Tribune 11 March 2011
Ian Williams on Libyan intervention
Some people would have picketed the Normandy Landings as imperialist intervention. (The Communist Party of the USA did actually condemn the British blockade of Nazi Germany as an imperialist attempt to starve German workers!) On the other hand, when I went to the UN legal department at the time of the belated attempts to help the Kurds after the first Gulf War, they shuffled their feet, and admitted that one of the few modern precedents they could find for “humanitarian intervention,” was Hitler’s land grabs in Czechoslovakia when he claimed to be rescuing Sudeten Germans from persecution.
When Kofi Annan persuaded the governments of the world to reinterpret the UN Charter to encompass “The Responsibility to Protect,” even supporters of intervention invoked the maxim “First do no harm,” and warned of the need to consider carefully the motives, intentions and methods of those intervening. Beware of brain surgeons with grudges and hatchets.
So, even though there are good ethical reasons to help the rebels in Libya, sadly there are few candidates qualified to do it. Obama has certainly blown it with his recent veto, which regresses US standing back to the inglory days of George W. Bush. (By the way, the UK went against the Blairite tradition and supported the resolution.)
In the face of Netanyahu’s refusal even to pause building settlements which the US coyly calls “illegitimate” but which the rest of the world unequivocally condemns as “illegal,” the US stood firm - and threatened to withdraw aid to the Palestinian victims unless they withdrew the embarrassing resolution!
One consequence is that this effectively rules out any attempt at international intervention in Libya, even to enforce a no-fly zone - at least if it involves US or NATO forces. There would be too many questions in the region about whether the jets flew for democracy or Israel, which was after all invoked by Mubarak’s security forces and the Yemeni president against protestors.
Gaddafi is still in some parallel universe where he thinks invoking Al-Qaeda gets him a free pass in Washington. This sounds like he is not quite hundred dirhams to the dinar, but put in the regional context of US support for any murderous autocrat who signs on for the anti-terrorist crusade and it is not that stupid. It might work yet, but if it doesn’t and there is any Western intervention, you can guarantee that he will invoke Israeli interference.
It is an interesting exercise to compare Obama’s recent stands, (or in some cases “prones,” might be a better word) on events in the region with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who has categorically condemned settlements as illegal, and called for Mubarak to step down long before the leaders of the free world screwed their courage to the sticking place. After making the call, he returned to New York to fierce protests from the Egyptian mission to the UN, which have one gathers, been replaced with thanks and plaudits from the new regime in Cairo.
In Libya Ban called for "an immediate halt to the government's disproportionate use of force and indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets". This is welcome change from the UN’s traditional inability to distinguish between victim and perpetrator in conflicts and reflects Ban’s unprecedentedly forthright condemnations of member governments committing crimes - and, it is worth remembering, his public support for the International Criminal Career when he was running for the office with the support of the Bush administration.
Of course, Ban has no troops of his own, even if he wanted to deploy them. The UN is now sending a fact-finding mission which could restrain regime excesses in Tripoli, and one also suspects that other countries are sending less public missions to help the rebels, which one hopes are more circumspect than the arrested British SAS team. Any help has to be hands off to be successful. And the ironic result of democracy in Libya, like in Egypt, will be an elected government more anti-Imperialist than its paid-for predecessor.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Pity the Poor Shareholder!
Comment: The Case For Dividends Over Buybacks
Ian Williams, Speculator Column
Inside Investor Relations | Mar. 7, 2011,
Corporate cash reserves are swelling, leading to decisions about what to do with them. The order of priorities seems to be: give executive bonuses, buy back shares, do some M&A, invest in the business and last – and least – pay dividends. Well, not quite last: repaying debt seems an even lower priority.
Are buybacks good for shareholders? Perhaps, up to a point, except there is so often an uncanny relationship between the number of shares bought back and the number distributed in stock options. We are assured – usually by people who have been fighting tooth and nail to avoid expensing stock options on their books – that buybacks are a tax-efficient way of distributing cash to shareholders. There is indeed a tax on dividends, but there is also a tax on capital gains, so if there is any water in the argument that continuous buybacks raise stock prices, then those who seek to cash in will be paying capital gains tax on this reputed increase in value.
Milo Mindbender in Catch 22 used to appropriate his comrades’ parachutes and replace them with ‘A share’. Many retirees must have felt the same falling feeling recently when they tried to draw down the shareholder value for which they forwent dividends.
It is, ultimately, all about power. When the Banks fell off Wall St, all the presidents’ men did indeed put them back together again, and bonuses at publicly traded banks hit $135 bn in 2010. The shareholders who had been told their stock would rise in value because of all those buybacks saw their dividends going to the people who crashed their portfolios almost to penny stock levels at one point.
Indeed, I was amazed at the naivety of some bankers to whom I extended therapy for not diversifying, when I discovered how many of them had kept all of their stock in, for example, CitiBank, as it performed Humpty Dumpty imitations. Cisco is a good example: it has never paid any dividends, but its share-purchase program has bought back a third of its stock – which has blipped recently, but is down some 70 percent over a decade of buybacks.
Unlike many of the companies that suffered then, Cisco makes essential products and delivered profits. It has some $25 bn net cash in its back pocket, and it is only now thinking of doling out a meager dividend – mostly, one suspects, because more portfolio managers now demand dividends from stock they hold.
So what’s in it for the corporate managements? It’s back to being all about power. Not only do buybacks conceal stock options, but they also reduce the number of stockholders, perhaps gently guiding unhappy stockholders toward the exit, consolidating control in executive-appointed boards.
But apart from votes for boards on emoluments and other decisions that the Business Roundtable has fought against tenaciously and bitterly, the buybacks disenfranchise shareholders from decisions on the most basic issue: what happens to their money. Dividends enfranchise shareholders and allow them to take the cash, spend or reinvest in the same company or elsewhere. It is, as it should be, their decision – not a CEO’s.
Ian Williams, Speculator Column
Inside Investor Relations | Mar. 7, 2011,
Corporate cash reserves are swelling, leading to decisions about what to do with them. The order of priorities seems to be: give executive bonuses, buy back shares, do some M&A, invest in the business and last – and least – pay dividends. Well, not quite last: repaying debt seems an even lower priority.
Are buybacks good for shareholders? Perhaps, up to a point, except there is so often an uncanny relationship between the number of shares bought back and the number distributed in stock options. We are assured – usually by people who have been fighting tooth and nail to avoid expensing stock options on their books – that buybacks are a tax-efficient way of distributing cash to shareholders. There is indeed a tax on dividends, but there is also a tax on capital gains, so if there is any water in the argument that continuous buybacks raise stock prices, then those who seek to cash in will be paying capital gains tax on this reputed increase in value.
Milo Mindbender in Catch 22 used to appropriate his comrades’ parachutes and replace them with ‘A share’. Many retirees must have felt the same falling feeling recently when they tried to draw down the shareholder value for which they forwent dividends.
It is, ultimately, all about power. When the Banks fell off Wall St, all the presidents’ men did indeed put them back together again, and bonuses at publicly traded banks hit $135 bn in 2010. The shareholders who had been told their stock would rise in value because of all those buybacks saw their dividends going to the people who crashed their portfolios almost to penny stock levels at one point.
Indeed, I was amazed at the naivety of some bankers to whom I extended therapy for not diversifying, when I discovered how many of them had kept all of their stock in, for example, CitiBank, as it performed Humpty Dumpty imitations. Cisco is a good example: it has never paid any dividends, but its share-purchase program has bought back a third of its stock – which has blipped recently, but is down some 70 percent over a decade of buybacks.
Unlike many of the companies that suffered then, Cisco makes essential products and delivered profits. It has some $25 bn net cash in its back pocket, and it is only now thinking of doling out a meager dividend – mostly, one suspects, because more portfolio managers now demand dividends from stock they hold.
