A UK marketing group leads the field in Washington power game

[kurukaalapoovan]

by Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Financial Times

November 26th, 2007

When New York City's Michael Bloomberg launched Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a nationwide campaign seeking to stop the flow of illicit weapons in cities and towns across America, he became a favourite verbal target of the National Rifle Association.

To bring more muscle to its fight in Washington, the mayors' coalition in May hired lobbyists at Dewey Square Group. To succeed, Dewey Square would have to go head-to-head with the NRA's own veteran lobbyists at Ogilvy Government Relations, one of the most powerful and well-connected such operations in Washington.

Although they are on opposite sides in the gun issue, the lobbying outfits do have one thing in common: both are owned by WPP, the UK marketing group.

WPP is best known as a powerhouse in the corporate communications business. Sir Martin Sorrell, its chief executive, has transformed what was once a business making wire baskets into the world's second-largest marketing services group. What has received less attention, however, is how WPP has also grown into a force in US political communications.

In setting its sights on Capitol Hill, WPP has targeted one of the most promising growth industries in America. The influence-peddling business was worth $2.45bn (£1.18bn, €1.6bn) last year, a 72 per cent increase from as recently as 1998, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks money in politics.

The lobbying and public relations industry influences nearly every significant decision made in Washington. Lobbyists finance campaigns, shape proposals that become law, help create regulatory loopholes and tax breaks and play a key role in directing billions of dollars in government contracts to their clients. In 2000 there were 16,342 registered lobbyists. Today, that figure has more than doubled to 35,844.

At a time when the capital's public relations and lobbying organisations are more influential than ever, no single company has concentrated as much Washington influence under one corporate roof as WPP.

The British group owns three big public relations companies with Washington expertise: Burson-Marsteller, Ogilvy, and Hill & Knowlton. It owns BKSH & Associates, a lobbying shop, and Penn, Schoen and Berland, a pollster, both of which are units of Burson. It also owns Timmons and Company, Quinn Gillespie, and Wexler & Walker, three other lobbying operations.

It owns smaller niche entities, such as Dewey Square and Direct Impact, which specialise in creating "grassroots campaigns" for corporate clients who are seeking to influence local elected leaders and community groups. It also owns Public Strategies, a lobbying and consulting business based in Texas.

WPP's network of companies in Washington is remarkable not just because of the cache of brands it has acquired over the years but because of the number of political heavyweights who run the operations and count themselves part of the WPP family. They include some of the most important fundraisers, former government officials, consultants and media advisers of recent political campaigns and in the 2008 presidential race.

Among them are Mark Penn, the chief executive of Burson and chief adviser to Senator Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner; Wayne Berman, a top fundraiser to President George W.?Bush and vice-chairman of Republican Senator John McCain's White House campaign; Dan Bartlett, who served as counsellor to Mr Bush; Mark McKinnon, who was chief media adviser for Mr Bush in his 2000 and 2004 campaigns and these days advises Mr McCain; and Michael Whouley, a former senior adviser to Senator John Kerry who helped the 2004 Democratic candidate clinch his crucial caucus victory in Iowa.

Mr McKinnon and Mr Whouley, in particular, are seen as being among the slickest political operatives in their respective parties - with skills that WPP's network of companies offers to corporate clients and foreign politicians seeking to make inroads in the US and at home.

The WPP network has even represented both sides of the political fight in Pakistan. Early this year, the People's Party of Pakistan and Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister who leads it, hired Burson and its subsidiaries for $28,500 a month (plus a one-time fee of $75,000) to help convince US government officials that Ms Bhutto was still "relevant" to the democratic process in Pakistan. Last year, the government of General Pervez Musharraf, Ms Bhutto's political rival, had turned to WPP for help in building its image in the US when it hired Quinn Gillespie, a lobby group whose co-founder, Ed Gillespie, now serves as a White House counsellor.

Its mission was to convince lawmakers to support a free trade agreement with Pakistan and promote it as a "reliable and attractive member of the global economic community". The work of the two units overlapped for a month, according to records.

WPP's reach raises questions about whether there is a limit to the number of companies, candidates and issues a single corporation and its network can represent. Craig Holman, a campaign finance lobbyist for Public Citizen, a Washington watchdog, says WPP epitomises the "monopolisation" of the influence industry that has Capitol Hill in its grip.

"It represents the devolution of lobbying through American history," he says. "The right to petition the government is in the constitution, so it is a constitutional right. But it has devolved from citizens into these huge for-profit conglomerates. It has got to the point where citizens have been pressed out of Capitol Hill and these for-profit businesses have a permanent voice here."

Mr Holman adds: "Those types of huge conglomerates can afford hiring former members of Congress. They go for about $2m a year and, once you hire those, you are the one who is controlling Capitol Hill." He says the government's interaction with business interests has become less transparent because of the convergence of lobbying groups, which must disclose who their clients are, with public relations companies, which do not have to reveal their clients' identity.

The increasing blurring of lines between political and corporate advisers, which is epitomised by Mr Penn's dual role as chief executive of Burson and adviser and confidant to Mrs Clinton, has also drawn scrutiny from the New York senator's rivals and union organisers.

At the heart of the criticism are allegations that the leading Democratic candidate espouses one set of values, while her chief strategist runs an operation that contradicts them by being pro-corporate and representing "union-busting" clients such as Cintas, the business services group that has fought unionisation efforts by its workers. Mr Penn says he personally does not represent clients on labour issues and adds that those who attempt to connect his work for Burson with the campaign are playing a "false game of gotcha".

"First, Burson is not working for the Clinton campaign, only myself and people from Penn, Schoen and Berland," says Mr Penn. (That company is a unit of Burson.) "Second, Burson has a 50-year history as a bipartisan firm and the clients that have been referenced are not clients I ever worked for, nor had any connection with," he says.

Burson has come under fire for its representation of other controversial clients. Last month it cut ties with Blackwater USA, the security group whose Baghdad guards are accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in September. The relationship, which began after the deaths, ended following criticism from John Edwards, Mrs Clinton's rival, who likened Mr Penn to Karl Rove, former senior adviser to Mr Bush. It was a WPP executive who made the decision not to extend the contract, according to people familiar with the matter.

Burson also recently ended its work with Countrywide, the embattled mortgage lender, though the circumstances of that separation are unclear. "Countrywide was a client of Burson but that ended," says Mr Penn, declining to elaborate.

In Washington, where lobbying and public relations are not closely regulated by any independent body, the saying goes that a conflict is only a conflict when a client says there is one. Some WPP clients, when asked, seem relaxed about the possibility that the outfit they hire to represent their interests may have the same owner as one that works for a competitor.

In the case of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the NRA, each says it is not concerned about the potential for conflict even though each relies on companies that are owned by WPP. A spokesperson for Mr Bloomberg's anti-gun coalition initially said he was not familiar with WPP or the fact that it owned another unit that represented the NRA. A day later, after discussing the matter with lobbyists at Dewey Square, the coalition said it was happy with its representation.

Mr Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman-turned-politician, also has other ties to WPP. In 2005, his campaign for the mayoralty paid more than $17m to Penn, Schoen and Berland, in the most expensive electoral tussle in New York City history. It paid off on polling day, when Mr Bloomberg beat Fernando Ferrer, his Democratic rival, by 20 percentage points.

Since then, Mr Bloomberg has been castigated by the NRA for using his "tentacles" to extend "his reach, and his illegal anti-gun tactics, across America". Whatever WPP's role was in helping its rivals, the NRA nevertheless expresses satisfaction with its lobbyists at the WPP-owned Ogilvy: "They do a good job for us," says Andrew Arulanandam, an NRA official. "We are aware of that relationship ... But there have been assurances of firewalls." The pro-gun lobby has paid Ogilvy Government Relations $720,000 in fees since WPP took over the company, previously the Federalist Group, in 2005.

