douglass carmichael: news and comment

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 23:53:17 GMT

on philanthropy, and a few shocking ideas. the secondary unplanned consequences of Lorge anoint of wealth.From Fred Turner.

The special mandate of the philanthropic or voluntary gift economy. And it will suggest ways in which the artistic and literary culture can begin to celebrate and offer guidance to the philanthropic enterprise.

Estimates of the amount of wealth that will be inherited or given away in trusts and the like in the next

few years range from ten to twenty trillion dollars, riches that will be provided as a gift, riches not earned, not acquired by conquest, nor legislatively appropriated. The amount over the next 55 years is estimated at between 41 and 136 trillion. This is an almost inconceivable sum—around seventeen thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child on the planet—and it will surely alter the world’s economy profoundly, loosening the tie between effortful production and personal wealth that has been so important a feature of capitalism.

Other periods of history give testimony about the benefits and also the great dangers of such large wealth transfers. In the last years of the Roman republic, a period of gigantic untaxed fortunes, gifts and

bequests to the Roman people and its army by the great magnates—such as Sulla, Marius, Lucullus,

Pompey, Julius Caesar, Octavius, Antony—were a crucial instrument of policy. The publication of a will

before or after the donor’s death could and did alter the course of world history. The result was enormous wars, a flowering of cultural production, and an epochal change from republic to empire. The Black Death in Europe, combined with a ripening of technological development and a warming of the climate, created another huge wealth transfer, ushering in the Renaissance, the Reformation, and more large-scale wars. More modestly, but perhaps in the long run just as momentously, the vast generational wealth transfers that occurred in Europe through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provided almost every novel, opera, and drama of the period with the mainspring of its plot—the will or entail that frustrates or liberates the lovers. The accumulated capital of the Industrial Revolution fell into the hands of a section of society that had tired of the process of money-making, while being kept from the aspiring classes that would have been happy to put it to use.

Social Security

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 05:24:38 GMT

The amazing story now is social security. The discussion is getting very good. The best site to follow may be Brad Delong's

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/

He quotes around a lot, and gets flavor and details.

Josh Marshal has been doing an extraordinary job of embarrassing congress people who are wavering. To learn about congress this is a good opportunity - and about political courage and doggedness.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

Chinese wisdom

Zhuangzi told this story to his disciples to make a point.

Once a zookeeper said to his monkeys: "You'll get 3 bananas in the Morning and 4 in the afternoon." All monkeys are upset.

"OK. How about 4 bananas in Morning and 3 in the afternoon?"

Hearing this, the monkeys are content.

One should realize that sometimes a change in phrasing does not represent a real change.

Pasted from <http://www.chinapage.com/story/monkeyfeed.html>

Tue, 01 Feb 2005 02:17:15 GMT

Picked up from Kevin Drum

LESSONS OF HISTORY?....Tom Cleaver of Redress Press sends along this clip from the New York Times. The date is September 3, 1967:

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote

Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

....A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.

I know, I know, this doesn't mean Iraq is Vietnam. But you have to admit, this story is pretty spooky.

Pasted from <http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005556.php>

Real interest now in the future of the Democratic party and the struggle over chairperson of the DNC.

Mon, 31 Jan 2005 03:47:19 GMT

Yesterday's before the election, a zogby poll. This poll is very good. It says that Iraqi's want the US out, they want a non-religious government, and they are interested in voting. The bad news is that the Shia's aare I being isolated. The other news of course is that the US really loses, unless we can reframe this as agood outcome, which I believe. Things have moved to the point wher Bush gets little credit, and that leaves us in the US with a major problem. What kind of a US do we want?

Zogby International did a poll of 805 Iraqis between January from January 19 to 23, 2005 in the cities of Baghdad, Hilla, Karbala and Kirkuk, as well as Diyala and Anbar provinces.

Results:

Sunni Arabs who say they will vote on Sunday: 9%

Sunni Arabs who say they definitely will not vote on Sunday: 76%

Shiites who say they likely or definitely will vote: 80%

Kurds who say they likely or definitely will vote: 56%

Sunni Arabs who want the US out of Iraq now or very soon: 82%

Shiites who want the US out of Iraq now or very soon: 69%

Sunni Arabs who believe US will hurt Iraq over next 5 years: 62%

Shiites who believe US will hurt Iraq over next five years: 49%

Shiites who want to hold elections on Jan. 30: 84%

Kurds who want to hold elections on Jan. 30: 64%

Sunni Arabs who want to postpone elections: 62%

Sunni Arabs who consider guerrilla resistance against the Americans legitimate: 53%

Iraqis who would support a religious government: 33%

Today, with the election behind us, except for the counting, Juan Cole as usual is on top of the implications.

I'm just appalled by the cheerleading tone of US news coverage of the so-called elections in Iraq on Sunday. I said on television last week that this event is a "political earthquake" and "a historical first step" for Iraq. It is an event of the utmost importance, for Iraq, the Middle East, and the world. All the boosterism has a kernel of truth to it, of course. Iraqis hadn't been able to choose their leaders at all in recent decades, even by some strange process where they chose unknown leaders. But this process is not a model for anything, and would not willingly be imitated by anyone else in the region. The 1997 elections in Iran were much more democratic, as were the 2002 elections in Bahrain and Pakistan.

Moreover, as Swopa rightly reminds us all, the Bush administration opposed one-person, one-vote elections of this sort. First they were going to turn Iraq over to Chalabi within six months. Then Bremer was going to be MacArthur in Baghdad for years. Then on November 15, 2003, Bremer announced a plan to have council-based elections in May of 2004. The US and the UK had somehow massaged into being provincial and municipal governing councils, the members of which were pro-American. Bremer was going to restrict the electorate to this small, elite group.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani immediately gave a fatwa denouncing this plan and demanding free elections mandated by a UN Security Council resolution. Bush was reportedly "extremely offended" at these two demands and opposed Sistani. Bremer got his appointed Interim Governing Council to go along in fighting Sistani. Sistani then brought thousands of protesters into the streets in January of 2004, demanding free elections. Soon thereafter, Bush caved and gave the ayatollah everything he demanded. Except that he was apparently afraid that open, non-manipulated elections in Iraq might become a factor in the US presidential campaign, so he got the elections postponed to January 2005. This enormous delay allowed the country to fall into much worse chaos, and Sistani is still bitter that the Americans didn't hold the elections last May. The US objected that they couldn't use UN food ration cards for registration, as Sistani suggested. But in the end that is exactly what they did.

So if it had been up to Bush, Iraq would have been a soft dictatorship under Chalabi, or would have had stage-managed elections with an electorate consisting of a handful of pro-American notables. It was Sistani and the major Shiite parties that demanded free and open elections and a UNSC resolution. They did their job and got what they wanted. But the Americans have been unable to provide them the requisite security for truly aboveboard democratic elections.

With all the hoopla, it is easy to forget that this was an extremely troubling and flawed "election." Iraq is an armed camp. There were troops and security checkpoints everywhere. Vehicle traffic was banned. The measures were successful in cutting down on car bombings that could have done massive damage. But even these Draconian steps did not prevent widespread attacks, which is not actually good news. There is every reason to think that when the vehicle traffic starts up again, so will the guerrilla insurgency.

The Iraqis did not know the names of the candidates for whom they were supposedly voting. What kind of an election is anonymous! There were even some angry politicians late last week who found out they had been included on lists without their permission. Al-Zaman compared the election process to buying fruit wholesale and sight unseen. (This is the part of the process that I called a "joke," and I stand by that.)

This thing was more like a referendum than an election. It was a referendum on which major party list associated with which major leader would lead parliament.

Many of the voters came out to cast their ballots in the belief that it was the only way to regain enough sovereignty to get American troops back out of their country. The new parliament is unlikely to make such a demand immediately, because its members will be afraid of being killed by the Baath military. One fears a certain amount of resentment among the electorate when this reticence becomes clear.

Iraq now faces many key issues that could tear the country apart, from the issues of Kirkuk and Mosul to that of religious law. James Zogby on Wolf Blitzer wisely warned the US public against another "Mission Accomplished" moment. Things may gradually get better, but this flawed "election" isn't a Mardi Gras for Americans and they'll regret it if that is the way they treat it.

Economy and scenarios, Bush trap.

Mon, 24 Jan 2005 23:06:51 GMT

Philanthropy.

An interesting time when there are so many initiatives on so many issues. Do these health initiatives strategically make sense?

http://www.familiesusa.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Health_Action_2005_Conference_Registration&;JServ

Is there an unmet need for frameworks for strategic thinking?

Note the complexity here: is it an attempt to shift fruit to genetically modified varieties, or simply a market domination decision? That eating fruit is on the rise is however a good sign.

Monsanto to Buy Seed Company for $1 Bln

January 24, 2005 05:46 PM ET

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Reuters) - Agriculture products company Monsanto Co. on Monday said it will buy Seminis Inc., the world's largest commercial fruit and vegetable seed company, for at least $1 billion from a private equity firm to capitalize on the trend toward healthier eating. More...

More debt, or more wealth?

American Express Profits Rise 17 Pct

January 24, 2005 04:44 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American Express Co. said on Monday fourth-quarter profits rose 17 percent, driven by increased use of its credit cards and strong travel-related sales. More...

Nations Ranked as Protectors of the Environment By FELICITY BARRINGER. That Davos is doing this means pressure on policy makers in the US.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/science/24enviro.html?oref=login&;th

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - Countries from Northern and Central Europe and South America dominated the top spots in the 2005 index of environmental sustainability, which ranks nations on their success at such tasks as maintaining or improving air and water quality, maximizing biodiversity and cooperating with other countries on environmental problems.

Finland, Norway and Uruguay held the top three spots in the ranking, prepared by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities. The United States ranked 45th of the 146 countries studied, behind such countries as Japan, Botswana and the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, and most of Western Europe.

The lowest-ranking country was North Korea. Among those near the bottom were Haiti, Taiwan, Iraq and Kuwait.

