Some "empire" we turned out to be

"Soviet-Style Propaganda" on Florida schools exam?

Dean Kalahar is a Sarasota, Florida high school economics teacher. On his blog, he says his guiding principles include private property rights, free market entrepreneurial capitalism and the U.S. Constitution. 

Kalahar recently brought attention to the new Florida high school senior exit exam, which he says will “indoctrinate children into a progressive and revisionist model critical of America.”

So, the USA is an empire? Empires are characterized by exploiting the conquered or dominated, by the imperium enriching itself at the expense of the subjects, if not in absolute terms then in relative.

Well, some empire we turned out to be. Seems that everyone else is getting rich at our expense. This chart shows the balances and nature of American imports compared to exports.

"Everything going out is raw goods. Everything coming in is finished" (source). So the US exports raw materials that our imperial subjects use to make things we want to buy. That is, they take relatively low-value American products, add value and then sell them back to us at a higher price. More of our money flows to the "empire" than flows in. The rest of the world gets rich at our expense. Yet we are the seat of empire!

Stupid Americans - don't even know how to run an empire....

Yale law professor: bin Laden killing was legal

Jed Rubenfeld, professor of law at Yale Law School and a former U.S. representative to the Council of Europe, in "U.S. justified in killing Osama Bin Laden:"

An "extrajudicial execution," that's what many in the international community are now calling the killing of Osama bin Laden. The U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for an investigation. According to a U.N. special rapporteur, if the U.S. commandos were under shoot-to-kill orders and did so without offering Bin Laden a "meaningful prospect of surrender," his killing could have been a "cold-blooded execution." ...

What Prof. Rubenfeld surely realizes, though he didn't write, is that the intention of the U.N.'s "investigation" is not actually to determine whether double tapping OBL met some legal criteria. It is to hamstring American might and hamper our efforts against Islamist terrorists. It is to put the United States into a box.

As Prof. Rubenfeld points out, there is no existing international treaty or Convention on warfare that says that an enemy combatant must be given a "meaningful prospect of surrender," or any opportunity at all. Says the professor,

It is pure foolishness to suggest that by going in on the ground, the U.S. turned its soldiers into policemen required to give Bin Laden "due process," place him "under arrest" and read him his Miranda rights.

I remember very well an incident during 1991's Gulf War in which American media excoriated US forces who observed Iraqi tanks heading toward their position and destroyed them with anti-tank missiles. Why the media fury? Because in the breathless words of a reporter whose face I remember well but can't put a name to it, the tanks were moving toward the American position "with their turrets reversed," that is, pointing toward the tanks' rear. So, the reporter continued, "the tanks were surrendering!" She claimed as well that a reversed tank's turret was a recognized sign of surrender.

Which is just stuck on stupid. First, tanks cannot surrender at all, turrets reversed or not. Only soldiers can surrender. If the crews wanted to surrender, all they had to do was dismount their tanks, casts away arms and raise a white flag (an undershirt would do - so many Iraqis used white undershirts to surrender during that war that Saddam finally made it a capital offense in the army even to possess one). Second, because tanks cannot surrender, it does not matter where the main gun is pointing. You just shoot the tank.

There was a later incident involving Saudi troops who accepted the surrender of a small group of Iraqi soldiers, including a handful of Iraqi officers, who did raise a white ensign and proceed on foot toward Saudi soldiers. When the Saudis went out to meet them, the Iraqis raised weapons and shot the Saudis down. Other Saudis immediately gunned down the Iraqis, of course, but several Saudi men lost their lives. From that day on, that unit of Saudis took no prisoners - any Iraqi showing a white flag was shot. And that was both entirely reasonable and legal. Perfidy of surrender is explicitly forbidden in the international conventions, and once perfidy is done, it is justifiable to expect it will be practiced again.

As Prof. Rubenfeld explains, perfidy has been the hallmark of bin Laden's acolytes. They are,

... enemies who flagrantly violate the laws of war, targeting civilians for death, hiding bombs behind burkas, using children as shields or — yes — faking a Red Cross, upraised hands or other symbolic white flags to perpetrate lethal attacks. ... Even if we imagine Bin Laden actually waving a little white sock on a stick in Abbottabad, there would have been no reason for our soldiers to credit these statements. No soldier had a duty to take the slightest risk to his own life because Osama bin Laden promised to be good from now on.

The SEALs were never under any obligation to do anything to bin Laden except shoot him on sight. As Prof. Rubenfeld points out, "If Bin Laden wanted to surrender, he could and should have done it sometime in the last decade. He could not do it by raising his hands during an attack on his compound."

Libyan jets armed to kill

Here are a couple of photos of the two Libyan air force Mirage fighter jets whose pilots landed in Malta Monday rather than obey orders to attack Libyan protesters.

The second photo tells a story. It is a closeup of the rear of an antipersonnel rocket pod. The pod used by the Mirage fighter is the SNEB pod, the name being the acronym of its manufacturer. Each SNEB pod holds either 18 or 19 rockets, depending on the type.

However, blowing up this image reveals rocket-exhaust nozzles in the mid-twenties count; a better view is in this image. So this appears not to be a SNEB pod. But it is an air-to-ground weapon, which only shows how lethal Qaddafi is willing to be against his own people.

And that means he does not consider them his own people at all.

Endnote: STRATFOR's George Friedman says it is "the military and police coming over to the side of the demonstrators, that makes or breaks a revolution." The problem is that in Libya, the military (the soldiers on the ground, anyway) is not an important player.

The Libyan army is one of the poorest and most neglected security sectors in the government. They are poorly fed , equipped, trained and paid. They are mostly ceremonial and Qaddafi does not trust them. So what we have here are private battalions with each of his sons owning the one named for him. So for example his son Khamees has a battalion belonging to him calling it “Kateebit Khamees.” Each is placed in private super huge barracks situated strategically around Tripoli for situations like these. These battalions are well-equipped, trained and paid and are extremely loyal not to the country but to the leader of their battalion.

So to answer your question the regular army is non-compliant and has mostly sided with the people. Remember they are poorly-equipped and so can be of only limited help. However, the battalions belonging to the regime itself are very much in the fight and are killing people wholesale. Still their numbers are not so great to cover this huge country so it seems they are complemented by mercenaries.

Qaddafi & Sons are protected by their own, private army and mercenaries imported from Africa's southern regions. The national army is unlikely to be a major factor in the outcome.

Meanwhile, President Obama is nothing if not consistent.

Here is the Youtube of the jets landing at Malta.

Qaddafi murders hundreds, Obama calls for "restraint"

Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi ordered his air force to bomb protesters. The air force there was "bombing indiscriminately across Tripoli on Monday."

"What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead," Adel Mohamed Saleh said.

Saleh, who called himself a political activist, said the bombings had initially targeted a funeral procession.

"Our people are dying. It is the policy of scorched earth." he said. "Every 20 minutes they are bombing."

Asked if the attacks were still happening he said: "It is continuing, it is continuing. Anyone who moves, even if they are in their car they will hit you."

However, thankfully, two of the pilots given the mission flew to Malta instead.

Two high-ranking Libyan air force pilots have who fled to Malta in their aircraft are reported to have told officials they escaped rather than carry out orders to bomb civilians. ...

The two Mirage F1 jets touched down in Malta after the pilots said they urgently needed to refuel and sought emergency clearance to land. The Times of Malta reported on its website the pilots had told officials they flew to the island after being ordered to bomb protesters occupying Libya's second-biggest city of Benghazi.

One report said they had also brought with them two other members of the Libyan armed forces. The pilots – both colonels – said that, after taking off from Okba Ben Nafi base, they flew low through Libyan air space to avoid radar detection.

So some of Qaddafi's fellow rats are fleeing his sinking ship. Well, I suppose a late change of heart is better than none, especially when the changed heart decides not to mass murder its fellow subjects.

Since the demonstrations against Qaddafi began, there are hundreds killed in the streets by Libyan security thugs.



Reports today say that Qaddafi has fled the country to - where else: "Dictator may already have fled and be on his way to Venezuela after Libyan air force attacks civilians."

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has fled Libya and may be heading for Venezuela, William Hague said today.

The [British] Foreign Secretary said he had seen 'information' that suggests Gaddafi is on his way to the South American country - as Libya was up in flames amid increasingly bloody battles between protesters and security forces.

If true, Qaddafi has left the country in the on-so-tender hands of his son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who "warns of "rivers of blood" in Libya."

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi's son warned early Monday that the country faces a bloody civil war if protesters refuse to accept reform offers, in a speech broadcast as gunfire rang out in the capital, saying that his father remained in charge with the army's backing and would "fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet."

But don't worry, Libyans! President Barack Obama, who was so daily vocal about the Cairo demonstrators, is on top of the situation! Uh, right?,

President Obama urged restraint in a written statement Friday on Libya and two other countries, but he hasn't appeared on television to talk about the crisis.

So what does "restraint" mean? "Please, Mr. Qaddafi, don't escalate to killing thousands instead of hundreds?" Or maybe, "Don't kill hundreds, kill only dozens."

