1. The LA Times reports Afghanistan ‘enemy combatants’ can make their case in U.S. court. U.S. District Judge John Bates “ruled today that prisoners in ‘the war on terror’ can use courts in the United States to challenge their detention at” the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

   Meanwhile, the U.S. military wants more troops deployed in Afghanistan. “Gen. David H. Petraeus disclosed yesterday that American commanders have requested the deployment of an additional 10,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year”… He said the Pentagon has not yet forwarded the troop request to the White House.” I wonder is this part of Petraeus 2012 presidential strategy?

   The NY Times adds Friday’s NATO meeting will highlight strains on Afghanistan. When they meet for the 60th anniversary of NATO, leaders “must face the harsh reality that NATO’s first military mission outside Europe is failing in a way that risks fracturing the alliance.”

   Nearly all of the additional troops being sent by European NATO-members to AFganistan this summer are there to provide security for the elections this summer and “not be permanently deployed.” Certainly implies U.S. deployment are permanent.

   While across the border in Pakistan, The Guardian reports of a Video of a girl’s flogging as Taliban hand out justice. A two-minute video showing a burka-clad “teenage girl being flogged by Taliban fighters has emerged from the Swat Valley in Pakistan, offering a shocking glimpse of militant brutality in the once-peaceful district, and a sign of Taliban influence spreading deeper into the country.”

   “Please stop it,” she begs, alternately whimpering or screaming in pain with each blow to the backside. “Either kill me or stop it now.”

   A crowd of men stands by, watching silently. Off camera a voice issues instructions. “Hold her legs tightly,” he says as she squirms and yelps.

   After 34 lashes the punishment stops and the wailing woman is led into a stone building, trailed by a Kalashnikov-carrying militant.

Four at Four continues with lax oversight of State Department mercenaries, monkey-wrenching student faces two-count federal felony, and Russia re-proposes replacing the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

1. The LA Times reports the U.S. and Russia reopen talks on nuclear arms. “The United States and Russia have agreed to reopen talks about curtailing their arsenals of nuclear warheads, marking the first major arms discussions since 1997, with President Obama saying today that he has accepted an invitation to travel to Moscow in July.”

   In Moscow, “the leaders plan to discuss a possible replacement for an expiring 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which limited the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 nuclear warheads. That agreement, known as START, expires on Dec. 5.”

   The NY Times adds Obama and Russia’s President Dmitri Medvedev “sought to warm what had become an icy post-cold war relationship, agreeing to cooperate on issues ranging from the war in Afghanistan to efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions. A four-page statement released after the hourlong meeting promised a ‘fresh start in relations between our two countries'”.

   “We, the leaders of Russia and the United States, are ready to move beyond cold war mentalities,” the two men said in the joint statement. “In just a few months we have worked hard to establish a new tone in our relations. Now it is time to get down to business and translate our warm words into actual achievements of benefit to Russia, the United States, and all those around the world interested in peace and prosperity.”

2. The AP reports the FBI finds No forensic match to Blackwater for ammo in Baghdad massacre. FBI researchers were unable to match bullets fired in the 2007 Nisoor Square massacre to guns allegedly fired by Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries. The FBI laboratory report leaves “open the possibility that insurgents also fired in the crowded intersection.”

   “Five Blackwater guards face manslaughter and weapons charges for their role in the shooting, which left 17 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-U.S. sentiment abroad. Prosecutors say the contractors launched an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenade launchers. The guards maintain their convoy was ambushed by insurgents.”

3. The NY Times reports Five suicide bombers attack Afghan provincial council.

   Five suicide bombers stormed a government office here Wednesday morning during a seminar hosted by an American democracy promotion organization, killing 13 people, including two provincial government officials, and wounding 14 others.

   One militant detonated a car bomb at the entrance gate of the provincial council office, as others stormed the compound in the center of Kandahar city with assault rifles and hand grenades, shooting at officials and guards inside. Seven civilians and six police were killed in the 20-minute gun battle, which ended when two of the militants blew themselves up inside the main hall, the provincial police chief, Matiullah Qati, said.

4. The Republicans offer a more detailed budget plan, according to the Washington Post. The House Republicans want to “cut taxes for business and the wealthy, freeze most government spending for five years, halt spending approved in the economic stimulus package and slash federal health programs for the poor and elderly.” Their plan still requires $3.1 trillion in new borrowing.

   According to The Hill, the Republican budget makes permanent Bush tax cuts set to expire next year. Their plan would further reduce taxes on the wealthy so they would pay less than the highest rate under Bush. In addition, the Republicans “would repeal most of President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus. And it would reduce Medicare and Social Security benefits for wealthy Americans age 55 and under.”