The index is the second produced in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, which meets in Davos, Switzerland, this week. The first complete index, in 2002, produced outrage and soul-searching in lower-ranking countries like Belgium and South Korea, said Daniel C.

Esty, the director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and an author of the report.

The report is based on 75 measures, including the rate at which children die from respiratory diseases, fertility rates, water quality, overfishing, emission of heat-trapping gases and the export of sodium dioxide, a crucial component of acid rain.

In its opening chapter, the Environmental Sustainability Index report

said: "Although imperfect, the E.S.I. helps to fill a long-existing gap in environmental performance evaluation. It offers a small step toward a more vigorous and quantitative approach to environmental decision making."

The report also cited a statistically significant correlation between high-ranking countries and countries with open political systems and effective governments.

The report's flaws stem largely from inadequate data, Mr. Esty said, adding that the ranking system is at best approximate, because some individual scores had to be imputed in many cases. But he said that data might improve in coming years.

He also said a system that rated Russia, whose populated western regions have undergone extraordinary environmental degradation, as having greater environmental sustainability than the United States had inherent weaknesses.

At 33, Russia's ranking, Mr. Esty said, is in large part a consequence of the country's vast size. While it "has terrible pollution problems"

in the western industrial heartland, he said, its millions of unsettled or sparsely settled acres of Asian taiga mean "it has vast, untrammeled resources and more clean water than anywhere in the world." So, he added, "on average, Russia ends up looking better than it does to someone who lives in western Russia."

Because such differences make many countries inherently difficult to compare, he said, this report also analyzed seven clusters of similar countries; in this analysis, the United States ranked slightly below the halfway point among 24 members of the Organization of American States.

But further on scenarios of development, an interesting scenario report from the "National Intelligence Council". This is a CIA effort, and amazingly public. I was a participant in the creation of a previous set, in about 1998, called futures 2015. I remember at the meeting, listening to a blue jacket tan pants rep tie fellow going on about the need to "take out the terrorists", and I finally took the floor and said "You can either be an architect or a fireman." What is striking is the tiny place in this new set, but a place, for attitudes: in this case, tradtionals vs post modernism as a world wide factor in future possibilities.

http://www.ifs.du.edu/ifs.aspx

The scenarios are well developed and here is the table of contents for them.

At http://www.futurebrief.com/project2020.pdf

The Contradictions of Globalization

An Expanding and Integrating Global Economy

The Technology Revolution

Lingering Social Inequalities

Fictional Scenario: Davos World

Rising Powers: The Changing Geopolitical Landscape

Rising Asia

Other Rising States?

The “Aging” Powers

Growing Demands for Energy

US Unipolarity—How Long Can It Last?

Fictional Scenario: Pax Americana

New Challenges to Governance

Halting Progress on Democratization

Identity Politics

Fictional Scenario: A New Caliphate

Pervasive Insecurity

Transmuting International Terrorism

Intensifying Internal Conflicts

Rising Powers: Tinder for Conflict?

The WMD Factor

Fictional Scenario: Cycle of Fear

Note that the alternatives are negative, or market globalization. There is no other alternative considered. I recommend some study of this document.

Some thoughts on Bush and the Inaugural I wrote over the weekend.

Bush is a small man with a vision of being a Churchill or a Lincoln. But he fails to note that those strong leaders led on a crucial issue of historical significance and recognized as such by their contemporaries. Bush picks an issue with a schoolboy understanding, like a baseball team or oil company to invert in. A small staff left our from Reagan and Bush I provided him with military options, and 9/11, a crucial moment requiring great wisdom for a response, got his self-righteous bully judgment that we were at war rather than in the midst of a great world wide restlessness over deeper issues. The US. is at risk of letting itself get defined in world perception as a bully with the goal of being an arm of the tragically situated Israel, thus letting us be defined very narrowly rather than in the broad and quiet ways appropriate to great power just at the moment in history we needed to show our capacity for rich and complex understanding and Subtly of nuanced action that fits the "reality party: The one justification for Bush's approach is important to consider: that governance has become increasingly difficult in a crowded technical age, and a simple posture is the only way to hold the country and the world together. Even if this is the intent, the way Bush is going about it is not simple, but divisive, throughout the world and within US national politics.

We are all in this trap. He is used by his own character, his party, his supporters, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, the fundamentalists, and there seeking short term financed gain in difficult economic times. And we are also abused by these intersections of ideology, posturing, manipulators and interests that are woven together by expediency in his Presidency. His cookie cutter "I've read Churchill," leadership, merged with the power and wealth of the county, is carrying us on a powerful stream unleashed by his rather impoverished decisions, amidst an absence of a more realistic assessment, that has eaten away American "soft capital'; our perceived goodness and idealisms. The very deep significance for all of as in the word "freedom" is almost lost in the avalanche of its perverted use for private property rather than for individuals to be free from tyranny and fear at home so they can reason and have faith in dialog, .

