Has Kim Jong-il brainwashed North Koreans?

Has Kim Jong-il brainwashed North Koreans? | Kathleen Taylor | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Since the death of Kim Jong-il, images of weeping North Koreans have filled the western media. But is their grief real? Some have suggested that the hysterical displays of mourning were staged, others have come up with an even shorter answer: brainwashing. But what does that mean?

 

It's a homecoming of sorts. The word "brainwashing" was coined in the Korean war: it was CIA man Edward Hunter's attempt to explain alarming footage of captured US personnel supporting communism and denouncing the west. The soldiers had undergone a process of "thought-reform" in Chinese prison camps. Made famous by The Manchurian Candidate, this mysterious process, it seemed, could wipe a mind clean of previous loyalties, achieving total, programmable control.

 

For westerners raised to believe in strength of mind and individual free will, brainwashing was a nightmare. Zombies and demonic possession have staying power in our cultures for good reason: they represent the terror of mind control. And as possession was all about black magic, so brainwashing reeks of dark and dangerous science. What else could explain those US soldiers' behaviour but mind-altering technology? A horrifying idea, but also encouraging for the US military, since technologies can be captured and transferred.

 

Except that, even in secretive North Korea, we can be pretty sure there is no such technology. To date. Neuroscience is developing so fast that brainwashing machines may yet appear, but they are not responsible for the grief in Pyongyang. So what, apart from propaganda, is?

The thought-reform that terrified the west did not use new technology but old psychology, cleverly applied. Chinese culture, less individualistic than its western opponents', was more aware of how groups can manipulate individuals. They used that social power on American prisoners and in their own societies. We see it now at work in North Korea. In this sense, brainwashing does exist. People can be made to believe things that clearly aren't good for them.

 

There's a trap, of course. Can the west really know what's best for the North Koreans? If "brainwashing" were some semi-magical mind-wipe, then maybe. But it isn't. It's more like psychological abuse, whose victims need careful treatment but haven't lost their minds. Brainwashing simply pushes to extremes persuasion techniques developed over centuries, using a highly coercive, controlled environment. A prison camp is ideal; an authoritarian dictatorship can come close. The intense social pressures make adopting – or appearing to adopt – new beliefs the easiest course of action. Believers always have reasons, however strange their beliefs may seem to us.

 

The five basic techniques use isolation, control, uncertainty, repetition and emotions. They work because our brains are not static and self-sufficient, but constantly updating information about our environment (including our bodies), creating minds and generating behaviours. Change the incoming data, control the behaviours, and you can change the minds.

 

First, move the person somewhere new. Isolation immediately changes the brain's inputs, weakening old beliefs. This is why cults often stop their members talking to friends and family. North Korea's population has been remarkably isolated for decades.

 

Second, control the new environment, especially inputs that might trigger former beliefs. Surround the person with believers, make sure conversations include approved topics only. Ban the media and internet, or govern what they show. Unsettle the body's inputs too, with pain, a different diet, hard labour or sleep deprivation. And control behaviour. Marching, rote learning, vast public rituals.

 

Use uncertainty. We humans hate it, especially when we feel threatened. Challenge old beliefs until they seem ridiculous; any idea can seem weird if you push it hard enough. Chinese thought-reform used intensive criticism. People wrote their thoughts in diaries, which were subjected to group analysis: a hunt for signs of ideological deviance, which could be extremely hostile and psychologically devastating. I expect Pyongyang still relies on similar methods.

 

Use repetition. Brainwashing doesn't happen fast; it takes time and effort. Chinese dissidents, sent for re-education far from home, could be interned for years. Lectures and criticism sessions lasted for hours, day after day. The pressure builds up.

 

Finally, use strong emotions. Punish when former beliefs are mentioned; reward support for new ones. Use love and disgust, the most effective of social emotions.

 

Combined over years, these techniques are immensely powerful. Yet even North Korea's control is far from total. The more the regime is seen as a source of uncertainty and hardship, rather than a protection, the likelier it is to crumble – and that collapse could be very rapid. Not all the tears are genuine.

 

But nor are they all fake. Kim Jong-il offered stability. However he abused his long-suffering people, the fear they must now be feeling is surely real.

Tough Year for Dictators

 - Yahoo! News

I used to play a kind of parlor game with friends on New Year's Eve, with each of us making predictions about the year ahead, what might happen in our neighborhood, our city, our nation and around the world. As a global news junkie and foreign editor at ABC News, I'd always throw in some potential global unrest or upheaval. Then others would vote on what guesses seemed most likely. We'd check back in a year's time and see how everyone did.

Sometime Sunday night I remembered those New Year's games and found myself imagining what friends would have thought had I offered any of the following "predictions" last Dec. 31:

Hosni Mubarak will fall from power -- and by midyear we'll see him in a cage, on trial in Cairo; Moammar Gadhafi will face a NATO bombing campaign -- and then meet his end on the hood of a car outside Tripoli; Osama bin Laden – living a short walk from a military garrison -- will be taken out by Navy Seals; And for good measure – the year's end will mark the end for Kim Jong Il.

I doubt anyone would have believed in or "voted" for any of these. And of course, I wasn't prescient enough to predict any of them, either.

2011 may already be known as the Year of the Protestor (see the Time's cover story last week), but it must also go down as one of the worst-ever years for long-serving tyrants.

2011 was only 14 days old when Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben-Ali was overthrown, after 24 years in power. Opposition groups rallied in Cairo 10 days later, and when they did a lot of cognoscenti insisted "Can't happen here – Egypt is different. Two and a half weeks later, Mubarak's three-decade rule was over.

