Category:

Ending a war – but not the bloodshed

US troops patrol Fallujah, Iraq, in 2003 By Tara McKelvey BBC News, Washington 6 November 2013 Last updated at 00:12 “We invaded Iraq to change the way the greater Middle East works,” says Andrew Bacevich. “From that point of view the war is a catastrophic disaster.” Above, US troops patrol Fallujah during a sandstorm in 2005 In September President Barack Obama said, “I was elected to end wars, not start them.” Yet ending wars, as he has discovered, can be as hard as waging them. The former US ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffrey, left Baghdad on a hot day in June 2012. He flew away in a special forces helicopter, as he recalls, and looked down at villas and swimming pools. “It was quiet and peaceful,” he says. He describes his departure as an “emotional” moment – and says that at the time he felt pleased with the outcome […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Saudis round up thousands of illegal immigrants

DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi authorities rounded up thousands of illegal foreign workers at the start of a nationwide crackdown ultimately aimed at creating more jobs for locals, media reported on Tuesday. Hundreds of thousands of workers have already left the kingdom following a grace period of seven months during which authorities told expatriates that if they did not fix their legal status they had to leave the country or face jail. The government hopes that reducing the number of illegal workers will create opportunities for Saudi job-seekers. The official Saudi unemployment rate is 12 percent but excludes a large number of citizens who say they are not seeking a job. However, the majority of the kingdom’s nine million foreigners are unskilled laborers or domestic workers, jobs usually shunned by Saudis. "Since early (Monday) morning, the security campaign got off to a vigorous start as inspectors swung into action," Nawaf […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Diplomats Fail to Agree on Details for Syria Peace Talks

GENEVA — Senior diplomats from the United States, Russia and the United Nations failed on Tuesday to agree on a date for convening a long-awaited peace conference aimed at settling the Syria conflict, acknowledging it would not take place this month and possibly not this year. The diplomats adjourned after meetings in Geneva that could not resolve the most basic obstacles: which countries would attend such a conference, who would represent the fractious Syrian opposition and what role — if any — would be played by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose polarizing effects have proved among the most difficult issues to overcome. Lakhdar Brahimi , the United Nations special envoy on Syria, told reporters: “We were hoping that we would be in a position to announce a date today. Unfortunately we are not.” He added, “We are still striving to see if we can have a conference before […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Australia's mining sector is expected to suffer from China's economic downturn, says a new report.

SYDNEY, Nov. 5 (UPI) — Australia’s mining sector is expected to suffer from China’s economic downturn, says a new report. “With China’s economy on course for a rude slowdown over the coming years,” says the report, released Monday by London-based research consultants Business Monitor, “Australia’s mining sector is set to suffer the painful spillover effects of a sharp investment slowdown.” The report notes that Australia has been among the biggest beneficiaries from the China-led commodities boom over the past decade. The value of the Australia’s mining industry had increased more than six-fold from $24 billion in 2003 to $147 billion in 2012, boosted by a sharp rise in the value of Australia’s mineral exports, particularly iron ore and coal. While Business Monitor predicts the value of Australia’s mining sector to reach $181 billion by 2017, the average annual growth rate is expected to be 4.3 percent through 2017, compared […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Australia’s mining sector is expected to suffer from China’s economic downturn, says a new report.

SYDNEY, Nov. 5 (UPI) — Australia’s mining sector is expected to suffer from China’s economic downturn, says a new report. “With China’s economy on course for a rude slowdown over the coming years,” says the report, released Monday by London-based research consultants Business Monitor, “Australia’s mining sector is set to suffer the painful spillover effects of a sharp investment slowdown.” The report notes that Australia has been among the biggest beneficiaries from the China-led commodities boom over the past decade. The value of the Australia’s mining industry had increased more than six-fold from $24 billion in 2003 to $147 billion in 2012, boosted by a sharp rise in the value of Australia’s mineral exports, particularly iron ore and coal. While Business Monitor predicts the value of Australia’s mining sector to reach $181 billion by 2017, the average annual growth rate is expected to be 4.3 percent through 2017, compared […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

China's Slower Growth Puts a Drag on Western Profits

Just as European economies are showing signs of stabilizing and the U.S. economy is waking up, some companies are running into obstacles in a market long considered their brightest hope: China. U.S. and European companies invested heavily in recent years to expand in China, seeking to tap into its flourishing middle class and fast economic growth. Since the global recession, China has helped offset the free fall in sales and profits in the euro zone and stagnant revenue in the U.S. But the latest set of quarterly earnings results reveal that for many companies, China has been a drag. While some industries did well, the combination of slower economic growth, plus government crackdowns that have put fresh scrutiny on the way companies win new business, hurt sectors from technology to luxury goods to pharmaceuticals. As a result, the sluggish global sales that persisted through much of the recovery aren’t […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

China’s Slower Growth Puts a Drag on Western Profits

Just as European economies are showing signs of stabilizing and the U.S. economy is waking up, some companies are running into obstacles in a market long considered their brightest hope: China. U.S. and European companies invested heavily in recent years to expand in China, seeking to tap into its flourishing middle class and fast economic growth. Since the global recession, China has helped offset the free fall in sales and profits in the euro zone and stagnant revenue in the U.S. But the latest set of quarterly earnings results reveal that for many companies, China has been a drag. While some industries did well, the combination of slower economic growth, plus government crackdowns that have put fresh scrutiny on the way companies win new business, hurt sectors from technology to luxury goods to pharmaceuticals. As a result, the sluggish global sales that persisted through much of the recovery aren’t […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

China’s Leaders Confront Economic Fissures

WUHAN, China — The two-story employment complex here, like job centers across China, is crowded with educated young people who are trying to figure out their futures in a country where the job market still prizes assembly-line workers willing to labor monotonous hours on backless stools. Among them is Zheng Yilong, who graduated from a university three months ago and refuses to consider a factory job even though his degree is in machinery design. He seeks a desk job instead. Sitting at the employers’ booths are much older factory managers like Jin Tao who despair of finding the workers they need. “I see the problem mostly as an education mismatch problem,” Mr. Jin said. “I’m willing to pay more than 3,000 renminbi a month, which is more than what fresh college graduates are getting.” (That’s about $500.) “I’m also willing to give training, but the young people now with […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

CA not enjoying TX-sized boom in revenues from oil

October 31, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi   Monterey Shale California increased its revenues last year by $8 billion a year, through passing the Proposition 30 and Proposition 39 tax increases. Texas has added even more to its revenues, but did so a different way. The fracking boom added $28.6 billion in revenues to the Texas state budget during the last three years, or $9.3 billion a year. Yet it’s a Los Angeles-based oil company, Occidental Petroleum, which owns 1.2 billion barrels of oil (or its equivalent) in Texas’ Permian Basin .  Sixty percent of Oxy’s oil and gas extraction comes from carbon dioxide flooding, which is used when water injection and pumping no longer works. Oxy has successfully used C02 hydraulic fracturing of rock — called fracking — in the Permian Basin in Texas since 2011, when the West Texas Intermediate benchmark crude oil price went over $100 per […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple