World – Page 11 – The Daily Brief

Memo: Your Recent Kind Letter

12. May 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, History, Iran, sarcasm, War, World

To: His Whateverness Ahmedinajad, President of Iran
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Your recent kind letter*

1. How nice to know that we are all on haranguing terms, just now. And this makes a change from the last quarter-century…. how?

2. We are given to understand from the better sort of middle-eastern newspaper that your co-religionists have been importuning the Presidente-for-Life Fidel Castro of Cuba to convert to Islam. We personally are skeptical, wondering how on earth anyone in the same room with the Dear Leader (Western Hemisphere Version) could get in a word edgeways with a wedge and hammer. But frankly, some of these middle eastern media sources are about on par with the sort of tabloids who run stories about mutant alien babies, and reappearances of the Titanic and Elvis. Oh, dear, a fair number of our very own dear media sources have achieved that same degree of credibility. My bad, and on to my next point. (Although this may validate Blair’s Law, which states that all sorts of extremism eventually go around the bend from different directions…and finally merge in one huge pulsating ball of idiocy.)

3. Your “very scholarly” * and “fascinating”* correspondence concluded with a rather disquieting salutation… disquieting, to those with an inclination to history. According to this source, it translates as “Peace only unto those who follow the true path.”… which however way you slice it, sounds… well, a bit threatening. Rather like the comment of a certain sort of local “insurance”* agent, who says “Nice little place you have here, be a shame if something bad happened to it.”

4. Your “diplomatic”* attempt at direct communication are noted, however, and I would have but one… well, several prerequisites before a “diplomatic”* reply can be tendered, the first of which is to return the American Embassy in Teheran to American custody, scrubbed of various abusive graffiti, cleaned and comprehensively refurbished, and every scrap of US government property taken from those premises, either returned, or a like replacement. I would also demand an official delegation from your government to go around to each of the American citizens and employees taken hostage in 1979, and apologize personally to each of them, (those still living, or their next of kin) and to offer a suitable recompense of their choosing.

5. Until then, my Dear President Ahmedinajad, I have only three words in reply to your missive.

6. Rat-hole.
7. Sand
8. Pound.

Sincerely,
Sgt. Mom

* Do I have to add this— those are “viciously skeptical “quote-marks… and a small but vital correction added at 3:05 after a comment

Memo: Regarding the Recent Bombings in Egypt

24. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, Mordor, sarcasm, War, World

To: Osama Bin Laden
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Dahab Bombing

So, Effendi, how is that hearts and minds thing going in Moslim countries, these days?

Sincerely,

Sgt. Mom

Bibliothek

19. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Pajama Game, World

Of all the American towns and small cities I have ever had much to do with, two stand out as interesting hybrids of America and the European homeland… well, three if you count Savannah, the other two being Santa Fe, and Fredericksburg. All three are, to be honest, a little self-consciously touristic with the charms, a touch too dressy for the occasion and location… but charming.

Fredericksburg is the smallest and the least-known of these three, and of course it is the one I am the most familiar with, although there are other Hill Country towns just as pleasant— Comfort, Wimberley, Kerrville— tucked into the limestone hills and steep valleys braided with that dear commodity in South Texas— clear, cold streams of water. William and I sat in a small courtyard this last weekend, sharing a bakery cinnamon roll, and marveling at how it had a definitely European feel— a sort of cloisterish ambiance, sheltering buildings along four sides, well and fountain in the middle, nice comfortable benches, stone paths and all… but three of the sheltering buildings around this small courtyard were the generic Texas clapboard and metal-roofed structures, only the fourth building had any claim to stone and mortar permanence.

My mother always said, after visiting the Hill Country, that it looked more like Pennsylvania… not just geographically, all rolling hills and oak treks… but because it was settled by the same sort of people; stolid Anglo-Saxon or Germanic farmers, devoted to hard work but the higher things as well…learning, free-thinking and libraries being amongst them.

The public library in the town of Fredericksburg is on Main Street, right next to the Gillespie County Courthouse, on an open green square— the Marketplatz that is the heart of town. The police and fire departments have a building along one side, most of the old, major churches are not far away, the Pioneer Museum and the Pacific War museum are in walking distance, and one can happily while away an afternoon just walking around and looking at lovely old houses, and shops and sampling local foods and wines. I have done so many times, since I moved to this area ten years ago; William is very fond of the place, and it is only an hour or so drive from my house; we drive up in the springtime, enjoying the fields of wildflowers on the hillsides and highway verge, and a nice meal and meander through some of the shops. (William also takes the opportunity to check out any interesting developments at the War Museum. He is a docent and man of all trades at an air museum on the West Coast— and it is always good to see what is going on in the field.)

The library presents a most arresting appearance— pure and lavish late 19th Century Beaux Arts style, all porches and tall windows, steep-domed towers, ornate iron lacework along the roof ridges and balconies— the whole effect being something that one can imagine would be the Addams’ Family local public library branch. It is all the more amusing, since the courthouse next door is one of those severely 1930ies Moderne efforts, like a table radio of the era, made large. I’ve never been inside either building, but I just know that the courthouse has WPA murals and industrial linoleum floors, and both of the buildings must and should have those heavy, blond oak tables and chairs that used to be an institutional staple before Bauhaus-style clubbed us all over the head and left us all aesthetically the poorer for it. But the library… ah, the library must have something more special.

It must have shelves, and shelves of books, and not on those nasty modern industrial metal-grade bookshelves that dent as soon as you look at them, with shoddy adjustable shelves. No, the Fredericksburg Public Library should have heavy, bespoke built-in shelves, as solid and permanent as the building itself, none of those laminate moveable shelves that will begin to sag after a decade or two under the weight of books and books, and books, and more books. This library should have odd little nooks and corners, with window seats and carrels built into them, where a child could curl up with a book and become lost in another world for hours, given access to a place where every volume is a doorway and a passport to that magic land of imagination. Such a perfect place to read, and read and read, all those wonderful worlds accessed through books.

I told William that the Fredericksburg Public Library would be the perfect venue for a kids’ adventure book. It looks from the outside as if it could contain every one of those elements for a perfectly ripping yarn, juvenile division. A secret room, or hidden passageway, a benevolent ghost, a hidden treasure, a mystery… a story that should encompass friendship and adventure and a sense of the wonderful things that lurk just beyond this all too prosaic world… things that are just barely imaginable just beyond the doorway of a place like the Fredericksburg Public Library… or any other public library, any other town in this seemingly unimpressive but potentially magical world of ours.

Host Nation Sensitivities

17. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Military, sarcasm, World

So, it seems from this article, there is a push to get Americans to behave more… well, to blend in more, when traveling overseas. Sounds like more of the same that the military audience used to get, and no doubt is still getting; speak softly, don’t get into discussing politics, avoid certain places and situations. It was all very good advice, especially since there were places where it might save your life, never mind the social embarassment of being— oh, the horror!— snubbed.

After a couple of years of being lectured about host nation sensitivities, and how to play down your service status and nationality, and all that, some of us used to try and work out the most offensively possible one-liners; a line absolutely guaranteed to get straight to the point of pissing off any member of our various host countries to whom they might be said.

So, without further ado, here are the top three…. More »

Prodi Wins

11. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Politics, World

Well, Italian politics has proven to be as fractious as ever, with Romano Prodi’s broad-based coalition declaring victory, on a margin of only 25,000 votes. Berlusconi is contesting the election.

Of course, the American left will attempt to make hay over this, calling Prodi’s promised immediate withdrawl of Italy’s 2600 troops from Iraq as a condemnation of the Bush doctrine. I see it as more an admission of Italy’s inability to fund overseas military adventures. For all his right-wing bluster, Berlusconi has failed to liberalize Italy’s stagnant statist economy.

Culture Of Corruption: At Least We Are Better Than France

09. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: World

Transparency International tracks government corruption around the world. Thier Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranks more than 150 countries in terms of perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys. Here’s their 2005 CPI
More »

Globalization of Taste

29. March 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Pajama Game, World

Sgt/Cpl. Blondie stumbled across evidence of this, at a local chain grocery—the one I always call the Humongous Big-Ass Grocery. It is truly one of the glories of living in Texas, a local chain which has run practically every other big grocery chain out of town with a combination of unparalleled customer service, quite good prices on their house brands, and an unimaginable variety of fine grocery items for the discriminating foodie. I firmly believe that the Iron Curtain would have slipped off its’ rod and collapsed even sooner if selected members of the Politburo could have been given guided tours of the average HEB store… the sheer lavish glories of American grocery stores are legend, and HEB does that all one or two steps better. They pay really close attention to their local market. I have a theory that you can calculate the average per capita income in a neighborhood (before taxes) by counting up how many varieties of olive oil are on the shelves at the local HEB… so many varieties X so many $ thousands in income, and there you have it. I haven’t worked out the exact figures yet (I’m only an English major, you know!!!!), but the greater the variety of olio d’ olive, the higher the income. The HEB nearest Lackland AFB, I’ll have you know, had only 2, and one of them was that nasty yellow Pompeii brand drek, which was all that was on the major grocery markets for decades, before anyone acquired any taste in the matter at all.

Olive oil— it’s a small thing, but something I noticed, because of being in Greece, where it was the font of all civilization (according to legend), and then in Spain where Alcampo, the Spanish equivalent to Walmart, with every imaginable item under one roof, and at next to wholesale prices, offered an entire aisle of olive oil, of every quantity and quality.
I came home from Spain with six 1.5 liter bottles of a good and faintly greenish brand of the stuff, which lasted me for barely a year.
That’s the trouble with being stationed overseas a lot; eventually you sample the local stuff- something that is a local taste, and hardly ever exported, and when you come home, you are bereft… sometimes. A year or so after I came home from Japan, my friend Marsh (She of the marvelous engine-mount challenged car) were overjoyed to discover a small Japanese-American eatery that offered… Katsudon!

Katsudon; a dish all the more luscious because it is very good, and filling and cheap, and most marvelous of all— available everywhere. (And when you said it, the waiter/waitress understood it!) It was the hamburger, or the meatloaf of Japan, a bowl of rice topped with a breaded and friend pork cutlet, and a savory glob of poached egg and onion, all the juices seeping down to flavor the rice with sweet liquor. You could go— or so said the Japanese lady who taught the “Intro to Japan 1A— into any casual eatery in Japan, and ask for “katsudon” and get some variant of it. There is of late in one of my cooking magazines, a recipe for such, which shows how adventurous the foodie population may have become— two decades ago, practically no one who hadn’t done a tour in Japan had ever heard of it at all. People who have served overseas have heaps of examples— lovely and particularly local foods which they became addicted to, and could never find again, or if they could, at great expense, once they came “home”.

Which gets me back, however circuitously to HEB, and food items from Japan. Blondie found an import item at a local HEB store, and fell on it joyfully; a particular brand of Japanese soda. It came in very distinctive blue-green glass bottles, sealed with a blue-green glass marble in the neck of it. A bulge in the neck, and a pinch molded into the glass on one side kept the bottle from rolling back into the top opening if you drank it holding the bottle in a certain way. Vendors kept a particular punch at their stand, to open it by pushing the marble back into the neck— where it had otherwise made a tight seal against force of carbonation. The soda was otherwise fairly indistinguishable from ginger ale, or some other clear, mildly sweet and carbonated drink… but still. Neither of us expected to see it on the market here, but whattaya know. Here it is.
Street Fair 1977
This pic of me (center) and two other girls from the barracks (Sorry, I can’t recall their names!) was taken during a local festival, about 1977, when all the traffic on Misawa’s main street was cut off, and it was decorated with lanterns and banners, and stalls. All of us have a bottle of this particular soda in hand.

Memo: Just So You Know Where We Are Coming From

28. March 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Good God, World

To: Those Insisting Upon A Death Sentence For Apostasy
From: Sgt. Mom
Re: The Case of Abdul Rahman

I would refer you to the matchless words of the “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom- 16 June 1786”: Read them, heed them, commit them to heart, for this is where we are coming from.

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do…. More »

Deaquisition of Illusion.

22. March 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, Pajama Game, War, World

Well, if we read the polls right, in the light of the port-management imbroglio, it may indicate that there is a sort of sub-rosa, grass-movements, silent-majority distrust of… well, international Islam. Surprise, surprise, surprise. This comes as a matter of slack-jawed amazement or grave concern to parties as various as the Zogby polls, CAIR, and our local congress-critters on both sides of the aisle. The rote insistence on Islam being a Religion of Peace is wearing very thin, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary… evidence that bulks large despite all the heroic efforts of Hollywood, an assortment of well-meaning civic associations, the intellectual strongholds, and last and not least, that final bastion of telling truth to power, those major news establishments.