Moammar Gadhafi had the Arab dictators all beat -- 42 years in power for him -- and for months Gadhafi bobbed and weaved his way around those NATO bombs, and the messy rebel movement. "All my people, they love me," he told ABC's Christiane Amanpour in February. But finally there he was on that car, set upon by a roadside mob, precisely seven months after the NATO mission began. Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh hung on a bit longer, but he took a shrapnel wound and ultimately signed a deal to cede power -- another three-decade dictator biting the dust. Among this group, Bashar al-Assad of Syria looks like that rare thing -- a 2011 survivor.

While we're at it, not a great year for international terrorists, either. A New Year's prognosticator might have predicted bin Laden's demise, though it would have stretched a Hollywood screenwriter to imagine the way it really went down, the Seal team's stunning raid and capture of the man under cover of darkness and under the noses of the Pakistani military.

But there was another bonanza still to come for terrorist hunters: The man who had probably inspired more actual terror of late, Anwar al-Awlaki, had a bad year, too. He wasn't even born when Gadhafi took the reins in Libya, but they died a month apart, Awlaki at the hands of a drone attack on Sept. 30. Did anyone predict that?

Finally there came the bulletin at two minutes past 10 Sunday night, New York time: "North Korea says supreme leader Kim Jong Il has died."

I suppose, in the last days of this unprecedented year of global tumult, no headlines or late-night calls should surprise us anymore. And, of course, this was different 00 no revolution, just natural causes (apparently) -- but the implications are as profound as with any of the other stories. A 20-something dictator-in-training, now in charge of an utterly reclusive nuclear nation.

It's all enough to start you wondering what 2012 could possibly bring, and which malefactors stand in its crosshairs. But then I think, Wait … this crazy year isn't over yet …

Alwaleed bin Talal's recent $300 million investment in Twitter

This Saudi Prince Is Twitter's New Sugar Daddy - Yahoo! News

We don't know many of the specifics of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's recent $300 million investment in Twitter but we do know one thing about bin Talal, the richest businessman in the Middle East: he's savvy. With an estimated $19.6 billion net worth, the 56-year-old, American-educated investor and nephew of the Saudi king is forward-thinking, not only in the companies he's interested in giving money to but also the causes that he's willing to champion. Forbes describes bin Talal as an Arab billionaire whom, unlike many of his peers, actively promotes "broader political participation, fair elections and effective job creation across the Arab world" and "has been pushing women's advancement." After news of bin Talal's mammoth investment in the microblogging, democracy-enabling service, tech blogger Mathew Ingram wondered (on Twitter), "What happens if there's an Egypt-style 'Arab Spring' movement in Saudi Arabia?" In a fascinating matter of speaking, the Saudi revolution could be sponsored in part by the Saudi royal family.


First things first: this latest and perhaps biggest round of investment is a huge deal. As Facebook prepares for a $10 billion initial public offering as soon as spring of next year, analysts estimate that bin Talal's $300 million investment values the company at $10 billion. Reports estimate that chunk of change bought bin Talal's stake -- or rather that of his company, Prince Alwaleed and Kingdom Holding (KHC) -- in Twitter at 3 to 3.75 percent. The massive influ of capital could mean a lot for Twitter's ability to support further explosive growth including but not limited to a doubling down on the development of its advertising platform and revenue model. Bloomberg broke the story of the latest round of investment and reports on the company's plans:

Twitter is seeking to speed up its ad rollout program, its main source of revenue. The microblogging service’s revamp will feature tabs at the top of the screen that let users more easily access their home pages, connect with others and discover new content. EMarketer cut its estimate for 2011 ad revenue to $139.5 million from $150 million in September because Twitter has been slow to roll out some services.

So far, Twitter has stayed silent, but we've reached out for comment and will update you when we hear back.


Bin Talal's reputation is strong and his stated interest in joining the Twitter family sounds fair. "Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our ability in identifying suitable opportunities to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with a global impact," the Saudi prince said in a statement, adding that the deal came after "several months of negotiations and comprehensive due diligence."

Then again, since bin Talal's also bankrolled some suspicious companies, too, we expect some skepticism in the not too distant future. Bin Talal is the same Saudi Prince who made headlines over the summer for supporting the Murdoch family in the face of the News Corp. phone hacking scandal. As the corporations number two investor, second only to the Murdochs themselves, bin Talal took a controversial position in defending the status quo at News Corp., though its unclear if it was a business decision or a moral one. "At the end of the day News Corp is going to get out of it," said bin Talal in July. "I think Rupert and James Murdoch came very forcefully and strongly and will resolve and clear this mess very quickly and I respect that." Bin Talal so far appears to have spoken too soon, at least about the younger Murdoch.

Um ..some people don't like when I said "RIP Kim"

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, 69, has died - Yahoo! News

I was wondering why this guy @Jaime is so angry with my comment saying "RIP Kim". What is wrong saying an RIP for Kim? I think, everyone who dies deserves to get a good wish. I am not a fan of Kim. And, I am aware that he made his people suffering. However, death will always leave a grief and sorrow. At least, his family and friends must have been totally devastated by his death. I hope, his death will also be a turning point for a new leader to improve North Korean people lives.

Let it Snow - Michael Buble

Type that song title on Google and you will find a cool effect :)

The Death of Kim Jong Il

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, 69, has died - Yahoo! News

 Kim Jong Il, North Korea's mercurial and enigmatic leader whose iron rule and nuclear ambitions dominated world security fears for more than a decade, has died. He was 69.