Freedom for property and freedom for people are not the same. Bush is forcing them farther apart in his claim to be ready to fight one and all in his quest for "freedom and democracy" which is Bush double speak for a managed media market corporatist world of his kind of "globalization."

Analysis here is not made easy by the prevailing set of ideas that demand assent to the conclusion that under current trends everyone is doing better, both in the US and everywhere else, economically and politically. Part of the psychic force that supports this policy generating conclusion is that it is so hard to imagine a plausible alternative world politics. The 20th. century was filed with attempts to Sober the problem of wealth, power, status and governance. The left and right totalitarian more went were powerful alternator, and both Sides attracted Various kinds of idealism, but they led to terrible wars. Our leaders took us there and current ^ leaders are not looking the lessons learned. "Don't be an appeaser" is the standard the away. the problems of nations, markets, ambitions and fears are not explored. Parallels with Mussolini seem unexplored for lessons. The same forces that dominated the 20th Century and created its wars are still the same forces that are alive and well and needing very enlightened management, if we are of prevent yet another. Some people are already calling for a new world war but I think none are who prefer earth now. Those who prefer war or seek its energy are dead to other dimensions of human aliveness. (see Podhoretz In Commentary http://www.commentarymagazine.com/special/A11902025_1.html )

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Redford opens Sundance festival

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 19:08:29 GMT

My son, Seth Carmichael, is at Sundance for the fourth year, so it gives me an opportunity to take the film world a bit more seriously. He co-produced last year's drama of social relevance award Brother to Brother

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/awards/sundance/reviews_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2060039

"Festival founder Redford said he believed that people thought the times were "chaotic" or "on course" depending on their political beliefs. "I'd like to think of this festival as a festival of dissent, and I'd like to celebrate that," he said."

Bush speech - PEGGY NOONAN

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 18:36:56 GMT

While mainstream commentary was positive about the speeCh,

The inauguration: the speech: policy and analysis:
If there has ever been a speech that produced so much unanimity of analysis, we ain't seen it.

Almost without exception, the entire punditocracy thinks:

1. The speech was well written and solidly delivered.

2. The goal of freedom around the world is worthy but tough to achieve.

3. Many of America's current bilateral relationships are not consistent with the expanded Bush Doctrine.

4. History will judge deeds more than words.

5. Mrs. Bush is, uhm, smokin!!!! (That has nothing to do with the speech, but everyone is talking about it . . . )

"His tone was proud, unapologetic, even defiant, and his emphasis on foreign policy muffled his outline of the domestic agenda that he and his aides have said is so important to the success of his second term," the aforementioned Mr. Purdum penned. LINK

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238

His closest friends were not. Take These three.

Peggy Noonan

"The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush's second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars. "

And Bob Novak

Pasted from <http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-novak21.html>

The answer is given by one Bush adviser by pointing to that second Lincoln inaugural. With the end of the Civil War in sight, Lincoln did not deal with the details of either military victory or Southern Reconstruction. Instead, he offered broad concepts of binding up the nation's wounds. As a result, that Lincoln speech is a rare inaugural address that has become a historical document.

3 major defects

Bush tried the same thing, with a denunciation of the countries aligned against the United States in the war on terror. He expanded the protection of U.S. citizens to "all the inhabitants" of the world, promising: "We are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

But the very nature of Bush's address contains three major defects concerning his second term.

*First, Bush is proposing a major domestic reform for his second term that he gave no boost whatever in his speech Thursday.

*Second, Bush's inflexible call for promoting democracy everywhere prompts questions about what Bush will do to undemocratic regimes with whom he now maintains various levels of friendly bilateral relations -- led off by China, Pakistan and Egypt.

*Third, what about Iraq? Does the United States guaranteeing democracy there promise a long U.S. military commitment? This is perhaps the major of all issues for Americans.

Reality of divided nation

It will take years to determine whether Bush's oratory Thursday can achieve historical status. But the president unmistakably sent the message that the spread of democracy takes precedence over any shopping list of domestic wishes. To some orthodox conservatives, Bush's message sounded too much like Woodrow Wilson or neo-conservative diehards.

Bush pleased his conservative base, angered his liberal foes and annoyed the national news media by failing to promise a "kinder, gentler" presidency (his father's phrase) to try to heal the nation's wounds. As Democratic senators were belaboring his Cabinet nominees this week, claims of being a national unifier would have signaled weakness by Bush.

Rather, the inauguration brought home the reality of a divided nation. Loyal Republicans and protesters, both of whom poured into the capital, confronted each other. For Bush to address this problem by promising more civil behavior would have seemed either provocative or weak, depending on his tone.

In the final analysis, it was determined by Bush not to attempt conciliation. The main message carried away from his second inaugural address would be that he is a muscular, global salesman of democracy. It remains to be seen whether the American people think that is in their best interests.

And

"William Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, criticized Mr. Bush's call for a more activist military role in the world as 'dangerous, eloquent nonsense,' rejecting the implication in the president's remarks 'that anyone's lack of liberty threatens us,"" writes Don Lambro in the Washington Times. LINK

outsourcing innovation

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:29:32 GMT

Tech innovation future

http://www.cxo.com/go/index.html?ID=1615&;PMID=2389567&s=1&f=1

Innovation Ships Out

U.S. computer makers such as Dell, Motorola and HP are outsourcing not just the manufacture but the design of new products to offshore companies. Could this be the end of America's innovative edge in electronics?