Whoo-hoo! We must have all been brainwashed by the powers of the major media, at the express bidding of the eeeeeevviiiil Bush administration.
Yes, that would be the major media who have no trouble “disappearing” all those pictures of people jumping from the Twin Towers, tying up the 2004 presidential race in a pretty pink bow and handing it to a favored candidate, and making a mockery of every brave pledge of a free press and all the news that’s fit to print, unless it’s mockeries of Mohammad. The lords and grandees of our established press are powerless to banish uncomfortable suspicions amongst the proletariat, who have latched on to the very infra dig notion that the forces of militant Islam— which might possibly incorporate quite a lot more than the tiny percentage which is always being presented to us as being that which has committed the outrage du jour— presents to us a real and present danger. Despite our marching orders from our betters, we persist in our peasant conviction that the Religion of Peace is something other than advertised. This knowledge is the elephant in the room. Not looking at it’s wide flappy ears, long ropelike tail, and tree-trunk legs and all the rest of it, will not make it go away. The elephant is in the room, and has crapped copiously all over the carpet. Some politicians and pollsters, whose livelihood depends on accurately sensing certain aromas on the breeze are reacting already— an otherwise competent, well-thought of, and efficient port-management concern may have caught it in the neck because of this conviction. Interested and easily offended parties like CAIR are frantically applying the metaphorical room freshener, with less and less effect. It’s all gotten very, very stale, and I suspect that a lot of us are very, very tired of it all.

We are tired, and wearied to death of it all, and the Affair of the Danish Cartoons was the final straw. Or perhaps a sentence of death for apostasy for a Christian Afghan convert is the penultimate final straw… unless there is one absolutely final, ultimately ultimate straw, a Religion of Peace inspired outrage which I desperately hope will not involve a mushroom-shaped cloud over Tel Aviv, or some European or American city.

Whatever the Islamic outrage du jour is, we are tired of it. We are tired of easily-set off mobs, burning and murdering, of hatred preached in mosques and middle-eastern newspapers, of vile insults and lies, of beheadings and bombs, of bullying and threats, of rapes and mutilations and the oppression of women, and the usual slickly-suited creatures oozing justifications for it on the TV and radio afterwards. We are tired of the same old whine about persecution by the same creatures whose co-religionists practice persecution with vigor and keen enjoyment. We are tired to exhaustion of the Islamic worlds’ tattered woobie of the Palestinian people, taken out and shaken about whenever interest flags—never mind that the so-called Palestinian people seem to have suffered more at the hands of their so-called friends than they have gotten from their ostensible enemy. (If we need an example for strategic stupidity, counter-productive behavior and bad choice of friends in the face of misfortune and adversity, the Palestinian State must be Exhibit A through Exhibit-X whatever. But that is material for another rant, another day.) We are tired of being told we have to understand, to respect and to tolerate… and yet to see that that understanding, respect and toleration is not reciprocated in any meaningful way, in most of those places where Islam meets the other.

We are tired of being hectored about getting to know the Koran, and the Islamic street; especially since the more we get to know it, the more we dislike it, all of its works and ways; prejudices, ignorance and barbarities on full display, courtesy of the unfiltered blog media.
We are just tired, tired of being tolerant and calm and understanding and enduring. We want to think the best of people, truly we do— but there is a limit, and someday — probably terrifingly soon– it will be reached. I hope, personally, that it will not be tomorrow or the day after, when the last patient nerve is shredded into microscopic threads, and the limit has been reached. If and when that happens, the going will get really, really ugly.

Note to the Islamic world; please, please do not step on that last un-shredded nerve. Just, please. Don’t. It won’t be worth it. Trust me on this. Just don’t.

Truth In a Print Petticoat

12. March 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, History, Pajama Game, World

Sometime around the turn of the last century, Rudyard Kipling (my very favorite short-story writer, after Saki, or H.H. Munro)— a writer not entirely unexposed to the real world, or the machinations of newspapers, society or the military—wrote a fine little story about three newspaper writers, whose life advendures had them on a little tramp steamship in the middle of the ocean. Suddenly, there is a strange, underwater volcanic explosion, a mysterious fog over a mysteriously calm sea, with all sorts of strange debris floating in it… and a pair of aquatic, apparently prehistoric sea dinosaurs nearby. The sea monsters are enormous, but it becomes clear to the riveted newshounds that they are a mated pair. One of them has been terribly injured by the underwater eruption, and is dying, right before their eyes, and to the evident distress of it’s mate. The three journalists watch in horrified sympathy… and their first impulse is to make it the biggest scoop of their lives… but then they realize that it is so incredible, that no one will ever, every believe them, and by the time they are all safe on land and trying to sell the story to their editors, they realize that they are best off just putting it across as fiction.
“For truth is a naked lady,” says the narrator, in the story’s punch-line, “And if by accident she is drawn up from the bottom of the sea, it behooves a gentleman to either give her a print petticoat or turn his face to the wall and vow that he did not see.”

It’s a pretty apt description of how most of our western media outlets treated the Affair of the Danish Cartoons. Throw a print burka over it, repeat the obligatory invocation “But Islam is a religion of peace!” as needed, as reflexively as a Catholic congregation crossing themselves at the mention of the Trinity, turn away and look at the wall and pretend you just don’t see anything in the interval. The trouble is, the monsters are being thrown up to the surface faster and faster. For most of us who are drawn to pay attention, especially after 9/11, we are all but drowning in a tsunami of incidents and portents, every one of which involves militant Islam, political Islam, aggressive Islam, or just local thugs (or individual nutcases) justifying themselves by wrapping themselves in a supremacist Moslem identity. The Madrid and London bombings, the Paris riots, Bali and Beslan, Kenya and Cronulla. Mass protests demanding that their archaic religious laws apply to non-believers. Demanding a respect to their beliefs which is not reciprocated. A tidal spew of insult, lies and incitements to individual and mass murder, from so-called religious leaders across the Moslem world. Simmering war in Chechnya and Indonesia, Darfur, and European banlieus; car bombs, gang rapes, beheadings; the victims are piled high and world-wide. American contractors, Russian soldiers, Afghan teachers, Indonesian school-girls, Australian teenagers, Iraqi policemen. Dutch filmmakers, British and Italian writers, Danish cartoonists, American reporters and pacifists, doctors and do gooders. Hindu temples, Shia shrines, Egyptian and Kenyan hotel complexes, bars in Bali….

…and our Western freedom of speech. Our right to discuss, criticize, parody and analyze critically is nakedly threatened, and our intellectual and cultural leading lights, as well as our mainstream news personalities guard their own tongues metaphorically, lest the rest of them have to be guarded in reality. To be fair, there are some brave exceptions, and a sense of good fairness and rough knowledge of people in general commands me to admit that there are good and upright Moslems in nations across the globe who are content in their beliefs, they are internally strong and confident in their beliefs, and are not demanding our intellectual and political obeisance.

There are those good people in the Arab and Islamic world, and I trust in their existence, and honor their courage when they speak out… but alas, there are so few of them, and the ignorant mobs, the oil-money fueled imams, the bought-and-paid for lobbyists speak so deafeningly louder. They crush all the questions and doubt with the certainty of their vision; it is all too horrendous, all too large. To admit the reality of it is to shake the foundations of ones’ safe world. Better for those mainstream news outlets, those with buildings and employees and a market-share at risk, just to pull the print petticoat, the print blanket, the print shroud over it all, let it go away, and hope that tomorrow will bring something easier, more amenable, more ordinary, something that can be safely tucked into the same old comfortable world vision.

The mainstream media can indulge themselves in fantasies; the rest of us can not. We cannot escape the world; it is still with us, in spite of how hard some of its manifestations are to believe.

Opec Prez: World Oversupplied With Oil

03. March 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: World

This from Tom Doggett and Chris Baltimore at Reuters:

WASHINGTON – OPEC President Edmund Daukoru said on Friday that the global oil market is “oversupplied” by about 2 million barrels per day.

“The market is indeed well supplied with crude today,” Daukoru told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington, ahead of next week’s meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Daukoru’s view that the global market has plenty of crude oil differed with that of the United States, the world’s biggest oil consuming nation, which believes the market needs more oil.

This is quite disturbing. Absent the undue influence of Governments, “Market Makers”, and powerful cartels, the free market doesn’t lie. And the market tells us there is no surplus in crude production. Over the past two decades, we’ve been blessed with the fact of OPEC’s waning power. And there were always producers (mostly Saudi) willing to increase production to counter the actions of other nations, who wanted to launch the market into an inflationary spiral. However, the expansion of the “emerging economies” (most notably India and China) has tapped the world’s surplus capacity. Ladies and gentlemen, hold on to your hats; it’s quite likely to be a bumpy ride.

A Manifesto Against Religious Totalitarianism

01. March 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: World

Malkin posts about 12 intellectuals signing their name to a document calling for an end to Islamism.

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

Sign me up.

This war truly is creating strange allies. If you had told me last year that Michelle Malkin was promoting a “manifesto” calling for “secular values for all” I would have asked you what you were smoking.

Iran To Enrich Uranium In Russia

26. February 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, Iran, Technology, World

This from Reuters:

Busher, Iran – Iran has reached a “basic” agreement with Russia on a joint venture to enrich uranium and will continue talks in coming days, Iran’s nuclear chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh said on Sunday.

My other sources believe the enrichment will be performed, at least partially, by Iranian personnel, but in Russian facilities. My only opinion, at this point, is: trust, but verify.

Cash-for-Kofi

18. February 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, World

More UN antics from Claudia Rosett at The Weekly Standard:

DESPITE FREQUENT DECLARATIONS OF REFORM, it seems that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has learned nothing from the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food scandal, in which Saddam Hussein’s billions corrupted the U.N.’s entire Iraq embargo bureaucracy. Earlier this month, Annan accepted from the ruler of Dubai an environmental prize of $500,000–a fat sum that represents the latest in a long series of glaring conflicts of interest. Call this one Cash-for-Kofi.

[…]

So entwined were Annan’s own U.N. colleagues in the process that selected him for this award that it’s tempting to relabel the entire affair as one of the U.N.’s biggest back-scratching contests. Chairing the jury panel, which voted unanimously for Annan, was the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, Klaus Toepfer, and among the jurors was the U.N. undersecretary-general for Economic and Social Affairs, José Antonio Ocampo. Both men owe their current jobs to Annan. Serving as an “observer” of the jury panel was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.N., Munir Akram, who just finished a term as president of the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council, which works closely with Annan. On the
website for the Zayed prize, the public relations contacts include a U.N. staffer, Nick Nuttall, listed complete with his U.N. email account and phone number at the Nairobi headquarters of the U.N. Environment Program.

[…]

Not unaware of appearances, Annan announced at the Dubai award ceremony that he would be using his prize as seed money for a foundation he plans to set up in Africa, devoted to agriculture and girls’ education. To date, he has provided no information about what this promised foundation might be or who will run it, or what perquisites might go to its founder, or to anyone else associated with it. Asked recently for details, Annan’s spokesman replied, “When we have more information, we’ll pass it on to you.”

Hat Tip: Glenn Reynolds, who quips, “Note to Condi: Why don’t we give this sort of outright bribery a try? It seems to be all the rage.”

What Do Falun Gong And Ben Franklin Have In Common?

10. February 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, World

Throughout history, all successful resistance efforts have had a foreign activities element. Forbes’ Richard C. Morais reports on Falun Gong’s activities in both the US, and the “No Man’s Land” of cyberspace:

Overseas Falun Gong practitioners are, for example, leading an underground campaign to hack China’s Internet firewalls to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s news blackout and propaganda in the Middle Kingdom. But there are many skirmishes between Chinese communism and Chinese spiritualism taking place on U.S. soil.

Consider, for example, the propaganda war that took place at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in late January. The New York City-based New Tang Dynasty TV beams uncensored free world news into China using capacity on European satellite-operator Eutelsat. NTDTV is loosely associated with Falun Gong (the spiritual group’s spokeswoman, for example, sits on the company’s board), and NTDTV hired Radio City Music Hall to stage a Chinese New Year gala. Not to be outdone, the Chinese government’s television station, CCTV, booked the famous hall immediately following the NTDTV gala and did its best to confuse the ticket-buying public.

Of course, all this belies Falun Gong’s earlier claims that it was simply a non-partisan spiritual movement.

Read the whole thing.

The Conscience of the Queen

05. February 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: World

Tigerhawk, whom I’m adding to our blogroll, has a good post on the Queen of Denmark’s opinions on Islam as expressed in her biography.

She said: “We are being challenged by Islam these years – globally as well as locally. It is a challenge we have to take seriously. We have let this issue float about for too long because we are tolerant and lazy.

“We have to show our opposition to Islam and we have to, at times, run the risk of having unflattering labels placed on us because there are some things for which we should display no tolerance.”

“And when we are tolerant, we must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction.”

He’s also got some other good posts on the subject. Maybe start on the main page and scroll down.

Via Protein Wisdom

Kinda, Sorta 9/11ish

05. February 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: European Disunion, General, GWOT, Pajama Game, War, World

All this last week I have been returning, almost obsessively to certain blogs for continuing updates on the Danish cartoon story. It is a marvel of jaw-dropping proportions of how a dozen fairly innocuous sketches, published in a comparatively small national newspaper, in a small European country have gotten the goat, so to speak, of seething mobs a good few countries or continents away. I rather suspect some of the rioters are only vaguely aware, in a kind of trivial pursuit/jeopardy question obscure factoid sort of way that there is a Denmark, and even fewer could find it on a map, but there they are, howling away and waving weapons and signs— invariably neatly lettered in English, how curious is that?!… and burning flags again… where the heck did they get all those Danish flags— is there some sort of “Flags R’ US” big box chain store serving Damascus, Jakarta and Gaza with all their banner barbeque needs?

It’s the fabled Muslim Street again, at a full roiling, furiously bubbling seeth, parked in front of an embassy, intimidating and threatening diplomatic staff, business interests and free-lance do-gooders, all alike. For more than two decades America (AKA “The Great Satan”) pretty much had a lock on that gig, as a focus for the Muslim ire, and it is initially passing strange and going into Outer Limits territory to see it happening to some other national interest, especially to a tidy, comfortably inoffensive little country like Denmark. The original action is so minor in comparison to the snowballing reaction—it’s rather like seeing the Animal Regulation people backed up by a tactical SWAT team go after the neighbor down the street on account of a unlicensed and unleashed teacup Chihuahua. You just keep scratching your head and wondering ‘what the f**k brought all that on?’ Or alternately, ‘what the f**k doesn’t set off the seething Muslim Street?’Or daringly, even ‘Since anything and everything sets off the seething Muslim Street, may as well publish and be damned!’

I personally confess to a great deal of appalled sympathy for the Danes, and the Norwegians, and all those other Europeans and Britons who see this issue clearly, just now. The whole issue of intellectual and press freedom, and open discussion of anything and everything, won for us with such great struggle and with so many setbacks, is a central value. All the previous little kerfuffles, all those spats about artist-poseurs smearing themselves with chocolate, or a canvas with elephant dung, or some tiresome leftist with a captive university audience, or some writer-pseud striking a daring pose by sticking it to the bourgeoisie; All that before was just a pose, a trivial and momentary diversion; this now, this is for real. Are we now willing to publish, or write about, or talk about an issue that might have permanent and fatal consequences, over a principle that we have had so long been accustomed to? Now that a threat has been issued that we must perforce obey the dictates of a religion, a religion alien to most of us? A dictate backed up by threats of murder and violence?
” Nice little country you got here, be a shame if anything happened to it.”
The demand, couched as a seemingly reasonable request to be “respectful” and understanding of a particularly belief is put reasonably, counting on us to be reasonable, courteous… but the implications are huge and only just dawning on those who have been not been following this, admittedly in a desultory way, for the last four months.

If we value the soul of Western democracies, of a free press, of being able do discuss anything at all in the media, old and new, print and TV, in the halls of universities and governments, in coffee shops and around office water coolers, without fear or favor, we cannot yield on this. Because being once constrained by Moslems, under threat, there is no reason to deny it to any other special party that may raise a complaint, backed by a similar threat. Once debate can be shut down on the grounds of “being respectful” to one belief, once criticism can be howled down on that ground, it can be done on behalf of any other religion or party, or group… and then what you have is no longer free. It may be something… but it is no longer free. Once the exception is made, we are pretty much lost, as much as the media outlets in the Mexican border towns are, when it comes to publishing anything about narco-trafficking , or independent Russian media is, about anything to do with the oligarchy.

And this is the realization that suddenly, and with a great deal of horror, that a lot of people in Britain and in Continental Europe may have come to this week, of how close they stand to the abyss, and how easily they may be struck a near-mortal blow, a blow at the intellectual heart, rather than the physical one struck on 9/11 to the US, for nothing more than being who they are in the eyes of Moslem extremists, rather than anything particular that they might have done.

Die Gedanken Sind Frei

01. February 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, Pajama Game, Politics, War, World

“I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

So this is where we stand, with Voltaire’s noble words about intellectual freedom and the right to contemplate and openly discuss orthodoxies and heresies of any sort, with an eye towards seeing that they stand or fall, strengths and weaknesses dissected and revealed. A former President of these united States, whose grasp of the concept of intellectual freedom is as apparently as shaky as his grip on marriage vows, appears to interpret belief in it to mean that a certain favored class of adherents to a particular orthodoxy are free from ever having those beliefs challenged, criticized, mildly mocked, or even having their feelings hurt. Such is the state of their tender sensitivities, this class must be treated with special regard, their core beliefs never questioned – or as it turns out, illustrated.

One might, with a great deal of experience and cynicism, suspect that a large part of this exaggerated deference is mostly due to the very high probability that self-styled representatives of the offended orthodoxy will show up at the door of the affronting party, singly or in force, wielding sharp weapons, explosive items, fatwas, lawsuits, serious armaments, or merely shrill accusations of racism and prejudice, according to the inclination, location and experience of the offended parties. One might also suspect that not a few intellectual, political and cultural establishments might have already made a quick calculation of the risks and benefits and preemptively rolled over, and quietly began self-censoring themselves. Speaking truth to power might really have some risks, best be sure that the power spoken to is either defanged or merely rolls its’ eyes derisively at yet another dreary polemic by Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone or John LeCarre. Best not say anything at all about the “religion of peace” lest the gentlemen with sharp knives be forced to demonstrate their imperfect acceptance of the Western tradition of open debate and dissent.

There is an old saying, to the effect that the most binding chains are the ones we put on ourselves. And the most insidious and effective censorship is that kind that we also put on ourselves, the censorship that strangles the question before it can even be asked. And that might be one of the points raised by the editor of the Jyllands-Posten all these months ago; that thoughtful people, earnestly wishing to be polite, tolerant and sensitive of others, began moving down that path that eventually ends— if we are not aware— with our wrists humbly held up for the manacles of imposed censorship to be firmly snapped on. A drift that began with good manners ends with limits imposed by maladroit legislation or a baying mob, maybe even both, and all the important issues of the day, which ought to be discussed— vociferously, noisily and with all the thrown crockery at our disposal— are removed from the arena where they ought to be, to fester and simmer away in odd corners. What has been more insupportable in recent years, is that our courtesy in this respect is not even reciprocated: the vilest sort of caricatures and insult imaginable regarding Westerners, Christians, Jews, Americans and others too varied to mention have free and frequent circulation in Muslim and Arab-oriented and funded media.

One does wonder about a religion and culture so sensitive of insult, yet so free about dealing it out wholesale and by the bucket to others?
Is this Prophet and belief set so fragile that the merest whisper of non-adoration, of criticism and caricature will shatter it, irrevocably? Are its dutiful defenders secretly in such fear of that shattering, of the doubt that might be raised by any breath of irrelevance in a country which pays allegiance to another tradition, that the doors of dissent from orthodoxy must be slammed shut on parody, criticism, literary hyperbole, and scholarly analysis?

Umm, no. I think not. Not here. Not now. The strength of the West is in that very noisy disputation, our freedom to put everything on the table, to question, to non-conform, and by disputation and argument, make our beliefs even stronger for having all the idiocy knocked out of them. As such has been our custom, and in the reported words of Martin Luther, at the Diet of Worms: “Since your majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason–I do not accept the authority of popes and councils for they have contradicted each other–my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me. Amen.”

Everything is on the table. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. These are the cartoons, here is a good link, curtesy of Samizdata. (Later: More discussion here…. oh, and buy Danish!!!!)

It’s Confirmed: Terrorists Were In Targeted Buildings

17. January 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: GWOT, World

This from Riaz Khan at AP:

At least four foreign terrorists died in the purported U.S. airstrike aimed at al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader in a Pakistani border village, the provincial government said Tuesday.

A statement, issued by the administration of Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, also said that between 10 and 12 foreign extremists had been invited to the dinner at the village hit in Friday’s attack.

It was the first official confirmation by Pakistani authorities that foreign militants were killed in the attack on the village of Damadola. Women and children also died, triggering outrage in this Islamic nation.

[…]

The statement, citing the chief official in the Bajur region where the Damadola is located, said its findings were from a report compiled by a “joint investigation team” but gave no specifics on who was included in the team.

“Four or five foreign terrorists have been killed in this missile attack whose dead bodies have been taken away by their companions to hide the real reason of the attack,” the statement said.

“It is regrettable that 18 local people lost their lives in the attack, but this fact also cannot be denied, that 10-12 foreign extremists had been invited on a dinner,” it said.

This totally discredits the argument that we were targeting “innocent civilians.” As with any wartime scenario, association with the enemy makes one a priori a viable target.

It is also important to note that this confirmation came from the “provincial government,” which has more authority in the region than Islamabad. This goes to the argument that we attacked a “friendly sovereign nation.” Just as with the 2002 Hellfire strike in Yemen, it is rather dubious to apply the European nation-state sovereignty model to much of the Islamic world, as they are unable to police within their own borders.

Another Brush With History

14. January 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Israel & Palestine, Memoir, Military, World

I had long put it out of my mind, and was only reminded when I ran across this picture at Chicago Boyz… that I actually went to see one of these men speak. For some reason (probably because he had recently resigned from the government) he came to speak at Cal. State Northridge, sometime in the spring of 1975 or 1976, under the sponsership of (I think) the campus chapter of Hillel.

I an fairly sure it was spring, because it was raining cats and dogs, and I was still inexperienced enough a driver to be mildly terrified of the ordeal of driving across the Valley in a downpour, what with the lights reflecting off the water in the road making it hard to see where the lanes were. On the whole the drive was a titch more unsettling than getting into the campus theater was. Each of us lined up to go into the theater— and there was a fair turnout— was patted down, briskly and effeciently, and all the women’s handbags were opened for inspection. Now that was unsettling. It hadn’t been unheard of, that kind of precaution, after all, it was only a half-dozen years after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, a dozen since Jack Ruby walked into a police station in Dallas and killed another Kennedy assassin… but still.

Even on a wet and unpleasant evening, there were protestors, or course…. practically the only time I had ever seen such on campus with my own eyes… chanting dispiritedly “Palestina! Palestina!” in the downpour that the weather gods save for those who are convinced the sun always shines in Southern California. (There was hardly any campus culture of protest after about 1972, and anyway, Northridge was a commuter school— most students going there had jobs and real lives, and just wanted the damned education, thank you very much.)

I think most of the other people in the audience were, like me, curious and interested… and polite. The person we had come to hear speak was famous, of course, mostly for winning wars— something that our own generals had not lately had much experience with. He had been on the cover of Time, and all. There was an air in the audience of pleasant anticipation, not excitement as if for a rock concert, but more like that in a classroom, when a really rivetingly good lecturer is about to begin. And there were good lecturers at Cal State, and there was a history prof at Glendale JC who was so fabulous that people sat out in the corridor to audition his classes. This man was truely a historic person, well worth driving across the Valley in driving rain to see and listen to.

For a hero, though, he was pretty short, and rather modestly ordinary looking, for all the world like a small local business owner at a Rotary or Lions meeting, wearing a plain tan-colored suit and a wholly lamentable tie. Perhaps I should have looked back in the diary I kept at the time before writing this because I would have written about what he said, because I can’t really remember any of it. But I am good with voices and accents, and they stick in my mind more tenaciously, and I thought it was curious how he spoke English well, but with sometimes a very pronounced accent, alternating jarringly with some words and phrases in perfectly fluent British English— as if he had once spoken English often and comfortably, but not lately, and so become rusted linguistically.

Exept for the eye-patch, one would have hardly noticed Moshe Dayan at all, in that campus theater; he had, I think now with my own experience in the military, perfected the art of putting aside the command presence that a military leader must have in order to lead… but that only the very finest of them can put aside when the occasion demands, and appear to be only ordinary.