Kim's death 17 years after he inherited power from his father was announced Monday by the state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. The country's "Dear Leader" — reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine — was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.

North Korea has been grooming Kim's third son to take over power from his father in the impoverished nation that celebrates the ruling family with an intense cult of personality.

South Korea put its military on "high alert" and President Lee Myung-bak convened a national security council meeting after the news of Kim's death.

In a "special broadcast" Monday, state media said Kim died of a heart ailment on a train due to a "great mental and physical strain" on Saturday during a "high intensity field inspection."

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but he had appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media.

Kim Jong Il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994. He had been groomed for 20 years to lead the communist nation founded by his guerrilla fighter-turned-politician father and built according to the principle of "juche," or self-reliance.

In September 2010, Kim Jong Il unveiled his third son, the twenty-something Kim Jong Un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.

Even with a successor, there had been some fear among North Korean observers of a behind-the-scenes power struggle or nuclear instability upon the elder Kim's death.

Few firm facts are available when it comes to North Korea, one of the most isolated countries in the world, and not much is clear about the man known as the "Dear Leader."

North Korean legend has it that Kim was born on Mount Paekdu, one of Korea's most cherished sites, in 1942, a birth heralded in the heavens by a pair of rainbows and a brilliant new star.

Soviet records, however, indicate he was born in Siberia, in 1941.

Kim Il Sung, who for years fought for independence from Korea's colonial ruler, Japan, from a base in Russia, emerged as a communist leader after returning to Korea in 1945 after Japan was defeated in World War II.

With the peninsula divided between the Soviet-administered north and the U.S.-administered south, Kim rose to power as North Korea's first leader in 1948 while Syngman Rhee became South Korea's first president.

The North invaded the South in 1950, sparking a war that would last three years, kill millions of civilians and leave the peninsula divided by a Demilitarized Zone that today remains one of the world's most heavily fortified.

In the North, Kim Il Sung meshed Stalinist ideology with a cult of personality that encompassed him and his son. Their portraits hang in every building in North Korea and on the lapels of every dutiful North Korean.

Kim Jong Il, a graduate of Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung University, was 33 when his father anointed him his eventual successor.

Even before he took over as leader, there were signs the younger Kim would maintain — and perhaps exceed — his father's hard-line stance.

South Korea has accused Kim of masterminding a 1983 bombing that killed 17 South Korean officials visiting Burma, now known as Myanmar. In 1987, the bombing of a Korean Air Flight killed all 115 people on board; a North Korean agent who confessed to planting the device said Kim ordered the downing of the plane himself.

Kim Jong Il took over after his father died in 1994, eventually taking the posts of chairman of the National Defense Commission, commander of the Korean People's Army and head of the ruling Worker's Party while his father remained as North Korea's "eternal president."

He faithfully carried out his father's policy of "military first," devoting much of the country's scarce resources to its troops — even as his people suffered from a prolonged famine — and built the world's fifth-largest military.

Kim also sought to build up the country's nuclear arms arsenal, which culminated in North Korea's first nuclear test explosion, an underground blast conducted in October 2006. Another test came in 2009.

Alarmed, regional leaders negotiated a disarmament-for-aid pact that the North signed in 2007 and began implementing later that year.

However, the process continues to be stalled, even as diplomats work to restart negotiations.

North Korea, long hampered by sanctions and unable to feed its own people, is desperate for aid. Flooding in the 1990s that destroyed the largely mountainous country's arable land left millions hungry.

Following the famine, the number of North Koreans fleeing the country through China rose dramatically, with many telling tales of hunger, political persecution and rights abuses that officials in Pyongyang emphatically denied.

Kim often blamed the U.S. for his country's troubles and his regime routinely derides Washington-allied South Korea as a "puppet" of the Western superpower.

U.S. President George W. Bush, taking office in 2002, denounced North Korea as a member of an "axis of evil" that also included Iran and Iraq. He later described Kim as a "tyrant" who starved his people so he could build nuclear weapons.

"Look, Kim Jong Il is a dangerous person. He's a man who starves his people. He's got huge concentration camps. And ... there is concern about his capacity to deliver a nuclear weapon," Bush said in 2005.

Kim was an enigmatic leader. But defectors from North Korea describe him as an eloquent and tireless orator, primarily to the military units that form the base of his support.

The world's best glimpse of the man was in 2000, when the liberal South Korean government's conciliatory "sunshine" policy toward the North culminated in the first-ever summit between the two Koreas and followed with unprecedented inter-Korean cooperation.

A second summit was held in 2007 with South Korea's Roh Moo-hyun.

But the thaw in relations drew to a halt in early 2008 when conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in Seoul pledging to come down hard on communist North Korea.

Disputing accounts that Kim was "peculiar," former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright characterized Kim as intelligent and well-informed, saying the two had wide-ranging discussions during her visits to Pyongyang when Bill Clinton was U.S. president.

"I found him very much on top of his brief," she said.

Kim cut a distinctive, if oft ridiculed, figure. Short and pudgy at 5-foot-3, he wore platform shoes and sported a permed bouffant. His trademark attire of jumpsuits and sunglasses was mocked in such films as "Team America: World Police," a movie populated by puppets that was released in 2004.

Kim was said to have cultivated wide interests, including professional basketball, cars and foreign films. He reportedly produced several North Korean films as well, mostly historical epics with an ideological tinge.

