From The Times of London
January 22, 2009Task No 1 for Barack Obama: reinvent capitalismLessons have been learnt. Obamanomics will not try to rebuild America on the principle that markets are always right Anatole Kaletsky
The words “Remaking America” were splashed yesterday across the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and almost every other paper in the US. This kind of unanimity in the press corps is not coincidental - “Remaking America” was the phrase the President's media machine wanted to emphasise. Why?“Remaking America” is President Obama's riposte to the slogan of populist conservatism through the ages: “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.” This do-nothing mentality was taken to its logical extreme by George W. Bush and his doltish Administration, whose epitaph should be the P.J.O'Rourke quip: “The Republicans are a party who believe that government doesn't work and get themselves elected to prove it.” To have any hope of repairing the ruin left behind by the Bush Administration, President Obama must first convince the 45 per cent of the population who voted against him that America really is broke. Not only is the US trapped, as Mr Obama noted, in a geopolitical quagmire and the worst recession in living memory. But behind both of these dreadful things lurks a horror even more existentially shocking: the entire politico-economic model of free enterprise, rugged individualism and small government on which America built its global hegemony seems to have broken down. How else can one describe a situation in which all of the country's main financial institutions and many of its biggest industrial companies are effectively bankrupt and on government life-support?The crisis triggered by September's bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers appears to have discredited many of the assumptions on which American prosperity and democracy was founded. In this sense, it really is possible to compare the credit crunch, as Ed Miliband did last weekend, to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1989 the world, from China and Russia to South Africa, India and Brazil, concluded that there was no serious alternative to market forces as a means of organising productive activity. In 2009 the whole world seems to have reached the opposite conclusion - that free markets and financial incentives lead even the richest and most sophisticated societies to disaster.Background Obama’s stimulus could turn round economy this year Can Obama fix it? Yes he can He may be the 'no we can't' President Why everyone is behind Obama There is, however, a crucial difference between these two pivotal years and this brings us to the positive side of President Obama's message. Communism was a monolithic and inflexible system that worked against the grain of human nature and had to be brutally imposed. Capitalism, by contrast, is a constantly evolving and organic set of human relationships. It advances by trial and error and takes a myriad different forms. Thus the demise of…

Safe, yes, but Obama's new limo won't turn any petrol heads 'Ugly as sin': the verdict on modified Cadillac capable of withstanding bomb blasts By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Thursday, 8 January 2009
AFP/ GETTY IMAGES President-elect Obama's new 'rolling tank' has been criticised for its functional dullness   Barack Obama's brand new presidential limousine has been given the Pimp My Ride treatment by the US Secret Service in time for his inauguration in under two weeks time. Despite campaign trail promises to transform all White House vehicles into hybrids, the President-elect has had to bow to security concerns. As he tools around Washington DC in the years to come, he will be cocooned inside a modified Cadillac that is capable of withstanding roadside bomb blasts and could survive a sustained battle involving gunfire and RPGs. Code-named "Stagecoach," it is more like a rolling tank with no gun barrel. According to the Detroit News, the new limousine also has "run-flat" tyres, bulletproof glass and a completely sealed interior to protect the next president in the event of a chemical attack. It also has encrypted electronic communications equipment. A detail of Secret Service agents is currently being familiarised with the new vehicle at an undisclosed location near Washington. Shortly after Mr Obama takes the oath of office on 20 January, the agents will drive him the two miles down Pennsylvania Avenue for the inaugural parade. Vast crowds are expected in Washington, some predict more than two million people, and billions are expected to watch the inauguration live on television. But as soon as Mr Obama has been sworn in on Abraham Lincoln's bible, (who used a horse and buggy to get around) and hops into the limo, he may very well disappear from view. The windows in his Cadillac are especially small to present less of a target and the doors are as thick as those on an airliner and packed with armour. Spy photos of the limousine – complete with bands of grey primer – have leaked, as have car enthusiasts' reviews: "Ugly as sin," said one on a car enthusiasts' website. "Can't we make a hotter ride for our pres?" "Sheesh," wrote another, "why don't they just transport the president around in an Abrams tank?" One commentator suggested it could withstand a "direct hit from an asteroid". However, General Motors' spokeswoman Joanne Krell dismissed that, telling CNN: "And it will fix you a latte if you ask." "The presidential vehicle is built to precise specifications, undergoes extreme testing and development, and also incorporates many of the top aspects of Cadillac's 'regular' cars – such as signature design, hand-cut-and-sewn interiors, etc," Ms Krell said. The legislation creating the Secret Service was on President Lincoln's desk the night he was assassinated and ever since agents have been tailing US presidents. In 1907, the agency acquired a steam car known as "The Incomparable White" to follow Theodore Roosevelt's horse-drawn carriage. For much…

