a top-ranked world-class naval power, the threshold of which, as the Chinese see it, is the possession of aircraft carrier battle groups and long-range power projection capabilities. There has been a national debate on the pros and cons of aircraft carriers since the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-96 (when the Chinese were furious with the arrival of two U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups to check China’s dealing with Taiwan). The debate is clearly settled.

In recent months, Chinese officials have gone on record to state that China has good reasons to acquire aircraft carriers and the world should not be surprised at their decision. China understands that aircraft carrier capability is an expensive undertaking in construction as well as in operation, but having had 30 years of phenomenal economic development and further development carefully planned well into the mid-21st century, China is confident that it can afford to run this business. There are already calls for China to openly launch its aircraft carrier construction project. China may be happy to comply.

The second component of China’s maritime power will be a world-class seaborne merchant fleet to meet the nation’s growing demand for trade and resources supply. Since becoming the “world manufacture center,” China has greatly expanded its seaborne transportation; after all, over 90 percent of China’s trade and resources supply go by sea.

Already China is among the world’s top seaborne transport holders—it has the world’s fourth largest merchant fleet and third largest shipbuilding industry; runs the heaviest container port traffic; and has five of the world’s ten busiest seaports. China wants to continue this advance and develop a blue-water navy to protect these “life supply facilities.”

The third part of China’s maritime power will cover all of its ocean interests, long-claimed (the disputed islands and the entire South China Sea) as well as those expanded by the UN Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). These include the 200 nautical miles of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) and Extended Continental Shelves (ECS).

China Navy

The claimed area is about 3 million square kilometers, as indicated by the blue line circling area in Figure 1. However, this claim complicates China’s old disputes with Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei and brings China new enemies, the two Koreas and Indonesia. All of them are also members of the LOST and entitled to claim their share of the pie (see the overlapping claims in the South China Sea shown in Figure 2.

China Navy1

Additionally, China has to settle the Taiwan issue with the United States.

See Complete Report: CHINA’S MARITIME QUEST

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FAS Strategic Security Blog

Comments and analyses of important national and international security issues

New Air Force Intelligence Report Available

By Hans M. Kristensen

The Air Force Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) has published an update to its Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat. The document, which I obtained from NASIC, is sobering reading. The latest update continues the previous user-friendly format and describes a number of important assessments and new developments in ballistic and cruise missiles of many of the world’s major military powers. The report also helps dispel many web-rumors that have circulated about Chinese, Russian, Indian and Pakistani nuclear forces. In this blog I’ll focus on the nuclear weapon states, particularly China.

Chinese Nuclear Forces

As the DF-3A retirement continues (there are now only 5-10 launchers left of close to 100 in the 1980s), the liquid-fuel missile is being replaced by a family of solid-fuel DF-21 variants. The NASIC identifies four, including two nuclear versions (Mod 1 and Mod 2), one conventional version, and an anti-ship version that unlike the others is not yet deployed.

Thankfully, the report dispels widespread speculation by web sites, news media, and even Jane’s after images began circulating on the Internet, that a DF-25 had been deployed, some even said with three nuclear warheads. But it was, as I predicted last year and NASIC now confirms, in fact a DF-21.

df21s A column of DF-21s on the road in what could be the Delingha deployment are in Qinghai Province. Several of the vehicles have identical camouflage patterns, raising suspicion that the image has been manipulated. Four DF-21 versions exist, two nuclear, one conventional, and one anti-ship version.

The report also reaffirms that the first of the DF-31s and DF-31As “have been deployed to units within the Second Artillery Corps,” and NASIC estimates that “less than 15” are deployed, up from the “less than 10” estimate in the Pentagon’s March 2009 report (which actually used 2008 data).

The NASIC report states that neither of China’s two types submarine-launched ballistic missiles is operational. This suggests that the multi-year overhaul of the JL-1 equipped Xia SSBN, which was completed last year, was not successful. The successor missile JL-2 for the new Jin-class SSBNs has not reached operational status either. NASIC gives the JL-2 the U.S. designation CSS-NX-14, not a numerical follow-on to the JL-1, which is listed as CSS-NX-3. The “14” could be a typo, but it appears several places in the report. The JL-2 is shown to have roughly the same dimensions as the Russian SS-N-32 SLBM.

NASIC lists single warheads on all of the Chinese missiles, not multiple warheads as speculated by many. “China could develop MIRV payloads for some of its ICBMs,” the report states. Yet it also predicts that, “Future ICBMs probably will include some with multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles.” Whether that prediction – which appears to hint that China has more ICBMs under development – comes true remains to be seen, and the U.S. intelligence community has stated for years that one development that could trigger it is a U.S. ballistic missile defense system.

The report echoes recent statements from other branches of the U.S. intelligence community that the number of warheads on Chinese ICBM capable of reaching the United States could expand to “well over 100 in the next 15 years.” Unfortunately, “well over 100” can mean anything so it is hard to compare this NASIC’s projection with the CIA projection from 2001 of 75-100 warheads “primarily targeted against the United States” by 2015. That projection only included DF-5A and DF-31A capable of targeting all of the United States, with the high number requiring multiple warheads on DF-5A. But the timeline for the anticipated increase has slipped considerably from 2015 to 2024.

chinaproj

Moreover, ICBMs “primarily targeted against the United States” is a smaller group of missiles than those “capable of reaching the United States,” which currently includes about 60 DF-4, DF-5A, DF-31 and DF-31A ICBMs with as many warheads. For this group to grow to “well over 100 warheads” suggests that NASIC anticipates that China will deploy at least 60-70 DF-31, DF-31A and JL-2 missiles by 2024 (the DF-4 will probably have been retired by then). Assuming that includes 36 JL-2s on three Jin-class SSBNs, an additional 20-30 total DF-31s and DF-31As would have to be deployed to reach 120 ICBM warheads. If five SSBNs were deployed, then only 10 additional land-based ICBMs would be required, or 30 if the 20 DF-5As were retired.

The DH-10 land-attack cruise missile is listed as “conventional or nuclear,” the same designation used for the nuclear and conventional Russian AS-4. But unlike the 2009 DOD report on Chinese military forces, which lists 150-350 DH-10s deployed with 40-50 launchers, NASIC lists the operational status as “undetermined.”

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Military Power of the People’s Republic of China

ANNUAL REPORT TO CONGRESS

Section 1202, “Annual Report on Military Power of the People’s Republic of China,” of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, Public Law 106-65, provides that the Secretary of Defense shall submit a report “in both classified and unclassified form, on the current and future military strategy of the People’s Republic of China. The report shall address the current and probable future course of military-technological development on the People’s Liberation Army and the tenets and probable development of Chinese grand strategy, security strategy, and military strategy, and of the military organizations and operational concepts, through the next 20 years.”

China’s rapid rise as a regional political and economic power with growing global influence has significant implications for the Asia-Pacific region and the world. The United States welcomes the rise of a stable, peaceful, and prosperous China, and encourages China to participate responsibly in world affairs by taking on a greater share of the burden for the stability, resilience, and growth of the international system. The United States has done much over the last 30 years to encourage and facilitate China’s national development and its integration into the international system. However, much uncertainty surrounds China’s future course, particularly regarding how its expanding military power might be used.

China_Military_Power_Report_2009_Fig7

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is pursuing comprehensive transformation from a mass army designed for protracted wars of attrition on its territory to one capable of fighting and winning short-duration, high-intensity conflicts along its periphery against high-tech adversaries – an approach that China refers to as preparing for “local wars under conditions of informatization.”

The pace and scope of China’s military transformation have increased in recent years, fueled by acquisition of advanced foreign weapons, continued high rates of investment in its domestic defense and science and technology industries, and far-reaching organizational and doctrinal reforms of the armed forces. China’s ability to sustain military power at a distance remains limited, but its armed forces continue to develop and field disruptive military technologies, including those for anti-access/area-denial, as well as for nuclear, space, and cyber warfare, that are changing regional military balances and that have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region.

The PLA’s modernization vis-à-vis Taiwan has continued over the past year, including its build-up of short-range missiles opposite the island. In the near-term, China’s armed forces are rapidly developing coercive capabilities for the purpose of deterring Taiwan’s pursuit of de jure independence. These same capabilities could in the future be used to pressure Taiwan toward a settlement of the cross-Strait dispute on Beijing’s terms while simultaneously attempting to deter, delay, or deny any possible U.S. support for the island in case of conflict. This modernization and the threat to Taiwan continue despite significant reduction in cross-Strait tension over the last year since Taiwan elected a new president.

China_Military_Power_Report_2009_Fig5

The PLA is also developing longer range capabilities that have implications beyond Taiwan. Some of these capabilities have allowed it to contribute cooperatively to the international community’s responsibilities in areas such as peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and counter-piracy. However, some of these capabilities, as well as other, more disruptive ones, could allow China to project power to ensure access to resources or enforce claims to disputed territories.

Beijing publicly asserts that China’s military modernization is “purely defensive in nature,” and aimed solely at protecting China’s security and interests. Over the past several years, China has begun a new phase of military development by beginning to articulate roles and missions for the PLA that go beyond China’s immediate territorial interests, but has left unclear to the international community the purposes and objectives of the PLA’s evolving doctrine and capabilities.

Moreover, China continues to promulgate incomplete defense expenditure figures and engage in actions that appear inconsistent with its declaratory policies. The limited transparency in China’s military and security affairs poses risks to stability by creating uncertainty and increasing the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation. The United States continues to work with our allies and friends in the region to monitor these developments and adjust our policies accordingly.

See Complete Report: ANNUAL REPORT TO CONGRESS – Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2009

Update – 2010 Report

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China’s Military and Security Relationship with Pakistan

Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission – May 20, 2009

My name is Lisa Curtis. I am a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation.

Pakistan and China have long-standing strategic ties, dating back five decades. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari wrote in a recent op-ed that, “No relationship between two sovereign states is as unique and durable as that between Pakistan and China.”[1] China’s partnership with Pakistan first emerged during the mid-1950s when Beijing reached out to several developing countries, and then deepened significantly during the period of Sino-Indian hostility from 1962 to the late 1980s.

Chinese policy toward Pakistan is driven primarily by its interest in countering Indian power in the region and diverting Indian military force and strategic attention away from China. South Asia expert Stephen Cohen describes China as pursuing a classic balance of power by supporting Pakistan in a relationship that mirrors the one between the U.S. and Israel.[2] The China-Pakistan partnership serves both Chinese and Pakistani interests by presenting India with a potential two-front theater in the event of war with either country.[3]

Chinese officials also view a certain degree of India-Pakistan tension as advancing their own strategic interests as such friction bogs India down in South Asia and interferes with New Delhi’s ability to assert its global ambitions and compete with China at the international level. That said, Beijing has demonstrated in recent years that it favors bilateral Indo-Pakistani negotiations to resolve their differences and has played a helpful role in preventing the outbreak of full-scale war between the two countries, especially during the 1999 Indo-Pakistani border conflict in the heights of Kargil.

Chinese-Pakistan Defense Ties

China is Pakistan’s largest defense supplier. China transferred equipment and technology and provided scientific expertise to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs throughout the 1980s and 1990s, enhancing Pakistan’s strength in the South Asian strategic balance. The most significant development in China-Pakistan military cooperation occurred in 1992 when China supplied Pakistan with 34 short-range ballistic M-11 missiles.[4] Recent sales of conventional weapons to Pakistan include JF-17 aircraft, JF-17 production facilities, F-22P frigates with helicopters, K-8 jet trainers, T-85 tanks, F-7 aircraft, small arms, and ammunition.[5] Beijing also built a turnkey ballistic-missile manufacturing facility near the city of Rawalpindi and helped Pakistan develop the 750-km-range, solid-fueled Shaheen-1 ballistic missile.[6]While the U.S. has sanctioned Pakistan in the past–in 1965 and again in 1990–China has consistently supported Pakistan’s military modernization effort.

China has helped Pakistan build two nuclear reactors at the Chasma site in the Punjab Province and continues to support Pakistan’s nuclear program, although it has been sensitive to international condemnation of the A. Q. Khan affair and has calibrated its nuclear assistance to Pakistan accordingly. During Pakistani President Zardari’s visit to Beijing in mid-October 2008, Beijing pledged to help Pakistan construct two new nuclear power plants at Chasma, but did not propose or agree to a major China-Pakistan nuclear deal akin to the U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement. U.S. congressional Members have expressed concern about China’s failure to apply Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) “full-scope safeguards” to its nuclear projects in Pakistan.[7]

China also is helping Pakistan develop a deep-sea port at the naval base at Gwadar in Pakistan’s province of Baluchistan on the Arabian Sea. The port would allow China to secure oil and gas supplies from the Persian Gulf and project power in the Indian Ocean. China financed 80 percent of the $250 million for completion of the first phase of the project and reportedly is funding most of the second phase of the project as well.[8] The complex will provide a port, warehouses, and industrial facilities for more than 20 countries and will eventually have the capability to receive oil tankers with a capacity of 200,000 tons. There is concern that China may turn its investment in Gwadar Port into access for its warships.

The India Factor

China has been able to successfully pursue closer relations with India, especially on the economic front (bilateral trade rose from $5 billion to $40 billion in the course of five years), while continuing to pursue strong military and strategic ties to Pakistan.

China’s interest in improving ties to India over the last decade has spurred Beijing to develop a more neutral position on the Kashmir issue, rather than reflexively taking Pakistan’s side, which has traditionally meant supporting United Nations resolutions calling for a plebiscite or backing Pakistan’s attempts to wrest the region by force, as with Pakistan’s 1965 Operation Gibraltar.[9] A turning point in China’s position on Kashmir came during the 1999 Kargil crisis when Beijing helped convince Pakistan to withdraw forces from the Indian side of the Line of Control following its incursion into the Kargil region of Jammu and Kashmir. Beijing made clear its position that the two sides should resolve the Kashmir conflict through bilateral negotiations, not military force. India was pleased with China’s stance on the Kargil crisis, which allowed Beijing and New Delhi to overcome tensions in their relations that had developed over India’s 1998 nuclear tests.

Despite the evolution in the Chinese position on Kashmir, China continues to maintain a robust defense relationship with Pakistan, and to view a strong partnership with Pakistan as a useful way to contain Indian power. China’s attempt to scuttle the U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement at the September 2008 Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting was evidence for many Indians that China does not willingly accept India’s rise on the world stage. The Chinese–buoyed by the unexpected opposition from NSG nations like New Zealand, Austria, and Ireland–threatened the agreement with delaying tactics and last-minute concerns signaled through an article in the Chinese Communist Party’s English-language paper, The People’s Daily.[10] The public rebuke of the deal followed several earlier assurances from Chinese leaders that Beijing would not block consensus at the NSG.

Indian observers claim the Chinese tried to walk out of the NSG meetings in order to prevent a consensus, but that last-minute interventions from senior U.S. and Indian officials convinced them that the price of scuttling the deal would be too high, forcing them to return to the meeting.[11] Indian strategic affairs analyst Uday Bhaskar attributed the Chinese maneuvering to longstanding competition between the two Asian rivals. “Clearly, until now China has been the major power in Asia,” said Bhaskar. “With India entering the NSG, a new strategic equation has been introduced into Asia and this clearly has caused disquiet to China.” Indian official Palaniappan Chidambaram (now Home Minister), citing China’s position within the NSG, said that, “From time to time, China takes unpredictable positions that raise a number of questions about its attitude toward the rise of India.”

Tensions over Separatists and Islamist Extremists

One source of tension between Beijing and Islamabad that has surfaced has been the issue of Chinese Uighur separatists receiving sanctuary and training on Pakistani territory. The Chinese province of Xinjiang is home to 8 million Muslim Uighurs, many of whom resent the growing presence and economic grip on the region of the Han Chinese. Some have agitated for an independent “East Turkestan.” To mollify China’s concerns, Pakistan in recent years has begun to clamp down on Uighur settlements and on religious schools used as training grounds for militants.[12] Media reports indicate that Pakistan may have extradited as many as nine Uighurs to China in April after accusing them of involvement in terrorist activities.[13]

Tension has also surfaced over Islamist extremism in Pakistan. It came to a head in the summer of 2007 when vigilantes kidnapped several Chinese citizens whom they accused of running a brothel in Islamabad. China was incensed by this incident, and its complaints to Pakistani authorities likely contributed to Pakistan’s decision to finally launch a military operation at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, where the militants had been holed up since January 2007. Around the same timeframe as the Red Mosque episode, three Chinese officials were killed in Peshawar in July 2007. Several days later, a suicide bomber attacked a group of Chinese engineers in Baluchistan. Last August, Islamist extremists abducted Chinese engineer, Long Ziaowei, in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. The Chinese protested vehemently to the Pakistani government and Ziaowei was released unharmed in February.

Security concerns about Pakistan could move the Chinese in the direction of working more closely with the international community to help stabilize the country. During President Zardari’s visit to Beijing in October 2008, Beijing resisted providing Pakistan a large-scale bailout from its economic crisis, thus forcing Islamabad to accept an International Monetary Fund program with stringent conditions for economic reform. Beijing did come through with a soft loan of about $500 million, though. China is part of the 11-member “Friends of Democratic Pakistan” grouping that was formed last September and met in April in Tokyo. The grouping has pledged to lend collective support to Pakistan in consolidating its democratic institutions, the rule of law, good governance, socio-economic advancement, economic reform, and progress in meeting the challenge of terrorism.

In another sign that China feels increasingly compelled to pressure Pakistan to adopt more responsible counterterrorism policies, Beijing dropped its resistance to banning the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD–a front organization for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, responsible for the November terrorist attacks in Mumbai) in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) last December. China had previously vetoed UNSC resolutions seeking to ban the JuD over the last several years.

Recommendations for U.S. Policy

Given that China, Pakistan, and India are nuclear-armed states and that border disputes continue to bedevil both India-Pakistan and India-China relations, the U.S. must pay close attention to the security dynamics of the region and seek opportunities to reduce military tensions and discourage further nuclear proliferation.

China‘s apparent growing concern over Islamist extremism in Pakistan may provide opportunities for Washington to work more closely with Beijing in encouraging more effective Pakistani counterterrorism policies. Pakistan’s reliance on both the U.S. and China for aid and diplomatic support means that coordinated approaches from Washington and Beijing provide the best chance for impacting Pakistani policies in a way that encourages regional stability. Conversely, the more Pakistan believes it can play the U.S. and China off one another, the less likely it will be to take necessary economic and political reforms and to rein in extremists. China’s involvement in the “Friends of Democratic Pakistan” grouping is a positive sign that it may be willing to contribute to a multilateral effort aimed at stabilizing the situation in Pakistan.

The U.S. should also seek to convince China to play a responsible role with regard to its nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, emphasizing the need to discourage nuclear-weapons stockpiling in a country facing the specter of further instability. China and the U.S. share the goal of preventing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands–China perhaps even more so, given its geographic proximity to Pakistan. Recent encroachments by the Taliban into parts of northwest Pakistan have added a more dangerous dimension to nuclear proliferation in Pakistan and require new thinking among stakeholders in the region for avoiding a nightmare scenario in which al-Qaeda gains access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. There is little reason to panic about the safety and security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons at the moment since the Pakistan military is a professional and unified force that has adopted security procedures to avoid such a worst-case scenario. Even so, recent developments in the country should add new impetus to regional efforts to control nuclear proliferation.

The U.S. should involve China in efforts to encourage greater South Asia regional economic integration and cooperation. Chinese financial aid to Pakistan has been valuable in maintaining economic stability there both before and during the global financial crisis. Chinese direct investment, such as China Mobile’s acquisition of Paktel, and assisting Afghan and Pakistani companies to tap the potentially huge Chinese market would be helpful in the creation of a more prosperous region. Trade flows are relatively undeveloped and would be particularly promising if transport links can be improved. Washington should encourage the Chinese to take part in economic and trade ventures that involve bringing Afghanistan and Pakistan together for mutual economic benefit. This would fit with China’s interest in accessing Middle East markets through Afghanistan and Pakistan and help provide each country with a vested interest in promoting regional stability.

Conclusion

To date China’s pursuit of relations with Pakistan has been aimed primarily at containing Indian power in the region. With rising instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan and the threat of Taliban forces gaining influence there, both China and the U.S. must take responsibility for encouraging greater stability and coherence among Pakistan’s leadership. China’s handling of the current crisis in Pakistan is a true test of its credentials as a responsible global player.

[1]Asif Ali Zardari, “Sino-Pakistan Relations Higher than Himalayas,” China Daily, February 23, 2009, at http://www.chinadaily.cn/opinion/2009-02/23
/content_7501699.htm (May 13, 2009).

[2]Stephen P. Cohen, India: Emerging Power (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2001), p. 259.

[3]John W. Garver, Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), p. 188.

[4]Ahmad Faruqui, “The Complex Dynamics of Pakistan’s Relationship with China,” Islamabad Policy Research Institute (Summer 2001), at http://www.ipripak.org/journal/summer2001/thecomplex.shtml (May 14, 2009).

[5]“Annual Report to Congress: Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, 2009,” Office of the Secretary to Defense, p. 57.

[6]“Pakistan Profile,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, January 2009, at http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Pakistan/index.html (May 14, 2009).