A South Korean film director claimed Kim even kidnapped him and his movie star wife in the late 1970s, spiriting them back to North Korea to make movies for him for a decade before they managed to escape from their North Korean agents during a trip to Austria.

Kim rarely traveled abroad and then only by train because of an alleged fear of flying, once heading all the way by luxury rail car to Moscow, indulging in his taste for fine food along the way.

One account of Kim's lavish lifestyle came from Konstantin Pulikovsky, a former Russian presidential envoy who wrote the book "The Orient Express" about Kim's train trip through Russia in July and August 2001.

Pulikovsky, who accompanied the North Korean leader, said Kim's 16-car private train was stocked with crates of French wine. Live lobsters were delivered in advance to stations.

A Japanese cook later claimed he was Kim's personal sushi chef for a decade, writing that Kim had a wine cellar stocked with 10,000 bottles, and that, in addition to sushi, Kim ate shark's fin soup — a rare delicacy — weekly.

"His banquets often started at midnight and lasted until morning. The longest lasted for four days," the chef, who goes by the pseudonym Kenji Fujimoto, was quoted as saying.

Kim is believed to have curbed his indulgent ways in recent years and looked slimmer in more recent video footage aired by North Korea's state-run broadcaster.

Kim's marital status wasn't clear but he is believed to have married once and had at least three other companions. He had at least three sons with two women, as well as a daughter by a third.

His eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, 38, is believed to have fallen out of favor with his father after he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport in 2001 saying he wanted to visit Disney's Tokyo resort.

His two other sons by another woman, Kim Jong Chul and Kim Jong Un, are in their 20s. Their mother reportedly died several years ago.

Japan to buy US F-35

Japan likely to pick F-35 fighter this week | Reuters

apan will likely pick Lockheed Martin's (LMT.N) F-35 jet as its next frontline fighter, media reported on Tuesday, which may help end six decades of isolation for the country's defence contractors and bolster its military against growing Chinese might.

The government will choose between two U.S. models -- the F-35 and the Boeing (BA.N) F/A-18 Super Hornet -- and Europe's four-nation Eurofighter Typhoon, at a meeting of the national security council on Friday, the Nikkei business daily said.

The date of the planned meeting could not be confirmed with government officials and chief cabinet spokesman Osamu Fujimura said no decision had been made. The Pentagon's F-35 program office also said it had not received any word from Japan.

Analysts say the purchase is potentially worth $8 billion.

The hope for Lockheed is that assembling the F-35 in Japan will spur the pacifist nation to lift a ban on military equipment exports, allowing contractors such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T) to compete as suppliers for the fighter.

"If the government chooses to go forward and relax the (export ban) we believe there is a very strong case for participating in the F-35 program," said Dave Scott director of international business development for the F-35.

While the most expensive of the three, the F-35 leads the others due to its "overwhelmingly superior performance" and stealth capabilities, the Nikkei said.

To compete against Lockheed's fifth-generation technological edge, Boeing is offering as much as 80 percent of the construction to local makers, with Eurofighter promising 95 percent for their fourth-generation designs.

THE LURE OF JAPAN TECH

While each maker disagrees on the merits of their competing bids, all agree that Japan has technology they could use. And for U.S. military planners juggling with smaller budgets, widening out into a more competitive supply chain may let it arm itself more cheaply.

Although Japan is the world's sixth-biggest military spender, it often pays more than double other nations for the same equipment because local export-restricted manufacturers can only fill small orders at a high cost.

Removing the ban would stretch its defence purse further as military spending in neighbouring China expands.

This year, Asia's biggest economy raised military outlays by 12.7 percent. That included money for its own stealth fighter, the J-20, which made its maiden flight in January.

Fielding the F-35 would put Japan a step ahead of China.

"The decision should be in line with what China has anticipated and come with little surprise," said Narushige Michishita, Associate Professor of Security and International Studies at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

But any easing of a weapons export ban may prompt criticism from Beijing and be seen as step away from Japan's pacifist constitution.

Although Boeing and Eurofighter may leave Japan empty handed, the battle for sales rages elsewhere.

The radar-evading F-35 is often touted as the second-best choice in the U.S. arsenal after the F-22, but marketers pitch the F-18 and Eurofighter as strong alternatives.

The market for fighter jets in the Middle East and Asia is particularly active as air forces worldwide come up against replacement cycles and prepare for growing fears of insecurity.

India is expected to choose between the Eurofighter and Dassault Aviation (AVMD.PA) Rafale, on a potential $11 billion order for 126 fighter jets in coming weeks.

Those two aircraft are also bidding for an order in the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. said on Monday it would sell 18 more Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters to Iraq.

(Additional reporting by Balaji Sridharan Tim Hepher, Jim Wolf, Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Nick Macfie; tim.kelly@thomsonreuters.com; +813 6441 1311)

Condi Saying

The Pungent Aroma of Paranoia - NYTimes.com

I’m not a National Security Council adviser, but I can think of about a hundred other options we had with Saddam.

At least Condi admits that one of the inflated and improvised rationales for war wasn’t true: “We did not go to Iraq to bring democracy any more than Roosevelt went to war against Hitler to democratize Germany, though that became American policy once the Nazis were defeated.”

Gold prices will fall below $1,500 an ounce

Gold to drop in Q1, far from retesting record high: Reuters poll - Yahoo! News

Gold prices will fall below $1,500 an ounce over the next three months and are unlikely to retest September's all-time highs until later 2012 at the earliest, according to a Reuters poll of 20 hedge fund managers, economists and traders.