So what’s in it for the corporate managements? It’s back to being all about power. Not only do buybacks conceal stock options, but they also reduce the number of stockholders, perhaps gently guiding unhappy stockholders toward the exit, consolidating control in executive-appointed boards.
But apart from votes for boards on emoluments and other decisions that the Business Roundtable has fought against tenaciously and bitterly, the buybacks disenfranchise shareholders from decisions on the most basic issue: what happens to their money. Dividends enfranchise shareholders and allow them to take the cash, spend or reinvest in the same company or elsewhere. It is, as it should be, their decision – not a CEO’s.
Friday, March 04, 2011
Wisconsin's Winning Ways
Now the spirit of protest has gripped Wisconsin
As protests swept Europe and the Middle East, there was a growing feeling that Americans, in their traditional isolation, would accept anything forced down their throats. But the revolt began, and in the least expected place, in the heartland state of Wisconsin, where tens of thousands of union members occupied the state capitol to protest [...]
by Ian Williams
Tribune Friday, March 4th, 2011
As protests swept Europe and the Middle East, there was a growing feeling that Americans, in their traditional isolation, would accept anything forced down their throats. But the revolt began, and in the least expected place, in the heartland state of Wisconsin, where tens of thousands of union members occupied the state capitol to protest against and try to thwart the Republican governor’s plans to use the financial crisis to end collective bargaining.
Ironically, the protestors invoked Egypt and, in an example of international solidarity, Egyptians and many others from around the world have been calling in orders to the nearby pizzeria to feed the protestors.
Governor Scott Walker is a conservative ideologue at the sharp end of a cabal of like-minded right-wing governors. Bankers caused the overall financial crisis, but they blame the unions. Governors such as Mr Walker exacerbated financial woes by railroading through tax cuts, benefitting mostly business, which in the case of Wisconsin almost exactly match the current deficit.
Across the United States, Republican governors have made public employees and their unions a scapegoat. In Wisconsin, as elsewhere, the public employee unions offered concessions under duress, but Governor Walker made it an ideological grudge fight by trying to end all collective bargaining rights – in response to which Democratic state senators fled the state to ensure there was no quorum while unions began their occupation and protest. The governor ordered state troopers to their homes to bring them forcibly to senate session.
Mr Walker’s proposal allows the traditionally powerful and well-paid police and warders’ unions to retain their union privileges, not least since they endorsed his candidacy, but even they know that the writing is on the wall and hundreds of them joined the protest last week. It is not against public employees but workers and unions in general. Private employers in the US spend millions fighting unionisation and, for decades, laws that protect labour rights have been ignored or scaled back by successive governments.
The ideological battle lines were drawn when a journalist recorded a spoof phone call he had made to Governor Walker while posing as one of the Koch brothers – multibillionaires whose dollars have financed initiatives ranging from the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry to Tea Party protests – and are behind the current ferocious anti-union campaign. On the call, Mr Walker calmly weighs sending agents provocateur to the protest to instigate violence.
The revolt in Wisconsin has evoked unprecedented solidarity across the US. One of the most telling details to emerge is that the four conservative states which do not allow teachers to join a union have the worst education levels in the country.
As protests swept Europe and the Middle East, there was a growing feeling that Americans, in their traditional isolation, would accept anything forced down their throats. But the revolt began, and in the least expected place, in the heartland state of Wisconsin, where tens of thousands of union members occupied the state capitol to protest [...]
by Ian Williams
Tribune Friday, March 4th, 2011
As protests swept Europe and the Middle East, there was a growing feeling that Americans, in their traditional isolation, would accept anything forced down their throats. But the revolt began, and in the least expected place, in the heartland state of Wisconsin, where tens of thousands of union members occupied the state capitol to protest against and try to thwart the Republican governor’s plans to use the financial crisis to end collective bargaining.
Ironically, the protestors invoked Egypt and, in an example of international solidarity, Egyptians and many others from around the world have been calling in orders to the nearby pizzeria to feed the protestors.
Governor Scott Walker is a conservative ideologue at the sharp end of a cabal of like-minded right-wing governors. Bankers caused the overall financial crisis, but they blame the unions. Governors such as Mr Walker exacerbated financial woes by railroading through tax cuts, benefitting mostly business, which in the case of Wisconsin almost exactly match the current deficit.
Across the United States, Republican governors have made public employees and their unions a scapegoat. In Wisconsin, as elsewhere, the public employee unions offered concessions under duress, but Governor Walker made it an ideological grudge fight by trying to end all collective bargaining rights – in response to which Democratic state senators fled the state to ensure there was no quorum while unions began their occupation and protest. The governor ordered state troopers to their homes to bring them forcibly to senate session.
Mr Walker’s proposal allows the traditionally powerful and well-paid police and warders’ unions to retain their union privileges, not least since they endorsed his candidacy, but even they know that the writing is on the wall and hundreds of them joined the protest last week. It is not against public employees but workers and unions in general. Private employers in the US spend millions fighting unionisation and, for decades, laws that protect labour rights have been ignored or scaled back by successive governments.
The ideological battle lines were drawn when a journalist recorded a spoof phone call he had made to Governor Walker while posing as one of the Koch brothers – multibillionaires whose dollars have financed initiatives ranging from the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry to Tea Party protests – and are behind the current ferocious anti-union campaign. On the call, Mr Walker calmly weighs sending agents provocateur to the protest to instigate violence.
The revolt in Wisconsin has evoked unprecedented solidarity across the US. One of the most telling details to emerge is that the four conservative states which do not allow teachers to join a union have the worst education levels in the country.
No Go for No Fly..
Middle East
Mar 5, 2011
Asia Times
To fly or not to fly?
By Ian Williams
So, there is an eccentric dictator, disliked by all his neighbors. When the chips came down with demonstrations across Libya, his only friends are similar arch-bombasts, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, President of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega and Cuban strongman Fidel Castro, and even their friendship seems based on a safe physical distance, a steady supply of cash and a presumed shared enemy in Washington.
With the Arab League, Organization of Islamic States, the African Union, the European Union and now even the full United Nations Security Council - including China, Russia and India - on your side against Muammar Gaddafi, surely this is a time where the
UN doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) adopted five years ago and American declarations of humanitarian intent should form a vector of forces all heading in the same direction?
Sudan is still sitting pretty after far more bloodshed in Darfur, showing the power of friendship and diplomacy, with the Arab League and African Union trying to pull the leash back on the International Criminal Court, while even Security Council members who do not accept ICC jurisdiction, like the US and India, voted to refer Libya's rulers.
And yet, despite, dare we say, bombast from Senator John McCain and Senator Joe Lieberman, the Barack Obama administration is correctly hesitant about letting loose the dogs of war on Gaddafi, not even to enforce a no-fly zone.
The framers of the R2P principles at the UN made a bedrock principle of "First Do No Harm", and US intervention would clearly fail that test spectacularly. This is sad. Yet the resistance in Libya deserves, and might even need support. Indeed rather than physical intervention, a clear threat that it was possible and likely would give second thoughts to small groups of Gaddafi loyalists who must already have that sinking feeling of going down with a mad captain heading straight for the White Whale.
Although the present juncture of events in the Arab world was then unthinkable, or at least unforeseen, a year ago, Obama might have been able to get away with it then. His outreach to Muslims with speeches in Cairo and Istanbul added to the general feeling of euphoria that a black American with a Muslim middle name and an African surname had been elected president was enough, and what is more, his seemed to be the first administration since George H W Bush to confront Israel on settlements and peace.
Since then a lot of water has flowed - backwards - under the bridge. While he maintained some pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about settlements, he had a chance, but the revelation that the only sanctions threatened were a cut off of aid to the victim - the Palestinians, unless they knuckled under, showed a reversion to Clintonian, indeed Bush politics.