1. The LA Times reports the EPA proposes cuts in air pollution from foreign ships. In a submission to International Maritime Organization (IMO), a U.N. agency, the EPA proposed creating a 230-mile Emissions Control Area along the coastal waters and ports of the United States and Canada.

   Foreign ships “account for 95% of all calls to port nationwide” and are “largely beyond the jurisdictional reach of state and federal air pollution regulations. This plan would regulate the emissions of foreign vessels under the auspices of the U.N. agency.”

   The Washington Post notes IMO approved the concept of emission control areas last October. If this proposal is adopted, “ships must use fuel with no more than 1,000 parts per million of sulfur beginning in 2015, and as of 2016, new ships must use advanced pollution controls.”

   The tighter standards would impose new costs on shipping, but industry, public health and environmental groups said the policy change is justified. “It will be costly, but it’s doable,” said Christopher L. Koch, president of the World Shipping Council. “We know this issue of vessel emissions needed an effective international response.”

2. The NY Times reports $296 billion in overruns in U.S. weapons programs.

   Nearly 70 percent of the Pentagon’s 96 largest weapons programs were over budget last year, for a combined total of $296 billion more than the original estimates, a Congressional auditing agency reported Monday.

   The findings, compiled by the Government Accountability Office, seemed likely to add to the pressure on officials to make sizable cuts in the most troubled programs as they work out the details of a proposed $664 billion defense budget for fiscal 2010.

Four at Four continues with U.S.-Iran diplomacy and Karzai’s pro-rape law in Afghanistan and the Pakistani Talibans plans attacks on Washington, D.C.

1. The CS Monitor reports China questions US’s financial dominance ahead of the G-20 summit. “Beijing is aiming for GDP growth of 8 percent this year. The World Bank estimates China’s economy will grow by about 6.5 percent… In fact, Chinese leaders have been voicing more concern recently over the US economy than about their own.”

   China has the bulk of its $2 trillion worth of foreign reserves in U.S. dollars. “Beijing is frightened that the fast pace at which the US Federal Reserve is printing dollars could lead to inflation, a fall in the dollar’s value, and big losses for China.” Americans with savings should be concerned about this too.

   China’s “Central Bank’s deputy governor, Hu Xiaolian, pointedly suggested last Monday that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should henceforth monitor the US economy as closely as it has traditionally overseen struggling Third World countries.”

   As a standard bearer for developing countries, China will use this week’s G-20 summit to demand that they should have a louder voice in the IMF, Ms. Hu said. She even took a swipe at the tradition by which the World Bank is headed by an American and the IMF by a European.

   Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reports China and Argentina sign a 70 billion Yuan currency swap. “The move will help ensure the stability of the regional currency system and contain financial risks amid the global financial crisis… China arranged a 100 billion yuan swap with Indonesia on March 23, a 20 billion yuan swap with Belarus on March 11, an 80 billion yuan swap with Malaysia last month, a 200 billion yuan swap with Hong Kong in January and a 180 billion yuan swap with South Korea in December.”

   According to Reuters via The Guardian, “Thanks to the swap, Argentina will not have to pay for imports from China in dollars, the currency in which most international trade is settled”.

   Huang Zhilong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said the swap set a good example for other Latin American countries to follow.

   “Since Argentina has done this, why can’t other countries like Brazil and Venezuela?” said Huang, who studies Latin American finances. “It’s a big deal that will increase China’s financial presence in Latin America.”

   The U.S. dollar’s days of dominance are counting down.

2. By the way, the LA Times reports the AIG crisis could be the tip of an insurance iceberg.

   As the economic crisis deepens, it has become clear that AIG’s problems extend across most of its business lines, including its massive life insurance and retirement services operations, which reported a staggering $18-billion quarterly loss this month.

   The company’s situation is emblematic of problems across the life insurance industry, which is suffering deep losses on investments that underlie policies for millions of American families.

Four at Four continues with civil war brewing in Iraq and Obama on Afghanistan.

1. McClatchy reports At least 48 people die in a suicide bombing of Pakistani mosque. “The blast demolished a two-story mosque in Jamrud, in the tribal area near the Afghan border. Many of the dead and wounded were buried under bricks and slabs of concrete. Officials warned that up to 70 people could have died, and some reports put the wounded at 170.”

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports President Obama unveils Afghan plan to add troops and set goals. “The situation is increasingly perilous,” Obama said. The president warned that of intelligence estimates that al Qaeda “is actively planning attacks on the U.S. homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan.”

   “We have a clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future,” Obama added. “That is the goal that must be achieved.”