The bleak forecast, coming after gold has lost 11 percent of its value so far this month, is likely to fuel fears that bullion is close to ending its more than decade long bull run and entering a bear market.

Almost half of respondents predicted bullion will fall to 1,450 an ounce in the first quarter next year, with three seeing prices as low as $1,400 an ounce.

The forecasts come after a dismal performance last week when prices hit a 2 1/2 month low of $1,560 and gold lost its safe haven status.

Selling was fuelled by a scramble by hedge funds for cash to meet client redemptions at the end of a difficult year and a run for cash by European banks seeking to raise capital.

"What is surprising is that in an environment where headline risk news is bigger than ever, gold has actually fallen from its highs," said Christoph Eibl, CEO and founding partner of the Swiss commodity hedge fund Tiberius.

"We believe that, in 2012, of all metals gold will be the worst performing," Eibl said.

The market eked out small gains Friday to trade just under $1,600, but showed little sign of strength even after a small bout of short covering took other financial markets higher.

The precious metal is now heading for its first quarterly loss for the fourth quarter after its second-worst rout since September 2008 when the global credit crunch was at its height.

In another immediately bearish sign, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) figures released Friday showed that managed money in gold futures and options cut bullish bets for the second consecutive week.

DOWNBEAT OUTLOOK

The long-term outlook is no more upbeat either, with more than half of respondents predicting that gold is unlikely to stage another run to new all-time highs until at least the second half of 2012.

Four said they don't expect a new record until at least 2014.

A lack of immediate monetary easing or stimulus programs by central banks has prompted money managers to turn bearish on gold even though the precious metal is traditionally considered a safe haven in times of uncertainty.

"To me, gold is not attractive right now because we don't see any inflation threats," said Jeffrey Sherman, commodities portfolio manager of DoubleLine Capital, a Los Angeles-based investment manager with $21 billion in assets.

BREAK OUT

Gold has increasingly moved in tandem with risky assets such as equities and industrial commodities. But gold broke ranks last week with a 7 percent decline, which dwarfed a 3 percent drop of the S&P 500.

Bullion's plunge below its 200-day moving average, which it had held for nearly three years, prompted a prominent market watcher to call an end to gold's decade-long bull cycle.

"We have the beginnings of a real bear market, and the death of a bull," said veteran trader Dennis Gartman, a long-time gold bull who completely exited his bullion investments last week.

Since September, gold has underperformed commodities measured by the RJ/CRB index and the euro, while U.S. equities measured by the S&P 500 eked out a slight gain.

US End in Iraq

End for U.S. Begins Period of Uncertainty for Iraqis - NYTimes.com

At a crowded market in the city center here, the flotsam of the war is for sale. Ripped Fuel workout supplement. Ready-to-eat meals, macaroni and cheese “Mexican style.” Pistol holsters. Nothing seems off limits to the merchants out for a quick dinar, not even a bottle of prescription pills from a pharmacy in Waco, Tex., probably tossed out by a departing soldier.


Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.


A soldier at a Baghdad market, the scene of bloody attacks in the past. Merchants now sell items left behind by departing soldiers.

The concrete blast walls that shielded the shopping stalls have lately come down. Since then, three explosions have struck the market, killing several people.

“This will be an easy target for car bombs,” said Muhammad Ali, a merchant who lost two brothers during the cruelest times of the conflict. “People will die here.”

After nearly nine years, about 4,500 American fatalities and $1 trillion, America’s war in Iraq is about to end. Officials marked the finish on Thursday with a modest ceremony at the airport days before the last troops take the southern highway to Kuwait, going out as they came in, to conclude the United States’ most ambitious and bloodiest military campaign since Vietnam.

For the United States, the war leaves an uncertain legacy as Americans weigh what may have been accomplished against the price paid, with so many dead and wounded. The Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, was vanquished, but the failure to find illicit weapons undermined the original rationale, leaving a bitter taste as casualties mounted. The lengthy conflict and repeated deployments strained the country and its resources, raising questions about America’s willingness to undertake future wars on such a grand scale.

Iraqis will be left with a country that is not exactly at war, and not exactly at peace. It has improved in many ways since the 2007 troop “surge,” but it is still a shattered country marred by violence and political dysfunction, a land defined on sectarian lines whose future, for better or worse, is now in the hands of its people.

“It is the end for the Americans only,” Emad Risn, an Iraqi columnist, recently wrote in Assabah al-Jadeed, a government-financed newspaper. “Nobody knows if the war will end for Iraqis, too.”

Iraq will now be on its own both to find its place in a region upended by revolutions and to manage its rivalry with Iran, which will look to expand its influence culturally and economically in the power vacuum left by the United States military. While American officials worry about the close political ties between Iraq’s Shiite leadership and Iran, the picture at the grass-roots level is more nuanced. Iraqis complain about shoddy Iranian consumer goods — they frequently mention low-quality yogurts and cheeses — and the menacing role of Iranian-backed militias, which this year killed many American soldiers.

Failed Reconciliation

The Iranian rivalry frequently plays out in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where Iraq’s religious authorities are based. Iran, which like Iraq is majority Shiite, recently installed one of its leading clerics in Najaf, raising worries that Iran is trying to spread its brand of clerical rule to Iraq. Meanwhile, Moktada al-Sadr, an anti-American cleric with very close ties to Iran, has recently said that with the military withdrawal, American diplomats are now fair game for his militiamen.

