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"This very useful compilation will serve to advance thinking and stimulate debate on these and related important contemporary global concerns." A.R. Sanderson, University of Chicago, CHOICE

"A hugely sensible book about global health and environmental problems, based on the 'Copenhagen Consensus' project documented in The Economist. Its authors, eminent economists, recognise that the resources to tackle such problems are finite and need to be applied where they are most likely to be effective. Better, for instance, to spend resources on the immediate problem of AIDS in Africa than the more distant one of global warming. This book is a healthy antidote to the narrow views of single-issue pressure groups." the Economist "Best Books of the Year"

"Especially recommended reading for government employees, non-governmental organizations, students of public policy and applied economics, and any individual with a direct personal or professional interest in global development issues." BOOKWATCH

Product Description
This volume provides a uniquely rich set of arguments and data for prioritizing our responses to some of the most serious problems facing the world today, such as climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts, education, financial instability, corruption, migration, malnutrition and hunger, trade barriers, and water access. Leading economists evaluate the evidence for costs and benefits of various programs to help gauge how we can achieve the most good with our money. Each problem is introduced by a world-renowned expert analyzing the scale of the problem and describing the costs and benefits of a range of policy options to improve the situation. Shorter pieces from experts offering alternative positions are also included; all ten challenges are evaluated by a panel of economists from North America, Europe, and China who rank the most promising policy options. Global Crises, Global Solutions provides a serious, yet accessible, springboard for debate and discussion and will be required reading for government employees, NGOs, scholars and students of public policy and applied economics, and anyone with a serious professional or personal interest in global development issues. Bjørn Lomborg is Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Aarhus and the director of the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute. He is also the author of the controversial bestseller, The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge, 2001).

Battle shapes up over future of U.S. role in Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) — The decisive battle of the Iraq war is shaping up — not in the streets of Baghdad but in the halls of government where the future of America's role across the region is on the line.
American and Iraqi officials have expressed new resolve to hammer out far-reaching deals that would allow U.S. forces to remain on bases across Iraq once the U.N. mandate expires at year's end.

The stakes in the talks are enormous.

The outcome will shape not just Iraq for years to come — but, more important, America's strategic position all across the oil-rich Persian Gulf at a time when Iran's influence is growing. The U.S. maintains substantial air and naval forces elsewhere in the Gulf but few ground troops except in Iraq.

A pact also would assure Arab allies that Iraq would not fall under domination by Iran, which is pressuring the Iraqis to refuse any deal that keeps U.S. soldiers here.

But critics in the United States fear it will tie the hands of the next president when millions of Americans are anxious to bring troops home. Many Iraqis, in turn, worry the deal will allow American domination of their country for decades.

With so much in the balance, the Iraqi government said Wednesday that both Washington and Baghdad recognize the need to finish the talks by July's end "to avoid any legal vacuum that may arise."

That came only days after it seemed the deal was dead. But Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the prospects for an accord had brightened because of new U.S. flexibility after meetings in Washington.

The White House said President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki discussed the talks Thursday via secured video teleconference and affirmed their commitment to completing the deal.

Nevertheless, the two sides remain far apart on core issues, including the number of bases where the United States will have a presence, and U.S. demands for immunity from Iraqi law for American soldiers and contractors.

Other obstacles include U.S. authority to detain suspects, fight battles without Iraqi permission and control of the country's airspace.

Iraq's parliament must sign off on the deal by year's end — and approval is by no means certain.

Opposition to the initial U.S. demands brought together rival Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders who all complain the deal would leave real power in American hands.

The oil minister, who is close to the country's powerful Shiite clerical leadership, told the British newspaper The Guardian this week that Iraq will demand the right to veto any U.S. military operation.

But American commanders believe they need such sweeping powers to protect U.S. soldiers in a combat zone.

Publicly, U.S. officials have expressed confidence they can find language that will satisfy the Iraqis on all major issues. But the negotiations are taking place against the backdrop of war and intense power struggles among rival ethnic groups in Iraq — each with its own agenda.

The U.S. operates scores of bases throughout the country, including the sprawling Camp Victory headquarters in Baghdad, Asad air base in western Iraq and the giant air facility at Balad, a 16-square-mile installation about 60 miles north of the capital that houses tens of thousands of American troops, contractors and U.S. government civilians.

It's still unclear how many of the facilities Washington would want to keep.

If all else fails, the two sides could go back to the U.N. Security Council and seek an extension of the mandate allowing troops in Iraq.

But that could prove politically embarrassing — and difficult — in the waning days of the Bush administration or the early days of the new U.S. presidency.

The current standoff has its roots in events last August when leaders of Iraq's rival factions — facing enormous U.S. pressure to resolve their differences — signed a declaration of unity.

It included a statement that Iraq's government wanted a long-term security relationship with the United States apart from U.N. mandates, which Iraq has long wanted to end.

A few months later, Bush and al-Maliki signed a statement of principles to negotiate two agreements — a broad security framework and a second deal spelling out the rules for the U.S. military presence.

Talks began in March but Iraqi officials were outraged over the initial U.S. demands — especially immunity for U.S. soldiers and security contractors.

The American draft also included no firm commitment to defend Iraq from foreign invasion — which would require U.S. Senate approval — nor a timetable for the departure of American troops, according to Iraqi officials. U.S. officials have released few details.

After Iraqi negotiators briefed lawmakers last month, politicians from all walks paraded in front of microphones to denounce the U.S. proposals.

Some commentators likened the U.S. position to the Iraqi-British treaty of 1930, which gave Britain virtual control of the country and is widely seen here as a humiliation.

Shiite lawmaker Haidar al-Abadi, speaking for al-Maliki's party, said June 4 that "negotiations are at a standstill, and the Iraqi side is studying its options." A week later al-Maliki himself said talks had reached a "dead-end."

Aides scrambled to clarify that al-Maliki did not mean negotiations were over. But his comments reflected Iraq's resolve not to accept an agreement short of major Iraqi demands.

"We could not give amnesty to a soldier carrying arms on our soil," al-Maliki said then.

Such comments reflect each Iraqi faction's need to publicly defend Iraq's rights, amid the country's intense political rivalry.

Some Sunni groups, for example, privately favor a continued American presence as a counterweight to Iran's influence among Shiites. Yet several leading Sunni politicians signed a letter to Congress insisting on a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal — in part to needle al-Maliki on an nationalistic issue.

Shiite parties, in turn, believe the agreement would shore up American support for al-Maliki ahead of parliamentary elections next year — a goal they seek. But Shiite leaders are also anxious to take over full control of their country.

Meanwhile, recent Iraqi military successes against al-Qaeda in Mosul and Shiite extremists in the south have convinced some Shiite politicians they don't really need America.

"Iraq has another option that it may use," al-Maliki said recently. "The Iraqi government, if it wants, has the right to demand that the U.N. terminate the presence of international forces on Iraqi sovereign soil."

Foreign firms investing in Iraq
By Jim Michaels, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — European and Asian companies are beating their American rivals into Iraq now that security has improved the investment climate, Iraq and U.S. officials say.
"It's starting to turn … and the people who are getting in on the ground floor are not American," said Paul Brinkley, the Pentagon official who is leading U.S. efforts to help Iraq rebuild its economy. "It's ironic."

Foreign companies, including U.S. investors, have committed to deals worth about $500 million so far this year and Brinkley expects at least $1 billion in foreign investment by the end of the year.

So far, Romanian consortium and a Lebanese company have signed revenue-sharing deals with Iraqi state-owned cement factories. Each group will invest about $150 million.

China has also aggressively pursued the Iraqi market, selling machinery to the government and electronic products to consumers.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, in Washington on an official visit, said Monday that larger U.S. firms were waiting for more security before entering the market.

Zebari noted that Turkish and Russian companies were already active in Iraq. "They take risks," he told USA TODAY in an interview. "No pain, no gain."

Many of the companies active in Iraq now are from countries, including France, Russia and Turkey, that did not send combat troops to back the U.S.-led invasion.

Some U.S. and Iraqi officials say American companies risk losing an early opportunity to establish long-term strategic ties with Iraq.

"My question is, 'Where are you guys in terms of investment, in terms of economic engagement?' " said Naufel al-Hassan, Iraq's commercial counselor in Washington. "Iraqis need your support. Why let someone else do that?"

There are no reliable historic numbers, but the deals this year are among the first major investment opportunities outside U.S.-funded reconstruction projects and they signal new confidence in Iraq's economy.

The activity by non-U.S. companies is not a cause for concern, said Charles Reis, the U.S. counselor for economic transition in Iraq. "This is a normalization of Iraq's relationship with the rest of the world," he said.

Large U.S. companies won the bulk of the $20 billion worth of reconstruction contracts funded by the military. Now, however, opportunities are riskier and require more local understanding.

That has favored non-U.S. investors who have had prewar experience in Iraq, said Timothy Mills, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Iraq.

American companies may also be reluctant to invest in Iraq because the war has generated so much controversy at home, Brinkley said.

The private investments that come from the USA are generally individual or institutional investors — not American corporations, Brinkley said. U.S. investors, for example, are part of a $120 million deal to build a hotel in the heavily fortified Green Zone, where U.S. and Iraqi government offices are located.

Americans lead other nations in the number of exports to Iraq, but other nations have ramped up trade. China doubled the number of exports to Iraq this year.

China is now Iraq's third-largest trade partner behind the USA and Turkey, according to Global Trade Information Services, a firm that tracks trade statistics.





Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2008-06-16-iraqinvestment_N.htm

June 20, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Two Obamas

By DAVID BROOKS
God, Republicans are saps. They think that they’re running against some academic liberal who wouldn’t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn’t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they’re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson.

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

But he’s been giving us an education, for anybody who cares to pay attention. Just try to imagine Mister Rogers playing the agent Ari in “Entourage” and it all falls into place.

Back when he was in the Illinois State Senate, Dr. Barack could have taken positions on politically uncomfortable issues. But Fast Eddie Obama voted “present” nearly 130 times. From time to time, he threw his voting power under the truck.

Dr. Barack said he could no more disown the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than disown his own grandmother. Then the political costs of Rev. Wright escalated and Fast Eddie Obama threw Wright under the truck.

Dr. Barack could have been a workhorse senator. But primary candidates don’t do tough votes, so Fast Eddie Obama threw the workhorse duties under the truck.

Dr. Barack could have changed the way presidential campaigning works. John McCain offered to have a series of extended town-hall meetings around the country. But favored candidates don’t go in for unscripted free-range conversations. Fast Eddie Obama threw the new-politics mantra under the truck.

And then on Thursday, Fast Eddie Obama had his finest hour. Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He’s spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system.

But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama’s got more money now.

And Fast Eddie Obama didn’t just sell out the primary cause of his life. He did it with style. He did it with a video so risibly insincere that somewhere down in the shadow world, Lee Atwater is gaping and applauding. Obama blamed the (so far marginal) Republican 527s. He claimed that private donations are really public financing. He made a cut-throat political calculation seem like Mother Teresa’s final steps to sainthood.

The media and the activists won’t care (they were only interested in campaign-finance reform only when the Republicans had more money). Meanwhile, Obama’s money is forever. He’s got an army of small donors and a phalanx of big money bundlers, including, according to The Washington Post, Kenneth Griffin of the Citadel Investment Group; Kirk Wager, a Florida trial lawyer; James Crown, a director of General Dynamics; and Neil Bluhm, a hotel, office and casino developer.

I have to admit, I’m ambivalent watching all this. On the one hand, Obama did sell out the primary cause of his professional life, all for a tiny political advantage. If he’ll sell that out, what won’t he sell out? On the other hand, global affairs ain’t beanbag. If we’re going to have a president who is going to go toe to toe with the likes of Vladimir Putin, maybe it is better that he should have a ruthlessly opportunist Fast Eddie Obama lurking inside.

All I know for sure is that this guy is no liberal goo-goo. Republicans keep calling him naïve. But naïve is the last word I’d use to describe Barack Obama. He’s the most effectively political creature we’ve seen in decades. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t smart enough to succeed in politics by pretending to renounce politics

The New Face of Islam
A critique of radicalism is building within the heart of the Muslim world.

Christopher Dickey and Owen Matthews
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 2:07 PM ET May 31, 2008
Back in the mid-1990s, Osama bin Laden had a problem, and it was Islam. He wanted to say the Qur'an gave his followers license to kill innocents—and themselves—in the cause of "jihad." That was how he could justify his global campaign of terror. But that's not what the Muslim holy book says, and that's not the way it was interpreted by any of the great scholars and preachers of the faith.

So bin Laden set about spinning the revelations contained in the Qur'an and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, known as the Hadith, which provide much of the context for actual religious practice in the Muslim world. The Saudi millionaire wrote a diatribe that he called a declaration of war and then a fatwa, or religious edict, cherry-picking quotations from Islamic Scripture and calling on dubious scholars to back him up. The tracts were political propaganda, not theology, but for his purpose they worked very well. The apocalyptic notion of holy war he promoted—and the reality of it that he demonstrated on 9/11—became the dominant vision of Islam for those with little understanding of the faith, whether in the West or, indeed, the Muslim world. Even many religious scholars were intimidated.

Now that's starting to change. Important Muslim thinkers, including some on whom bin Laden depended for support, have rejected his vision of jihad. Once sympathetic publics in the Middle East and South Asia are growing disillusioned. As CIA Director Michael Hayden said last week, "Fundamentally, no one really liked Al Qaeda's vision of the future." At the same time, and potentially much more important over the long run, a new vision of Islam, neither bin Laden's nor that of the traditionalists who preceded him, is taking shape. Momentum is building within the Muslim world to re-examine what had seemed immutable tenets of the faith, to challenge what had been taken as literal truths and to open wide the doors of interpretation (ijtihad) that some schools of Islam tried to close centuries ago.

Intellectually and theologically, a lot of the most ambitious work is being done by a group of scholars based in Ankara, Turkey, who expect to publish new editions of the Hadith before the end of the year. They have collected all 170,000 known narrations of the Prophet's sayings. These are supposed to record Muhammad's words and deeds as a guide to daily life and a key to some of the mysteries of the Qur'an. But many of those anecdotes came out of a specific historical context, and those who told the stories or, much later, recorded them, were not always reliable. Sometimes they confused "universal values of Islam with geographical, cultural and religious values of their time and place," says Mehmet Gormez, a theology professor at the University of Ankara who's working on the project. "Every Hadith narration has ... a context. We want to give every narration a home again."

Mehmet Aydin, who first conceived the Hadith project four years ago, when he was Turkey's minister of state for religious affairs, says it is obvious that in the seventh century, the time of the Prophet, life was very different. One Hadith, for instance, forbids women from traveling alone. In Saudi Arabia, this and other sayings are given as a reason women should not be allowed to drive. "This is clearly not a religious injunction but related to security in a specific time and place," says Gormez. In fact, the Prophet says elsewhere that he misses those days, evidently in his recent memory, when women could travel alone from Yemen to Mecca. In its first three centuries "Islam was interacting with Greek, Iranian and Indian cultures and at every encounter [scholars] reinterpreted Islam according to new conditions," says Gormez. "They were not afraid to rethink Islam then."

Liberal Muslim thinkers have made similar arguments in the past, but they were outliers and often not theologians. The Turkish project, on the other hand, has the quiet backing of the ruling AK Party, the world's most successful, democratically elected party with Islamist roots. The professors involved are quick to deny that their work represents some sort of Islamic Reformation—there is no Martin Luther among them, no theses are being nailed to a door. They call what they're doing a "rethinking" or a "re-understanding" of the sacred texts "according to modern concepts like democracy, human rights, women's rights and universal values," says Gormez. Yet their work has far-reaching potential, given the credibility of the source.

Many states, even those like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia that have tolerated radicalism in the past, have come to see that their own stability depends on encouraging greater moderation. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has moved to curb the zealous excesses of some 10,000 imams on the government payroll. The government isn't rethinking basic doctrines, one of the king's advisers, who wasn't authorized to speak on the record, told NEWSWEEK: "Let's say there is a theological debate about how to present their ideas and advice to the public." If a woman dresses a little immodestly by Saudi religious standards, it should be enough simply to say that without calling her a harlot, threatening her with punishment or worse. The idea is to tone down the fire and brimstone, which has inspired young Saudis to sign up for jihad in Iraq and elsewhere.

Across the Muslim world, people appear ready for this new message. Growing middle classes are no longer willing to accept the pieties of peasant life as guides for public and private conduct. "The rules of religion stay the same, but people's attitudes toward religion have changed," says Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government is working to bring Turkey into the European Union. "The urbanization of the country has brought increased wealth and a different understanding of life." Even in theocratic Iran, police frequently cancel speeches by 49-year-old mullah Mohsen Kadivar because, authorities say, "they may cause traffic and public disturbances outside." Kadivar's message? That the Iranian system of velayat-e-faqih, in which a cleric has the final say on all matters of state, is fatally flawed. "It is a centralized interpretation of Islam that is not democratic," says Kadivar. "The government should be answerable to ordinary human beings who live on earth!"

Bin Laden's prescription for change, meanwhile, has led to nothing but death and destruction. Radicals have turned their anger and their bombs against other Muslims whom they deem apostates or simply inconsequential. As a result, they've found themselves isolated. In Iraq, Al Qaeda's forces are on the ropes and largely indistinguishable from gangsters. In Pakistan, polls show public support for suicide bombings has dropped from more than 30 percent five years ago, to less than 9 percent today. In an open letter last year, a Saudi scholar bin Laden had long revered, Sheik Salman al-Oudah, demanded, "Brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak, and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of Al Qaeda?"

The most ferocious attack on bin Laden's version of holy war has come from one of the few really respected religious thinkers within jihadist ranks, Sayyid Imam al-Sharif. Now imprisoned in Egypt, he has known Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's second in command, since they were in university. In a book his Egyptian jailers allowed him to publish last year, al-Sharif writes about the way the Sharia, Islamic law, has been tarnished by Al Qaeda's actions: "There are those who kill hundreds, including women and children, Muslims and non-Muslims in the name of Jihad!" That, said al-Sharif, is unacceptable in the eyes of Allah, of his law and of his people. Once again bin Laden has a problem, and it is Islam.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/139433