(I saw Ray Bradbury lecture once, in the same theater, and remember that he told the story of being arrested for walking in LA, but I think he’s been telling that one for years.)

Spirit of America Releases Anonymous Blogging Guides

10. January 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Site News, World

Received this email from Spirit of America today:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SPIRIT OF AMERICA RELEASES ANONYMOUS BLOGGING GUIDES IN ENGLISH,
ARABIC, CHINESE, AND PERSIAN

Spirit of America has launched the BlogSafer wiki, available at http://www.blogsafer.org. BlogSafer contains a series of guides on how to blog under difficult conditions in countries that discourage free speech.

LOS ANGELES, California – January 7, 2006 – Spirit of America’s
BlogSafer wiki hosts a series of targeted guides to anonymous
blogging, each of which outline steps a blogger in a repressive regime
can take, and tools to use, to avoid identification and arrest. These
range from common sense actions such as not providing identifying
details on a blog to the technical, such as the use of proxy servers.
More »

Operation Jaywick

08. January 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Military, War, World

I had never, ever heard of this particularly daring and creative WWII operation, until I taped a TV mini-series about it all, off Star-Plus when I was in Korea… umm, about a decade ago. Chalk it up to cultural bias and isolationism, since I had always read more about the European side of it, and the bits that American forces were involved in, in the Pacific…still, I do regret that I had never heard much about this operation. Major/Colonel Lyon does come off as one of those who is indisputably mad, perhaps a little bit bad, and definitly dangerous— if not to know, then to follow him into the jaws of death or Singapore harbor under Japanese occupation in 1943-45.
(The miniseries is not, apparently, available via Amazon, although the book that it is based upon is.)

The Coming Chinese Civil War

06. January 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General Nonsense, World

A lengthy, but essential post from James Waterton at Samizdata:

I believe that the Chinese banking sector’s dire straits constitute the gravest threat to global stability in the coming years. The Chinese government is always harping on about its “deepening” banking and state-owned industrial enterprise reforms, and this is a mantra is being repeated across the world. Unfortunately, the Chinese state is so opaque that it’s impossible to verify the veracity of such claims, and the unrealistic numbers being thrown at us by the Communist party (like the drop of NPLs from 25% to 12% in less than five years) and the shonky juggling of bad debt from one insolvent bank to another woefully undercapitalised holding company do not inspire much confidence in the nature of the reforms. Frankly, I believe the banking sector is too far gone to reform without collapse. In international terms, the crisis in the Chinese banks and SOEs is an elephant that stands in the middle of the room, but everyone is either perceiving it as a mouse or trying to pass it off as a mouse. I believe the Australian government is in the latter category, as are a great many others around the world.

I have been cautioning against this for years – urging those interested in “emerging markets” to look to the more stable and liberalized nations of Ireland and Eastern Europe. The Chinese economy is as flimsy as rice paper. This is akin to Japan in the late ’80s, but far worse. Japan has a substantially free market. The free market in China is a sham.

It positively escapes me why such normally intelligent libertarian investment advisors as Capitalist Pig’s Jonathan Hoenig have been so bullish on China.

Mentioned only tangentially by James in this article is the fact that, while their holding have been greatly reduced this past decade, the Red Army is an economic entity unto itself. If the domestic financial situation takes a sour turn, it may feel the need to engage in foreign adventurism – particularly if it could be “profitable”. Ownership of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea have long been a point of contention

“Without going to the Spratly (Nansha) Islands, you would not know the magnitude of the threat and challenge to China’s maritime territory and interests” – People’s Liberation Army Daily reporter

Oil and Gas reserves in the region are unknown, but suspected. If the Red Army suddenly becomes unable to supply its fuel needs due to an economic downturn, the pressure to secure control of the region will increase greatly.

As James makes quite clear, even if no blood is shed as a result of the Chinese bubble bursting. the global economic effects would be harsh. Australia (James’ homeland) would be particularly hard hit, as much of it’s economy revolves around supplying China with raw materials.

Progress # 1: The Lesser-Weevil

20. December 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, World

Oh, yeah somewhere, someplace, someone is forgiving me for cadging Jack Aubrey’s joke in the movie version of “Master & Commander”, about choosing the lesser of two weevils, in reference to my darling daughter presenting me with the choice of either a gun or a dog as a personal home protection device. I chose, of course, a dog as the lesser of two weevils, over my own misgivings, and the even deeper misgivings of the cats, especially Bubba and Parfait, the visitors who now find their gentleman’s paradise closed to them, for now my backyard is home to… a dog. I put their dishes on the front porch, but they have not been back since yesterday morning, when I returned from my morning run, dragging Lesser-Weevil back with both hands on the leash from chasing them. A couple of miles, and she still has energy and enthusiasm. The discipline will come, and fairly easily, I think, for she appears to be an intelligent and personable dog.

Her qualities are as murky as the circumstances under which she was acquired, from friends of my daughter who were either vague, or unknowing, but this much we have been able to deduce either from personal observation, or from the judgment of an attending veterinarian: She is an un-neutered female (and partial to females, small children, and non-threatening males), is somewhere between six and nineteen months of age. Her adult teeth are grown in, but relatively unworn, her paws and leg bones are in proportion to the rest of her, and the expert veterinarian concludes that she has grown to her adult size and weight (about 45 pounds), and is in excellent health. She appears to be mostly boxer, and lashings of something else, at which can only be guessed; whatever what may be in the genetic mix she is openly friendly with other, non-hostile dogs, and genuinely civil and affectionate to the average non-hostile person. She was actually pretty territorial about Blondie’s car, during the drive from Cherry Point, which bodes well for her assigned profession as a guard or alarm dog.

Lesser-Weevil also— which is good for me and the small yards in the neighborhood I live in— not one of those nervy or terribly bored dogs who barks interminably at any provocation as a hobby. (Her bark is more of a deep, sonorous bay, the sort of thing you can imagine from a bloodhound on the trail) I may have to get a couple of the distant neighbors to walk up to the front door as a test, to see how she handles strangers coming to the door; she is quite calm about Blondie or Judy or I coming up the walk. She sleeps on the back porch, curling up very small, and is ecstatically happy to go out with me for my early-morning run, cavorting and bouncing up and down on her hind legs for about the first half block, until I shorten the leash and then she settles down into a steady mile-eating jog. Three mornings, and she seems to have already grasped that I need a dog that will pace a short distance from my right hand, not tugging or jerking at the leash. Blondie is already working on “sit/stay”, with promising results; the Lesser-Weevil sits and waits, even while you have her full food-dish in hand.