The first veto, of a resolution actually stating US views on Israeli settlements (if we elide the weaselly distinction between "Illegitimate" and "illegal"), starkly revealed US isolation and choices. It had 130 sponsors and every US ally on the Security Council voted for it. The fervor with which Washington tried to head off the vote shows they knew the risks they were taking, but nothing explains why they thought it was worthwhile.
We can see the potential as Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh refers to the protesters in his country as American and Israeli agents. It is nonsense, but he knows that it would be a potent objection if he could make it stick. The riots across the Arab world are not about Israel and Palestine, they are about food, democracy and many other pressing domestic issues.
But polls have shown that Arabs do feel strongly about the humiliation of their Palestinian brethren by Israel. And instead of biddable and buyable kleptocrats, Washington now has to worry about the views of the Arab electorate for the first time. They might not want to go to war against Israel: but they certainly will not countenance being bases for a war for Israel, or even the US, against yet another Arab country.
Even more broadly, after Iraq, for which British premier Tony Blair claimed humanitarian reasons when the weapons of mass destruction went missing, there is no way that the US could repeat a Kosovo operation without a UN mandate - which the US is almost certainly not going to get.
In addition to traditional Russian suspicion of US motives, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has memories. He was UN ambassador when Moscow extended the hand of cooperation over the first Iraq war in 1991 - and he feels quite rightly betrayed. Russia voted for sanctions - and saw them maintained for a decade after their declared original purpose of liberating Kuwait had been achieved. He saw UN measures to help the Kurds against the Ba'athist regime expanded to include a no-fly zone over the whole country, and once again maintained for a decade with no explicit UN authorization.
Now that the US is looking and sounding like the old-style US administrations, he is not cutting them any slack. There was a sound "nyet" to any suggestion of military action in the resolution.
In fact, he is saving the US from itself. After Obama's first veto he has reverted to being just another US commander-in-chief, and there are many people in the region who would ask whether those jets were flying for democracy or Israel - a question with extra force since many of those who are advocating it were much less keen to lend support to Egyptians ousting Hosni Mubarak, let alone the king of Bahrain.
Even Gaddafi, who eccentrically blames al-Qaeda as if this will win him support from Washington, is likely to raise the Israel specter if the US Air Force flies in. Even the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a clear US surrogate is incompatible.
However, rather than the US, a threat of Turkish, or Egyptian intervention or interdiction of the Libyan military might overcome many of the legitimate actions, and indeed would encourage the rebels while stripping Gaddafi of the last of his crew so he could go down without taking the ship with him.
Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, Nation Books, New York.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
The end of the end of history
Mar 4
Mar 5, 2011
Asia Times
To fly or not to fly?
By Ian Williams
So, there is an eccentric dictator, disliked by all his neighbors. When the chips came down with demonstrations across Libya, his only friends are similar arch-bombasts, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, President of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega and Cuban strongman Fidel Castro, and even their friendship seems based on a safe physical distance, a steady supply of cash and a presumed shared enemy in Washington.
With the Arab League, Organization of Islamic States, the African Union, the European Union and now even the full United Nations Security Council - including China, Russia and India - on your side against Muammar Gaddafi, surely this is a time where the
UN doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) adopted five years ago and American declarations of humanitarian intent should form a vector of forces all heading in the same direction?
Sudan is still sitting pretty after far more bloodshed in Darfur, showing the power of friendship and diplomacy, with the Arab League and African Union trying to pull the leash back on the International Criminal Court, while even Security Council members who do not accept ICC jurisdiction, like the US and India, voted to refer Libya's rulers.
And yet, despite, dare we say, bombast from Senator John McCain and Senator Joe Lieberman, the Barack Obama administration is correctly hesitant about letting loose the dogs of war on Gaddafi, not even to enforce a no-fly zone.
The framers of the R2P principles at the UN made a bedrock principle of "First Do No Harm", and US intervention would clearly fail that test spectacularly. This is sad. Yet the resistance in Libya deserves, and might even need support. Indeed rather than physical intervention, a clear threat that it was possible and likely would give second thoughts to small groups of Gaddafi loyalists who must already have that sinking feeling of going down with a mad captain heading straight for the White Whale.