So pusillanimous is Obama's statement that Libya's own ambassador to the United States attacked it (same link):

Now here's a situation pretty much without precedent: The Libyan Ambassador to the U.S. just called on the Untied [sic] States to denounce his country's leaders -- and his employers -- more forcefully.

"I want the U.S. to tell the world and to work with the countries who love peace...they have to stop this," Ambassador Ali Ojli said, suggesting that he had resigned his post, in an interview with Al Jazeera English.

"I would never ask us to intervene physically in Libya," he said, but called on the Obama Administration to "take a strong position that what's happening in libya must be stopped now...and to avoid giving the impression to the Arab world that the West "has only a materialist mind -- they don't care about human rights...except when it comes to their own interest."

Mr. Ojli vastly overestimates this administration's capability to understand what is in the United States' interests.

Doug Ross has more.

Update: The WaPo finally wades in. It's a pretty good piece, actually, but shrinks from the whole truth here:

Tribal and religious leaders condemned Gaddafi for the attacks against civilians; some urged all Muslims to rise against him. Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi told al-Jazeera television that he urged any Libyan soldier who has the opportunity to kill Gaddafi - and issued a religious decree to that effect.

"I am issuing a fatwa now to kill Gaddafi," the cleric said. "To any army soldier, to any man who can pull the trigger and kill this man to do so."

Managed to miss mentioning that al-Qaradawi is the public face of the Muslim Brotherhood and that he was cheered by a million Egyptians Feb. 18 in Cairo's Tahrir Square for promising Islamist rule in Egypt.

Et maintenant, le deluge

Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman has announced that President Hosni Mubarak has resigned. There is wild celebration in Tahrir square in Cairo, where demonstrating crowds have gathered for more than two weeks.

It is unclear who is in control of Egypt right now. Presumably, Suleiman is the new chief executive and CinC of the armed forces. What the morrow will bring no one knows right now. But this is clear: for the time being, at least, Mubarak is out but his government, including his handpicked successor, Suleiman, is still in.

So what has changed? Less than it appears. My crystal ball tells me that the Suleiman government will announce that elections will take place in September as planned, and that until then some reforms will be instituted. But no other change in government will take place until then. The army will let it be known that with Mubarak gone the armed forces will countenance no further civil unrest. I do not mean that the army will move soon or ever to disperse the crowds by force. I mean that it will enforce civil order. The crowds can stay there as long as they like, but limits will be set.

However, I think that after a celebratory time in the square, people will go home and then go back to work. "A man's gotta eat," after all.

Despite what appears to be a triumph for the people today, Egypt is now is a more precarious state than before. That there will be a period of political disorder as factions jockey for position leading to September hardly needs be said. The risk to to the country is very great. If things get too chaotic in months to come, as is quite possible, the factions that can most credibly promise order and regularity of society will become more acceptable.

That means either the military or the Muslim Brotherhood. So I am back where I was last Monday:

Who will wind up on top in Egypt? The faction with most willing and able to kill other Egyptians to get power. Right now the Muslim Brotherhood leads for the former and the military for the latter. But the Brotherhood will also take a longer view of things than the military and so will be more comfortable with biding its time.

I would add that in no more than a week it will dawn on the proles that the eschaton has not arrived. Food will be neither more plentiful nor less expensive. Economically, Egypt is now worse off than it was yesterday since investment capital will no flow in and much foreign capital will likely be withdrawn. There is potential for serious unrest by this date in, say, April. If that happens and is widespread, then comes le deluge.

Update, Feb 12: Barry Rubin sees it this way, too: "How Much in Egypt Has Really Changed? Less Than It Seems"

Strike on the Suez Canal

Not a military strike - a workers' strike.

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Shipping on Egypt’s Suez Canal, used to carry about 8 percent of global seaborne trade, is transiting on schedule after service workers linked to the waterway began striking, the Suez Canal Authority said.

Workers from Suez Canal Co. began a sit-in today, Al-Ahram newspaper reported earlier today in its online edition, without saying where it got the information. The 6,000 workers are from Suez, Port Said and Ismailia, Al-Ahram said.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Suez Canal traffic and the canal is operating normally,” Mohamed Motair, director of companies at the Suez Canal Authority, said by phone. The striking employees belong to seven service companies linked to the waterway and are not involved in operations, he said.

So far, no effect on shipping operations, but the strike mentality could spread. About 2.1 million barrels per day (MBD) of oil and oil products are trans-shipped through the Canal in both directions. There is also the Sumed pipeline, running from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean coast, that has a capacity of about the same (crude only, though) but is presently pumping just more than 1 MBD.