Now, if she would only restrain herself from chewing up everything in sight; she’s already done a number on the bamboo table on the back porch, my gardening hat (well, that was nearly shot already), the plastic lighter I use for the oil lamps, and Blondie’s pleather purse…. Ah, well, things to work towards.

Getting Islamism Out Of Their System

19. December 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, World

Michael J. Totten has this must-read interview with Big Pharaoh. Here’s some of the meat:

“I’ve had this theory for a while now,” I said. “It looks like some, if not most, Middle East countries are going to have to live under an Islamic state for a while and get it out of their system.”

Big Pharaoh laughed grimly.

“Sorry,” I said. “That’s just how it looks.”

He buried his head on his arms.

“Take Iranians,” I said. “They used to think Islamism was a fantastic idea. Now they hate it. Same goes in Afghanistan. Algerians don’t think too much of Islamism either after 150,000 people were killed in the civil war. I hate to say this, but it looks like Egypt will have to learn this the hard way.”

“You are right,” he said. “You are right. I went to an Egyptian chat room on the Internet and asked 15 people if they fasted during Ramadan. All of them said they fasted during at least most of it. I went to an Iranian chat room and asked the same question. 14 out of 15 said they did not fast for even one single day.”

“Egypt didn’t used to be like this,” I said.

“Nasser’s biggest crime was not establishing democracy when he took over,” he said. “Back then, Egyptian people were liberal. It would have worked then. But not now.”

Progress is a funny thing. We Westerners like to think it moves in a straight line. In America that’s pretty much how it is. No serious person would argue that American culture was more liberal and tolerant in the 1950s than it is now. But Egypt, amazingly, moved in exactly the other direction.

“When Nasser took over,” Big Pharaoh said, “people were angry at Britain and Israel. He nationalized all the industry. He banned political parties. He stifled everything. Banned the Muslim Brotherhood. Banned the Communists. Banned all. When Sadat took over in 1970, he had two enemies: the Communists and the Nasser remnants. So to counter these threats, he did what the United States did in Afghanistan during the Cold War – he made an alliance with the Islamists. He brought back the Muslim Brotherhood which had fled to Saudi Arabia when Nasser was around. He used them to destroy the left.”

“That was part of it,” he continued. “During the oil boom of 1973 a lot of Egyptians went to Saudi Arabia to work. Then in the 1990s, two important things happened. After the first Gulf War, Saudi Arabia began to Saudize its economy and said they no longer needed Egyptian workers. When the Egyptians came home they were contaminated with Wahhabism. Egypt’s economy kept getting worse. Unemployed members of the middle class either sat around and smoked shisha or got more religious. That was when Islamism moved from the lower class to the middle class. Now it is moving even to the upper class.”

Chinese Demand Perestroika

14. December 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General Nonsense, World

This from William J. Dobson at TNR:

There is no question that the growing size and scope of public unrest is a matter of grave concern for Beijing’s leadership. But what must be more alarming than the number of protests is something more fundamental: the erosion of the political formula that is supposed to keep the current regime in power. The Chinese Communist Party believed that, with the ushering in of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms more than two decades ago, it had struck a grand political bargain with the people: that as long as Beijing kept the country’s economic engine humming the public would accept both the lack of political freedom and the state’s abandonment of the socialist principles upon which it was founded. Income was supposed to replace ideology.

But the country’s economic growth, which remains among the world’s fastest, is not keeping a lid on dissent. Indeed, just about the only thing rising faster than the country’s economy is the people’s anger at the government. Since 2000, the country has held steady with 9 percent economic growth. During the same time, protests have grown by more than 20 percent a year. For Beijing’s leaders, what is worse than the rising number of protests is not knowing how to stem the tide.

[…]

China’s leaders have probably long since realized a growing economy isn’t enough. Indeed, the country’s experiments in cowboy capitalism have led to many of the abuses that are now fanning the flames of protest. No one doubts that Beijing’s technocrats know what it takes to engineer impressive GDP growth. It’s less clear that they can condition millions of party officials to stop preying on their local populace and to start providing the type of governance that will give the party a good name outside of Beijing.

China’s leaders have been good students of the recent experiences of the former Soviet bloc. yet they have failed to pay heed to one virtually incontrovertible historical fact: economic liberalization virtually always portends political liberalization. Revolt is fomented in the middle and upper, not the lower classes.

Globalization: The Rich Get Richer…

20. November 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Technology, World

…And so does everybody else. A prime example is this NYTimes (Select) story, covered by Virginia Postrel:

Big retailers in Brazil are lowering the bar for what they will sell on credit. Though the country’s shops and department stores have long sold big-ticket items on installment plans, Brazilian and multinational retailers, like Wal-Mart Stores and Carrefour of France, have begun offering purchase plans with monthly payments that come to no more than one or two reais–about 45 to 90 cents.

The shift is an effort by retailers here to squeeze more spending from the big, but cash-short, bottom of the consumer base in Brazil, South America’s biggest economy. Amid a tepid recovery that has yet to blossom into strong, sustained growth in retail demand, vendors are going to new lengths to help low-income Brazilians pay for everything from their weekly rice and beans to inexpensive items like clothes, radios, blenders and other goods.

[…]

Slower inflation enabled stores to introduce payment plans for retail goods that many consumers once strained to finance–from tennis shoes and televisions, to refrigerators and home computers. So successful was retail credit, especially among the middle class, that price tags in many stores now highlight the cost of the monthly installment, with the total price in much smaller print below.

Yet a big portion of the consumer base still struggles with bare necessities. That is why vendors recently began applying their credit plans to low-cost items, too.

Says Virginia: “While items like irons and electric grills may seem like cheap consumer goods to Americans, they are actually household capital equipment–the sort of goods that represent accumulated wealth over time. This newly available credit thus enables not only short-term consumption but a higher standard of living over the long-term.”

Now some will say that this is some attempt to entrap naive consumers. But that is typical of the infantilization endemic to the socialist mindset. No doubt some will abuse their new-found credit, and get into financial trouble. But, just as in the United States decades ago, the vast majority will use their credit prudently to raise their standard of living.

The Daily Brief