Although the present juncture of events in the Arab world was then unthinkable, or at least unforeseen, a year ago, Obama might have been able to get away with it then. His outreach to Muslims with speeches in Cairo and Istanbul added to the general feeling of euphoria that a black American with a Muslim middle name and an African surname had been elected president was enough, and what is more, his seemed to be the first administration since George H W Bush to confront Israel on settlements and peace.
Since then a lot of water has flowed - backwards - under the bridge. While he maintained some pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about settlements, he had a chance, but the revelation that the only sanctions threatened were a cut off of aid to the victim - the Palestinians, unless they knuckled under, showed a reversion to Clintonian, indeed Bush politics.
The first veto, of a resolution actually stating US views on Israeli settlements (if we elide the weaselly distinction between "Illegitimate" and "illegal"), starkly revealed US isolation and choices. It had 130 sponsors and every US ally on the Security Council voted for it. The fervor with which Washington tried to head off the vote shows they knew the risks they were taking, but nothing explains why they thought it was worthwhile.
We can see the potential as Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh refers to the protesters in his country as American and Israeli agents. It is nonsense, but he knows that it would be a potent objection if he could make it stick. The riots across the Arab world are not about Israel and Palestine, they are about food, democracy and many other pressing domestic issues.
But polls have shown that Arabs do feel strongly about the humiliation of their Palestinian brethren by Israel. And instead of biddable and buyable kleptocrats, Washington now has to worry about the views of the Arab electorate for the first time. They might not want to go to war against Israel: but they certainly will not countenance being bases for a war for Israel, or even the US, against yet another Arab country.
Even more broadly, after Iraq, for which British premier Tony Blair claimed humanitarian reasons when the weapons of mass destruction went missing, there is no way that the US could repeat a Kosovo operation without a UN mandate - which the US is almost certainly not going to get.
In addition to traditional Russian suspicion of US motives, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has memories. He was UN ambassador when Moscow extended the hand of cooperation over the first Iraq war in 1991 - and he feels quite rightly betrayed. Russia voted for sanctions - and saw them maintained for a decade after their declared original purpose of liberating Kuwait had been achieved. He saw UN measures to help the Kurds against the Ba'athist regime expanded to include a no-fly zone over the whole country, and once again maintained for a decade with no explicit UN authorization.
Now that the US is looking and sounding like the old-style US administrations, he is not cutting them any slack. There was a sound "nyet" to any suggestion of military action in the resolution.
In fact, he is saving the US from itself. After Obama's first veto he has reverted to being just another US commander-in-chief, and there are many people in the region who would ask whether those jets were flying for democracy or Israel - a question with extra force since many of those who are advocating it were much less keen to lend support to Egyptians ousting Hosni Mubarak, let alone the king of Bahrain.
Even Gaddafi, who eccentrically blames al-Qaeda as if this will win him support from Washington, is likely to raise the Israel specter if the US Air Force flies in. Even the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a clear US surrogate is incompatible.
However, rather than the US, a threat of Turkish, or Egyptian intervention or interdiction of the Libyan military might overcome many of the legitimate actions, and indeed would encourage the rebels while stripping Gaddafi of the last of his crew so he could go down without taking the ship with him.
Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, Nation Books, New York.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
The end of the end of history
Mar 4
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Goldstone again
This week’s Catskill Review of Books, on WJFF 90.5 FM or streaming on http://www.WJFFradio.org/, features Ian Williams talking to Lizzy Ratner, one of the editors of Nation Book’s edition of the Goldstone Report, about how the book shows the effect of Justice Goldstone’s report on him personally, as well how people worldwide see Operation Cast Lead, the attack on Gaza.
http://www.wjffradio.org/parchive/xml/bookreview.xml
http://www.wjffradio.org/parchive/xml/bookreview.xml