WPP is not the only company in Washington that has built up its arsenal in the US lobbying industry. But it is among the largest. In the first six months of this year, companies held by WPP generated an estimated $33.6m in lobbying fees, not including its public relations and consulting work in the capital, which is not publicly disclosed.

The figure represents only a fraction of WPP's total sales of roughly $12bn a year, but it trumps lobbying fees generated by two large law firms in town that are the largest single-brand lobby shops in Washington: Patton Boggs and Akin Gump. They generated $19.2m and $15.2m respectively in publicly disclosed lobbying fees during the first six months of 2007. Lobbying entities owned by Interpublic, a WPP rival that owns Cassidy and Associates, another big lobby shop, recorded $15.9m.

One financial services lobbyist who asks not to be named says he is sceptical about the role of large groups such as WPP that serve as holding companies for competing lobby and public affairs operations, because there are no regulatory restrictions that prevent senior corporate officials from discussing clients with one another.

"You could conceivably have company A and B working against each other on one issue and working together on another issue. This is a big country club," the person says, recalling how one lobbying industry veteran used to quip that there was no such thing as a conflict for clients who were worth less than $40,000 in fees.

To this ambiguity is added the complication that public relations houses do not have to disclose who they are working for or which corporate or political interest lies behind a campaign.

For example, Burson has recently been conducting a behind-the-scenes campaign on behalf of Microsoft, the software provider, to generate opposition to the proposed takeover of DoubleClick, the online advertising company, by Google, the internet giant.

When Burson sent an e-mail to a Financial Times journalist this year that pointed to "severe risks to privacy" posed by Google's desktop search product, the company suggested it was doing so on behalf of a group of "privacy experts" including Larry Ponemon, an independent researcher. In the e-mail, Burson did not identify its client as Microsoft.

When asked about the e-mail, the Burson employee who sent it said it was meant to "support" Mr Ponemon's institute. She later confirmed that it was sent on behalf of a Microsoft-sponsored initiative that is opposed to the DoubleClick deal. Mr Ponemon says he is flattered by the attention but did not hire Burson and is concerned about the "optics" the e-mail created.

Attempts to regulate influence- peddlers in Washington have generally been feeble. While public relations outfits are not regulated at all, lobbying reforms passed by Congress in the wake of the scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist convicted of corruption in 2006, are centred on relationships with lawmakers, not on duties to clients.

Higher standards are set for law firms, such as Akin Gump, which have lobbying practices. They are regulated by state bar associations, which generally enforce conflict-of-interest rules that in most cases stop them representing opposing sides.

Daniel Joseph, a partner at Akin Gump who also serves on the Washington DC bar's legal ethics committee, says one theory behind the conflict-of-interest rules that apply to all individuals who work at law firms is that attorneys, who are obliged vigorously to represent their clients, might pull their punches if they thought that by helping one client they could hurt the interests of another. "A law firm could not simultaneously represent two clients who were taking opposing positions in lobbying," he says.

With no such stricture applying to public relations houses, activists such as Mr Holman raise the persistent issue of how many clients, on how many issues, a company such as WPP can take on before the interests of clients begin to conflict. "We are seeing a mega-corporation hold many of the largest, most influential firms in Washington under one roof. They have clients who are competing against each other. Any individual client that hires one of these firms cannot be guaranteed that the firm will represent their interests," Mr Holman says.

Sitting in his office just a block off the lobbyist-favoured K Street, Howard Paster, vice-president of public relations and public affairs at WPP and former head of legislative affairs during the Bill Clinton administration, says he is not bothered when companies within the WPP family have clients that oppose one another on issues on Capitol Hill. The situation is no different, he says, from two advertising agencies within WPP working for competing shampoo manufacturers.

"I don't see where a different value applies. What you can't do is have one person working two sides of the same issue," he says, emphasising that companies within WPP operate independently. "I think the ethical standards are high and demonstrably so," he says.

Mr Paster contends that WPP does not "hide" the companies it owns - indeed, a list is provided on WPP's corporate website. Yet it is not by accident that the WPP brand is itself not widely known in the US capital, says Dale Leibach, the founder of Prism Public Affairs, a Washington public affairs company, who worked at Ogilvy when it was acquired by WPP in 1989.

"If WPP was a household name, it would be tough to say, 'Burson, you can work for tobacco companies and Ogilvy, you can work for the American Cancer Society'. I'm not saying it is a giant conspiracy theory - I think it is trying to be smart," says Mr Leibach.

Another person familiar with WPP underscores the point. Two years ago, Sir Martin made "a big push", the person says, for all the WPP companies to consolidate their office space into one or two buildings to save costs. "Nobody in Washington wanted to be a part of that, because the notion of clients coming into the building, seeing all of them, knowing these companies were opposed to them on key issues, wouldn't fly very well."

Mr Paster says there "are always efforts to achieve efficiencies" but describes the anecdote as a "gross exaggeration" and adds that no "non-affiliated" WPP agencies are located together in Washington.

WPP's assertion that its operations in the US capital consist of little more than a group of independently run PR and lobby groups contrasts with the vision Sir Martin set out in an interview with the Financial Times two years ago. Then, the executive pointed out that his belief in WPP's activist corporate "centre" set him apart from his competitors, who operated "holding companies", not a parent company.

But asked about the Washington operations for this article, Sir Martin plays down WPP's across-the-group role: "Unlike accountancy firms or consulting companies or investment banks, which operate as single brands and sort out a conflict at the centre, we have many brands, operating independently with their own authority, so there is no risk of conflicts among our operating companies," he maintains.

"We often have very complex arrangements to ensure that those Chinese walls are enforced. You do that by physical audit, financial audit, by ensuring geographical separation of people and ensuring people don't work on conflicting business unless there is a strict and significant cooling-off period."

When it comes to Mr Penn, both WPP executives and Mrs Clinton's campaign say the pollster's day job as Burson chief executive has no crossover with - and, indeed, is irrelevant to - his work as her top adviser. Mr Paster insists that WPP has no role in deciding which clients its companies represent - though he says they will not work for states or groups that would bring disrepute to WPP.

On the decision last month that Burson would not extend its relationship with Blackwater USA, Mr Paster says only: "I can say unequivocally that the decision was not made on political terms." Asked about Burson's work for Blackwater , a Clinton campaign official says simply that the ending of the arrangement between those two companies "was the right thing to do".

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14820

[kurukaalapoovan]

Shaping US foreign policy today: national interest versus special interest

A Note by the Director (Ditchley 1999/07)

(with the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations) - 20-22 May 1999

How far, the making of United States foreign policy was markedly influenced (distorted?) by the domestic pressure of special interests.

We began by recognising that, for any major Western government, the long East-West confrontation had served to concentrate, calibrate and in some ways simplify the shaping of policy and, by much the same token, to underpin the authority in external matters of government leaders, especially the US President. The ending of the Cold War had accordingly left objectives and criteria less clear and more complex; and some of our participants maintained that in these circumstances to yearn for some overarching framework to steer policy decisions was to cry for the moon - it was in the nature of events, not of the routinely-proclaimed weakness of leadership, that issue-to-issue pragmatism must predominate.

One strand of commentary further argued that these trends were intensified by the facts of globalisation, the growth in interdependence, the erosion of sovereign power, the worldwide flood of information all reduced the ability of national governments to frame their objectives simply and autonomously and to pursue them with tidy consistency. The information flow indeed, some suggested, might be as likely to lead among overwhelmed lay publics to narrower parochialism as to wider understanding. All that said, however, we knew that nation states were still the key players in international affairs; and that the United States was a uniquely powerful one.

That reality, as we recognised, gave matching importance to the particular characteristics of the US political system. The combination of size, diversity and the special consequences of the separation-of-powers structure meant not only that there were many actors in the formation of US policy but also that their operation was open to view, and so to evident struggle among interests, in a degree scarcely matched among major US allies. The fundamental democratic healthiness of this was plain; but it meant especially given the comparative decay of old political-party mechanisms, and of the disciplines they once imparted that there was opportunity for pressure-groups to operate in a notably vigorous and high-profile way. We heard cited one or two recent instances in which the facts of political conjuncture had conferred remarkable leverage on narrow-seeming interests.

The system gave to members of the US Congress scope for foreign-policy intervention of a strength and directness not paralleled in Parliaments elsewhere. We heard a touch of misgiving expressed about whether the Congress always rose adequately to its resultant duties and accountabilities in government sharing; there seemed in some policy interventions, so one or two weighty observations suggested, a disproportion between sensitivity to local electoral (or campaign-finance) interest and responsible concern for the steady coherence of US external actions. But these were the realities of the system, and no recipe was proposed for modifying them.

We should have liked to anchor our discussion of the part "special interests" played in a clear concept of how "national interest" was to be defined. But we found differing schools of thought about whether any such definition was possible, other than at a level of generality too broad to be operationally useful as a criterion for policy. For at least some participants, master concepts were infeasible, and national interest might often have to be (indeed democratically ought to be?) just whatever emerged from the competing clamour of special-interest groups, not something standing above them. But we did agree that amid uncertainty and incommensurability elected governments/executives had to be the determining judges of national interest, even if the need in modern circumstances to husband a limited stock of political credit constrained the frequency with which leaders could step in to impose policies against the wishes of strong pressure groups. And we acknowledged that such groups would often be inescapably (and perhaps salutarily) key players in raising public awareness of issues to be tackled, and in forming government priorities about their tackling.

As we turned to particular classes of interest group we asked ourselves how much leverage business corporations or associations had. Popular supposition in other countries, we heard, often imputed to US business powerful influence exerted for protectionism, or for scruple-free sell-to-anyone arms trade. The reality, we came to suspect, was much more modest more modest even, perhaps, than the leverage which commercial concerns exerted upon policy in some European countries where the state traditionally accepted a more direct role in support of business. In the United States business seemed generally, for example, to have been surprisingly reticent in applying its influence against unilateral sanctions (usually urged by one or another special-interest group of a different sort) which stood to harm the freedom of trade, though in respect of China its influence seemed clearly to have been exercised in favour of trade openness and technology transfer as against non-commercial concerns about China’s internal character. The general outlook of US business clearly ran contrary to isolationism; and we conjectured that logically it ought to be (though we were less sure that in practice it always was) a long-run supporter of stable and consistent international rule-of-law regimes for commerce rather than the pursuit of ad hoc short-term advantage.

Ethnic pressure-groups took up much of our discussion. Non-US participants were keenly aware of particular examples the Jewish solicitude for Israel, the Florida-centred Cuban-exile concern about the Castro regime, the numerically-massive and vocal segment claiming Irish origin and animated by powerful perceptions/myths in respect of British policies in Ireland. These examples were valuably offset by comment that, in the light of the wide diversity of ethnic origin in a polity as deeply immigration-based as the United States, it was if anything remarkable that coherent such lobbies were so few rather than so many. For the most part, as immigrant elements were absorbed into the melting-pot their aspiration to shape US policy in regard to their former homes faded away, even if they might for a while retain an awareness of "abroad" that usefully offset isolationism. It was surely noteworthy that perhaps because of a general desire to avoid seeming to nurture outdated non-American allegiances there was no strong or distinctive ethnically-based influence upon US policies towards Africa, Latin America, India, China or (despite growing Muslim numbers) the Islamic world. And though groups of Polish origin had probably played some part in helping the Administration to pursue NATO enlargement despite forebodings of Senate reluctance, there was little sign of ethnic pressure in respect of dealings with the former Yugoslavia.

We asked ourselves whether the small number of ethnic pressure groups which did seek to play a part really influenced policy, and influenced it in directions contrary to true US national interest. In the Irish case we mostly doubted it; despite episodes irritating to British governments, when major issues arose US leaders always put first their sense of the wider importance of US/UK cooperation. Some of us were less happy about the Cuban example, suspecting that an electorally-powerful ethnic concentration might have exploited separation-of-powers opportunities to impose unilateral US actions belonging at best to an outdated Cold-War-ism. No clear consensus emerged on the Jewish instance. We were reminded of the undoubted significance of Jewish influence, especially on the Democrat side and through the campaign-finance route. Whether the particular sympathy for Israeli as against Arab concerns militated against long-term US interests was a contentious matter; but at the least, most of us thought, the domestic Jewish pressure notably constrained US policy options in the region.

The third class of pressure group we considered was issue-centred non-governmental organisations. In the US, perhaps even more than in most other countries, their diversity was now enormous in subject-matter, in resource, and in accountability and staying-power; and membership had in recent decades surged remarkably. Their focus might sometimes seem narrow or near-capricious and their biases considerable; but they were in modern circumstance key aspects of healthy civil society, and their ability to influence public agendas and to air arguments was often a valuable corrective to the preoccupations and preferences of other actors such as business. (The converse might of course be equally true; the voice of business might need to clearly heard as counterweight to, for example, environmentalist zealotry, which was responsible for at least a sprinkling of policy outcomes which retrospect suggested to be unwise.) We noted, among other features, that in the United States NGOs were not always independent of commercial sponsorship; and that US NGOs, like those elsewhere, might increasingly work with the help of globalised information mechanisms readily available in modes of transnational cooperation, as in the matter of anti-personnel landmines.

The US system gave NGOs ready access to opinion-formers and to various categories of decision-maker - a pattern which, albeit by different mechanisms, European structures of government were increasingly emulating. We were however doubtful whether, in either setting, NGOs were as effective as media opinion sometimes supposed in determining answers, as distinct from posing questions. We discerned a few instances where NGOs seemed clearly to have managed to impose policies upon governments in Europe, for example, on the land-mines issue and (so far) in caution over genetically-modified foods; in the US, in the efficacy of anti-abortion groups in preventing the fulfilment of indisputable US financial obligations to the United Nations. But the list of such achievements adduced in our debate was not long.

We found too little time to consider the role of organised labour significant, we heard, in government policy over labour standards in trade agreements, for example to review the various methods by which groups might seek to bring their influence to bear (we noted very briefly that in the United States, as in Britain, the techniques of law-breaking civil disobedience appeared notably less successful than in some countries of Continental Europe). In the round, however, the sense of our conference placed the special-interest influence in a more reassuring perspective often a more modest one than at least most non-US participants had expected.

This report reflects the Director’s personal impressions of the conference. No participant is in any way committed to its content or expression.

[பொய்கை]

உலகளாவிய பொருளாதார பிரச்சினைகள் இலங்கை பிரச்சினைக்கு தீர்வை கொண்டுவரும் எண்டுறீர்களோ. ?

தீர்வு எந்த மாதிரியானதாக இருக்கும் என்பதில் சந்தேகம் இருக்கு.

சோடைபோன நாடுகள் பட்டியலில் இருக்கும் இலங்கை போண்ற நாடுகள் போரிடுவது தவறு என்பதை உணர்ந்து போரிடும் வசதிகளை வழங்குவதை அடியோடு நிறுத்தினால் அண்றி எதுவும் தீராது.

[kurukaalapoovan]

The build up to the Third World War

By Pablo Ouziel

Perhaps a couple of decades from now we will all be praising the mainstream media for the wonderful work they have done reporting on our collective insanity. If we could all leave aside for a minute our nationalisms and ideologies, we could see through every page printed, every word aired, or every media image shown, that global confrontation is just around the corner.

The media seems to be seeing what its readers, viewers and listeners are not able to grasp. A large scale war is now unavoidable, and we have all contributed to it through our obtuse obsession with ourselves and our ideals, and our lack of holistic understanding of human interaction. That said, it could be that news are no longer news, and are just part of the 21st century satirical entertainment culture. If that is the case, we can safely say that once the television is turned off, the war ends.

Week after week, escalation is the game being played by “our” governments. Every country flexing its muscle to see what it is able to obtain, as the cake of global resources is safely being distributed between those with access to the knife.

The British fighting for the little bit of oil which they might be able to extract, if they push the boundaries of their empire past the legal 200 nautical miles from the shoreline of its colonized Ascension Island. The Americans pushing for their famous missile shield in the ex-soviet states, which for years now professor Chomsky has been labeling as a declaration of war.

The Israelis focused on their territorial expansion on Palestinian land, through their now world-renowned settlements. The Russians with their personal conflict in Georgia, which the “international community” of hypocrites is unanimously condemning, with the same might as they unanimously support every aggression they personally wish to impart.

Literally every country in the world, no matter where we look, is bent on this culture of aggression. Nobody is able to trust anybody, because deep down we all know that we are selfish, and as soon as we can, we are going to do everything possible to get on top of the game. But the worse thing of all, is that we look at “our” countries as if they were people with a life of their own -- we talk about America as if it was a conquering woman, the pom-pom girl of world aggression, we look at Britain as the wise old fashioned conservative who thinks he knows everything, while Russia is the head of the Mafia and Israel the holder of the truth, the bearer of humanity’s suffering.

Farcical stereotypes have been continuously set up by very effective spin-doctors with enough resources to govern the world. Put a barking dog behind a herd of sheep and they are bound to go in the direction you plan for them to follow. That is what we have today - barking dogs disguised as politicians, and sheep seeing themselves as citizens with a right to vote. The problem is that in this equation there is no shepherd to guide anyone to greener pastures. This is status quo necessary for those in power to remain in power, building fraudulent imagery about the true state of the world.

It is this Status quo, which allows popular debate to remain framed in words like “hope” and “change” for Obama, as he sits in the foundations of corporate America, presenting his strategy for change, while demonstrators outside of Denver’s “freedom cage” are getting arrested. The same status quo, which constantly reminds us of McCain’s bravery as a POW, in a war which was unjustified and which killed many innocent Vietnamese civilians. The status quo, which allows for 90 Afghan civilians to be killed in one day by American troops, without a single minute of mourning by civilized Americans who claim to be helping them.

In Spain, there is a saying which says, “no lo cogería ni con pinzas”, which translated to English could mean something like “I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole”, and sadly that is the state of our political systems worldwide. The problem is that global populations seem either too naïve, too ignorant, too indifferent, or too powerless, to reject this social reality and confront it with serious intentions for change.

As our politicians keep fighting for power while rallying the national flag, millions of people are confronting each other without knowing each other. Yet, as the suffering keeps mounting with the ringing of war bells, none of those firmly behind their candidates are gaining much from these paramilitary adventures. Only the corporate interests of a very small global elite keep pushing ahead, as their lapdog politicians keep barking, and the herd of sheep keeps moving towards what Samuel P. Huntington coined as “the clash of civilizations.”

Mired in our own limited sphere of thought, dealing with our own personal problems, we are too disconnected from each other to ever get a grasp of the fact that no matter what our politicians tell us, Americans and Iraqis, French and Afghans, Iranians and Israelis, Russians and British and the rest of us, we are not all that different from each other. Yet, because most of us only know each other through the imagery of the television set, we allow our barking politicians to lead the way towards conflict.

