On What Obama Should Say To Iran
I'm a few days behind in sharing this link, but it is still very worth reading: What Obama Should Say To Iran, by Debi Ghate.
Labels: individual_rights, international
Words and stuff.
I'm a few days behind in sharing this link, but it is still very worth reading: What Obama Should Say To Iran, by Debi Ghate.
Labels: individual_rights, international
See this interesting short article about the role Twitter is playing in getting the word out about the unrest in Iran following the recent "election."
Labels: international, Twitter
I was saddened to hear of Jackie Chan's recent comments. It might not be good for over a billion people to have freedom? I don't assume that moving a country that size away from single-party rule and a relative lack of individual rights will be easy or could be done overnight. But to say what Mr. Chan is saying? Ugh.
Labels: individual_rights, international
This is likely the best visual representation (animated even!) of statistics I've ever seen:
Labels: amazing, international
My latest review of the official news coming out of North Korea turned up several gems.
Labels: funny, international
Few things are more sickening to me than those iconic Che Guevara T-shirts (or any item with that famous image of him). Ugh... so many people are so very ignorant of what Guevara did and what he stood for.
Labels: international
Yes, the title of this posting is describing the latest economic news from Zimbabwe. These numbers are just incredible. As this news item notes, the country recently introduced a nwe 100 Trillion Zimbabwe dollar note. This is necessary because of inflation, which is officially at 231 million percent, in but reality is much higher.
Labels: amazing, international
I checked the latest "news" from North Korea, and two book publishing articles caught my attention.
The Pyongyang Publishing House has of late brought out new books. Among them are the books "Great Man and Music" and "Questions and Answers on Songun Politics" and the full-length novel "River Rimjin" (Part one "Woman of the North").
"Great Man and Music" gives an impressive description of the peerless greatness and immortal feats of General Secretary Kim Jong Il who has left footmarks of great leadership, accompanied by music.
"Questions and Answers on Songun Politics" gives a comprehensive account of the creation and development in depth of Songun politics, its validity and invincible vitality in the question-and-answer form.
The full-length novel "River Rimjin" (Part One "Woman of the North") portrays through a vivid artistic depiction a woman who happened to part with her husband during the Fatherland Liberation War. She, with her children, grows to be a full-fledged master of the country in the bosom of the DPRK and enjoys a worthy life and happiness, living stoutly with an ardent desire for the reunification of the country.
It is hard to imagine the sense of "awakening" that citizens of North Korea will feel once their long, cruel time living under communist dictatorship finally comes to an end.
Labels: funny, international
As his Year in Review 2008 indicates, my friend Don Parrish continues to travel all around the globe. I've linked to some of his trip reports here in the past, so I wanted to do the same for his end-of-the-year review. It is a fascinating read: long (as he admits), but worthwhile. Included are numerous photos -- hand-picked ones from the 8,000 photos he took over the year!
Labels: international
Sometimes a few numbers helps to make already clear distinctions that much more so. The Sept. 27th issue of The Economist magazine had a series of articles on North and South Korea. A sidebar in one of the articles had some numbers that are quite striking:
So North Korea has 47.2% of the population that South Korea has.
So North Korea has only 2.7% of the GDP that South Korea has! Wow. This works out in GDP per capita to $1,118 for North Korea and $19,751 for South Korea.
Another interesting difference is Power Generation, measured in kWh, 100m:
Again, that works out to North Korea producing only 6.2% of what South Korea does. No wonder night-time satelite images of North Korea always appear so completely dark!
And while there are no doubt a variety of factors involved in life-expectancy, I would assume that if Korea had been one country for the past 50+ years, the life-expectancy between people in the north and people in the south would be fairly similar. