November 10, 2007
Global Shift in Wealth
Ouch: "Iinflated confidence in the Kremlin; new weapons in Chad and new petrochemical plants in Saudi Arabia; no-driving campaigns in South Korea and bigger sales for Toyota hybrid cars; a fiscal burden in Senegal and a bonanza in Brazil.
All thanks to the rising price in oil, The Washington Post claims: "High oil prices are fueling one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history. Oil consumers are paying $4 billion to $5 billion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pumping more than $2 trillion into the coffers of oil companies and oil-producing nations this year alone."
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October 31, 2007
Private Soldiers Fuel Fijian Economy
Here's the lead: "On the post-Sept. 11 battlefield, Fiji is marketing for hire its 3,500 active soldiers, 15,000 reservists and more than 20,000 unemployed former troops."
According to Bloomberg's A. Craig Copetas, "Fiji is a martial culture with no problem in fashioning a gross domestic product that includes mangoes and mercenaries."
Since 1978, Fiji has outsourced more than 25,000 troops to the UN, the British Army and independent mercenary contractors -- and sent home $300 million over almost 30 years. In 2003, the mercenaries brought about $9 million in wages to Fiji -- including the 1,000 Fijians deployed to private security contractors in the Middle East, Copetas relates, who adds that eight Fijians have been killed in Iraq.
Soldiers for Hire: A highly trained Fijian soldier can earn about $1,700 a month. That's about 3 percent of the $50,000 a month those same companies will pay for a retired and similarly seasoned U.S. or British combat trooper. ($50,000 sounds high for the going rate to me, but you get the idea.)
That is a good buy for the United Nations peacekeeping missions, apparently.
The UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the multinational force with an annual budget of $5.5 billion and about 100,000 personnel serving in 18 security actions globally, has 243 Fijian troops deployed in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. It sees Fijian soldiers as a cut-rate blessing.
In the abstract, it is understandable to appreciate the need for private military companies in supporting the military around the world -- ideally, the bring professionalism, experience and a quick, just-in-time response. But the practice also raises some very poignant and substantive questions:
-- What does it say about a nation that relies heavily on paying citizens of other countries to wage war?
-- To what extent should private soldiers engage in war rather than having a nation invest its collective will with a military draft?
-- And if a draft is not politically possible, if, indeed, a draft is political suicide, should there be a long-term war at all?
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August 21, 2007
Cracking India's Caste System
Simply because of birth, they are considered "untouchables."
Known as Dalits, they have been India's low-ranking outcasts for 3,000 years. It is a rigid caste system where the wealthier -- even the middle class -- are trained to believe they are smarter and more entitled to better lives than the 70 percent of Indians who are born with less.
But The Washington Post reports in a laudable story by Emily Wax that some do gooders are working hard to shatter that habitual social order that segregates the poorest of Indians from their country's improving economy.
While the caste system is outlawed by the constitution, low-caste Indians still experience severe discrimination. Dalits are regarded as so low that they are not even part of the system. To this day, they are not allowed to enter many Hindu temples or to drink water from sources used by higher castes.
Wax explores new efforts by companies to provide Dalits and other oppressed Indians with new employment opportunities, including Bharti Enterprises and Infosys. She also notes that many U.S. companies working in India "are not fully aware of the caste system and its complex legacy of discrimination."
An estimated 86 percent of technology workers at multinationals and large Indian outsourcing firms come from upper castes or wealthy middle castes, according to a study released in August 2006 by the government and activist groups.
US Congress has taken notice.
Last month passed a resolution calling for the United States to work with India to address the problem of untouchability by "encouraging U.S. businesses and other U.S. organizations working in India to take every possible measure to ensure Dalits are included and are not discriminated against in their programming."
Interestingly, the story also reports that the vast majority of Indians living in the United States and Britain come from upper castes, partly because they have better access to work and education visas and can afford expensive plane tickets. They also attend private schools where education is far superior to India's public education.
(In the United States, that means that weatlhy Indians who have benefited most from their homeland's caste system can benefit from US affirmative action programs, diversity goals and no-bid government contracts even if they are not American citizens.)
Here's the story: India's Lower Castes Seek Social Progress In Global Job Market
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May 23, 2007
Book Review: Licensed to Kill
In his book, Licensed to Kill, Robert Young Pelton hits the bull's eye with a sweeping, crash course in the explosive growth of private security contractors.
Thrust from the sweltering groins of Africa, Papua New Guinea and other trouble spots around the globe where hidden treasures of oil and minerals tempt buccaneering entrepreneurs, the private security industry is now bursting in full multi-billion-dollar glory on the bloody streets of Iraq.
Pelton chronicles it all with gritty first-hand experience and a keen, knowing vision: the past is prologue and the present boom in Iraq screams a cautionary tale for tomorrow. We may be witnessing the birth of a roving, freelance warrior class in constant search for new wars. (On second thought, the world may already have one. It's called the global war on terror.)
Licensed to Kill, proves once again that Pelton gets the interviews and access that few writers even dream about. He gallops into the secret mud brick camps of Afghanistan; lifts glasses with big wheels while toasting back-room money deals; sweats through a Triple Canopy training camp in Arkansas; barrels down the dangerous highways of Iraq; explores the twisted life of a self-aggrandizing bounty hunter searching for bin Laden; and lives the daily tensions of retired cops and veterans struggling to make a living for their families back home as hired guns.
Although these blue-collar workers may earn $600 a day, they work 24/7. It is grueling and deadly work. Just ask Miyagi, one of the many characters percolating through the book. Sent home by Blackwater to his wife and nine-year-old son in Santa Barbara, an IED drove a gash through his arm and left a fist-sized hole in his butt. Now, he's waiting for a new assignment. He says it's too tough to make ends meet for his family as a cop in California.
Others, like Erik Prince, a politically-connected former Navy SEAL, never faced those worries. As the founder of the North Carolina-based Blackwater, USA, Prince hit the jackpot a long time ago with a multimillion-dollar family fortune. Today, his company banks on government security contracts totaling $750 million or more won after the Sept.11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. Blackwater's success may be only the beginning. Prince envisions taking part in contracts all over the world with Blackwater's own private air force. The company claims it can deploy a private regiment of 1,700 anywhere within a 24-hour notice.
"Prince likes to think of Blackwater's relationship to the traditional military as something akin to FedEx's relationship to the U.S. Post office," Pelton observes after meeting with Prince on several occasions.
Then there's Col. Tim Spicer, a former Scots Guardsman, who first plied his mercenary trade on the outskirts of the developed world by getting mixed up with coups, mineral rights and guns for cold hard cash. Today, Spicer has reinvented himself with the newly-formed Aegis Defence Services. His company holds the largest security contract in Iraq and is charged with coordinating the chaos among tens of thousands of gun-slinging contractors working for scores of companies.
But who will coordinate the chaos of private security companies after Iraq? The business is already on the prowl for new work. "The thing to watch," Pelton cautions, is if hired guns become a permanent fixture in foreign policy.
Even more troubling, is the prospect that the private warriors will begin to freelance in backing political coups -- sometimes unknowingly -- because their mission can be disguised by contracts to protect oil fields, gold mines and other corporate property.
Pelton recounts chilling incidents of this already happening before Iraq sucked up the talent from around the world and then went begging for new recruits. No one knows how many trained and battle-hardened private warriors are working in Iraq. Some estimate 30,000, others say 50,000 or more. Most of these fighters will have few crossover job skills once they leave, but they will have proven resumes showing they carry guns for hire and answer to no one but their company boss.
Licensed to Kill may be just the first chapter in what may lead us to ask: what monster is this that the world has created?
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Training Peacekeepers Around the World
Northrop Grumman landed a five-year, $200 million contract for the Global Peace Operations Initaitive as part of the US State Department initiative to build peacekeeping operations worldwide -- with a present emphasis on Africa. L3 Communications MPRI won a similarly valued contract. Both companies will be working on GPOI initiative.
The program has three major components:
Train and equip, deployment support, and gendarme-like capabilities. In terms of manpower, the initiative aims at deploying 75,000 peace support operations (PSO) troops worldwide over the next 5 years, primarily to Africa, but also to Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
Northrop Grumman already provides similar training under the ACOTA program, aka, African Contingency Operations Training Assistance -- since the 1990s.
Thanks to Civil-Military Relations for the find.
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May 18, 2007
The World Bites Back: Wolfowitz Gets the Boot
The World has Spoken: Wolfowitz's lasting legacy may very well be his role in planning and managing the Iraq war while serving at the Pentagon.
The Petty Salary Rigging: for his girlfriend at the World Bank meant nothing. In the world's eyes, his executive handiwork only reflects the more lurid bid rigging for contractors in Iraq. Contractors paid with billions of dollars in cash seized from the Iraqi people that was then squandered and lost.
The World is Watching: If the US Congress needed only Monica Lewinsky to drive a US president to impeachment, why can't the World Bank president get the boot for giving raises to his girlfriend? Especially when you can count the number of contractors in Iraq on a soldier's maimed hand that the Bush administration has prosecuted for theft, fraud and murder. (It is amusing that Robert Bennett, the lawyer representing Wolfowitz in this current ordeal, also represented Clinton during his impeachment.)
Financing War the Wolfowitz Way: "There's a lot of money to pay for this (war) that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people...and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 (billion) and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three year..... We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." [Source: House Committee on Appropriations Hearing on supplemental war spending, 3/27/03]
Wolfie's Girlfriend was a Means to an End:
Most staffers saw Wolfowitz's role in Iraq policy as governance gone horribly bad, the ribbons became a symbol of anger, a silent demand for the big boss's resignation. At World Bank, Blue Ribbons Became Attire Of Their Ire.
Staff members described a celebratory mood inside the World Bank's headquarters near the White House, with people embracing, singing songs and hoisting flutes of Champagne.
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April 25, 2007
Philippines Warns Companies to Stop Recruiting Workers for Iraq
The US economy thrives on illegal immigration here in the United States so apparently the US State Department doesn't care. It uses Philippine workers and other laborers from countries that have bans on their citizens working in iraq to build its new embassy: Asian Workers Trafficked to Build World's Largest Embassy.
Well, rest assured: It's "under investigation." Once the war in Iraq is over, things will get back to normal.
Here's more: "Illegal gateway to Iraq"
The Philippines in 2004 banned the deployment of Filipino workers to Iraq following a flare-up of violence there, but sources in Manila told the GDN that thousands still manage to defy the ban and enter the country in search of jobs - many of which are reportedly high-paying due to the danger involved.
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April 19, 2007
Wolfowitz: White House Ponders Possible Replacements
President Bush as repeatedly affirmed his support for Paul Wolfowitz, the embattled World Bank President, but behind the scenes, White House staff is drawing up a list of possible replacements.
Wolfowitz cancelled formal appearences on Thursday to meet behind closed-doors with the World Bank's 24-nation board, which is investigating whether he broke any rules in arranging a high-paying job at the US State Department for his partner, Shaha Riza, in 2005. Graeme Wheeler, one of Mr Wolfowitz's two deputies, has already called for him to resign.
Who's on Bush's short list for replacement? Most prominent is Ashraf Ghani, who directed the overhauling the Afghanistan's economy after September 11, The Times reports. "Such an appointment would mark the first time a non-American has held the position in the 60-year history of the global lender".
More in The Times.
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April 18, 2007
Wolfowitz: Girlfriend a 'Must Hire' for Iraq Contractor
It was very much business for a Defense Department contractor, SAIC: But behind the scenes, it looks like a lover or friend in high places may have been pulling the strings for the girlfriend of Paul Wolfowitz, Shaha Riza.
How did Riza land a moonlight gig with the Iraq contractor in 2003? At the request of the Defense Department, according to Reuters. (Riza was working for the World Bank, but forgot to tell the Bank about picking up some extra work in Iraq.) Her beau, Paul Wolfowitz, now president of the World Bank, was then-Pentagon No. 2 and a chief planner of the Iraq invasion at the time.
.... A spokeswoman for Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, said the Defense Department's policy office directed the company to enter a subcontract with Shaha Riza, under which she spent a month studying ways to form a government in Iraq.
AND THEN SHE WAS PROMOTED: When Wolfie was nominated to be president of the World Bank by president Bush in 2005, he arranged to give Riza a high-paying promotion before she resigned and took a job at the U.S. State Department.
Riza's salary increased from $132,660 to $193,590: Riza was compelled leave the World Bank because of rules against lovers working closely together at the Bank, but the pay hike guaranteed her a cushy salary at her next place of business: the U.S. State Department.
Stay Tuned: There may be a story on how Riza, who carries a British passport, ended up at the State Department. (Did she just send in her resume with a job reference from Wolfie?)
Meanwhile: Senior Democratic congressmen and other critics are pushing for the resignation of Wolfowitz, saying his actions have undermined the campaign against corruption in the developing world that has been a hallmark of his World Bank tenure.
More on the saga: Wolfowitz: Girlfriend's Shadowy Iraq Work and Wolfowitz Under Fire: Iraq in the Shadows.
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April 15, 2007
Wolfowitz: Girlfriend's Shadowy Iraq Work
Shaha Riza and long-time companion (read: heart throb) of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, apparently performed moonlighting services for a Pentagon contractor during the run up to the Iraq invasion while also working for the World Bank.
The Government AccountabilityProject (GAP) Notes: Riza worked as a "subject matter expert" on the Middle East at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) -- a major player in intelligence gathering prior to the Iraq invasion. At that time, Paul Wolfowitz was the Deputy Secretary of Defense, a chief architect to the Iraq campaign.
Bank Sources Verified: Riza never applied for nor received World Bank permission to provide these consultant services to SAIC.
A Blatant Employment Violation: Bank sources told Gap that Riza's undisclosed moonlighting for a Pentagon contractor would never have been tolerated at the Bank. They said her apparent secrecy would be grounds for dismissal. World Bank staff rules require employees to clear outside professional activities to prevent conflicts of interest.
"Multiple conflicts of interest probably existed," said GAP International Program Director Bea Edwards in a press release:
1) Riza was reportedly romantically involved with Wolfowitz at the time and the Iraq War was imminent.