No matter who winds up in charge in Egypt, it will not be in their interests to shut down or even much reduce the traffic flow through the Canal, whether of oil or other cargo. The income is just too important to Egypt. Nor will it be possible for them to raise fees much of various kinds that are now charged ships for transit. Suez-transit costs are far below costs of sailing all the way around Africa instead, but this is mainly because ships' fuel oil ("bunker oil") is priced so high right now.

Total costs to shippers of transiting piracy water off Somalia and navigating the Canal and its approaches and exits would have to rise a lot to make the route around the Cape of Good Hope the more economical route. As present costs, it would cost almost $9 million more per year for a single Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC, the second-largest crude-oil tanker afloat) to sail the Cape rather than the Canal. "Need for rethinking about when to sail around the Cape of Good Hope?" explains the implication of routing through the Canal compared to sailing around Africa. A summary:

1. "... a fully laden VLCC cannot go through the Suez Canal without a partial discharging of cargo to the Sumed Pipeline at Ain Sukhna Terminal in the Rea Sea before picking up an equivalent shipment at Sidi Kerir Terminal on the Mediterranean Coast." The reason for the stop is that the Canal has a maximum depth of 66 feet; VLCCs cannot transit the Canal fully laden. And the offload/onload stops costs money.

2. "One important issue that has changed the picture dramatically is the potential repercussions for ship owners of the executive order issued by US President Obama."

The order is called, "Executive Order Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Conflict in Somalia." For shippers, the order lay additional compliance requirements before they can deal with pirates who capture a vessel and/or crew. For example,

... the shipping company whose vessel is captured off of the coast of Somalia, in addition to determining whether to negotiate with the pirates, will also have to determine whether any sanctioned pirates are involved anywhere in the chain of events. Out of an abundance of caution, one would expect that a U.S.-based shipping company would presume an SDN is involved and would work with his insurance company and its financial institution to obtain the necessary authorization from OFAC before dealing with the pirates. One also would expect that OFAC will institute expedited licensing procedures to reflect the danger and urgency of pirate hostage-taking situations. Where a non-U.S. shipper is a victim of piracy but a U.S. insurer, reinsurer or financial institution is involved, the compliance burden is likely to shift to those parties.

Passage into out out of the Suez Canal in the south unavoidably entails sailing through piracy waters. The executive order raises compliance costs of the risk, though in a rather fuzzy way. However, these costs are part of the total costs of Canal passage, which are also affected by:

3. "[B]unker [fuel oil] prices have gone up by 4%, time charter rates and ship values have increased for container vessels while Suez Canal tolls have declined by 5%."

What matters the most in the cost calculations?

For a liner company it is primarily a question of higher bunker expenses due to the large consumption of fuel oil for the very powerful engine, while a tanker company primarily is concerned with the added capacity costs even though the fuel consumption also plays a significant part.

4. Comparing costs of the Canal versus around Africa:

The costs incurred from going round the Cape is related to the extra fuel consumption but also to the extra capacity required and related insurance premium increase in order to lift the same quantum of cargo in the same amount of time. Conversely, the costs incurred in going through the Suez Canal consist of canal tolls, extra insurance risk premium and the use of services such as tugs, pilotage and mooring. Canal costs have decreased by 5% over the last five months.

Right now bunker fuel is expensive. Freight markets are low because of the recession. This makes the Canal option much less costly than sailing around the Cape, provided, of course, that the vessel is not hijacked by pirates. However, if bunker fuel's price drops below $370 per tonne, the Cape route becomes more economical even though much longer. This is significantly less than today's prices, which are (click for larger image):

The bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Costs of Canal transit would have to increase very sharply to make the Cape route more economical for crude and container ships. For example, piracy insurance premiums would have to quadruple.

A VLCC charters for one-year terms at $36,000 per day, so its calculations are different than for a container ship, which charters for about $13,000 per day. However, VLCCs are much more fuel efficient than container ships, so total daily costs from all sources have to be compared. Dry bulk vessels have an altogether different calculation since they are chartered for each voyage, so total revenue weighs more heavily than costs, per se.

Here is a handy Excel calculator of comparative costs of sailing the Cape or the Canal that informs just how complex and assumptive the decision can be - click here.

Related:

-- a primer on the world's oil-transit choke points.

-- "Tech Talk - Oil Tankers in the wake of the Egyptian Crisis"

Who's next after Egypt?

Maybe no one. But maybe these guys.

Mexican drug routes and gang areas

Interesting, informative, interactive map from The Economist.