BY CHRISTOPHER KOCH

Buy a laptop anywhere in the world and there is a one-in-four chance that T.J. Fang will process the order. You'll just never know it.

Does tsunami relief dry up other giving? - slate

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:24:14 GMT

System thinking, we need to learn..

President Bush in early January proclaimed: "The greatest source of America's generosity is not our government; it's the good heart of the American people." He's right. So far, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, private relief charities have raised more than $480 million for tsunami recovery efforts, far more than the $350 million committed by the government.

These impressive figures have been accompanied by a huge and unseemly amount of self-congratulation. It's especially unseemly in the case of the government contributions because the federal money is most likely coming out of existing aid budgets--any new money for reconstruction in Sri Lanka and Indonesia will likely mean less money for sub-Saharan Africa. Can the same be said about private donations? Will the private tsunami relief dry up other charitable giving?

History and anecdote suggests it will. Crain's New York Business this week had a fine piece about how five New York nonprofits working in fields such as homelessness and hunger have seen their direct-mail donations fall off a cliff in recent weeks. "Some groups such as Bailey House, which helps homeless people who have AIDS, have even started receiving letters from longtime donors warning that this year's gifts are being redirected to the tsunami relief effort," writes reporter Miriam Kreinin Souccar. The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" mentions that at Brooklyn prep school Packer Collegiate, a "fifth-grade bake sale, which had originally been intended to benefit a less fortunate school in Tanzania, was jointly dedicated to Tanzania and relief for tsunami victims."

New yorker on Alawi

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:09:01 GMT

Five centuries? no wonderthis is so intense.

The elections were meant to solidify a spirit of Iraqi national unity, but the upcoming vote has only increased the tensions among the country’s ethnic groups. The removal of Saddam abruptly disempowered Iraq’s Sunni minority, which had ruled Iraq for nearly five centuries. The resulting Sunni hostility toward American occupation forces—and their fears of being subjugated by Iraq’s Shiite majority—has inflamed the insurgency. Many Sunnis fear that Shiite parties will win the elections and install an Islamic theocracy closely linked to Iran’s. Some Sunni leaders have called for a boycott of the elections.

Rice Doublespeak at Senate

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 20:50:03 GMT

Rice and Iran, from Juan Cole

Rice responded concerning Iran that it was hard to have an engagement with a country that wanted to see Israel destroyed. It is such a simple-minded thing to say. Uh, let me see. In the 1980s wasn't it the Khomeini regime that sold Israel petroleum in exchange for spare parts for its American weaponry? Wasn't it the Israelis who put Reagan up to the Iran-Contra scandal by suggesting that the US ship TOWs to Iran in return for an end to the Lebanese hostage crisis? Even when it was more radical, and despite all the rhetoric, Iran was willing to deal with Israel in ways that helped the latter enormously.

It is true that some Iranian leaders, like Rafsanjani, say frightening things about Israel. But Rafsanjani has no executive power, and when he was president he didn't actually act on such sentiments. The point of engaging the Iranian regime would be to gradually ween it away from such extremism. Iran hasn't launched any aggressive wars in the region, or threatened to use weapons of mass destruction, unlke some other countries (the US had full diplomatic relations with Iraq in the 1980s at a
time when it had done both of these things.) I am very uncomfortable in having US national security policy and diplomacy dictated by how politicians in a country talk about our non-Nato allies (with whom, by the way, we do not even have a mutual defense pact). And I am very suspicious that now that Iraq is a basket case, all of a sudden Ariel Sharon is calling on the US to attack Iran.

If Rice is going to be a successful Secretary of State, she simply has to get back control of US foreign policy from the Likudniks in the Bush administration.

Cole on Iran

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 20:04:27 GMT

As you may recall for a year I have been saying the real focus of Bushco is on the broader nuclear strategic issues, and that the admin would go after Iran. The logic is filling in.

" The Pentagon and also Pakistan are denying the report heatedly. But it makes sense. Iran has formed a close military alliance with India, Pakistan's chief rival in South Asia, and Iran has come out on top in the new Afghanistan, with Tajik and Hazarah allies displacing the largely Pushtun, Pakistan-oriented Taliban. And Pakistan has reason not to want Iran to get nukes, thus surrounding Pakistan with nuclear powers on both the east and the south. So Pakistan has every reason to cooperate with the US against Iran. "

and for Hersh

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact

when a chair is rented.. adventures in the new economy

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 18:44:55 GMT

The replacement of property by lease hods undermines the independence Locke wanted private property to suppot. In jest,which means seriously,

"Cyborg researcher Steve Mann has produced a piece of conceptual art called "License to seat." It's a chair with "magnetic stripe card reader and spikes that retract when a seating license is downloaded from a license server in response to input from the card reader incoroprated into the chair. The license server is in the 19 inch relay rack behind the Internet Chair" The piece makes a point about the rentware world we're fast approaching, where individuals are stuck in a kind of feudal relationship with commercial entities, who reach into our homes and track and bill us for the use of our household goods. Link (Thanks, Ethan!) "

Rubin on Japan and social security

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:05:40 GMT

The social security debate may be a distraction. The best analysisI have read is that it is an effort to set up a difference beteween dems and repubicans in 2006/08. But the following by Ex Clinton Sec of treasury Bob Rubin makes another good point.

"Rubin adds that the stock market is hardly a sure bet. "You are not making social security more secure by subjecting people's retirement to equity risk. If you look at the Nikkei in Japan you get a sense of what can happen." "

and

Even private-accounts-meister Newt Gingrich bagging on the crisis claim? "The combination of higher birth rates and more immigration makes the United States the healthiest of developed nations. This is not a crisis," says the former Speaker, according to Bloomberg....

Thu, 06 Jan 2005 00:29:07 GMT

The NYT in an editorial

It's instinctive in humans to search for the meaning of an event like this, once shock and grief have begun to subside. And there will be plenty of meanings to find in the ways that humans reacted as this disaster struck and in its aftermath as the relief effort begins. But except for our obligations to help the victims in any way we can, the underlying story of this tragedy is the overpowering, amoral mechanics of the earth's surface, the movement of plates that grind and shift and slide against each other with profound indifference to anything but the pressures that drive them. Whenever those forces punctuate human history, they do so tragically. They demonstrate, geologically speaking, how ephemeral our presence is.

Pasted from <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/27/opinion/27mon-tsunami.html>

This is an amzing exoneration of the rest of us, and corporations, from the details of the economy of the area, the development of Exxon's natural gas fields in Aech, and all the use of military power to move people off land, extort them and kill. The presence of so many people on hte edge may be linked to major land clearing and other economic factors that are exploitative.

the divergence with the image of the culprit mother nature is vast. That people live where they do, fish as they do, are realted to world resource and population problems, not to mere acts of nature.

The emerging question in the Indian Ocean tsunami aftereffects is whether the awareness of the conditions of real lives, so many, so fragile, will have any impact on the direction the leadership, the press, and economics will take. Governance and the media live ion a self serving narrow partial illusion. Can we expect this to get better? What can we do?

That is, is there an emerging alternative that has a chance of creating a coherent society we, humanity, could actually step into, out of our current ways, without capsizing in the attempt?

To put it in yet another perspective, The total deaths are less than the monthly birthrate for india alone, at 23/1000/year, and the annual death rate for children and malaria I think is about 5 million. The visual TVable power of the Tsunami is probabaly what makes this so powerful as a representative event of our time. It can be compared to

Grand Death Auto
	March/April 2004
Grand Death Auto By 2020, traffic fatalities will be the world’s third leading cause of death after heart disease and tobacco smoke and ahead of HIV/AIDS, according to a recent report by the Global Burden of Disease Project (GBD), cosponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank. More than 1 million people are killed on the world’s roads each year, and nearly 90 percent of these deaths occur in low to middleincome nations. In 2000, Southeast Asia alone bore one third of...

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story_id=2497&;URL=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2497

For a report on Exxon in Aech see

http://www.laborrights.org/projects/corporate/exxon/

Thu, 09 Dec 2004 15:57:26 GMT

Terrible way to start the day, but best to see what is

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11645049%255E2703,00.html

Half the world's children are living in poverty

AFP, Reuters

December 10, 2004

ONE billion children - half the world's population of children - suffer from poverty, conflict and the scourge of AIDS, the United Nations Children's Fund revealed in its annual report yesterday.

The rights of children to a healthy and protected upbringing, as laid out in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, were regularly imperilled due to the failure of governments to enact human rights and economic reforms, UNICEF said.

I set google to send me notices of damage in Granada. I today received the first in many weeks. The way the world news works, only spotlights fall on certain plaes. the rest go unrecorded.

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2004/diciembre/juev9/49hurri.html

The most serious human and socioeconomic losses were concentrated in the smaller, less developed countries such as Haiti and Granada. The archipelago of the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands were also seriously affected by the double impact of more than two hurricanes.

According ECLAC, the effects of Hurricane Ivan on the island of Grenada – with a population of 100,000 inhabitants – will be felt on the economy for many years given that the disaster destroyed 89% of homes as well as damaging agricultural and other activities.

In Jamaica, Ivan caused approximately $575 million worth of damage, equivalent to 8% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the Dominican Republic, losses caused by the hurricanes reached $320 million, equivalent to 1.7% of the GDP.

According to ECLAC, evaluations of the damage caused in Haiti are still pending, although it is known that consequences for the north and northeast regions of the country were very serious, particularly in the city of Gonaives, the third largest in the country. In the Cayman Islands, the atmospheric phenomenon negatively affected the tourist industry and seriously damaged the social infrastructure of housing and communications.

and

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 8

BROOKFIELD, Ill. -- After Babs the gorilla died at age 30, keepers at Brookfield Zoo decided to allow surviving gorillas to mourn the most influential female in their social family.

One by one Tuesday, the gorillas filed into the Tropic World building where Babs' body lay, arms outstretched. Curator Melinda Pruett Jones called it a "gorilla wake."

Babs' 9-year-old daughter, Bana, was the first to approach the body, followed by Babs' mother, Alpha, 43. Bana sat down, held Babs' hand and stroked her mother's stomach. Then she sat down and laid her head on Babs' arm.

"It was like they used to do in the exhibit, lying side by side on the mountain," keeper Betty Green said. "Then Bana rose up and looked at us and moved to Babs' other side, tucked her head under the other arm, and stroked Babs' stomach."

Other gorillas also approached Babs and gently sniffed the body. Only the silverback male leader, Ramar, 36, stayed away.

Keepers said the display wasn't surprising.

"She was the dominant female of the group, the peacekeeper, the disciplinarian, the one who kept things in a harmonious state," Pruett Jones said.

Koola, 9, brought her infant daughter, whom Babs had showered with attention since her birth in August.

"Koola inspected Babs' mouth for a while, then held her baby close to Babs, like she loved to do the last couple months, letting Babs admire her," Green said.

Babs had an incurable kidney condition and was euthanized Tuesday.

Keepers had recently seen a videotape of a gorilla wake at the Columbus, Ohio, zoo and decided they would do the same for Babs.

Gorillas in the wild have been known to pay respects to their dead, keepers said.

"I had a headache for the rest of the day after all the tears I cried watching them," Green said.

Mon, 06 Dec 2004 06:31:45 GMT

I dont think this needs any comment.

Ombudsman

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36067-2004Dec4.html?sub=AR

What Readers Saw, and Didn't See

By Michael Getler

Sunday, December 5, 2004; Page B06

The story that didn't appear in The Post is about a 102-page report by a task force of the Defense Science Board, a federal advisory committee composed of academic, think tank and private-sector representatives who provide independent advice to the secretary of defense. The report had not been made public until after the New York Times wrote about it on Nov. 24, followed by the Associated Press and other news organizations.

In some ways, the report -- titled "Strategic Communications" -- is dry, bureaucratic fodder. But deep inside, it goes to the heart of both the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq, and it raises many crucial issues that don't get probed deeply enough by news organizations, in my opinion.

The report comes at an interesting time. President Bush, on many occasions when speaking of Osama bin Laden, his al Qaeda network and the "nature of the terrorist enemy," has said: "They hate us. And they hate freedom. And they hate people who embrace freedom." Last week, in a television interview, Thomas Kean, co-chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, said, "We know there's another attack coming. You and I can't say if it's next week or six months from now, but it's coming." In recent weeks, there have been new statements from bin Laden (on Oct. 29) and his top deputy and strategist, Ayman Zawahiri (on Nov. 29). Zawahiri was quoted as saying: "You must choose between two methods in dealing with Muslims. Cooperate with them based on mutual respect and interests or deal with them as if they are spoils of war. This is your problem, and you must choose. And you should know that we are a nation of patience, and we will continue fighting you until the last hour."

Now comes the Pentagon's advisory board with a sharply critical report that says U.S. efforts to separate "the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-Jihadists . . . have not only failed . . . they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended."

Here are some of the key points:

• "American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the U.S. to single-digits in some Arab societies."

• "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states."

• Since Sept. 11, 2001, "American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. What was a marginal network," the report said, is now a community-wide "movement of fighting groups."

• "Muslims," the board says, "see Americans as strangely narcissistic -- namely, that the war is all about us . . . no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game." The critical problem for American public diplomacy, the section concludes, is "a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none -- the United States today is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of Islam."

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 12:00:29 GMT

What is difficult to understand is why the press needs to be so weak in its analysis of the obvious - Bush is not presidential in character, tone or intelligence. The need last night of major commentators to say "equal" was barely overcome by such a great disparity as to be humiliating. The anger and character issue slowly emerge, but the audience is leading the press.

How does a press talk about such issues without seeming subjective? Simple things, like fact checking, looking at argument coherence, and talking about what is not talked about, are all news.

My guess is that it takes the same qualities in a reporter as we wish we had in a president. Emotional maturity, experience, broad understanding of history and politics. The reporters are looking for the angle that can be brought to the level of standard myth - of which we have so few. Win-lose being the major one.

I interviewed in 1971 a key aid to McNamara when he was secretary of defense. He said "When I wake up in the morning there is one issue: how to get my stuff on the front burner so McNamara's car stops by my house and picks me up on the way in."

The reporter is looking for the one line that makes the story. But it has to fit the editor's judgment and the pulse of the people so they will want more.

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 17:27:58 GMT

One of the reasons I like the blog world is exampled by the following check on Cheney's apperances on tuesdays in the senate.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/6/11163/2940

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 19:48:53 GMT

the picture tells a story..

at http://www.counterpunch.org/ for today.