   Obama will send an additional 4,000 U.S. from the 4th brigade, 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, NC to Afghanistan in a training role. According to McClatchy, Obama shifts the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan toward more modest goals. In addition to sending more forces, “it will also ‘surge’ of hundreds diplomats and civilian specialists to help run elections, fighting rampant corruption and battle increased narcotics trafficking. It also calls for tripling economic aid to Pakistan.”

   According to the Washington Post, Obama wants more funding for the Afghan occupation. According to White House aides, expenses for Afghan operations this year “will increase about 60 percent from the current toll of $2 billion a month… Obama called on Congress to pass legislation to provide $1.5 billion a year for five years in economic assistance to Pakistan, along with a bill creating ‘opportunity zones’ for exports. Additional development aid is also planned for Afghanistan, and Obama said he would launch a “dramatic increase,” expected to number in the hundreds, of U.S. civilian officials on the ground there. The United States also plans to provide additional equipment, including transport helicopters, to the Pakistani military.”

   “I do not ask for this support lightly,” Obama said… “These are challenging times, and resources are stretched. But the American people must understand that this is a down payment on our own future.”

Four at Four continues with plans to stay in Iraq cities beyond the June deadline, the algae bloom CO₂ experiment in Antarctica fails, and social safety nets work in Europe while here in America, jobs are shifted overseas.

1. The Guardian reports President Barack Obama may delay signing up to Copenhagen climate change deal because of wide scale opposition to such a deal in Congress. Officials in the administration have been warning their counterparts in Britain, “the president may need at least another six months to win domestic support for any proposal.” A delay will cause Kyoto to expire without a new agreement in place.

   “American officials would prefer to have the approval of Congress for any international agreement and fear that if the US signed up without it there would be a serious domestic backlash.”

   However, there was some good environmental news out of Washington, D.C. today. The LA Times reports the Wilderness protection bill gets Congress’ approval. “The legislation gives maximum federal protection to more than 2 million acres in nine states” and is “the largest expansion of the wilderness system in 15 years”. Wilderness is the “highest level of federal protection”. Also approved was an ambitious river restoration project for the San Joaquin River and prized salmon runs.

   The Oregonian adds Conservationists hail new era as Congress passes wilderness bill. “The 285-140 House vote sent the 1,300-page public lands bill to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it as early as next week.”

   “‘This is a huge victory for the Oregon outdoors,’ Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden said after the vote.”

2. The CS Monitor reports Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says US shares responsibility for Mexico’s drug violence due to the “insatiable” demand for narcotics by Americans.

   “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians,” Mrs. Clinton said.

   “How could anyone conclude any differently? … I feel very strongly we have co-responsibility,” she said.

   The United States’ three-decade “war” on drugs “has not worked”, according to Clinton.

   According to the LA Times, Clinton says the U.S. must help Mexico “since it is a major consumer of illicit drugs and a key supplier of weapons smuggled to cartel hit men.”

   “We know very well that the drug traffickers are motivated by the demand for illegal drugs in the United States, that they are armed by the transport of weapons from the United States to Mexico,” Clinton said during a news conference with Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa. “We see this as a responsibility to assist the Mexican government and people.”

Four at Four continues with Iran says yes to Afghan talks, Obama’s Afghan strategy, the FBI wants the Patriot Act renewed, and UK police to investigate Guantánamo Bay torture.

1. The Guardian reports the Obama administration says goodbye to ‘war on terror’. The war on terror is over.

   A message sent recently to senior Pentagon staff explains that “this administration prefers to avoid using the term Long War or Global War On Terror (Gwot) … please pass this on to your speechwriters”. Instead, they have been asked to use a bureaucratic phrase that could hardly be further from the fiery rhetoric of the months immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The global war on terror is dead; long live “overseas contingency operations”.

2. McClatchy reports Most electronic voting isn’t secure, CIA expert says. “The CIA, which has been monitoring foreign countries’ use of electronic voting systems, has reported apparent vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about the machines’ vulnerability to tampering.”

   A presentation made by a CIA cybersecurity to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission “could provide disturbing lessons for the United States” where use of electronic voting is spreading. “Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections”.

   Stigall told the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that Congress created in 2002 to modernize U.S. voting, that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results.

   “You heard the old adage ‘follow the money,’ ” Stigall said, according to a transcript of his hour-long presentation… “I follow the vote. And wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that’s an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to … make bad things happen.”

Four at Four continues with news of the dollar fallar and U.S. economy, Iran and Obama, and Afghanistan.

1. The NY Times reports China urges for a new money reserve to replace the U.S. dollar. Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, “has called for the eventual creation of a new international currency reserve to replace the dollar.”