2) SAIC was a defense contractor.
3) The World Bank had active projects in Iraq.
"International institutions, such as the World Bank and the United Nations, depend on mutual trust," said Edwards, who interviewed World Bank sources. "Member governments trust that employees work only to serve the institution's mission and that of the international community. A violation of that trust undermines the very foundation of international cooperation."
The Dating Game: Riza began dating Wolfowitz since 2002, the year he separated from his wife of 30 years. President Bush nominated Wolfowitz to World Bank president in 2005 while Riza was working in the bank's Middle East and North Africa (MENA) section.
Influential Friends: Bank regulations prohibit spouses or partners from supervising one another, so Riza was compelled to resign from the Bank -- but not before Wolfowitz first signed off on her promotion and salary increase. She then took that upgrade to a new position at the U.S. State Department, with a job reference from Wolfowitz, where her salary increased from $132,660 to $193,590. (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earns $186,000.)
Riza carries a British passport and is of Saudi and Libyan descent.
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April 13, 2007
Wolfowitz Under Fire: Iraq in the Shadows
With the 10,000 member World Bank Staff Association is asking Bank President Paul Wolfowitz to step down amid charges of improperly giving pay raises to his girlfriend, a Bank employee, Wolfwitz's role in planning and managing the invasion of Iraq at the Pentagon may come back to haunt him.
Wolfowitz once assured the U.S. Congress that Iraqi oil money would pay for the war and the planned reconstruction of Iraq:
"There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people...and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 (billion) and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three year..... We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." [Source: House Committee on Appropriations Hearing on a Supplemental War Regulation, 3/27/03]
Almost $12 billion in Iraqi assets has been found to be left unaccounted for under supervision of the U.S.-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority -- much of it arrived in $100 bills on pallets straight from the Federal Reserve in New York. (Others tell me the amount of Iraqi assets that went missing -- if you inlcude oil smuggling and theft in Iraq -- may be in the neighborhood of $22 billion. )
Some Wolfowiz foes at the Bank hope he is hauled before Congress sometime soon to explain his role in the Iraq war -- a potential embarassment that feasibly could lead to his resigning from the Bank.
Wolfowitz is already blaming World Bank employees for making his girlfriend's salary an issue because of his role in Iraq -- and many Bank employees view him as a principal architect behind the U.S. invasion while at the Pentagon. "For those people who disagree with the things that they associate me with in my previous job, I'm not in my previous job," Wolfowitz said in a statement. "I'm not working for the U.S. government; I'm working for this institution and its 185 shareholders."
For more on the spending of Iraqi oil money, known as the Development Fund for Iraq, see Spending Iraqi Money from two years ago.
More on Wolfowitz at World Bank today: World Bank Staff Seek Wolfowitz's Ouster
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April 12, 2007
Imelda: Giggles for Castro, Sighs for Saddam and Noriega
In the course of two days and some eight hours of conversation: Imelda Marcos talks about her husband, former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and his 7,500 tons of gold; her grandson's jewelry line; exile in Hawaii; New York notoriety, the concept of "Imeldific" -- and encounters with world leaders.
Yvette Ferreol of Bloomberg visited with the 77-year-old Imelda at her apartment on the 34th floor of a luxury high-rise in the Manila's swanky Makati financial district. Ferreol writes in a finely crafted profile that photos of world leaders are everywhere in the home, including those of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi and Mao Zedong prominently displayed on her piano. Fidel Castro sits in the driver's seat of a car in one photo, with Marcos as his passenger.
Imelda shared her impressions of some of the most iron-fisted rulers of the past century while talking with Ferreol:
Fedel Castro: "Said in his whole life, he has only driven for two people: his mother and Imelda Marcos," she says, giggling.
Mao Zedong: "Look at this photo. It says, 'Mao flirting with Imelda Marcos,'" she says, pointing to a photo of Mao kissing her hand.
Saddam Hussein: "I don't believe in the death sentence. Saddam was a friend of the Philippines. He was the first leader in the Arab world who welcomed Philippine labor.... When I was on trial, he sent his people to me in New York. If there was anything he could do for me, he was ready to help."
Manuel Noriega: "When we were forced into exile in 1986, he was the one who was about to give us a place for asylum. Some time ago, he sent me his book and a letter. I was so touched because I could not do anything to help him."
Most people recall Ferdinand Marcos as having been accused of massive human rights abuses as he oversaw the destruction of the country's economy while the rest of Asia's economies boomed. He was froced from power in 1986 in one of the world's most peaceful revolutions and died in exile in Hawaii in 1989. Imelda Marcos returned to Manila in 1991 and has been involved in numerous court cases in the U.S. and the Philippines over allegations of corruption, amassing illegal wealth and illegally maintaining Swiss bank accounts holding more than $500 million.
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