The educational system, not unlike other sectors, is on the verge of collapse. This is usually what happens when you take a viable community and surround it with walls. But this is exactly what the Sharon government wants. Think of Ar-ram as an upside down triangular (see map). A wall is being constructed on both legs of this triangular, cutting Ar-Ram from the adjacent neighborhood of Beit Hanina on the West, and from its land, which has now been confiscated, on the East. To the North, the base of this triangular is a road which will become a Jews-only road, serving the nearby settlements (the military is likely to build some kind of barrier between the road and Ar-Ram). As a result, the neighborhood will be surrounded on all sides, with only one entrance (at the notorious Qalandiya checkpoint). A ghetto.

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 19:20:56 GMT

Highly recommend the new blog by Steve Clemons of the New America Institute.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 16:48:11 GMT

From Ted Turner on PBS to be rebroadcast next monday..

"We wasted 200 Billion Dollars of our money (in Iraq), 100Billion to destroy the infrastructure of the country, thenwe had to pledge 100 Billion to build it back, to find oneguy who was hiding in a fox hole." -- Ted Turner

"History will look back at this debacle in Iraq as one ofthe greatest mistakes that any major country every made --as big a bad deal as Time Warner merging with AOL. In onemove, we set the United States back at least 30 years, asfar as our International relations. I mean it's gonnatake a *long* time and a lot of work to repair ourstanding in the world." -- Ted Turner

"I said 'I felt as excited about signing the papers onthe (AOL Time Warner) merger as I did about having sexfor the first time' ... but I didn't really. I was justtrying to make the shareholders happy." -- Ted Turner

He also spoke of the environment, population, and the better world that is possible if we just decide tocreate it.

Sun, 25 Jul 2004 19:08:28 GMT

I sometimes think our tendency to

be overweight
have grocery stores that are wonderful
amount of money and effort spent on food

are interpretable as anxiety about the future of food.

WORLD FOOD SECURITY DETERIORATING:
Food Crunch in 2005 Now Likely

Lester R. Brown

Closing the gap in the world grain harvest this year following four consecutive grain harvest shortfalls, each larger than the one before, will not be easy. The grain shortfall of 105 million tons in 2003 is easily the largest on record, amounting to 5 percent of annual world consumption of 1,930 million tons.

The four harvest shortfalls have dropped world carryover stocks of grain to the lowest level in 30 years, amounting to only 59 days of consumption. Wheat and corn prices are at 7-year highs. Rice prices are at 5-year highs. (See data.)

The concentration of ownership in the food industry is also worrisome. The alrge travel distances make food prices very vulnerable to fuel costs and terrorism.

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 18:29:02 GMT

need to watch out for an Israeli atttack on Iran nuclear facilities. Obviously we are in the midst of a slow escallation.

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 00:47:31 GMT

Start with - all from Chalmers Johnson at

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-johnson15jul15,1,6211433,print.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

China is easily the fastest-growing big economy in the world, with a growth rate of 9.1% last year. On June 28, the BBC reported that China had passed the U.S. as the world's biggest recipient of foreign direct investment. China attracted $53 billion worth of new factories in 2003, whereas the U.S. took in only $40 billion; India, $4 billion; and Russia, a measly $1 billion.

and then see the context

COMMENTARY

Sailing Toward a Storm in China

U.S. maneuvers could spark a war.

By Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson's latest book is "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic" (Metropolitan, 2004).

July 15, 2004

Quietly and with minimal coverage in the U.S. press, the Navy announced that from mid-July through August it would hold exercises dubbed Operation Summer Pulse '04 in waters off the China coast near Taiwan.

This will be the first time in U.S. naval history that seven of our 12 carrier strike groups deploy in one place at the same time. It will look like the peacetime equivalent of the Normandy landings and may well end in a disaster.

At a minimum, a single carrier strike group includes the aircraft carrier itself (usually with nine or 10 squadrons and a total of about 85 aircraft), a guided missile cruiser, two guided missile destroyers, an attack submarine and a combination ammunition, oiler and supply ship.

Normally, the United States uses only one or at the most two carrier strike groups to show the flag in a trouble spot. In a combat situation it might deploy three or four, as it did for both wars with Iraq. Seven in one place is unheard of.

and he ends with

If left alone by U.S. militarists, China will almost surely, over time, become a democracy on the same pattern as that of South Korea and Taiwan (both of which had U.S.-sponsored military dictatorships until the late 1980s). But a strong mainland makes the anti-China lobby in the United States very nervous. It won't give up its decades-old animosity toward Beijing and jumps at any opportunity to stir up trouble — "defending Taiwan" is just a convenient cover story.

These ideologues appear to be trying to precipitate a confrontation with China while they still have the chance. Today, they happen to have rabidly anti-Chinese governments in Taipei and Tokyo as allies, but these governments don't have the popular support of their own citizens.

If American militarists are successful in sparking a war, the results are all too predictable: We will halt China's march away from communism and militarize its leadership, bankrupt ourselves, split Japan over whether to renew aggression against China and lose the war. We also will earn the lasting enmity of the most populous nation on Earth.