Democratic President Barack Obama has been preaching the virtues of bipartisanship since before he took office, as has Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But in each case, the claim to bipartisan governing has meant exactly the same thing: solidifying Democratic votes in Congress or the Legislature and picking off a handful of Republican stragglers.

Given the profound differences between most Democrats and Republicans on the major public policy issues of the day – taxes, health care, foreign policy, abortion, gay rights, environment, energy and a host of other issues – this raises the question of whether true bipartisanship is even possible to a significant degree.

“Bipartisanship has about as much of a future as squirrel-flavored ice cream,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College.

“Although President Obama's probably very sincere about reaching across party lines, the divisions on Capitol Hill are very deep,” said Pitney, a former Republican congressional staffer. “The parties have very different views on issues, and they represent very different constituencies.”

Obama has made a point of schmoozing with congressional Republicans, including inviting a group of them to the White House to watch the Super Bowl.

He also named a conservative Republican, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, to be commerce secretary, but Gregg changed his mind about accepting the post, saying he could not support Obama's massive economic stimulus bill because it was too bloated. Gregg also expressed concern about the future U.S. Census after reports surfaced that the White House would essentially take control of what long has been a Commerce Department function.

Although passage of the $787 billion stimulus package was indeed a major triumph for the new president, it was essentially a partisan one. Obama's only Republican support came from senators generally considered the most liberal in their party – Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Susan Collins of Maine. No Republican in the House voted for the bill.

Even after Gregg's withdrawal and the near-party-line vote on the stimulus bill, Obama insisted he was undeterred about promoting bipartisanship.

“Ultimately, I think, we're going to just keep on making efforts to build the kind of bipartisan consensus around important issues that I think the American people are looking for,” Obama told The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill.

Winning Republican votes for his budget plan may be an even bigger challenge.

Arnold Shober, a professor of government at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., chalks up Obama's bipartisanship rhetoric to “naiveté.”

“He has appeared genuinely frustrated that Republicans will smile as they vote against him,” Shober said. “He never had to deal with the GOP in his home Illinois district and doesn't seem to understand that their political differences are deep and philosophical.”

In Schwarzenegger's case, Shober said, the governor talks up bipartisanship because he's “bargaining from a position of weakness,” having lost the support of nearly all legislators in his own party.

For months, Schwarzenegger tried to forge a bipartisan solution to the state's budget crisis and was on the cusp of an agreement earlier this month when he was stymied by fellow Republicans. The plan of tax increases, spending cuts and borrowing to close a $42 billion deficit had full Democratic support. But only after what some considered unrelated concessions did the last of a handful of necessary Republican lawmakers sign on last week.

The Republican governor, who has espoused bipartisanship and even once famously declared a “post-partisan” era had arrived, is now pushing a nonpartisan solution. The budget concession required the Legislature to place on the June 2010 ballot a measure asking Californians to approve open, nonpartisan state and congressional primary elections that would allow voters to cross party lines and vote for any candidate. The governor and other supporters say this will bring more moderates to a state Capitol polarized by hard-line liberals and conservatives.

“We have to create open primaries,” the governor said Thursday after the Legislature approved the budget package. “I think that you saw very clearly what happened here in these budget negotiations. ... All of this is because of the partisanship. We've got to bring people to the center.”

Obama's approach to bipartisanship strikes some as more calculating than naive. Republican activist Jim Broussard, a professor of history at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, dismisses Obama's bipartisan overtures as cosmetic gestures.

“So far, Obama has proven very adept at reaching out to the Republicans, patting them on the head and putting a couple of Republicans in the Cabinet,” Broussard said. “The question is will there be bipartisanship on policy, and what we've seen from the stimulus bill is there won't be.”

Steven Smith, director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis, noted that a bipartisan style of governing does not necessarily guarantee a bipartisan outcome.

“It's very possible for President Obama to maintain a civil, open approach that most of us would associate with a bipartisan approach, while not achieving bipartisan support for many of his policy proposals,” he said.

Smith added that Obama also runs the risk of a backlash from some Democrats.