 Still a Republican, Powell Urges Party to Become More Inclusive
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 24, 2009
    Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell today reaffirmed his allegiance to the Republican Party and called for a "no-holds-barred, candid" debate about the party's future. Powell, one of the GOP's most popular figures, used an appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation" to strike back at a barrage of recent attacks against him as a Democrat in GOP clothing. Former vice president Richard B. Cheney caustically said two weeks ago that he thought Powell, his onetime colleague in the Bush administration, had given up his membership in the party. Powell retorted that Cheney was "misinformed," adding, "I am still a Republican." And the retired general called for the Republicans to "define who we are, and not just listen to the diktats that have come down from the right wing of the party." He suggested that "moving further to the right" has "allowed the center to be taken over by independents and . . . Democrats." The GOP would remain an isolated minority, Powell said, unless it expanded beyond the "very, very narrow base" that decisively lost the presidency and Congress to the Democrats last November. Powell repeated his support for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an issue that has illustrated a deep divide at the top ranks of party politics. Cheney has accused President Obama of endangering national security by demanding both the shuttering of the facility and the release or federal trial of most of the 240 detainees who remain there. "I've felt Guantanamo should be closed for the past six years," Powell said. "I lobbied and presented reasons to President [George W.] Bush. Mr. Cheney is not only disagreeing with President's Obama's policy, but also with" the administration in which he served. Bush wanted to close the prison, Powell said, but "couldn't get all the pieces together" and ran into many of the same problems Obama is now encountering. But Powell faulted Obama for seeking to close Guantanamo without a detailed plan on what he would do with the detainees. Both the House and Senate last week refused to give the administration the funding it sought to shut down the prison, and many lawmakers said their states would not permit alleged terrorists to be transferred to domestic prisons. Powell's estrangement from Cheney and others in the Bush White House led to his not being invited to serve a second term as secretary of state, and conservatives including popular conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh were stung by Powell's endorsement of Obama in last fall's election. In recent weeks, they have led a sustained assault against him. Two weeks ago, Cheney said he would choose Limbaugh over Powell as a party exemplar and suggested that Powell was no longer a Republican. Limbaugh, for his part, said Powell was…

   Obama gets ready to make toughest call of presidency• US will set out war strategy before Thanksgiving next week
• Brown's speech aims to shore up support of British publicJulian Borger and Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 November 2009 22.17 GMT Article history The first Royal Air Force Merlin helicopter destined for Afghanistan is loaded into a C17 transport aircraft at RAF Brize Norton yesterday. Photograph: Steve Lympany/MoD/PA  President Barack Obama is expected to make a long-awaited announcement on his Afghan war strategy in the next few days in an attempt to bring an end to a prolonged period of uncertainty surrounding US intentions, officials said today.Gordon Brown today attempted to shore up British public support for the war prior to Obama's declaration, arguing that Nato's resolve in Afghanistan would "never succumb to appeasement", while offering to host a conference in January to agree a phased handover of the military effort to Kabul.Nato allies are awaiting Obama's declaration on strategy and reinforcements before deciding on their own contributions. However, impatient British defence chiefs have warned that the deployment of 500 extra British troops pledged by the prime minister was urgently required and should not be dependent on Washington's decision, or on the political conditions laid down by the prime minister. "It's nothing to do with politics. We need them now," a defence official said.Obama's announcement is provisionally planned before the American Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday next week. If it is left until after that it could coincide jarringly with the ceremony bestowing the Nobel peace prize on the US president in Oslo on 10 December.However, before finally deciding on how many more troops to send into the battle with the Taliban, the US is seeking specific commitments from the Afghan and Pakistani governments on what they are prepared to contribute to the fight.The US and its allies are demanding fundamental reforms from President Hamid Karzai aimed at curbing the corruption rampant in his government and increasing the flow of recruits to a new Afghan national army.Western officials are demanding that Karzai signal a decisive break with the past in his inauguration speech on Thursday and in his subsequent government appointments. There has been speculation in Washington that Obama, currently on a tour of Asia, might fly to Kabul to deliver that message himself.Meanwhile, Obama's national security adviser, James Jones, has been dispatched to Islamabad to ask the government there to extend its current offensive against Pakistani insurgents to fight Afghan Taliban groups sheltering on Pakistani territory. According to the New York Times, Jones told the Islamabad government that the US strategy would only work if Pakistan broadened its military offensive in the tribal areas along its borders with Afghanistan. The appeal was contained in a letter from Obama delivered by Jones to Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president.Pakistan has raised concerns that a US military surge in Afghanistan would push more Taliban across the border and undermine Pakistani stability, at…

  Huge influx of immigrants has changed Dutch society forever  Friday, 5 March 2010What had been expected to be relatively run-of-the-mill local elections in the Netherlands quickly acquired a lot more significance once the Dutch government had unexpectedly collapsed over the Afghanistan issue. These results tell us little about Afghanistan, but they do offer a foretaste of the possible result of the general election that is planned for 9 June, and in particular they give us a good indication of the prospects for Geert Wilders' far-right Freedom Party.  Dutch politics has been in disarray since the traditional patterns were first challenged by Pim Fortuyn's populist protest in 2002. Fortuyn was, of course, assassinated just before that election, and his leaderless party fell apart soon afterwards. Wilders has now taken up Fortuyn's legacy, but in a much more extreme and direct manner. His is an explicitly anti-Islam party, decrying the Koran, threatening deportation for immigrant offenders, promising a ban on the building of mosques and minarets, and so on. In this, he builds on, and further promotes, the inter-communal tensions that have been so evident in the Netherlands since Fortuyn, and which also hit the headlines with the assassination of film director Theo van Gogh and the hounding of the politician and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Dutch society, long one of the most homogenous in continental Europe, was never as tolerant as it appeared, and problems which rumbled for long under the surface have become steadily more acute as the share of the non- Western immigrant population has grown to become one of the largest in western Europe. The Dutch party system is now exceptionally fragmented. No party is expected to win much more than 20 per cent in the coming election, which, given the extreme proportionality of the electoral system, means none is likely to win more than 30 of the 150 seats.In this clouded Dutch landscape, Wilders's sharp and direct appeal wins a lot of favour. He also runs a highly disciplined party. There is no membership, and hence no activist layer which needs to be appeased, and the party's parliamentary group – currently nine seats – is firmly under his control. In the local elections, he concentrated his efforts on just two flagship municipalities: Almere, a new city near Amsterdam, and The Hague, the seat of government. His party did tremendously well in both, topping the poll in Almere, and running a close second to Labour in The Hague. All this is good for the image that Wilders promotes, of a party for straight talking and with popular appeal. It also positions him well for the general election, with the Freedom Party now being forecast to emerge as the first or second largest in parliament. The big question now is whether, and how, that success might translate into…