Over in Afghanistan

All is not quiet on that other front:

Attacks in Afghanistan have begun to emulate those in Iraq: suicide bombings, which are not a traditional Afghan approach; similar types of explosive devices set off by remote control; missile attacks from longer range; and the targeting of foreign aid organisations and the UN.
. . .
One of the most worrying developments has been the systematic killing of aid workers, now totalling 15. Colonel Mike Griffiths, the commander of the British troops in Afghanistan, told The Independent: “There is no doubt. There are now indications of methodology transfer from Iraq. Some of the things we have seen in Iraq, we are beginning to see here.”
Eighteen months after the fall of their Islamist regime, the Taliban and their al-Qa’ida allies are resurgent, while the forces of the Kabul government are in retreat in large swaths of the south and east. The deputy governor of Zabul admits most of his province is now in Taliban hands, officials report that the situation is much the same in neighbouring Oruzgan, while about half the territory in Kandahar has slipped out of government control. In the dusty town of Spin Boldak close to the border with Pakistan in the east, where the Taliban was born, black and green flags celebrate its rebirth.
American forces in Afghanistan and the multinational International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) have come under fire more times in the past three months than the previous 15. This year, 25 American and Isaf soldiers have been killed and 28 injured. The number of Afghans, allied and enemy, killed, according to the US military, is “several thousand”. More than 400 Taliban fighters were said to have been killed in September.

The growing Iraqification of Afghanistan doesn’t sound good. Nontheless President Hamid Karzai says the insurgents are not destabilizing the country:

“It’s not working,” he said, referring to the rising number of Taliban attacks that have killed 300 Afghans, including 100 policemen and 13 aid workers, this year. “It’s working against them.”

This may or may not be the case. It sounds a little too much like political rhetoric, but who knows. It’s clear, however, that despite the talk of writing a constitution and all that good stuff Afghanistan is a long way from anything resembling autonomy.
I hope the foreign troops are comfy in Kabul.

Ironical If True

Apparently Strom may not have been as committed a segregationist as one might assume:

A 78-year-old retired schoolteacher is coming forward after years of silence to claim she is the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, her attorney said Saturday.
Essie Mae Washington-Williams, who lives in Los Angeles, had long been rumored to be the daughter of the one-time segregationist, who died June 26 at the age of 100. She is coming forward now at the urging and encouragement of her children, attorney Frank K. Wheaton said.
. . .
Williams claims Thurmond fathered her long before his political career started, when he was a 22-year-old living in his parents’ home in Edgefield, S.C. Her mother, then 16, had been working as a maid in the Thurmonds’ home.
If challenged by the Thurmond family, Williams is ready to submit to DNA tests, Wheaton said.
Williams said she has documents to validate her claim, including cashier’s check stubs, mementos from Thurmond and a letter from an intermediary who delivered money from the senator. She provided the Post with a copy of a 1998 Thurmond letter thanking her “for the nice Father’s Day note you sent me.”

Contrarian Employment Outlook

You listen to some of the rah rah Wall Street talking heads and you’d think we’re on the verge of an unprecedented employment boom. Stephen Roach isn’t convinced:

The spin-meisters are hard at work proclaiming the long awaited healing of the US labor market. Jobs have now been up for four months in a row, and many of the so-called leading indicators of future employment growth — jobless claims, work schedules, and purchasing managers� hiring intentions — are flashing green. And so the verdict has been rendered: At long last, the great American hiring machine is finally shifting gears — marking a critical turning point for the US economy on the road to sustainable recovery.
I don�t buy it. As I read the US labor market, there is still compelling evidence of a fundamental breakdown in the time-honored relationship between aggregate demand and employment. While it seems that the worst of the layoff carnage is over in the aggregate — at least for the time being — this recovery bears no relationship whatsoever to the classic hiring-led upturns of the past.
. . .
There seems to be a real disconnect between the actual numbers on the hiring front and the impressions that have been formed in financial markets. Total nonfarm payrolls have expanded by only 328,000 workers over the August to November 2003 period — an average of 82,000 per month. That�s far short of the pace of job creation that normally occurs at this stage in a business cycle recovery — somewhere in the range of 250,000 to 300,000 per month. Yet many have been quick to interpret the recent modest pickup in hiring as a sign that Corporate America is finally breaking the shackles of risk aversion and emerging from the funk of recent years. The mix of recent hiring trends tells a very different picture. It turns out that fully 84% of the total increase in nonfarm payrolls over the August to November period is traceable to hiring in four segments of the labor market — the temporary staffing industry, health, education, and government — where combined jobs have increased by 68,000 per month. In other words, the bulk of the so-called hiring turnaround since August has been concentrated in either the contingent workforce (temps) or in those industry groupings that are least exposed to global competition. This hardly speaks of a US business sector that has consciously made an important transition from downsizing to expansion. It merely reflects the fact that scale is increasing in the most sheltered and least productive segments of the economy.
Those trends stand in sharp contrast to employment conditions in those segments of the economy that are most exposed to tough competitive pressures. Over the past four months, jobs have continued to decline in manufacturing, the information sector (i.e., telecom, publishing, data processing, and broadcasting), wholesale distribution, and finance and insurance. Moreover, at the same time, employment growth has been anemic in transportation and warehousing and in a broad array of professional and business services other than temps (i.e., legal, computer systems design, management consulting). Collectively, these �exposed� segments of the economy employ about 47 million workers, or 36% of the total nonfarm workforce. Over the August to November time period, jobs in this large collection of industries have contracted, on average, by 20,000 per month.
. . .
This jobless recovery has just celebrated its second anniversary. Never in the modern-day history of the US business cycle has there been such a profound shortfall of hiring. For months we�ve been hearing that�s about to change. The recent sharp acceleration in the US economy, in conjunction with a modest improvement on the overall hiring front in the past four months, have led most to believe that an old-fashioned hiring-led recovery is just around the corner. Don�t bet on it. The global labor arbitrage tells me there�s something new and big going on that will continue to defy the optimistic spin that is now being put on a still very sluggish American labor market.

Losing Strength

Uh oh:

The strength of the Earth’s magnetic field has decreased 10 percent over the past 150 years, raising the remote possibility that it may collapse and later reverse, flipping the planet’s poles for the first time in nearly a million years, scientists said Thursday.
At that rate of decline, the field could vanish altogether in 1,500 to 2,000 years, said Jeremy Bloxham of Harvard University.
Hundreds of years could pass before a flip-flopped field returned to where it was 780,000 years ago. But scientists at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union cautioned that scenario is an unlikely one.

This change allegedly may affect satellites and the chemistry of the atmosphere. I’m not sure what other impact this may have on people. But if you’re prone to roam in the wilderness using on a compass to navigate, you might think about investing in one of those GPS gadgets. ‘Course if the satellites get knocked out those won’t be much help, either.
Good luck.

Rebuilding Continues

This story ran yesterday but is worth noting:

US plans to create a new Iraqi army have suffered a setback after hundreds of recruits resigned.
The army’s first 700-man battalion lost 300 troops who were within weeks of being deployed, Pentagon officials say.
The battalion is the only one trained so far for what is eventually hoped to be a 40,000-strong force.

This isn’t the type of trend that makes it easy to turn control of Iraq back to the Iraqis.
Funny I haven’t heard much about this in the liberal, everything-is-crumbling-in-Iraq media.