“It's not easy because his own partisans will begin to complain – some already have – about his appeals to Republicans when, in their view, it's pointless,” he said.

Polls show most Americans give the president credit for trying.

When a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll this month asked adult Americans if they thought Obama is “doing enough to cooperate with the Republicans in Congress or not,” 74 percent said yes.

When the same poll asked Americans if Republicans in Congress are doing enough to cooperate with Obama, only 39 percent said yes.

Smith said Americans aren't sure what they want.

“For the most part, they want civil discourse, someone who listens,” he said. “But they also want in a president someone who leads. So there is a contradiction.”

In recent decades there have been several major pieces of legislation that passed Congress on bipartisan votes.

John Wohlstetter, senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, noted that President Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cut and 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty received a number of Democratic votes. President Bill Clinton passed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and capital gains tax cuts in 1997 with Republican votes.

“Tax bills lend themselves to bipartisan cooperation because cutting taxes is politically popular,” Wohlstetter said. “Spending bills are harder to find bipartisanship because increases raise deficit fears and cuts enrage recipient constituencies.”

Such examples of bipartisanship have become increasingly rare in recent decades as the Democratic and Republican parties have become more ideologically polarized and moderate party members have become marginalized.

The conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans that were plentiful in Congress into the 1970s are virtually extinct.

“There was a time when Northeastern and Midwestern Republicans were very moderate, that there was a Mac Mathias from Maryland and a Chuck Percy from Illinois who were more liberal than the conservative Democrats from the South,” Smith said. “But their party changed. Those kinds of Republicans can't win their party nominations.”

Some analysts question whether bipartisanship is even desirable.

“The system works when one party wins a convincing share of the electorate, puts out a platform, puts it into effect and gets judged on the results,” said Charles Noble, chairman of the political science department at California State University Long Beach.

The notion of bipartisanship, he said, “assumes that there's some objectively correct solution to all these problems. There isn't. There are options, and you pick one and see how it works.”

Calif. GOP Reprimands 6 Lawmakers Over Tax Votes

Filed at 4:57 p.m. ET

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- The California Republican Party has approved a measure reprimanding six GOP lawmakers who voted for the largest tax increase in state history.

The measure to deny the six party funding for the 2010 election was approved Sunday by delegates during the party's convention in Sacramento.

Three lawmakers each from the Senate and Assembly broke ranks last week to give Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger the necessary votes for passing a compromise budget solution to the state's $42 billion shortfall.

Supporters say Sunday's resolution sends a strong message to politicians that there will be consequences for breaking their no-tax pledge.

Other delegates called the move mean-spirited and worried that it pushes the party into an ideological corner.

Obama denies terror suspects right to trial

Human rights groups shocked by refusal to reverse Bush policy in Afghanistan

By Stephen Foley The Independen/UK

Reuters

As Democratic candidate for the United States presidency last July, Barack Obama posed for this photograph with senior American military staff at the Bagram air base near Kabul in Afghanistan

Less than a month after signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, President Barack Obama has quietly agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan that human rights lawyers have dubbed “Obama’s Guantanamo”.

In a single-sentence answer filed with a Washington court, the administration dashed hopes that it would immediately rip up Bush-era policies that have kept more than 600 prisoners in legal limbo and in rudimentary conditions at the Bagram air base, north of Kabul.

Now, human rights groups say they are becoming increasingly concerned that the use of extra-judicial methods in Afghanistan could be extended rather than curtailed under the new US administration. The air base is about to undergo a $60m (£42m) expansion that will double its size, meaning it can house five times as many prisoners as remain at Guantanamo.

Apart from staff at the International Red Cross, human rights groups and journalists have been barred from Bagram, where former prisoners say they were tortured by being shackled to the ceiling of isolation cells and deprived of sleep.

The base became notorious when two Afghan inmates died after the use of such techniques in 2002, and although treatment and conditions have been improved since then, the Red Cross issued a formal complaint to the US government in 2007 about harsh treatment of some prisoners held in isolation for months.

While the majority of the estimated 600 prisoners are believed to be Afghan, an unknown number – perhaps several dozen – have been picked up from other countries.

One of the detainees who passed through the Afghan prison was Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who is expected to return to the UK this week after his release from Guantanamo Bay. Mr Mohamed’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, head of a legal charity called Reprieve, called President Obama’s strategy “the Bagram bait and switch”, where the administration was trumpeting the closure of a camp housing 242 prisoners, while scaling up the Bagram base to house 1,100 more.

“Guantanamo Bay was a diversionary tactic in the ‘War on Terror’,” said the lawyer. “Totting up the prisoners around the world – held by the US in Iraq, Afghanistan, Djibouti, the prison ships and Diego Garcia, or held by US proxies in Jordan, Egypt and Morocco – the numbers dwarf Guantanamo. There are still perhaps as many as 18,000 people in legal black holes. Mr Obama should perhaps be offered more than a month to get the American house in order. However, this early sally from the administration underlines another message: it is far too early for human rights advocates to stand on the USS Abraham Lincoln and announce, ‘Mission Accomplished’.”

Four non-Afghan detainees at Bagram are fighting a legal case in Washington to be given the same access to the US court system that was granted to the inmates of Guantanamo Bay by a controversial Supreme Court decision last year. The Bush administration was fighting their claim.

Two days into his presidency, Mr Obama promised to shut Guantanamo within a year in an effort to restore America’s moral standing in the world and to prosecute the struggle against terrorism “in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals”. But on the same day, the judge in the Bagram case said that the order “indicated significant changes to the government’s approach to the detention, and review of detention, of individuals currently held at Guantanamo Bay” and that “a different approach could impact the court’s analysis of certain issues central to the resolution” of the Bagram cases as well. Judge John Bates asked the new administration if it wanted to “refine” its stance.

The response, filed by the Department of Justice late on Friday, came as a crushing blow to human rights campaigners. “Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position,” it said.

Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, the New York human rights organisation representing the detainees, warned last night that “by leaving Bagram open, the administration turns the closure of Guantanamo into essentially a hollow and symbolic gesture”.

She said: “Without reconsidering the underlying policy, which has led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the indefinite detention of hundreds of people all these years, then we are simply returning to the status quo. The exact same thing that had the world up in arms has been going on at Bagram since even before Guantanamo.

“People have been tortured to the point that they have died; it is a rallying cry for those who oppose the US actions in Afghanistan; it is not strategic for the US; and, more importantly, holding people indefinitely, regardless of who they are and regardless of the facts, is completely inconsistent with everything we stand for as a country.”

The Department of Justice would only say that the legal briefs in the Washington case “speak for themselves”. It says Bagram is a special case because, unlike Guantanamo, it is sited within a theatre of war.

Mr Obama has pushed out the wider questions about the US policy on detaining terror suspects and supporters of the Taliban in Afghanistan until the summer, ordering a review that will take six months to complete.

The administration is weighing the likely increase in prisoners from an expanded fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, against the international perception that it is embedding extra-judicial detention into its policies for years to come.

• 
• • Colin Blakemore
  • The Observer, Sunday 22 February 2009
  • Article history

When I was a medical student at Cambridge in the Sixties, I walked to lectures past the forbidding exterior of the Cavendish Laboratory, as famous for Crick and Watson's unravelling of DNA as for Rutherford's splitting of the atom. One day, scrawled on the wall, was a supreme example of Cambridge graffiti: "CRICK FOR GOD".

No surprise that pivotal advances in science provoke religious metaphors. Crick and Watson's discovery transformed our view of life itself - from a manifestation of spiritual magic to a chemical process. One more territorial gain in the metaphysical chess match between science and religion.

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was certainly a vital move in that chess game - if not checkmate. In an interview for God and the Scientists, to be broadcast tonight in Channel 4's series on Christianity, Richard Dawkins declares: "Darwin removed the main argument for God's existence."

That wasn't, of course, Darwin's intention. In 1827, he scraped into Cambridge to study for the church. But by 1838, with the wealth of experience from the Beagle's voyage inside his head, Darwin had conceived the idea that natural selection - survival of the fittest - had created new species. Even after she accepted his marriage proposal, Darwin's cousin Emma, a strict Unitarian, fretted that his heretical theories would lead to their separation in the afterlife!

