Afghanistan Messier than Ever for Obama

First, please note that several posts have gone up by me on The Daily Capitalist. You may click HERE, HERE and HERE for them or go to the first 'HERE' and scroll down.

Next, several news items are out showing how uphill the Obama surge is in Afghanistan. First, from Reuters:

Afghanistan's political crisis worsened Saturday with lawmakers voting to sack the five most senior judicial officials and international consternation growing after a presidential tribunal threw out a quarter of parliament.

The special court, set up by a decree of Afghan President Hamid Karzai after parliamentary elections last year were marred by fraud, ruled Thursday that 62 lawmakers would have to be replaced because of alleged poll fraud.

Karzai did not immediately comment, perhaps because he is in Iran attending a security conference. Hmmm . . .

And speaking of Iran, they're quite the wonderful country with which and in which to feel secure. Here is today's news out of Iran from the Guardian:

Prison guards in Iran are giving condoms to criminals and encouraging them to systematically rape young opposition activists locked up with them, according to accounts from inside the country's jail system.

A series of dramatic letters written by prisoners and families of imprisoned activists allege that authorities are intentionally facilitating mass rape and using it as a form of punishment.

And getting back to Afghanistan, of course there are many reasons for lack of military success (perhaps the main reason is that military force can't defeat a popular insurgency), but here's one that would have been utterly marvelous news 70 years ago:

German Soldiers Can’t Shoot

Leaked reports question the competence of the German army, which has thousands of troops serving in Afghanistan.

June 26, 2011 10:30 PM EDT

“German soldiers mostly don’t know how to use their weapons.” They “have no or little experience driving armored vehicles.” For German field commanders, “the necessity and ways [to protect their units from roadside bombs] are to a large extent either unknown or incorrect.”

These are quotes from a series of secret internal reports on the German army, the Bundeswehr, whose 5,000 soldiers in the northern Kunduz sector of Afghanistan were supposed to help the U.S. rout the Taliban and stabilize the country over the past 10 years.

Out now.

Afghan Election Fraud, Gold and Interest Rates

Yours truly has commented that given the slack in the economy, the biggest risk to a significant return of price increases would likely be a large war in Afghanistan. The President is widely reported to be rethinking his previous emphasis on winning there.

Anyone interested in the idea that there is a government worth fighting for in Afghanistan may want to read What I Saw at the Afghan Special Election.

My conclusion is that the Karzai government is not worth another American life, 8 of which were lost in a battle Saturday.

The article also describes the current warfare as a civil war between Pashtuns. Presumably they are fighting over control of the drug trade. So rather than buy off Mr. Karzai, why not just buy off both sides in the war?

So far as we are given to believe, al-Qaeda is largely headquartered in Pakistan, anyway.

The financial markets are quiet in Asia. So long as the political situation stays stable there as well, the 10-year Treasury still appears to EBR to be pointing toward a 3-3.1% yield and the 30-year to an even more surprising 3.7% yield or less.

Louise Yamada, who called the gold bottom about 8 years ago, disclosed very recently that she now has a target of $1300/ounce for the metal during this ongoing move upwards. She does not however predict both price and time, but generally her time frame for this sort of prediction is not years and years (which would render the prediction useless).

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