Make no mistake about it, last century’s great depression ended with the build up to the Second World War, and the unacknowledged economic depression of today will give way to the official beginning of the Third World War. When that happens, the whole of humanity will be subjected to the kind of depression which can only be felt with the destruction of social existence.

We must be thankful to the media for all those images of reality which they have been streaming endlessly through their networks, for only the accumulation of those images allows us to see where the world is heading. I wish the media was satirical, then I could turn off the television set knowing we are not heading towards global war. However as things stand, it might be in one year, it might take five or ten, but sooner or later imperial attitudes lead to major conflict.

-- Pablo Ouziel is a sociologist and freelance writer.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=157107

[kurukaalapoovan]

Immigration to be cut as unemployment soars

Phil Woolas tells Times of urgent need for policy change to ease racial tension

Strict limits are to be imposed on immigration amid fears that unemployment rises in the economic downturn will fuel racial tension.

Phil Woolas, in his first interview since taking over as Immigration Minister, said that he wanted to see a dramatic reduction in the number of migrants coming to Britain.

In what many will see as extraordinary remarks for a Labour minister, he told The Times that the economic backdrop changed everything. “If people are being made unemployed, the question of immigration becomes extremely thorny . . . It’s been too easy to get into this country in the past and it’s going to get harder,” he said.

Ministers intended to introduce changes to allow it to set a limit on migration, he said. “This Government isn’t going to allow the population to go up to 70 million. There has to be a balance between the number of people coming in and the number of people leaving.”

Until now the Government has shied away from curbing levels of immigration, which have reached record levels under Labour.

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, was shocked by the comments. “I would be astonished at a Labour immigration minister in effect changing the policy,” he said. “His predecessor and the Home Secretary have made it very clear they do not support a quota.”

Habib Rahman, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “This could drive a coach and horses through any notion of managed migration through the Government’s new points-based system . . . on which it held long and detailed consultations before unveiling it as the answer to the country’s economic needs.”

With immigration still a big issue of public concern, Labour is under pressure to toughen its approach after the Tories revealed plans for annual limits on numbers entering the country.

The latest figures estimate that net migration – the gap between those entering and those leaving the country – will run at more than 200,000 a year until 2012. About 70 per cent of population growth over the next 25 years is expected to be a result of migration.

Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migrationwatch, which argues for balanced migration, described Mr Woolas’s comments as a potential breakthrough. “It is the first time that a government minister has actually linked immigration and population. If they succeed in delivering, they will have done our country a considerable service,” he said.

The Government’s response to public concern about immigration has been to introduce an Australian-style points system linking migrants’ skills to particular jobs. It is likely that curbs would hit such migrants. The Government cannot, however, curb EU migration and has international obligations to accept asylum-seekers. It would also be reluctant to target students because of the money that they provide to universities. It could curb entry for marriage purposes, although this risks an electoral backlash in seats with large Asian communities.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/poli...icle4965433.ece

[kurukaalapoovan]

Iran, Russia, Qatar Discuss Forming Natural Gas Cartel

By VOA News

21 October 2008

Iran, Russia and Qatar have agreed to increase cooperation on joint projects - an initiative that may lead to a group resembling the oil exporting cartel, OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries).

Iran's Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari discussed plans with Qatar's energy minister, Abdullah Bin Hamad al-Attiya, and the head of Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom, Alexei Miller, Tuesday in Tehran.

Nozari said the three countries reached a consensus to establish a gas version of OPEC, though his counterparts did not say they reached a firm commitment to form such a cartel.

The United States and European nations have expressed concern about a potential gas cartel, worrying that it could lead to price manipulation.

Analysts say a natural gas cartel would not have the influence over gas prices that OPEC has over oil because the markets for the two commodities are different. Natural gas contracts tend to be very long-term, while oil contracts are relatively shorter and more prone to price swings.

Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.

http://voanews.com/english/2008-10-21-voa31.cfm

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...mp;refer=europe

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews...H12925720081021