Darwin agonised for more than 20 years before publishing On the Origin of Species, and another two before he could say, in The Descent of Man, that "Man must be included with other organic beings in any general conclusion respecting his manner of appearance on Earth". In the final words of that transcendent book, Darwin couldn't avoid the religious metaphor: "Man with all his noble qualities... with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system - with all these exalted powers - Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origins."

Throughout the love-hate relationship between science and Christianity, the idea that human rationality is a gift from God has frequently been used as a justification, or an excuse, for scientific inquiry. Pope Benedict XVI has gone further. In a speech read at La Sapienza University in Rome last year (in the face of opposition from the academic staff) he argued: "If, however, reason ... becomes deaf to the great message that comes from the Christian faith and its wisdom, it will wither like a tree whose roots no longer reach the waters that give it life." What on earth was the Pope saying? That only Christians can be good scientists? Sorry, Pythagoras; sorry, Galen; sorry, Einstein; sorry, Crick.

Science has rampaged over the landscape of divine explanation, provoking denial or surrender from the church. Christian leaders, even the Catholic church, have reluctantly accommodated the discoveries of scientists, with the odd burning at the stake and excommunication along the way.

But I was astounded to discover how topical the issue of Galileo's trial still is in the Vatican and how resistant many Christians are to scientific ideas that challenge scriptural accounts. More than half of Americans, even a third of Brits, still believe that God created humans in their present form.

The process of Christian accommodation is a bit like the fate of fieldmice confronted by a combine harvester, continuously retreating into the shrinking patch of uncut wheat.

Ten days ago, on Darwin's birthday, Richard Dawkins, Archbishop of Atheism, and Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford, conducted a public conversation in the Oxford University Museum, where Bishop Sam Wilberforce and Darwin's champion, Thomas Henry Huxley, had debated Darwin's ideas in 1860. The two Richards were more civilised. But inevitably, Richard H claimed for religion a territory that science can never invade, a totally safe sanctuary for Christian fieldmice. Science is brilliant at questions that start "how", but religion is the only approach to questions that start "why". Throughout history, human beings have asked those difficult "why" questions.

It's true that spiritual beliefs of one form or another are universal, almost as defining of humanity as language is. But the universality of language and the fact that bits of the human brain are clearly specialised to do language suggest that our genes give us language-learning brains. Is the same true of religion?

Brain scanning has indeed shown particular bits of the brain lighting up with activity when people pray, look at pictures of the Virgin Mary or recollect intense religious experiences. Richard Harries said: "It would not be surprising if God had created us with a physical facility for belief."

But there is another interpretation, which might eventually lead to the completion of the scientific harvest.

Human beings are supremely social animals. We recognise people and judge their feelings and intentions from their expressions and actions. Our thoughts about ourselves, and the words we use to describe those thoughts, are infused with wishes and wants. We feel that we are the helmsmen of our actions, free to choose, even to sin.

But increasingly, those who study the human brain see our experiences, even of our own intentions, as being an illusory commentary on what our brains have already decided to do.

Perhaps we humans come with a false model of ourselves, which works well as a means of predicting the behaviour of other people - a belief that actions are the result of conscious intentions. Then could the pervasive human belief in supernatural forces and spiritual agents, controlling the physical world, and influencing our moral judgments, be an extension of that false logic, a misconception no more significant than a visual illusion?

I'm dubious about those "why" questions: why are we here? Why do we have a sense of right and wrong? Either they make no sense or they can be recast as the kind of "how" questions that science answers so well.

When we understand how our brains generate religious ideas, and what the Darwinian adaptive value of such brain processes is, what will be left for religion?

The American Debate: GOP rants on census are no surprise

By Dick Polman

Inquirer National Political Columnist

Right now, for instance, they're going bonkers over the U.S. census, which is soon slated to begin its decennial mission of counting every American. The census might not strike you as being a particularly sexy issue, but inside the Washington hothouse, the census always bestirs the partisan juices. Despite President Obama's inaugural plea that politicians should put aside "childish things," there remains an overpowering urge to rant in the sandbox.

It all began this month, when the president, still pursuing his post-partisan dream, agreed to tap Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) for the job of commerce secretary. Big mistake. Whoever heads the Commerce Department also oversees the Census Bureau, and the liberal minority groups - recalling that Gregg once tried to cut the census budget, and suspecting that Gregg might prefer to undercount minorities - strongly protested his ascendance.

Those protests prompted the White House to issue a statement promising that Gregg's census director would "work closely with White House senior management." And that's the line that has sent the Republicans, and their messengers, into fits of apoplexy. Gregg has since withdrawn his name, but the emotions persist. On Fox News, Sean Hannity has been inveighing against "the biggest White House power grab ever," which is quite the priceless remark, given the recent Bush-Cheney "unitary executive" assaults on the U.S. Constitution.

GOP headquarters insists that Obama's "Chicago-style" "hijacking" of the census is "unprecedented," and that outraged donors should send money to fight it. A prominent religious-right group, the Family Research Council, insists that even "the liberal San Francisco Chronicle" is outraged. It quotes the paper as warning that Obama may well "destroy the integrity of one of the U.S. government's most trusted institutions" - although, as I discovered during my fact-checking, the group actually plucked that line from a letter to the editor.

Hyperbole aside, it's not surprising that the census is a flash point. Numbers are power. The population count determines who will most benefit from billions in federal aid, and where it will go; it determines which states will gain congressional seats and which states will lose. Both parties have a huge stake in the census. In the broadest terms, Democrats figure to gain clout if minorities and immigrants are overcounted; Republicans gain if these folks are undercounted.

Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, the GOP House leader, intones that the census "should remain independent of politics," but the reality is that the census has been hotly political since the dawn of the republic. A scholar once said that "trying to rid the census of politics is like trying to rid horse racing of competition." Current GOP rhetoric notwithstanding, presidents have always shown an abiding interest.

The very first presidential veto, exercised by George Washington, was about the very first census. He and a close White House adviser, fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson, decided that the census-related formula for congressional seats was too favorable to the Northern states, so they nixed the formula.

By today's rhetorical standards, that veto was a Virginia-style "power grab." And it was surely a "power grab" in 1970, when Republican Richard Nixon - who, at the time, was making a play for future Hispanic votes - ordered the Census Bureau at the 11th hour to add a new survey question about Hispanics.

Will Obama and his team show an interest in the 2010 census? Absolutely. Will they indeed appoint a new census director to fill the currently vacant job? That's how it works. But will that director become a White House lackey, skewing the numbers as part of an Obama conspiracy to craft a permanent majority? Only in the GOP's most fervent dreams. The census will stay within Commerce, and the same congressional oversight committees will oversee it, as always.

Granted, Democrats have certainly sought ways to maximize the minority count. Ten years ago, mindful that the 1990 census had missed eight million people, most of whom were underprivileged, Democrats suggested combining the results of the traditional "head count" with statistical sampling (a process similar to public opinion polls), in order to hike the tally of those minorities and immigrants who had ignored or eluded census inquiries. But Republicans had a solid response - the Constitution requires "actual enumeration" - and the Supreme Court nixed the idea anyway.

That was a big win for the Republicans, but clearly there's something about the census that drives them batty. In 2000, top GOP senators shrieked that certain questions on the census form constituted a government invasion of privacy; for instance, they ridiculed the inquiry about whether Americans had "complete plumbing facilities," including "a flush toilet." It turned out that the question had been asked in every census since 1940.

And once George W. Bush took over . . . well, it won't shock you to learn that, for the last eight years, the Census Bureau has been a mess. Each of the top three jobs turned over three times; none of those officials had any national census-taking experience; and preparations for the 2010 census were chronically underfinanced.

No wonder Obama has an abiding interest in the census; it's yet another fine mess that he is compelled to clean up. The current rants on the right are the least of his problems.

Rant by CNBC's Rick Santelli puts pundit at odds with Obama administration

Phil Rosenthal | Media

February 22, 2009

 

CNBC RANT from Floor of the Chicago Board of Trade.

Volume apparently was up Thursday at the Chicago Board of Trade.

At least loudness was.

"The government is promoting bad behavior!" CNBC's Rick Santelli complained about President Barack Obama's mortgage bailout plan from the Chicago Board of Trade, as traders urged him on. "This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?"

Santelli's full-throttle call for a Chicago Tea Party "dumping in some derivative securities" into Lake Michigan, boosted by good play on the Drudge Report site, made him a near-instant viral video star, a voice of opposition to the administration's stimulus package and, if he plays it right, secured his very own personal economic stimulus.

Assuming the former trader and financial executive enjoys his increased profile, now might be the time for Santelli to pitch a book, a talk show, a political career. Very Foxy.

And assuming CNBC appreciates the fact he has at least momentarily extended its reach well beyond the monied business crowd that watches its daytime markets coverage, as opposed to nighttime reruns of NBC's " Deal or No Deal," it may want to keep Santelli dialed up to 11.

"We don't comment on issues on relating to internal processes or discussions at CNBC," Kevin Goldman, CNBC's vice president for public relations, said by e-mail when asked if CNBC management knew in advance that Santelli was going to rant against the housing plan and whether this salvo will change his status or responsibilities on the channel, which is part of General Electric's NBC Universal.

The trick will be for Rick the Commentator to not become Joe the Plumber, exhausting the interest of even those who support him. But the fact that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs came down hard on Santelli when the subject came up at Friday's briefing speaks to the traction the so-called Rick's Revolt could gain.

"It's tremendously important … for people who rant on cable television to be responsible and understand what it is they're talking about," Gibbs said. "I feel assured that Mr. Santelli doesn't know what he's talking about."

Gibbs invited Santelli to read the administration's plan, even offering to pop for coffee—decaf. Santelli would later respond that he prefers tea. This is a photo op so vivid it's not necessary for anyone to actually show up for the cameras for us all to see it.

Santelli, who at one point Thursday made a comparison to communist Cuba, is invoking the American ideal of individualism.

"Maybe I could have chosen some words better, but I think at the end of the day, what this boils down to is you have to treat everybody fairly," he said the next day on NBC's "Today."

The Obama administration is invoking the American ideal that says united we stand and divided we fall.

The common ground is that everyone agrees the housing market and economy are a mess, people are hurting and no one knows how it will turn out, which means there's territory for a budding pundit to claim as his own.

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COMMENTARY: ON THE MEDIA

President Obama and the role of the ethnic press

 Publisher's Note: London Telegraph usually comes up with more details than most US papers. Probably relying on reporting rather than the AP.

 

By David Blair in Cairo
Last Updated: 10:36PM GMT 20 Feb 2009

Sayyid Imam al-Sharif: The terrorist attacks on September 11 were both immoral and counterproductive, he writes

Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, who goes by the nom de guerre Dr Fadl, helped bin Laden create al-Qaeda and then led an Islamist insurgency in Egypt in the 1990s.

But in a book written from inside an Egyptian prison, he has launched a frontal attack on al-Qaeda's ideology and the personal failings of bin Laden and particularly his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Twenty years ago, Dr Fadl became al-Qaeda's intellectual figurehead with a crucial book setting out the rationale for global jihad against the West.

Today, however, he believes the murder of innocent people is both contrary to Islam and a strategic error. "Every drop of blood that was shed or is being shed in Afghanistan and Iraq is the responsibility of bin Laden and Zawahiri and their followers," writes Dr Fadl.

The terrorist attacks on September 11 were both immoral and counterproductive, he writes. "Ramming America has become the shortest road to fame and leadership among the Arabs and Muslims. But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy's buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours?" asks Dr Fadl. "That, in short, is my evaluation of 9/11."

He is equally unsparing about Muslims who move to the West and then take up terrorism. "If they gave you permission to enter their homes and live with them, and if they gave you security for yourself and your money, and if they gave you the opportunity to work or study, or they granted you political asylum," writes Dr Fadl, then it is "not honourable" to "betray them, through killing and destruction".

In particular, Dr Fadl focuses his attack on Zawahiri, a key figure in al-Qaeda's core leadership and a fellow Egyptian whom he has known for 40 years. Zawahiri is a "liar" who was paid by Sudan's intelligence service to organise terrorist attacks in Egypt in the 1990s, he writes.

The criticisms have emerged from Dr Fadl's cell in Tora prison in southern Cairo, where a sand-coloured perimeter wall is lined with watchtowers, each holding a sentry wielding a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Torture inside Egyptian jails is "widespread and systematic", according to Amnesty International.

Zawahiri has alleged that his former comrade was tortured into recanting. But the al-Qaeda leader still felt the need to compose a detailed, 200-page rebuttal of his antagonist.

The fact that Zawahiri went to this trouble could prove the credibility of Dr Fadl and the fact that his criticisms have stung their target. The central question is whether this attack on al-Qaeda's ideology will sway a wider audience in the Muslim world.

Fouad Allam, who spent 26 years in the State Security Directorate, Egypt's equivalent of MI5, said that Dr Fadl's assault on al-Qaeda's core leaders had been "very effective, both in prison and outside".

He added: "Within these secret organisations, leadership is very important. So when someone attacks the leadership from inside, especially personal attacks and character assassinations, this is very bad for them."

A western diplomat in Cairo agreed with this assessment, saying: "It has upset Zawahiri personally. You don't write 200 pages about something that doesn't bother you, especially if you're under some pressure, which I imagine Zawahiri is at the moment."

Dr Fadl was a central figure from the very outset of bin Laden's campaign. He was part of the tight circle which founded al-Qaeda in 1988 in the closing stages of the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. By then, Dr Fadl was already the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an extremist movement which fought the Cairo regime until its defeat in the 1990s.

Dr Fadl fled to Yemen, where he was arrested after September 11 and transferred to Egypt, where he is serving a life sentence. "He has the credibility of someone who has really gone through the whole system," said the diplomat. "Nobody's questioning the fact that he was the mentor of Zawahiri and the ideologue of Egyptian Islamic Jihad."

Terrorist movements across the world have a history of alienating their popular support by waging campaigns of indiscriminate murder. This process of disintegration often begins with a senior leader publicly denouncing his old colleagues. Dr Fadl's missives may show that al-Qaeda has entered this vital stage.

 

 

Jeb Bush borrows from UK to take on president

America yields in battle for Nato troops

The Government and the Banks

Bank stocks plunged last week on fears that the government will have to take over battered institutions like Citigroup and Bank of America. That would wipe out the banks’ shareholders — hence, investors’ rush for the exits — and put the government in control of a swath of the financial system.

Americans have a visceral horror of the word nationalization. So call it restructuring or majority ownership. Or call it the taxpayers’ due after pouring in hundreds of billions of dollars in capital and guarantees and standing ready to pour in hundreds of billions more. We increasingly believe it is the least bad solution to a truly desperate situation.

Bank losses are mounting, leaving some institutions undercapitalized and — by credible calculations — insolvent. That is a disaster for taxpayers. They need the banks to function, and it is their money on the line to support banks that are too big to fail, like Citi and BofA.

Rescue measures have so far prevented a system-wide meltdown, but they have not reversed the downward slide or revived bank lending. That will not happen until investors have a firm grasp of the losses that everyone knows are on banks’ books — but that the banks are loath to acknowledge.

Done right, a takeover would be a once-and-for-all fix. The government would examine the banks’ holdings to get a realistic assessment of the toxic assets that are crippling the banks — and how much capital each bank needs, not only to survive but to begin lending again.

Institutions that are healthy enough to raise the needed capital from private investors would remain in shareholders’ hands. Those that are too weak would be taken over by the government and recapitalized with taxpayer money. The government would be in charge of restructuring those banks’ finances and operations. Current management would be fired — an appropriate end for executives whose failures have brought their companies and the country to this dark and dangerous point. Because taxpayers would be the owners, they would benefit from the gains to be had when the banks recover.

Critics will charge that government bureaucrats do not have the skills to pull this off. But the United States has a successful history of seizing insolvent banks through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The takeovers contemplated here are larger in scale and would be more complex than those that have generally fallen under the F.D.I.C.’s purview. But the notion that the government totally lacks the know-how to nationalize insolvent banks is not valid.

Safeguards must also be built into the process to curtail political meddling in lending and other decisions.

The aim is to clean up the banks efficiently, rather than allow the problems to become bigger, and then — as soon as possible — to sell the banks back to private investors. They will be smaller institutions. And there will be proper regulations in place to ensure that this catastrophe does not happen again.

Taking over big failed banks will be very difficult politically. But technically it could be easier than many of the elaborate rescues that have been tried and proposed.

On Friday, President Obama’s spokesman tried to calm the markets by reaffirming the administration’s preference for a sound privately owned banking system. We share that preference. But it looks as if the best way to get from here to there is for some of the banks to spend some time in the government’s hands.

Brown flies to meet President Obama for economy crisis talks

Mini-summit announced as George Soros says ‘the world financial system has disintegrated’

By David Randall and Jane Merrick

he ground for April’s G20 meeting in London, which is intended to draw up concrete measures for international economic recovery. Mr Soros, whose words and actions have moved entire markets in the past, told attendees at a conference dinner at Columbia University: “We witnessed the collapse of the financial system. It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support.”

His words are stronger than his previous statements: at Davos a month ago, he said the financial system was merely “dysfunctional”. He now compares the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union and added: “There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.” Another speaker, Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Fed and now adviser to President Obama, said that, while he felt capitalism would survive, “I’m not so sure about financial capitalism”.

The announcement by Washington of the visit brings to an end speculation over whether Mr Brown would be beaten by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, or the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, for an audience with the world’s most popular politician. Mr Brown will meet Chancellor Merkel in Berlin today as he continues with preparations for April’s G20 summit in London.

Momentum is now building for more than hand-wringing and fine words to come out of the London summit. President Sarkozy said yesterday: “I will not associate myself with a position that does not give an ambitious response to this deep crisis.” Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has already called for the summit to make “strong and concrete” proposals to fight the financial crisis.

Guiding Mr Brown and, he hopes, the other leaders at the gathering will be the 74-page document he unveiled last week called The Road to the London Summit: The Plan for Recovery. It calls for eight “concrete commitments” to be agreed at the meeting. They include a review of measures so far taken to stimulate demand; an increase in the IMF’s resources to make more loans; immediate action to ensure banks are adequately capitalised; an international renunciation of protectionism; reform of financial regulation; and reform of international financial institutions.

In his New York speech, Mr Volcker delivered judgements unimaginable a few months ago. He began by saying the financial system we have known would never return. “Too many weaknesses and flaws have been exposed,” he said. He added that banks had gone from a system based on relationships with customers to “a very impersonal kind of market where everything was a deal”, often at arm’s length, with loans packaged, repackaged, and resold, often several times a day.

Mr Volcker insisted that banks should be barred from sponsoring hedge and equity funds, and engaging in any high-risk activity, and incentive schemes should be completely overhauled. He said he found no evidence that the huge sums made by bankers “penetrated down to the rdinary person”.

A more distributive US economy has had to await the advent of Barack Obama, and yesterday the President said Americans will start to reap the benefits of a $787bn stimulus package in a matter of weeks. “Never before in our history has a tax cut taken effect faster or gone to so many hardworking Americans,” he said. He added that in six weeks a typical family will start taking home at least $65 (£45) more every month, part of plans that will, he insists, benefit 95 per cent of working families.

And yesterday word began to leak out of the budget that President Obama is finalising. He wants to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term, mostly by scaling back Iraq war spending, raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans and streamlining government. Obama's proposal for the 2010 fiscal year that begins on 1 October projects that the $1.3 trillion deficit he inherited will be halved to $533 bn by 2013. He has pledged to wind down the Iraq war by withdrawing most combat troops within 16 months of taking office. He also has said he would letting the Bush tax cuts expire for people making more than $250,000 a year, effectively raising taxes on those people.

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