Iraq faces a multitude of vexing problems the Americans tried and failed to resolve, from how to divide the country’s oil wealth to sectarian reconciliation to the establishment of an impartial justice system. A longstanding dispute festers in the north over how to share power in Kirkuk between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, an ominous harbinger for power struggles that may ensue in a post-America Iraq. A recent deal between Exxon Mobil and the Kurdistan government in the north has been deemed illegal by Baghdad in the absence of procedures for sharing the country’s oil resources.

“We are in a standstill and things are paralyzed,” said Adel Abdul Mahdi, a prominent Shiite politician and former vice president of Iraq, describing the process of political reconciliation among Iraq’s three main factions, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. “We are going from bad to worse.”

A surprising number of Iraqis refuse to believe that the Americans are really leaving, the effect of a conspiratorial mind-set developed over years living under the violent and repressive dictatorship of Mr. Hussein, and a view of history informed by the Crusades, colonialism and other perceived injustices at the hands of the West.

Rani Basil, who drives a taxi in the capital, said, “Iraq will be a great place if the U.S. withdraws,” but he does not believe that it will. “I do not think the United States will leave Iraq, because they are about to attack Iran,” he said.

In Falluja, where years of block-to-block urban combat left behind a city that its Sunni residents refer to as Iraq’s Hiroshima, residents celebrated the withdrawal with a day of public demonstrations, angry speeches, the burning of American flags and a gallery exhibition of photos of mangled children, destroyed homes and other signposts of what residents call the bitter legacy of the American invasion.

“It’s a huge happiness that the Americans are getting out,” said Mohammed Adnan, 35. “Hopefully, we are all going to be fine, we Iraqis. We were doing fine before 2003.”

Not everyone was doing fine before 2003. After a failed Shiite uprising at the close of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Mr. Hussein executed tens of thousands of people, mostly Kurds and Shiites. International sanctions destroyed the economy, creating mass poverty and crime. The dictatorship inflicted deep wounds to the collective psyche, which partially explains why the American invasion unleashed so many unforeseen consequences, from sectarian violence to a winner-take-all political culture.

“If you go to Basra and go house to house, wives will say that their husband disappeared,” said Jana Hybaskova, the European Union’s ambassador to Iraq. “The level of destruction of society was a million times deeper than anyone expected.”

Experts estimate that the remains of 250,000 to one million Iraqis lie in mass graves around the country, victims of the Hussein government. Not a single victim has been identified by DNA analysis, partly because various government ministries and the two factions with the greatest claims of victimhood — the Kurds and Shiites — have been unable to agree on how to proceed. The lack of a painful but cathartic process of reckoning with its history — as South Africa and other countries have done — has stymied Iraqi society’s ability to vanquish the ghosts of its past.

While more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians perished in the war and its aftermath, violence has decreased significantly since 2007, when there were almost 7,500 attacks a month.

But Iraq remains an extremely dangerous place. According to the American military, there were 500 to 750 attacks a month this year, including bombings, rocket attacks and assassinations. There are still roughly a dozen insurgent groups and militias active in Iraq: Sunni groups made up of former members of the ruling Baath Party and the homegrown insurgent group, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia; and Shiite militias supported by Iran and Mr. Sadr, the anti-American cleric.

Progress in Small Steps

While the violence has declined, sectarian rifts still have not healed. American officials worry that a large attack on a Shiite shrine could trigger a new round of sectarian bloodletting. It remains unclear whether Iraq’s security forces are loyal to their nation or their sect. In Abu Ghraib, the Sunni stronghold outside Baghdad, residents complain about harassment by the Shiite-dominated security forces and say they fear them more than insurgents. Local police and army outposts fly the flag of Imam Hussein, the revered Shiite martyr.

“It’s been papered over,” Joost R. Hiltermann, of the International Crisis Group, said of the sectarian divides. “There has been no reconciliation whatsoever.”

The war opened Iraq’s tremendous petroleum reserves to foreign investment for the first time since 1974, though American companies did poorly in the postwar auctions. So far, the Ministry of Oil has granted 12 licenses for fields in the south to companies from Britain, China, South Korea, the Netherlands, Russia and elsewhere, with just one going to an American company, Exxon Mobil. The outcome helped defuse criticism that the United States had invaded Iraq for its oil.

Yet, Iraq’s oil output still has not rebounded to the level it was in the late 1970s, according to the International Energy Agency. The Iraqi government’s stated goal of raising output to 12 million barrels a day by 2017, from the current 2.95 million barrels a day, is regarded as unattainable by some analysts.

Aesthetically, Baghdad is still a war zone of checkpoints, blast walls and coils of razor wire, where buildings sit partially destroyed from the first wave of bombings that President George W. Bush called “shock and awe.” At entrances to the garrisoned heart of the central government, the Green Zone, vehicles on the way in are searched for bombs, and on the way out for kidnapping victims. And most Iraqis still receive only a few hours of electricity a day, forcing many to sleep on their rooftops during sweltering summer nights.

Iraq has improved in some respects. Life in Baghdad has blossomed in recent years — street life has returned, markets are bustling, a new amusement park is opening and even the circus came to town this year. The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, while hamstrung by sectarian infighting, was chosen in elections last year that international monitors declared as free.

Melancholia and Hope

On the garbage-strewn banks of the Tigris River, a group of young men who lived abroad during the bad days now gather on Fridays to ride their Jet Skis, arriving in the early afternoon and staying until the sun goes down. They drink Tuborg beer and Chivas whiskey, and listen to American pop and rap music.

“When I’m on the Jet Ski on the Tigris, I forget all the explosions and the politics, everything,” said Khaldi Nuami, who owns an import-export company whose primary product is armored cars.

A palpable sense of melancholy pervades Iraq. The war opened a generational divide that splits older Iraqis, who recall a brief golden age in the 1960s and 1970s, from younger ones, who are drawn more to the culture and ideas the Americans tried to import here.

“In the 1960s, life was good,” said Qassim Jasim, who has baked bread at the Abu Naseer Bakery in Adhamiya, a Sunni enclave in the capital, for 38 years. During the war, he said, “when I used to go out and see the dead bodies, I would cry for what it used to be like here.”

His neighborhood is no longer a bloody battleground controlled by Al Qaeda. But the Shiites have mostly left. The fabric of the community has been forever altered. Ghaith Raad, whose family owns a well-known sweets shop across the street from the bakery, returned from Syria — where he fled during the fighting — about four months ago.

“When I came back, I didn’t find any of my friends,” he said. “The society has changed here, the people have changed.”

The war opened Iraq to the outside world. For the first time, Iraqis had easy access to satellite television and the Internet. This allowed the pop singer known as Dali, who left Iraq in the 1990s as a child and became famous in the Arab world, to become a star in her own country. She recently returned for the first time since the war began, to perform and film a music video.

Over coffee in the lobby of the recently refurbished Ishtar Sheraton hotel, dressed in a purple Adidas track suit, she considered her homecoming.

“I can feel how Iraq has changed now, and how it is sad,” she said. “All of Iraq is sad.”

Reporting was contributed by Jack Healy, Michael S. Schmidt, Andrew E. Kramer, Duraid Adnan, Omar al-Jawoshy and an employee of The New York Times.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 16, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Marks End to a Long War for an Uncertain Iraq.

The $200 Trillion World: Who Owns All the Wealth?

The $200 Trillion World: Who Owns All the Wealth? - Yahoo! Finance

The Atlantic

The wealth of the world -- from all the global stock markets, insurance funds, and families -- comes out to about $200 trillion, according to the McKinsey Global Institute's new report on investors in developing nations. Who owns all that?

Households, mostly. U.S. and Western European households own about one-quarter of the world's financial assets, according the rather remarkable chart produced by the authors, which breaks down wealth by type and geography. Here is that chart:

And for those of you who prefer to compare big numbers visually, here is the right column broken down by percentages and organized as a pie graph.

And now with the numbers (all in trillions):

McKinsey's headline finding:

Until this decade, the preferences of investors in developed nations have shaped the evolution of global capital markets. Today these investors control 79 percent of the world's nearly $200 trillion in financial assets.

Broadly speaking, investors in developed economies hold highly diversified portfolios, with significant portions in equities. The United States stands out for consistently high equity allocations: currently US households have 42 percent of their non-retirement financial assets in publicly listed shares. Households in Hong Kong have similar shares of their wealth in equities. On average, Western European households placed 29 percent of their financial assets in equities in 2010, with 29 percent in the United Kingdom (down from 45 percent in 2000), 25 percent in France, and 19 percent in Germany.

Among developed nations, Japan stands out for its very low investment in equities. Despite a long tradition of equity investing by individual investors for most of the 20th century, Japanese households now hold less than 10 percent of their assets in equities, down from 30 percent before the 1989-90 crash. Because of low or negative returns over the past two decades, Japanese allocations have never exceeded 18 percent in this period.

Gold: Panic Sellers May Be Sorry

 - Yahoo! News

Once again, the European debt crisis hit global stock markets on Monday, but share prices are trying to stabilize early Tuesday. Even though the major US stock market averages lost around 1.5%, the gold market was hit even harder, as the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) was down over 3% and February Comex gold futures dropped by over $48 per ounce.

The stronger US dollar got the majority of the credit for gold’s decline, while raising cash at any price to protect against the euro’s demise was also a popular explanation. This conflicts with the view that more aggressive European Central Bank (ECB) action will increase inflationary expectations.

The demand outlook is also mixed, and while the world’s central banks bought more gold in the third quarter than at any time in the past 40 years, there were also concerns that emerging market demand has dropped sharply.

Technically, Monday’s drop looked more like panic selling. As mentioned in my recent seasonal report (see “4 Key Seasonal Trends for 2012”), gold prices typically top out in February.

Looking at the short-term seasonal pattern, gold often bottoms around December 22, which is just eight trading days away, and although the short-term momentum is currently negative, now is still the time to keep a close eye on gold prices.

The profile of Liege attacker Nurdin Amrani

Liege attacker profile: Belgian killer Nordine Amrani a known criminal - Telegraph

Nordine Amrani, the lone gunman who died after killing three people and injuring scores in an attack in a crowded Belgian square on Tuesday, had a long criminal record but was not known for violent crime.
Three grenades exploded outside the main courthouse in Liege


The 33-year-old Amrani was well known to the police before he went on the rampage in the eastern Belgian city of Liege, opening fire on a square packed with children and Christmas shoppers, killing three people and wounding another 75.

He had previously been convicted for drug dealing and illegal arms possession, as well as for holding stolen goods and other crimes, said Daniele Reynders, the public prosecutor for Liege.

In September 2008 he was thrown behind bars for 58 months when police uncovered a weapons arsenal in his home.

They found 10 firearms and 9,500 gun parts along with 2,800 cannabis plants, but a prison official said Amrani was granted early release last year.