[7]Shirley A. Khan, “China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles: Policy Issues,” Congressional Research Services Report RL31555, January 7, 2009, p. 3.

[8]Ziad Haider, “Baluchis, Beijing, and Pakistan’s Gwadar Port,” Politics and Diplomacy (Winter/Spring 2005), pp. 96, 97.

[9]Operation Gibraltar was an operation launched in August 1965 by the Pakistani military that sought to infiltrate militants into Indian Kashmir to provoke an insurrection among Kashmiri Muslims against Indian rule in the region. However, the strategy was not well-coordinated and the infiltrators were quickly discovered, precipitating an Indian counterattack that resulted in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War.

[10]Chris Buckley, “China State Paper Lashes India-U.S. Nuclear Deal,” Reuters India, September 1, 2008, at http://in.reuters.com/article/
topNews/idINIndia-35260420080901(May 14, 2009).

[11]Bhaskar Roy, “China Unmasked–What Next?” South Asia Analysis Group Paper No. 2840, September 12, 2008.

[12]Ziad Haider, “Clearing Clouds Over the Karakoram Pass,” YaleGlobal Online, March 29, 2004, at http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article
?id=3603&page=2 (May 14, 2009).

[13]Press release, “Freedom House Condemns Pakistan, China for Uighur Extraditions,” Freedom House, May 7, 2009 at http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=815 (May 14, 2009).

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Background Reading (Uploaded Files):

THE RISE OF CHINA IN ASIA: SECURITY IMPLICATIONS, January 2002

CHINA’S GROWING MILITARY POWER: PERSPECTIVES ON SECURITY, BALLISTIC MISSILES, AND CONVENTIONAL CAPABILITIES, September 2002

Export Administration Act of 1979 Reauthorization, Updated January 2, 2003

The Cox Report: Text of a Congressional report on security at US nuclear weapons facilities and on Chinese espionage during the Clinton Administration, Top Secret Report Date: Jan 1999 – Declassified Report Release Date: May 1999 (pdf files not uploaded)

Title: The New Silk Road: How a Rising Arab World is Turning away from the West and Rediscovering China Author: Ben Simpfendorfer Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (Audio)

PropagandaCzar: The Emperor’s New Clothes?

Filed under: Astronomy, Business, Government, Local News, Politics — 2 Comments

August 18, 2009

What Is The Fairness Doctrine? — Round 1: FCC’s ‘Media Diversity’ Panel Chosen to Analyze Balance on Radio Airwaves Have No Conservatives on Committee… Where’s the Diversity? — Forget the Fairness Doctrine — Sen Grassley’s Letter to FCC – New FCC ‘Chief Diversity Officer’ Co-Wrote Liberal Group’s ‘Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio’ — Prologue to a Farce (Communication and Democracy in America)

censoramericaspeech_1

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Everyone can say what’s going on
They laugh ‘cos they know they’re untouchable
Not because what I said was wrong
Whatever it may bring
I will have my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace
Maybe it sounds mean
But I reallly don’t think so
You asked for the truth and I told you
Through their own words
They will be exposed
They’ve got a severe case of
The emperor’s new clothes.

— Sinead O’connor

What Is The Fairness Doctrine?

Wiki: The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was (in the Commission’s view) honest, equitable and balanced.

The Fairness Doctrine should not be confused with the Equal Time rule. The Fairness Doctrine deals with discussion of controversial issues, while the Equal Time rule deals only with political candidates.

In 1969, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Commission’s general right to enforce the Fairness Doctrine where channels were limited, but the courts have not, in general, ruled that the FCC is obliged to do so. In 1987, the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine, prompting some to urge its reintroduction through either Commission policy or Congressional legislation.

According to Steve Rendall of the media criticism group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting,

The Fairness Doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented.

The Fairness Doctrine was introduced in the U.S. in 1949. The doctrine remained a matter of general policy and was applied on a case-by-case basis until 1967, when certain provisions of the doctrine were incorporated into FCC regulations.

In 1974 the Federal Communications Commission asserted that the United States Congress had delegated it the power to mandate a system of “access, either free or paid, for person or groups wishing to express a viewpoint on a controversial public issue…” but that it had not yet exercised that power because licensed broadcasters had “voluntarily” complied with the “spirit” of the doctrine. It warned that:

Should future experience indicate that the doctrine [of 'voluntary compliance'] is inadequate, either in its expectations or in its results, the Commission will have the opportunity—and the responsibility—for such further reassessment and action as would be mandated.

Under FCC Chairman Mark S. Fowler, a communications attorney who had served on Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign staff in 1976 and 1980, the commission began to repeal parts of the Fairness Doctrine, announcing in 1985 that the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

On February 16, 2009, Fowler told conservative radio talk-show host Mark Levin that his work toward revoking the Fairness Doctrine under the Reagan Administration had been a matter of principle (his belief that the Doctrine impinged upon the First Amendment), not partisanship. Fowler described the White House staff raising concerns, at a time before the prominence of conservative talk radio and during the preeminence of the Big Three television networks and PBS in political discourse, that repealing the policy would be politically unwise. He described the staff’s position as saying to Reagan:

The only thing that really protects you from the savageness of the three networks — every day they would savage Ronald Reagan — is the Fairness Doctrine, and Fowler is proposing to repeal it!

Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC also at 395 U.S. 367 (1969) (Excerpt from Majority Opinion, III A; Senate report cited in footnote 26). Justice William O. Douglas did not participate in the decision, but there were no concurring or dissenting opinions.
Clark, Drew (20 October 2004) “How Fair Is Sinclair’s Doctrine?” Slate
Rendall, Steve (2005-02-12). “The Fairness Doctrine: How We Lost it, and Why We Need it Back” (in English). Common Dreams (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting). http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0212-03.htm. Retrieved 2008-11-13.
Report on Editorializing by Broadcast Licensees, 13 F.C.C. 1246 [1949])
Donald P. Mullally, “The Fairness Doctrine: Benefits and Costs”, The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Winter, 1969-1970), p. 577
In the Matter of THE HANDLING OF PUBLIC ISSUES UNDER THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST STANDARDS OF THE COMMUNICATIONS ACT, 48 F.C.C.2d 1 (F.C.C. 1974)
Tom Joyce: “His call for a reply set up historic broadcast ruling; Fred J. Cook, whose book was attacked on Red Lion radio station WGCB in 1964, died recently at age 92.” York Daily Record (Pennsylvania), May 6, 2003, retrieved on August 17, 2008
The quotation is from Section III C of Red Lion v. FCC 395 U.S. 367 (1969). Justice Brennan’s opinion was joined by Justices Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell and Sandra Day O’Connor. Dissenting opinions were written or joined by Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices William Rehnquist, Byron White and John Paul Stevens
The Mark Levin Show, February 16, 2009 (a 26-Megabyte MP3 file), from about 17 minutes 15 seconds into the broadcast to 25 min. 45 sec.

Emperor_Clothes_01 An emperor of a prosperous city who cares more about clothes than military pursuits or entertainment hires two swindlers who promise him the finest suit of clothes from the most beautiful cloth. This cloth, they tell him, is invisible to anyone who was either stupid or unfit for his position. The Emperor cannot see the (non-existent) cloth, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing stupid; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they dress him in mime. The Emperor then goes on a procession through the capital showing off his new “clothes”. During the course of the procession, a small child cries out, “But he has nothing on!” The crowd realizes the child is telling the truth. The Emperor, however, holds his head high and continues the procession.

Frugal Café Blog Zone

Where it’s chic to be cheap… Conservative social & political commentary, with frugality mixed in

Radio Censorship, Round 1: FCC’s ‘Media Diversity’ Panel Chosen to Analyze Balance on Radio Airwaves Have No Conservatives on Committee… Where’s the Diversity?

By Vicki McClure Davidson, May 5, 2009

UPDATE, JUNE 18, 2009: This just in from Brian Jennings, Big Hollywood: Incoming FCC Chairman: No Censorship. To quote Jennings in his article, “Be vigilant for free speech and let’s make sure Julius Genachowski is true to his word. And, watch out for the new wave of political correctness that has swept the world and is now taking stronger hold in America – legislation against hate speech. Who decides what is hateful? The National Hispanic Media Coalition has asked the FCC to investigate alleged hate speech by John and Ken of KFI, Los Angeles, Lou Dobbs of CNN, and Michael Savage of the Talk Radio Network. Beware of further assaults on broadcast speech rights.”

~~~~~

Original post, dated May 4, 2009, begins here:

Talk about unmitigated hypocrisy and violation of the First Amendment.

Extremist liberals (and even not-so-extreme liberals) are criticizing US radio ownership because white, conservative men own the stations and air only white, conservative males that parrot their views (which isn’t true). They demand balance and diversity by mandate, so have, in the Age of Obama, constructed a review panel that has absolutely no conservative, free market representation. The panel’s “diversity” is based on skin color, or so it seems, and not on the diversity of ideas. What a bloody travesty.

This panel discussion to instigate censorship of free speech on the radio is also a travesty, a dog-and-pony show of discussing “fairness” much like a third-world banana republic dictatorship will do to go through the motions to placate the public and to camouflage the desired end result.

The “Fairness Doctrine” that Ronald Reagan abolished has been retooled and renamed “Media Diversity.” It is an affirmative-action scam, hoping to obscure its real intent. Minorities are not prevented from purchasing radio stations, nor are women, nor is any citizen.

There is no oppression. There is no bigotry. It’s all been contrived by the Obama administration…

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Freedom of speech and free enterprise under attack again.

Review of Mark Lloyd by drifter51 | August 15, 2009

I have run out of fingers. Lets see…..Mark Lloyd’s recent appointment as “Chief Diversity Officer” at the FCC makes him something like the 33rd “Czar” in Barack Obama’s administration. I’ve lost count. These so-called “czars” are conveniently unelected and therefore largely unaccountable to Congress or to the American people. Mark Lloyd comes to his new position with some very definite ideas about how the radio business should be regulated. Like so many other people in the Obama administration he loathes the free market and seeks to remake the radio industry. There can be little doubt about his intentions. Just read the attached report he wrote in 2007 for the “Center For American Progess”. It is chilling indeed!.

Make no mistake about it. If Mark Lloyd has his way the Federal government will have an awful lot to say about the types of programming you will be able to hear on the radio. That thought makes me cringe. Quoting from “Forget The Fairness Doctrine” Lloyd calls for ownership rules that “we think will create greater local diversity of programming, news, and commentary.” Keep in mind that the American taxpayer is already underwriting such diversity by appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars each year to subsidize the clearly left-wing programming on National Public Radio.

Mr. Lloyd favors tax policies designed to “encourage” broadcasters to air the kinds of programming that he approves of. Mr. Lloyd goes on to say that “Only the most misinformed still believe that radio group owners such as Citadel Broadcasting Corp., which refuses to air popular progressive hosts like Ed Shultz, are only concerned about the bottom line.” This is pure hogwash Mr. Lloyd! It is all about the bottom line. If Ed Shultz or Randi Rhodes could attract a decent audience then they would be on the air in a lot more cities than they are. The simple fact of the matter is that for decades the American people have clearly preferred conservative talk radio by an overwhelming margin.

This is largely true on both the national and local levels. Consider the liberal talk network “Air America” that featured Al Franken and Randi Rhodes among others. The ratings were dismal and the network quickly fell into bankruptcy. They even stiffed their flagship radio station WLIB in New York City of a substantial amount of money. The majority of people simply did not find that brand of talk to be very compelling. Which brings us back to you Mr. Lloyd. What is your real motivation in trying to stifle conservative talk radio? The answer is quite obvious. Your proposed assault on the radio industry is a backhanded attempt to stifle any criticism of the people and the policies that you support. The American people will not stand for it!

Now if Mark Lloyd’s true motivation was to achieve some sort of “fairness” and “ideological balance” then his proposed rules might also apply to cable news where liberals tend to rule the day. But as you might expect they do not. While I have no use for the likes of Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews or even Lou Dobbs, I would never advocate silencing these voices. I say let the marketplace determine the winners and losers as it always has. It seems to me that bureaucrats like Mark Lloyd and others should have better things to do with their valuable time than to conspire against freedom of speech and free enterprise. A very bad idea!

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Sen Grassley’s Letter to FCC Chair- Questions Media Should Ask About FCC ‘Chief Diversity Officer’

By Seton Motley, August 17, 2009

Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley has publicly released a letter he penned to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski regarding the July 29th announced appointment of new FCC Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd.

In the press release accompanying the missive, the Senator said he was “concerned with the appointment due to Lloyd’s writings on political talk radio and the Fairness Doctrine.”

As the Senator’s letter goes on to detail, there is very much more to fear from Lloyd than merely his views on the so-called “Fairness” Doctrine. Lloyd’s intentions on the enforcement of the FCC regulations known as “media diversity” and “localism” are no picnic either.

In advance of then-nominee Genachowski’s June 16 Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing, my boss – Media Research Center President Brent Bozell – drafted and publicly released a list of questions that Genachowski should have been asked.

Sadly, with the exception of the most pro forma of queries about the mis-named “Fairness” Doctrine, he was not.

Genachowski therefore remains a blank slate on his “media diversity” and “localism” enforcement intentions. We are thusly left to think the worst about his appointment of Chief Diversity Officer Lloyd. The Chairman has to have read Lloyd’s writings; his appointing him must mean Genachowski at least tacitly accepts Lloyd’s views on the subjects at hand.

Which is frightening.

We have repeatedly explained that Lloyd is virulently anti-conservative, anti-capitalist, almost myopically racially fixated and exuberantly pro-regulation.

Lloyd has in his past written a road map for how liberal activists should use the FCC to threaten the licenses of stations with whom they do not agree politically. He seeks to impose an annual FCC license fee equal to each station’s annual gross operating budget, with the money going to public broadcasting stations with whom the private stations then have to compete.

That he now works at the FCC where he can put his ridiculous policy proposals into place is more than a little disconcerting.

There is much more to be mined from the mind and pen of this man. We are currently poring over his many writings; there will be much more to come from us.

But from all we have thus far learned it appears that the First Amendment and free speech are either completely foreign or irrelevent to him.

Senator Grassley’s letter:

Dear Chairman Genachowski,

On July 29, 2009, you announced the appointment of Mark Lloyd as Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). I write today to express my concerns with this appointment and ask for you to clarify and reaffirm statements you made to me in a personal meeting prior to your confirmation related to the Fairness Doctrine and efforts to diversify broadcast media.

On April 22, 2009, before your confirmation by the U.S. Senate for your position as Chairman of the FCC, you came to my office and told me that you did not support an effort to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I took you at your word that, if confirmed, the policies that you promoted at the FCC would not include any policy or regulatory shifts that seek to reintroduce the long abandoned Fairness Doctrine. However, I have serious reservations that you may be moving away from these statements you made to me regarding the Fairness Doctrine given the appointment of Mr. Lloyd to a position within the Office of the General Counsel (OGC) at the FCC. Please allow me to elaborate.

My concerns relate to Mr. Lloyd’s participation in scholarly writings on political talk radio, the Fairness Doctrine, and efforts to bring greater diversity to talk radio. Prior to joining the FCC, Mr. Lloyd served as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), in addition to positions as a professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. In his capacity as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, he coauthored a paper titled, “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.”

This paper argued that radio programming was currently “imbalanced” and that there are “serious questions about whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the public airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans.” Mr. Lloyd’s paper suggests three options to remedy the “imbalance” in political talk radio, including (1) restoring caps on commercial radio station ownership, (2) ensure greater accountability in licensing, and (3) require owners who fail to enforce public interest ownership obligations to pay a fee. While these remedies seem innocuous on their face, hidden within the paper are some stark revelations.

First, Mr. Lloyd’s paper suggests that the Fairness Doctrine was “never formally repealed.” Instead, Mr. Lloyd argues that the FCC merely announced “it would no longer enforce certain

regulations under the umbrella of the Fairness Doctrine.” The paper continues by stating that while the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the FCC decision, the Supreme Court has “never overruled the cases that authorized the FCC’s enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine…thus it technically would not be considered repealed.”

Second, the paper suggests that the FCC revise the licensing process for radio broadcasters. Specifically, it suggests that licenses should not be permitted for longer than three years, that they be subject to challenges in the decision to renew their licenses, and that they submit to strict documentation and regulatory requirements.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the paper suggests that commercial radio owners be subjected to new regulatory requirements enforcing public interest obligations and if they fail to meet these standards, subjecting them to fees and taxes in order to compel compliance. The paper suggests that such a fee or fine structure could raise between $100 million to $250 million in new revenue, but would not “overly burden commercial radio broadcasters.”

Taken together, these statements represent a view that the FCC needs to expand its regulatory arm further into the commercial radio market. However, it would be unfair for me to say that Mr. Lloyd has specifically advocated for a return to the Fairness Doctrine. Instead, he has argued that the Fairness Doctrine is unnecessary if other regulatory reforms to commercial radio are implemented.

Specifically, in discussing the CAP paper “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio,” Mr. Lloyd authored an internet article published on CAP’s website entitled, “Forget the Fairness Doctrine.” In that piece, Mr. Lloyd stated, “we call for ownership rules that we think will create greater local diversity…we call for more localism by putting teeth into the licensing rules. But we do not call for a return to the Fairness Doctrine.”

Simply put, I strongly disagree with Mr. Lloyd. I do not believe that more regulation, more taxes or fines, or increased government intervention in the commercial radio market will serve the public interest or further the goals of diversifying the marketplace. I am concerned that despite his statements that the Fairness Doctrine is unnecessary, Mr. Lloyd supports a backdoor method of furthering the goals of the Fairness Doctrine by other means.

Accordingly, I ask that you clarify and reaffirm your commitment to me to oppose any reincarnation of the Fairness Doctrine. Further, I ask you to affirmatively state that you will not pursue an agenda that includes any new restrictions, fines, fees, or licensing requirements on commercial radio that would effectively create a backdoor Fairness Doctrine. I appreciate your prompt reply regarding this important matter.

Sincerely,
Chuck Grassley
United States Senator

—————

New FCC ‘Chief Diversity Officer’ Co-Wrote Liberal Group’s ‘Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio’

By Seton Motley, August 6, 2009

UPDATE: Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin read this piece in nearly its entirety last night. His on-air stylings can be found here.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced a new “Chief Diversity Officer,” communications attorney Mark Lloyd.

But Doctor of Jurisprudence Lloyd is far more than merely a communications attorney. He was at one time a Senior Fellow at the uber-liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), for whom he co-wrote a June 2007 report entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.”

Which rails against the fact that the American people overwhelmingly prefer to listen to conservative (and Christian) talk radio rather than the liberal alternative, and suggests ways the federal government can remedy this free-market created “problem.”

Restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations.
Ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing.
Require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.

These last two get perilously close to the use of “localism” to silence conservative (and Christian) radio stations, about which we have been warning for quite some time.

“Localism” is a nebulous FCC regulatory requirement that radio stations must meet to get and keep their broadcast licenses. How it is defined and enforced is wide open to the interpretation of whomever is doing the enforcing. It can mean something benign like airing local public service announcements, or it can be used as a weapon by activists to punish, harangue and ultimately shut down stations they don’t like.

In a follow-up essay to the CAP report entitled “Forget the Fairness Doctrine,” Lloyd specifically instructs liberal activists to do the latter – use the “localism” requirement to harass conservative stations by filing complaints with the FCC. The FCC would then assess these stations fines, with the money going to (very liberal) public broadcasting.

Or worse – the FCC would rescind these stations’ broadcast licenses. In other words, shut them up by shutting them down. Thus, as Lloyd says, no need for the mis-named “Fairness” Doctrine.

From Lloyd’s piece:

To be fair, even some progressives are confused about the Fairness Doctrine. A recent news story reported that the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC for short, has asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine—even as the same article reports on a speech to LULAC by ABC News correspondent John Quinones, who spoke of his work bringing to audiences a hard-earned perspective to the long-running immigration debate.

Quinones told the LULAC audience that he got his start because a San Antonio community organization threatened that if the stations didn’t hire more Latinos, the group would go to the FCC and challenge their licenses. “Thank God for them,” Quinones said. “I wouldn’t be here.”

Equal opportunity employment policies. Local engagement. License challenges. Nothing in there about the Fairness Doctrine.

“Community organizations” (run one would think by community organizers) threatening the licenses of stations with whom they do not agree politically.

Or making them pay hefty fines, which would be added to the public monies already being given to liberal public broadcasting.

The other part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads (i.e. Rush Limbaugh fans, meant here by Lloyd to more broadly refer to fans of all conservative talk) upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don’t want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community.

Lloyd’s instructions to Leftist activists are clear: use the FCC to pummel conservative talk radio. With fines, or entirely out of existence.

And now Lloyd works for the FCC.

Prologue to a Farce

Communication and Democracy in America

Author: Mark Lloyd

Pub Date:	2006
Pages:	352 pages
Dimensions:	6 x 9 in.

The cure for an American media where market interests have usurped democratic participation

“A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both.”–James Madison, 1822

Mark Lloyd has crafted a complex and powerful assessment of the relationship between communication and democracy in the United States. In Prologue to a Farce, he argues that citizens’ political capabilities depend on broad public access to media technologies, but that the U.S. communications environment has become unfairly dominated by corporate interests.

Drawing on a wealth of historical sources, Lloyd demonstrates that despite the persistent hope that a new technology (from the telegraph to the Internet) will rise to serve the needs of the republic, none has solved the fundamental problems created by corporate domination. After examining failed alternatives to the strong publicly owned communications model, such as antitrust regulation, the public trustee rules of the Federal Communications Commission, and the underfunded public broadcasting service, Lloyd argues that we must re-create a modern version of the Founder’s communications environment, and offers concrete strategies aimed at empowering citizens.

“Lloyd . . . has both law and journalism credentials and experience, and here he offers a critical history of American telecommunications and media policy. His theme is corporate domination, repeated with each succeeding technology, and how it prevents the media from offering true public value. . . . Lloyd offers a lot of food for thought. Highly recommended.”–Choice

“Marshaling a wide range of sources, Lloyd’s historical analysis of the politics of communication in the United States is one of the best available.”–Journal of American History

“Mark Lloyd offers a wide-ranging chronicle of American communication policy from the founding of the republic through the present day. This work is unique among historical examinations of American communication policy in that it is less about reforming media than about reforming democracy by providing citizens with full access to important public information and thereby restoring public dialogue to its central position as intended by the nation’s founders.”–American Journalism

“Mark Lloyd has written arguably the finest introduction to American media policy history I have read. Featuring an original and compelling argument, Lloyd draws not only upon extensive research but on his many years of experience as a public interest advocate. Prologue to a Farce should be required reading for media students, teachers, practitioners and concerned citizens nationwide.”–Robert W. McChesney, author of The Problem of the Media

“A passionate, thoughtful account of our society’s failure to use communications media in ways that enlarge democracy. A book for citizens as well as scholars of media and politics.”–David Thorburn, professor of literature and comparative media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mark Lloyd is Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. He is both a communications lawyer and an award-winning broadcast journalist.

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Forget the Fairness Doctrine

By Mark Lloyd | July 24, 2007

The Center for American Progress late last month published a widely read report titled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” That report demonstrated the failure of the supposed “free market” regulation of the U.S. radio industry to address the public-interest needs of listeners. Our analysis revealed that conservative talk radio dominates the airwaves of our country—to the detriment of informed public discourse and the First Amendment.

Only the most misinformed still believe that radio group owners such as Citadel Broadcasting Corp., which refuses to air popular progressive hosts like Ed Shultz, are only concerned about the bottom line. Few would agree that markets such as Philadelphia and Houston are well served with 100 percent conservative talk radio. But that doesn’t mean that the answer to this pervasive imbalance is the Fairness Doctrine.

In our report, we call for ownership rules that we think will create greater local diversity of programming, news, and commentary. And we call for more localism by putting teeth into the licensing rules. But we do not call for a return to the Fairness Doctrine.

Despite what we thought was fairly stark evidence of conservative bias, despite clear proposals to address that bias, Rush Limbaugh and other distortionists insisted that we were calling for a “return” of the Fairness Doctrine. But as we wrote, “simply reinstating the Fairness Doctrine will do little to address the gap between conservative and progressive talk unless the underlying elements of the public trustee doctrine are enforced, in particular, the requirements of local accountability and the reasonable airing of important matters.”

The power of right-wing talk radio and their echo chambers in the conservative blogosphere and Fox News was amply demonstrated by their simple “black or white, for or against” reaction to our report. They refused to discuss the underlying market control exercised by radio corporations eager to promote the conservative agenda. But it worked. Even the radio hosts of supposedly liberal public radio stations asked the authors of the report over and over, “Why are you calling for a return of the Fairness Doctrine?”

On one station, I responded that our report focused on media consolidation and localism, not the Fairness Doctrine. This sparked the host to ask, “Well, why aren’t you calling for a return of the Fairness Doctrine?”

Okay, so why aren’t we calling for a return of the Fairness Doctrine? As we state in the report, the Fairness Doctrine never by itself fostered coverage of important issues in a way that spoke to the diversity of interests in local communities across our country. In the late 1960’s, the supposed golden age of the Fairness Doctrine, the Kerner Commission reported the failure of mainstream media to report on minority communities. The same could be said at the time regarding the reporting of the views of women or poor people or young people protesting against the war in Vietnam.

Despite the distortions of the Nixon-era media haters, mainstream broadcast media in the late 1960s was middle-class, anti-communist, Protestant, male and white. If dittoheads like to think of this as a “liberal” bias, so be it, but the Fairness Doctrine didn’t do much to address it.

Here’s the history that matters. In the late 1960s the United Church of Christ successfully challenged the Federal Communications Commission over the lack of local input in FCC decisions. A moderate Republican judge, Warren Burger, whom Nixon later appointed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, sided with the church group. As a result of that ruling, a whole slew of rules were put in place to give local communities power in the licensing of broadcasters.

In their engagement in the licensing process many of those groups cited the responsibility of the broadcaster to “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of issues of public importance.” This responsibility, which many think of as the core of the Fairness Doctrine, was established in the 1920s. But with public engagement in the 1970s the Fairness Doctrine finally had some teeth.

All reports of its demise to the contrary, this core responsibility remains in the Communications Act today. Today, however, the act once again simply has no teeth.

How broadcast licensees meet their responsibility of fair discussion of important public issues has varied considerably over 80 years of federal regulation. But the image of eager federal bureaucrats peering over the shoulders of all of America’s radio talk show hosts with a stopwatch in hand is as absurd as it is impractical.

We trace the rise and influence of Rush and other conservative radio hosts to relaxed ownership rules and other pro-big business regulation that destroyed localism. The supposed “repeal” of the Fairness Doctrine did not create Rush Limbaugh, just as the supposedly onerous Fairness Doctrine did not destroy Joe Pyne in the 1960s or Father Charles Coughlin in the decades before Pyne.

To be fair, even some progressives are confused about the Fairness Doctrine. A recent news story reported that the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC for short, has asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine—even as the same article reports on a speech to LULAC by ABC News correspondent John Quinones, who spoke of his work bringing to audiences a hard-earned perspective to the long-running immigration debate.

Quinones told the LULAC audience that he got his start because a San Antonio community organization threatened that if the stations didn’t hire more Latinos, the group would go to the FCC and challenge their licenses. “Thank God for them,” Quinones said. “I wouldn’t be here.”

Equal opportunity employment policies. Local engagement. License challenges. Nothing in there about the Fairness Doctrine.

The other part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don’t want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community. Commercial broadcasters want to be trustees of public property but without responsibility.

Unlike newspapers and movies and blogs and cable channels, the federal government gives commercial broadcasters a free license to use public property—the airwaves. There are still more people who want these licenses than the government is able to satisfy. In exchange for this very valuable and scarce license, and federal protection against “pirate” (unlicensed) radio operators, broadcasters are supposed to operate in the public interest.

That’s the deal. The broadcasters like the free license and the free protection, but they just don’t want the public involved in telling them whether they are actually serving the public interest. For 80 years the public interest has been defined as, you guessed it, providing a reasonable opportunity for the diverse expression of issues of local importance.

For over 25 years Henry Geller, a distinguished telecommunications attorney, has argued that broadcasters ignore the local public interest, that the whole “public trustee” idea is broken, and that instead of trying to make broadcasters play by the rules we should just make them pay a reasonable fee to support public broadcasting. But spectrum license fees should not be put in the federal treasury as they are now. Instead, they should be used to advance the public’s First Amendment interest in diverse speech at the local and national levels. We think Geller makes a strong argument.

We at the Center are delighted at the increased attention our report has brought to the obligations of broadcasters to provide local communities they are licensed to serve with opportunities for diverse expression of important issues. The status quo does not serve our democracy well. We want to create more ownership opportunities and more speech focused on local interests. We want either clear rules that promote these First Amendment values or a reasonable payment to the public for the use of its property.

All of these public policy objectives are there for Congress and the FCC to act upon within current law. There is no need to return to the Fairness Doctrine.

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Credit: Protein Wisdom

Counterculture: The Summer Of Love, Woodstock, and Wounded Hippies

Filed under: Government, Health, Humor, Politics — Leave a comment

August 17, 2009

Obama Healthcare Logo Looks Like An Acid Trip — Bob Dylan Unknown Again — Carlos Santana In Las Vegas — 69′ Woodstock (LIFE Magazine Classic) Video — PBS Summer of Love — John Kerry’s New Deal — VFW (While Woodstock Rocked, GIs Died) — Vietnam War veteran proud after breaking 35 years of silence)

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Obama Healthcare Logo Looks Like An Acid Trip!

The Obama healthcare logo makes a rather celestial plea for Obama’s health care reform plan. A stylized caduceus rises ethereally from the fields of Obama. Three heavenly stars grace its crown, while a faint bubble trembles above the silhouttes of expectant Americans. If Uncle Sam himself were tripping, this is probably what he would see. I’d prefer a more down-to-earth logo–perhaps a big needle piercing a health insurance company–but obviously someone on the Obama team thought LSD-inspired patriotism was the most effective way to market healthcare reform. –Business Pundit

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Like a complete unknown?

Bob Dylan frogmarched to collect ID after rookie policewoman fails to recognise scruffy music legend

DailyMail By Annette Witheridge

He has sold albums by the million and was the idol of the 1960s protest movement. But yesterday Bob Dylan discovered what it’s like to be just a face in the crowd.

Police were called in a quiet seaside town after he was spotted freewheelin’ down the street and apparently acting suspiciously. A 22-year-old female officer demanded to see his identification papers.

He assumed she would at least recognise the name if not the face. But she ordered him into the back of her car and took him to his hotel to check his story.

Then she radioed her older colleagues at the police station to ask if anyone knew who Bob Dylan was.

‘I’m afraid we all fell about laughing,’ said Craig Spencer, a senior officer in Long Branch, New Jersey. ‘If it was me, I’d have been demanding his autograph, not his ID.

‘The poor woman has taken rather a lot of abuse from us. I offered to bring in some of my Dylan albums. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know what vinyl is either.’

It was in 1965 that Dylan wrote Like A Rolling Stone, with its line: ‘How does it feel to be on your own, a complete unknown?’

He found out while staying at the Ocean Place Resort in Long Branch. Before taking part in a concert with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, he decided to take a stroll through the town’s Latin quarter.

‘Residents called to complain there was an old scruffy man acting suspiciously,’ said officer Spencer. ‘It was an odd request because it was mid-afternoon. But it’s an ethnic Latin area and the residents felt he didn’t fit in.’

This is not the first time that Dylan has wandered off alone while on tour.

After a concert in Belfast in 1991, he shunned his chauffeur-driven limo and was captured by a TV crew waiting at a bus stop.

And in the middle of an American tour he popped unannounced into the childhood home of author Mark Twain.

When the stunned curator asked if he was really Bob Dylan, he said: ‘I guess I am.’

6a00d8341c630a53ef01156eaf6dbf970c Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images

What’s the one thing Las Vegas needs more of? Light, according to Carlos Santana, who figures he’s just the guy to bring it during a Sin City residency he’ll begin May 27 at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

Santana, the man and the band, will play about three shows a week through 2010 at the Hard Rock’s expanded and refurbished concert theater, the Joint, which another classic rocker, Paul McCartney, will inaugurate April 19.

“Santana is going to bring a lot of joy, light, peace and happiness into a place that is basically based on illusion,” the multiple Grammy-winning guitarist, songwriter and bandleader said Tuesday from his management’s offices in San Francisco. “We have to triumph, because we’re bringing the opposite of what Las Vegas is built on.”

The residency is the result of a deal with entertainment giant AEG Live, which also produced Celine Dion’s “A New Day” show — a production that ran five years at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace — as well as subsequent residencies with Elton John, Cher and Bette Midler.

Santana, who has never been hesitant about expressing his spiritual beliefs, said he intends to keep his performances inspired by avoiding an overly scripted and choreographed production.

“I put in the contract that we will need 20 to 30 minutes in the middle of the set to do a back flip into the unknown,” he said. “I won’t know what that’s going to be; the sound and lighting people won’t know, the band won’t know. We need that just so we can reignite and reinvent ourselves.”

The Joint, which opened in 1995 and helped make Las Vegas a legitimate destination for rock musicians, is undergoing a $60-million expansion. The former 1,400-seat theater now will house up to 4,000 people. Tickets, priced from $79 to $299, go on sale today for Santana performances through September.

“There are a lot of options of what we can do,” said Santana, 61. “The only thing we don’t want it to be is routine. . . . I’m ready, I’m inspired, and I’m ready to roll up my sleeves.”

–Randy Lewis, Los Angles Times

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Comrades! August 15th (July 31st in the Julian calendar) marks the glorious 40th Anniversary of the Great Woodstock Revolution, when a 500,000-strong army of heroic young workers, peasants, and toiling intelligentsia courageously rose in massive rebellion throughout the 600 acre dairy farm, 69 kilometers away from Woodstock, New York, to struggle together for the deepening of the widening of the expansion of the awareness of their struggle. –The People’s Cube

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We hold these experiences to be self-evident, that all is equal, that the creation endows us with certain inalienable rights, that among these are: the freedom of body, the pursuit of joy, and the expansion of consciousness and that to secure these rights, we the citizens of the earth declare our love and compassion for all conflicting hate-carrying men and women of the world.

- A Prophecy of a Declaration of Independence, published anonymously, 1967

In the summer of 1967, thousands of young people from across the country flocked to San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district to join in the hippie experience, only to discover that what they had come for was already disappearing. By 1968 the celebration of free love, music, and an alternative lifestyle had descended into a maelstrom of drug abuse, broken dreams, and occasional violence. Through interviews with a broad range of individuals who lived through the Summer of Love — police officers walking the beat, teenage runaways who left home without looking back, non-hippie residents who resented the invasion of their community, and scholars who still have difficulty interpreting the phenomenon — this American Experience offers a complex portrait of the notorious event that many consider the peak of the 1960s counter-culture movement.

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Watch the PBS Program

Chapter 1: (2:49)
“Teaser” introduction for Summer of Love on American Experience.

Chapter 2: (7:53)
Disillusioned members of the Baby Boom generation embrace a utopian vision.

Chapter 3: (4:25)
A mind altering new drug becomes popular with San Francisco’s hippies.

Chapter 4: (7:34)
National news reports put the hippie movement in the national spotlight. Young people travel to San Francisco from across the country.

Chapter 5: (7:35)
San Francisco residents and local authorities react to the growing number of hippies in the city.

Chapter 6: (9:17)
San Francisco hippies create the Council for the Summer of Love in response to concerns about a massive influx of young people to the city.

Chapter 7: (9:46)
Young teenage runaways struggle with drugs, disease and life on the streets of San Francisco.

Chapter 8: (3:28)
On October 6, 1967, a group of hippies close the curtain on the Summer of Love with “The Death of the Hippie.”

Chapter 9: (2:51)
End credits.

Film Description
A synopsis of the film, plus film credits.

Transcript
The program transcript.

Further Reading
A list of books, articles, and Web sites relating to the program topic.

Acknowledgements
Program interviewees and consultants.

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Carrying a guitar and a M16 rifle, Marine waits for a flight out of Khe Sanh, February 25th, 1968

It was the era of Rock & Roll and more people turned up for James Brown at the yearly USO extravaganza, than for Bob Hope. The AFRVN radio networking was grooving from the Delta to the DMZ. Accompanying the music of the era was a new mood towards the war and a lack of faith in the objectives became more common among the servicemen than ever before.

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John Kerry’s New Deal

Melinda Henneberger, Editor in Chief, 4/27/09

Forty years ago this spring, Navy Lt. John Kerry returned home from Vietnam. His first wife, Julia Thorne, told Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley that when he stepped off the commercial flight from San Francisco to JFK in his dress blues and white hat, “He was bandaged, some of it was sticking out, and nobody was paying attention to him while I was sitting there going, ‘Everybody stop and look at this man. Part the seas and say, This is your veteran coming home from serving his country.’ But nobody cared. Nobody gave a goddamn. Nobody gave a damn at all. Nobody.”

For the next year, according to Brinkley’s Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, he’d wake up screaming, thinking he was back on the Mekong Delta: “He was always in combat, in an emergency situation,” said his former wife, who died in 2006. “He was saving men. It was never anything about him – it was saving the boat and saving the men.” It was Kerry’s growing conviction that his government was doing just the opposite — cavalierly sending his buddies into situations they didn’t survive for reasons they couldn’t explain — that led him, in 1971, to ask the Senate Foreign Relations committee, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Kerry chairs the committee now, and according to his aides, last week was the first time since his own testimony all those years ago that rank-and-file fighting men and women had been invited to appear before it, to weigh in on the operations in which they’d risked everything and lost plenty. Kerry told the young veterans of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that if we as a country learned nothing else from Vietnam, we do know now how wrong it was, disrespecting our soldiers and “confusing the war with the warriors.”

If some of us nonetheless continue to confuse protest with a want of patriotism, or diplomacy with a chronic case of the williwaws, well, that is no longer John Kerry’s problem…

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… When I ask about the state of his relationship with his old friend John McCain, he isn’t much interested in my own shock and dismay that the McCain of ’08 wasn’t the guy I thought I knew in 2000. In fact, he plausibly suggests that with the ranks of military vets in Congress dwindling, their bond as Navy men might even go beyond politics, at least some of the time: “I like John, I still admire him, and I really didn’t think of it as being against John McCain” during the ’08 campaign.

He certainly regrets, he says, that there are fewer military veterans in their line of work these days: “Here’s what I’ve found: Can they be passionate without ever having served? Yes. But it really hones the questions you ask. You see things other people don’t see, and find the right people to talk to. I value it in a resume, and think we ought to have recruiters on all the college campuses.”

… Asked whether President Obama might want to cool it with the effusive greetings – not just to monarchs, but to oh, say, Hugo Chavez – he says absolutely not: “A guy walks up to him who is the democratically elected leader of his country and he was polite on behalf of our country and that’s just what he ought to have been. If that’s the best the Republicans can grab on to, they’re really desperate. To be rating a smile is just ridiculous, and I feel sorry for them.”

…When I ask about what it’s like, having the chance to invite the new generation of John Kerrys to testify before his committee, he is downright effusive: “What do you call that? Irony? Serendipity? Kismet? Karma? Amazing?”

Almost since the moment he testified in 1971, people have been asking why he hasn’t shown that fire more often, but could the passionate young guy who came to national prominence then have ever been elected to anything? “That guy did get elected,” he says quietly.

And for that guy, foreign policy in the Obama era boils down to “an appropriate combination of American idealism and values and appropriate realism, with a respect for international institutions but a priority on security and a willingness to act accordingly.” Not, in other words, simply holding hands and hoping for the best, as the cartoon Kerry would have. Which, I’m sorry to say, makes me mad all over again.

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While Woodstock Rocked, GIs Died

With the 40th anniversary of the ‘60s cherished rock concert, the so-called “Sixties Generation” remembers fondly those four days in August 1969. Instead, VFW magazine commemorates the 109 Americans killed in Vietnam then.

by Richard K. Kolb

Newsweek described them as “a youthful, long-haired army, almost as large as the U.S. force in Vietnam.” One of the promoters saw what happened near Bethel (nearly 40 miles from Woodstock), N.Y., as an opportunity to “showcase” the drug culture as a “beautiful phenomenon.”

The newsmagazine wrote of “wounded hippies” sent to impromptu hospital tents. Some 400,000 of the “nation’s affluent white young” attended the “electric pot dream.” One sympathetic chronicler recently described them as “a veritable army of hippies and freaks.”

Time gushed with admiration for the tribal gathering, declaring: “It may well rank as one of the significant political and sociological events of the age.” It deplored the three deaths there—“one from an overdose of drugs [heroin], and hundreds of youths freaked out on bad trips caused by low-grade LSD.” Yet attendees exhibited a “mystical feeling for themselves as a special group,” according to the magazine’s glowing essay.

That same tribute mentioned the “meaningless war in the jungles of Southeast Asia” and quoted a commentator who said the young need “more opportunities for authentic service.”

Meanwhile, 8,429 miles around the other side of the world, 514,000 mostly young Americans were authentically serving the country that had raised them to place society over self. The casualties they sustained over those four days were genuine, yet none of the elite media outlets were praising their selflessness.

So 40 years later, let’s finally look at those 109 Americans who sacrificed their lives in Vietnam on Aug. 15, 16, 17 and 18, 1969.

An American Profile
They mirrored the population of the time. A full 92% were white (seven of whom had Spanish surnames) and 8% black. Some 67% were Protestants; 28% Catholic. A disproportionate number—more than one-third—hailed from the South. More than two-thirds were single; nearly one-third married. Not surprisingly, the vast majority (91%) were under the age of 30, with 78% between the ages of 18 and 22.

Overwhelmingly (87%), they were in the Army. Marines and airmen accounted for 8% and 4% of the deaths respectively, with sailors sustaining 1%. Again, not unexpectedly, two-thirds were infantry¬men. That same proportion was lower-ranking enlisted men. Enemy action claimed 84% of their lives; non-hostile causes, 16%. The preponderance (56%) had volunteered while 43% had been drafted. One was in the National Guard.

Of the four days, Aug. 18—the last day of “peace and love” in the Catskills when the 50,000 diehards departed after the final act—was the worst for the men in Vietnam. Thirty-five of them died on that one miserable day. Many perished in the Battle of Hiep Duc (see VFW August 2008) fighting with the hard-luck Americal Division in the Que Son Mountains. In fact, 37% of all the GIs lost in this period came from this one unit.

So when you hear talk of the glories of Woodstock—the so-called “defining event of a generation”—keep in mind those 109 GIs who served nobly yet are never lauded by the illustrious spokesmen for the “Sixties Generation.”

A 20-year-old Stephen Manthei, right, and fellow soldier Bob Tarbuck, left, prepare for the Battle of Ripcord, during which their platoon was attacked, killing everyone but the two of them.We say we’re a progressive country, but as far as taking care of veterans, we’re way behind.” – Stephen Manthei

Vietnam War veteran proud after breaking 35 years of silence

MILTON TOWNSHIP — Steve Cameron left his family farm in New Milford, Ill., and joined the Marines in June 1965. He was 20 years old, and the Vietnam War was raging a half a world away. If he didn’t enlist, he knew he’d be drafted. “If your country needed you, there were no excuses, no cowardice and no second thoughts in serving your country,” he said.

Cameron met his would-be wife, Patricia, in July 1965 shortly before he went to San Diego for 13 weeks of boot camp. He proposed when he returned home, and they married in February 1966, just 17 days before Cameron boarded a troop ship headed for Vietnam.

Cameron was assigned to 1st Force Service Group in Da Nang, where he supervised 14 South Vietnamese civilians working on the Marine base. Within a few months of their arrival in Da Nang, Cameron’s unit and a group of Catholic nuns started an orphanage in abandoned buildings on China Beach.

“There were so many children there who had lost their parents,” he said. The Marines brought the orphans clothing, toys and candy. They paid regular visits—at least once a week—to the children. In addition to repair work, the Marines fed the children, played with them and acted as role models in the absence of their parents. “They thought we were great,” he said with a chuckle. “Of course, we had things for them.”

1112VetsCameronalone_t715 Cameron’ tough Marine exterior housed a generous, loving heart that melted when he met a 6-year-old Vietnamese girl who had lost her leg. “It was just the smile she had on her face,” he said. “For someone losing their leg in a war zone, losing their mother and father, my heart just opened up to her.”

Cameron sent pictures home to his family, planting the seed of adoption. His wife was supportive of the idea, but at the time no adoptions of Vietnamese children were allowed. It wasn’t until 1985 that the couple adopted a 7-year-old Korean girl, whom they named Julie.

Cameron said his unit’s relationship with the children at the orphanage revealed an often-overlooked aspect of the war. “It was something we could be a part of, some place we could feel loved,” he said. But the adoring eyes of the orphaned children weren’t enough to block out the disheartening stories of anti-war protests and riots that filtered to the soldiers serving in Vietnam.

“Whether they returned on their own two feet, in a wheelchair … or in a body bag, they were met with taunts, jeers and derogatory name-calling,” Cameron said. “Over there (in Vietnam), it was out of sight, out of mind.” En route back to the United States, the Marines were warned of the unpleasant homecoming ahead.

The higher-ups told them to stay out of the way of protesters, not to talk back to rioters and to wear civilian clothes. “It bothers me,” Cameron said. “When I went in, I was proud to serve my country. And when I came home, I was still proud, but I could not display it by wearing my uniform.”

Cameron was discharged in 1969 as a staff sergeant. He and other Vietnam veterans learned it was better to keep quiet about their service. “When we came home, we were the bad guys,” he said. “So I tried to forget about it.” Cameron, 63, of Milton Township remained silent for almost 35 years until the traveling Vietnam Memorial was brought to Janesville in 2000. While standing in front of the memorial, a business acquaintance shook his hand and thanked him for his service.

His voice shakes when he tries to describe the meaning of that brief exchange. He said it was the first time someone other than his family members had thanked him. Now when he meets a fellow Vietnam veteran—or any veteran, for that matter—Cameron makes it a point to extend his hand in thanks. “I go out of my way to do it,” he said.

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Richard (Dick) Cheney: America’s 1st Helmsmen “We Don’t Want To Leave Anyone On The Battlefield”

Filed under: Books, Government, History, Reference — 2 Comments

August 16, 2009

Time: Dick Cheney: Why So Chatty All of a Sudden? — The Telegraph (UK) Blog: Dick Cheney is a great American hero — AJC: Washington Post pulls comic featuring Vick, Cheney — Liz Cheney Video — CBS Report: Cheney Thought Bush Showed Moral Weakness — Time: Inside Bush and Cheney’s Final Days

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“Be patient and calm – for no one can catch fish in anger.” - Herbert Hoover

Cheney — code-named Angler by the Secret Service — is a lot like fishing in dark water; there’s a lot going on underneath, but you’d never know it from staring at the surface… The former Veep says he’s worried that by dismantling a controversial Bush-era terrorist surveillance program and stepping back from harsh interrogation policies, the Obama Administration is putting the nation at risk. “I think it’s fair to argue,” said Cheney, “that we’re not going to have the same safeguards we’ve had for the last eight years.”

Time: Dick Cheney: Why So Chatty All of a Sudden?

Dick Cheney is a great American hero

The Telegraph (UK) Blog , By Nile Gardiner, July 17, 2009

It’s a good thing we had Dick Cheney in the Vice President’s office in the days following the 9/11 attacks. Cheney was the right man at the right time in history and was instrumental in launching the counter-attack against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and across the world, which has kept the United States safe from assault to this day.

It was a strategy that worked, from the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay to the battlefields of south Asia. It also included wiping out thousands of jihadists in Iraq, including much of the leadership of al-Qaeda in the region. Those who say the Iraq War had nothing to do with the battle against Osama bin Laden should look at the immense losses his foot soldiers suffered there at the hands of Allied forces in a humiliating and crushing defeat during the U.S.-led surge

There’s something very refreshing about a fearless leader who was willing to show the enemy no quarter – including reportedly backing a plan to train anti-terrorist hit teams to take out the senior leadership of al-Qaeda on foreign soil. The hardly earth-shattering revelation – the whole thing had been flagged by The Washington Post as early as October 2001 – about the planned operation (which was never even activated due to CIA concerns over practicality), is now provoking self-righteous bouts of condemnation on both sides of the Atlantic, with liberals on Capitol Hill hysterically calling for a witch hunt.

Critics ignore the fact that both branches of the United States Congress approved a joint resolution on September 18, 2001, which authorized the President:

“to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

They also conveniently forget that the Obama administration, like the Bush and Clinton administrations before it, implemented the targeted killing of al-Qaeda leaders by unmanned aerial vehicles or missile strikes. Is there any difference in principle between this approach and the sending of covert operatives to physically hunt down the enemy on the ground? The end result is the same – the elimination of terrorists.

Dick Cheney, a great American patriot and huge supporter of the Anglo-American alliance, deserves a medal for his leadership of the war on terror, and not howls of derision. The Vice President was absolutely right to seek to wipe out the al-Qaeda leadership, brutal barbarians responsible for the murder of 3,000 people of dozens of nationalities in New York in 2001 of all religious faiths, as well as hundreds more at the Pentagon and on planes used as suicide bombs.

Cheney rightly recognized that America, Britain and their allies were engaged in a global war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates, not some sort of glorified law and order exercise or an “overseas contingency operation.”

The West is involved in a long war against a barbaric adversary that may take decades to win. It’s a war that must be waged and ultimately won by aggressively taking the fight to the enemy.

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Washington Post pulls comic featuring Vick, Cheney

By CHRISTIAN BOONE, August 10, 2009

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

You won’t read about Dick Cheney advising the NFL commissioner to kill Michael Vick in today’s Washington Post.

The fictional subplot appeared in the long-running “Tank McNamara” comic strip, about a former football player turned TV sportscaster. Post Managing Editor Raju Narisetti told the paper’s “Comic Riffs” blog that the storyline was deemed “inappropriate.”

The pulled strip features a conversation between the former vice president and NFL chieftain Roger Goodell, who’s seeking counsel on how to handle the reinstatement of Vick. The former Falcons star recently completed an 18-month prison sentence for operating a dogfighting ring.

Goodell: “I have to make a move on Mike Vick.”

Cheney: “Kill him.”

Goodell: “Kill him?!?”

Cheney: “Well, not you personally.”

Why Cheney would tell the commissioner to put a hit on Vick is unclear. The comic’s writer, Jeff Millar, was unavailable for comment Monday, said illustrator Bill Hinds, who referred any questions about content to Millar.

The strip’s syndicator, Universal Press Syndicate, said they weren’t aware of any other cancellations.

“We at Universal Uclick absolutely respect the right of The Washington Post to pull the strips, but we also respect the rights of our creators to write sharp and humorous satire,” according to a statement sent to the AJC Monday afternoon. “For more than 35 years, Jeff [Millar] and Bill [Hinds] have been holding athletes, the sports industry and public figures up to the light. It wouldn’t be Tank McNamara if they didn’t.”

Vick, a free agent, was conditionally reinstated by Goodell in late July. He can immediately take part in preseason practices, workouts and meetings and can play in the final two preseason games but won’t be considered for full reinstatement until Week 6 of the NFL season.

While often topical, “Tank” is rarely controversial. The strip isn’t afraid to name names, however; one of its more popular features is the “Sports Jerk of the Year” award, given one year to former Braves southpaw John Rocker.

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CBS Report: Cheney Thought Bush Showed Moral Weakness

Former Vice President Thinks Bush Ignored Advice, Made Concessions To Public Sentiment

The book will cover Cheney’s long career from chief of staff under President Gerald Ford to vice president under Bush.

“When the president made decisions that I didn’t agree with, I still supported him and didn’t go out and undercut him,” Cheney said, according to Stephen Hayes, his authorized biographer. “Now we’re talking about after we’ve left office. I have strong feelings about what happened. … And I don’t have any reason not to forthrightly express those views.”

According to the author of the Post piece, Barton Gellman, who earlier wrote a book on Cheney called “Angler,” the former vice president believes Bush made concessions to public sentiment, something Cheney views as moral weakness. After years of praising Bush as a man of resolve, Cheney now intimates that the former president turned out to be more like an ordinary politician in the end, Gellman says.

“In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” Gellman quoted a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. “He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming.”

Cheney Uncloaks His Frustration With Bush

‘Statute of Limitations Has Expired’ on Many Secrets, Former Vice President Says

By Barton Gellman, Thursday, August 13, 2009

In his first few months after leaving office, former vice president Richard B. Cheney threw himself into public combat against the “far left” agenda of the new commander in chief. More private reflections, as his memoir takes shape in slashing longhand on legal pads, have opened a second front against Cheney’s White House partner of eight years, George W. Bush…

…Cheney’s post-White House career is as singular as his vice presidency, a position he transformed into the hub of power. Drained of direct authority and cast aside by much of the public, he is no less urgently focused, friends and family members said, on shaping events.

The former vice president remains convinced of mortal dangers that few other leaders, in his view, face squarely. That fixed belief does much to explain the conduct that so many critics find baffling. He gives no weight, close associates said, to his low approval ratings, to the tradition of statesmanlike White House exits or to the grumbling of Republicans about his effect on the party brand.

John P. Hannah, Cheney’s second-term national security adviser, said the former vice president is driven, now as before, by the nightmare of a hostile state acquiring nuclear weapons and passing them to terrorists. Aaron Friedberg, another of Cheney’s foreign policy advisers, said Cheney believes “that many people find it very difficult to hold that idea in their head, really, and conjure with it, and see what it implies.”

… The depths of Cheney’s distress about another close friend, his former chief of staff and alter ego I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, have only recently become clear. Bush refused a pardon after Libby’s felony convictions in 2007 for perjury and obstruction of an investigation of the leak of a clandestine CIA officer’s identity.

Cheney tried mightily to prevent Libby’s fall, scrawling in a note made public at trial that he would not let anyone “sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder.” Cheney never explained the allusion, but grand jury transcripts — and independent counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald — suggested that Libby’s false statements aimed above all to protect the vice president.

… Despite an ailing heart and reduced mobility, the former vice president at age 68 retains a prodigious capacity for work. He rises early, reads voraciously about history and current events, and acquired a BlackBerry in modest recompense for the loss of daily intelligence briefings. He allows himself some indulgences, Liz Cheney said in an interview.

She said her father relishes his new freedom to take a morning drive to Starbucks in a black SUV, toting home the decaffeinated latte on which his doctor and his wife, Lynne, insist. He attends the soccer and softball games of his oldest grandchildren, Kate and Elizabeth, and spends more time than he could as vice president fly fishing near his vacation homes in Wyoming and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore…

“What impressed me was his continuing zeal,” said an associate who discussed the book with Cheney. “He hadn’t stepped back a bit from the positions he took in office to a more relaxed, Olympian view. He was still very much in the fray. He’s not going to soften anything or accommodate shifts of conscience.

There was no sense in which he looked back and said, ‘I wish I’d done something differently.’ Rather, there was a sense that they hadn’t gone far enough. If he’d been equipped with a group of people as ideologically rigorous as he was, they’d have been able to push further.”

Some old associates see Cheney’s newfound openness as a breach of principle. For decades, he expressed contempt for departing officials who wrote insider accounts, arguing that candid internal debate was impossible if the president and his advisers could not count on secrecy.

As far back as 1979, one of the heroes in Lynne Cheney’s novel “Executive Privilege” resolved never to write a memoir because “a president deserved at least one person around him whose silence he could depend on.” Cheney lived that vow for the next 30 years.

As vice president, according to one witness, Cheney “was livid” when the memoir of L. Paul Bremer, who led the occupation of Iraq, made the less-than-stunning disclosure that Cheney shared Bremer’s concern about U.S. military strategy. A Cabinet-level Bush appointee recalled that Cheney likewise described revelations by former Treasury secretary Paul H. O’Neill and former White House spokesman Scott McClellan as “beyond the pale.”

…Liz Cheney, whom friends credit with talking her father into writing the book, described the memoir as a record for posterity. “You have to think about his love of history, and when he thinks about this memoir, he thinks about it as a book his grandchildren will read,” she said.

What the former vice president assuredly will not do, according to friends and family, is break a lifetime’s reticence about his feelings. Alluding to Bush’s forthcoming memoir, Cheney told one small group recently that he had no interest “in sharing personal details,” as the former president planned to do.

“He sort of spat the word ‘personal,’ ” said one person in the room.

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Inside Bush and Cheney’s Final Days

By Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf

Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon the Vice President’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby.

Libby had been convicted nearly two years earlier of obstructing an investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity by senior White House officials. The Libby pardon, aides reported, had become something of a crusade for Cheney, who seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with Bush to the breaking point — and perhaps past it — over the fate of his former aide. “We don’t want to leave anyone on the battlefield,” Cheney argued.

Bush had already decided the week before that Libby was undeserving and told Cheney so, only to see the question raised again. A top adviser to Bush says he had never seen the Vice President focused so single-mindedly on anything over two terms. And so, on his last full day in office, Jan. 19, 2009, Bush would give Cheney his final decision.

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These last hours represent a climactic chapter in the mysterious and mostly opaque relationship at the center of a tumultuous period in American history. It reveals how one question — whether to grant a presidential pardon to a top vice-presidential aide — strained the bonds between Bush and his deputy and closest counselor. It reveals a gap in the two men’s views of crime and punishment.

And in a broader way, it uncovers a fundamental difference in how the two men regarded the legacy of the Bush years. As a Cheney confidant puts it, the Vice President believed he and the President could claim the war on terrorism as his greatest legacy only if they defended at all costs the men and women who fought in the trenches. When it came to Libby, Bush felt he had done enough…

After a seven-week trial, Libby was found guilty on March 6, 2007, of obstructing justice, perjury and lying to investigators. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and a $250,000 fine, a precipitous fall for a man known as the Vice President’s alter ego and formerly a prestigious lawyer at a premier Washington firm. He fought the verdict, his legal bills paid by a defense fund that raised $5 million, but a federal appeals court ruled on July 2, 2007, that Libby had to report to jail.

The White House was prepared for the ruling, in part because after six years in Washington, Bush had finally found himself a White House counsel who was up to the job. Fred Fielding, a genial, white-haired, slightly stooped figure in his late 60s, had cut his teeth as an assistant to John Dean in Richard Nixon’s counsel’s office and served as Ronald Reagan’s top lawyer as well.

He had unrivaled experience managing allegations of White House misconduct. He also was one of the few people in Washington who had served in as many Republican Administrations as Cheney had, which meant he had uncommon stature in the West Wing. And he was everything Bush’s two previous counsels, Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers, hadn’t been: strong-willed, independent and fearless. Says an old friend: “Freddy isn’t afraid of anyone. He will slit your throat with a razor blade while he is yawning.”

Fielding’s arrival in early 2007 was one of several signs that the balance of power in the Administration had shifted against the Vice President. Fielding reviewed the Libby case before the appellate verdict came down and recommended against a presidential pardon. Cheney’s longtime aide hadn’t met the criteria: accepting responsibility for the crime, doing time and demonstrating remorse. “Pardons tend to be for the repentant,” says a senior Administration official familiar with the 2007 pardon review, “not for those who think the system was politicized or they were unfairly targeted.”

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The verdict was one thing. Libby’s sentence was another matter. Fielding told Bush that the President had wide discretion to determine its fairness. And within hours of the appeals-court ruling, Bush pronounced the jail time “excessive,” commuting Libby’s prison term while leaving in place the fine and, most important, the guilty verdict — which meant Libby would probably never practice law again.

Fielding’s recommendation was widely circulated in the White House before it was announced, and there is no evidence of disagreement. If Cheney and his allies were disappointed with Bush’s decision, they did not show it, several former officials say, in part because they were, as one put it, “so happy that [Scooter] wasn’t going to jail.”

The response was predictable: conservatives cheered the commutation; liberals deplored it. But among Bush aides, the presidential statement was seen as a fail-safe, a device that would prevent a backtrack later on…

Longtime Cheney ally Donald Rumsfeld was eased out as Pentagon chief in late 2006, and Bush replaced him with Robert Gates, a former CIA director and Bush-family ally. Gates was as effective a bureaucratic player as Cheney — and much more of a pragmatist. “Bush was persuaded that the day of the neoconservatives had to be over…

Cheney fought some of these initiatives all the way, “taking it upon himself,” as a top adviser put it, to make the hard-line national-security case to the President. Cheney didn’t lose every fight, but he was no longer winning them all either. And his backup vanished.

Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz moved to the World Bank in early 2005. Libby was indicted in October of that year and left the government. John Bolton resigned his post as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. the same month Rumsfeld left the Pentagon in 2006. Cheney’s allies no longer manned the key points in the national-security flow chart. “Cheney,” says an ally, “had to fight much harder to win.”

…Petitions for pardons are usually sent in writing to the White House counsel’s office or a specially designated attorney at the Department of Justice. In Libby’s case, Cheney simply carried the message directly to Bush, as he had with so many other issues in the past, pressing the President in one-on-one meetings or in larger settings. A White House veteran was struck by his “extraordinary level of attention” to the case. Cheney’s persistence became nearly as big an issue as the pardon itself. “Cheney really got in the President’s face,” says a longtime Bush-family source. “He just wouldn’t give it up.”

lynne_cheney_12

That meant taking up the pardon question again was, as a West Wing veteran put it later, like passing a kidney stone — for the second time. Bolten declined to take a stand, according to several associates. Instead, he lateraled the issue to Fielding, claiming that a legal, not a political, call was required. If the counsel’s office decided a pardon wasn’t merited, says an official involved in the discussions, everyone else would have cover with Cheney. “They could say, Our hands are tied — our lawyers said the guy was guilty.”

And so again the job fell to Fielding. The counsel knew that only one legitimate reason for a pardon remained: if the case against him had been a miscarriage of justice. Because that kind of judgment required a thorough review, Fielding plowed through a thick transcript of the trial himself, examining the evidence supporting each charge. It took Fielding a full week. He prepared his brief for an expected showdown at a pardon meeting in mid-January 2009.

The Vice President argued the case in that Oval Office session, which was attended by the President and his top aides. He made his points in a calm, lawyerly style, saying Libby was a fall guy for critics of the Iraq war, a loyal team player caught up in a political dispute that never should have turned into a legal matter. They went after Scooter, Cheney would say, because they couldn’t get his boss. But Bush pushed past the political dimension. “Did the jury get it right or wrong?” he asked.

… The President had been told by private lawyers in the case that Libby never should have testified before the grand jury and instead should have invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. Prosecutors can accept that. But lie to them, and it gets personal. “It’s the difference between making mistakes, which everybody does, and making up a story,” a lawyer told Bush. “That is a sin that prosecutors are not going to forgive.”

A few days later, about a week before they would become private citizens, Bush pulled Cheney aside after a morning meeting and told him there would be no pardon. Cheney looked stricken. Most officials respond to a presidential rebuff with a polite thanks for considering the request in the first place. But Cheney, an observer says, “expressed his disappointment and disagreement with the decision … He didn’t take it well.”

The_Angler

He’s Fly Fishing…

end

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