   In a paper, Zhou proposed “a new currency reserve system controlled by the International Monetary Fund could prove more stable and economically viable.” The proposal “indicates that Beijing is worried that its huge dollar-denominated foreign reserves could lose significant value in coming years. I think they’re right to be concerned. The dollar has already been devalued since Barack Obama took office and if you look at the dollar’s decline since Bush took office, you’ll cry.

2. The Guardian reports Richard Holbrooke unveils parts of the U.S. strategy to halt Afghanistan ‘drift’. President Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan outlined the U.S. policy to its NATO allies yesterday.

   The strategy defines a path to exiting Afghanistan and, according to Holbrooke, emphasises non-military aspects and a regional approach.

   The Washington Post adds Foreign Service jobs in Afghanistan to grow. The State Department will create an additional 14 Foreign Service posictions in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The “surge” is part of Obama’s overall regional strategy that is expected to include “sending hundreds of U.S. civilian officials to Afghanistan, increasing the size of the embassy and its outposts by about 50 percent — to about 900 personnel.”

   “The new posts, and other expanded civilian operations, will probably require expanded security. Xe, the private security company formerly known as Blackwater, holds the State Department contract for diplomatic security in Afghanistan.”

   Meanwhile, McClatchy reports U.S. troops confront disciplined, wily, mobile Afghan foe.

   When the young American lieutenant and his 14 soldiers glanced up at the rock face, they thought that the major who’d planned the mission must have been kidding…

Four at Four continues with the worsening crisis in Sudan and Japan’s high speed rail.

1. The Washington Post reports U.S. role alleged in the detention and torture of an American Muslim in UAE.

   One day last July, Naji Hamdan was summoned to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates. He drove two hours through the desert heat from Dubai to answer questions from FBI agents who had arrived from Los Angeles, where Hamdan had gone to school, started a family, built a successful auto-parts business and become a U.S. citizen.

   At his apartment six weeks later, he was awakened from a nap by men who bundled him into a black Chevrolet Suburban with tinted windows. Hamdan was told he was a prisoner of the UAE and was held in a cell painted glossy white to reflect the lights that burned round the clock, according to a note he wrote from prison. Between interrogations, he wrote, he was confined in a frigid room overnight, strapped into “an electric chair” and punched in the head until he lost consciousness.

   In one session, the blindfolded prisoner recalled hearing a voice that sounded American. The voice said, “Do what they want or these people will [expletive] you up,” Hamdan wrote.

   The prisoner obliged, signing a confession that he later said meant only that he would do anything to make the pain stop. The case might have ended there but for Hamdan’s U.S. citizenship and his American attorney’s assertion that he was tortured “at the behest” of his own government.

   According to Newsweek, the Declassified Bush-Era torture memos is coming soon. “Over objections from the U.S. intelligence community, the White House is moving to declassify-and publicly release-three internal memos that will lay out, for the first time, details of the ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration for use against ‘high value’ Qaeda detainees. The memos, written by Justice Department lawyers in May 2005, provide the legal rationale for waterboarding, head slapping and other rough tactics used by the CIA. One senior Obama official, who like others interviewed for this story requested anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, said the memos were ‘ugly’ and could embarrass the CIA.”

Four at Four continues with Obama and Afghanistan, another bombing in Iraq, and more proof the Wall Street bailout only helps the rich.

1. The LA Times reports President Obama’s overture elicits cautious response from Iran. Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a ranking advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “responded cautiously today to President Obama’s Persian New Year overture for a new beginning in relations, saying Tehran wants to see discernible changes in U.S. Middle East policies before it agrees to rapprochement with Washington.”

   If Obama “shows goodwill and goes beyond words to take practical measures, the state and nation of Iran will not turn its back” on him, Javanfekr said. “We welcome the wish of the U.S. president to put away past differences… Our logic is peace, justice fraternity and mutual respect and love of mankind.”

   According to the NY Times, “Obama’s video outreach is currently the lead story on the English-language Web site of Press TV, Iran’s state-sponsored satellite broadcaster. In an interesting sign of connection via the Web, the report on the Iranian site links directly to the video on the White House Web site.”

2. The LA Times reports a Pioneering ecologist is confirmed to head NOAA. The Senate voted unanimously to confirm Oregon State ecologist Jane Lubchenco as the first woman and first marine scientist to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

   Lubchenco said she was eager to get started because of pressing burdens on the economy and the environment, including global warming, polluted coastal waters and severely depleted fish populations.

   “We really don’t have a choice,” she said… “We have to move rapidly ahead because of chronic problems that need immediate solutions.” …

   Her immediate agenda includes pushing for a National Climate Service to coordinate federal research into greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and shifting climatic patterns.

Four at Four continues with the coming North Korea ‘missile’ launch, nuclear talks with Russia, and Obama’s Afghan strategy.