A weapons aficionado, he was said to be able to dismantle, repair and put together all sorts of weapons but was never linked to any terrorist act or network.


Ms Reynders said there had never been the slightest hint he was unhinged enough to mount the kind of deadly attack he launched in Liege.

"At no moment in any of the judicial proceedings against him was there a sign of a disturbance," she told a news conference.

Amrani had been summoned by police on Tuesday morning but never showed up.

Instead he left his Liege home in the morning with his backpack and arms, a light automatic rifle, a handgun and several grenades.

He headed for the city's central Saint-Lambert square, crammed with children and Christmas shoppers, and set up his gear on the roof of a popular bakery chain, Le Point Chaud.

With a bird's-eye view of the square, he hurled three grenades into the crowd, the prosecutor said, before opening fire.

How exactly he died was not immediately clear, with some witnesses claiming he turned his revolver on himself while others said one of his grenades appeared to explode prematurely.

"The inquiry will determine whether he acted deliberately or whether the equipment he was carrying caused his death," Reynders said.

His van was found on the square.

Will Sondang death ignite a second 'Jasmine Revolution' in Indonesia?

Indonesian Student Ignite New Uprising? - Global Agenda - News - Israel National News

An Indonesian student may have ignited a second "Jasmine Revolution" after setting himself on fire in front of the presidential palace in Jakarta.

Police said it was unclear what Sondang Hutagalung, a well-known rights advocate, was protesting when he torched himself on Wednesday. The 22-year-old law student died Saturday after being treated for burns over 98 percent of his body, Jakarta police spokesman Baharudin Djafar said.

An investigation has been launched into Hutagalung's protest, Djafar told the AFP news agency. "We still don't know what caused him to immolate himself," he said.

Witnesses were quoted by the Jakarta Globe who said the student had poured gasoline over himself and ignited the flames near the palace before running towards a billboard bearing a photo of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, shouting anti-government messages, a living, flaming torch.

Djafar denied the report, saying it was "not possible" that Hutagalung was protesting against the government. "He was the perpetrator as well as the victim," the police spokesman said. "Only he had the answer; we couldn't guess his motive. But we hope nobody will repeat such an act. If you're unhappy with anything, you may protest but please do so without hurting yourself and others."

A similar act by a desperate vendor protesting against the Tunisian government after his produce and pushcart were confiscated by authorities set off the "Jasmine Revolution" in Tunisia. That act of self-immolation ignited what eventually became the "Arab Spring" that swept through the entire Middle East. Four long-standing regimes were toppled in the uprisings that followed, with at least another one currently being threatened, and several of those whose governments were swept aside still not yet stabilized in the aftermath.

But Indonesia's president already appears to be managing a budding democracy, albeit in an Islamic environment. The first Indonesian president to win a democratic election after decades of dictatorship, Yudhoyono began his second five-year term in October 2009, but has had to struggle with sinking popularity polls amid problems with incompetence and corruption at other levels of government, despite the country's strong economy.

Yudhoyono expressed his "sympathy and concern" following the incident, in a statement released through his adviser, Daniel Sparingga.

Indonesia is home to the largest Muslim population in the world, numbering some 203 million people -- approximately 88 percent of the total population of the country as of the 2009 census. The majority adhere to the Sunni branch of Islam.

Iran says it will not return US drone

I can imagine how this makes Obama administration feel embarrassed
 - Yahoo! News

Iran will not return a U.S. surveillance drone captured by its armed forces, a senior commander of the country's elite Revolutionary Guard said Sunday.

Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Guard, said in remarks broadcast on state television that the violation of Iran's airspace by the U.S. drone was a "hostile act" and warned of a "bigger" response. He did not elaborate on what Tehran might do.

"No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country," Salami said.

Iranian television broadcast video Thursday of Iranian military officials inspecting what it identified as the RQ-170 Sentinel drone.

Iranian state media have said the unmanned spy aircraft was detected over the eastern town of Kashmar, some 140 miles (225 kilometers) from the border with Afghanistan. U.S. officials have acknowledged losing the drone.

Salami called its capture a victory for Iran and a defeat for the U.S. in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.

"Iran is among the few countries that possesses the most modern technology in the field of pilotless drones. The technology gap between Iran and the U.S. is not much," he said.

Officers in the Guard, Iran's most powerful military force, had previously claimed that the country's armed forces brought down the surveillance aircraft with an electronic ambush, causing minimum damage to the drone.

American officials have said that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran neither shot the drone down, nor used electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contend the drone malfunctioned. The officials had spoken anonymously in order to discuss the classified program.

But Salami refused to provide more details of Iran's claim to have captured the CIA-operated aircraft.

"A party that wins in an intelligence battle doesn't reveal its methods. We can't elaborate on the methods we employed to intercept, control, discover and bring down the pilotless plane," he said.

Oops ..Newt Gingrich's freudian slip?

Yesterday Newt Gingrich  (a Republican presidential candidate) made calling Palestinians an "invented" people, and even a proposal he once floated to build a colony on the moon......whoa...

Reeves : 'be excellent to each other'

Keanu Reeves gives up his subway seat for a lady | Mail Online

One of Bill and Ted's most famous mottos was 'be excellent to each other.'

And A-list actor Keanu Reeves lived up to his breakthrough character's wishes when he gave up his seat for a woman on the subway.

The hunky Canadian star was filmed sitting on the New York subway when he suddenly notices a lady is being forced to stand.

Relient K - Must Have Done Something Right

The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony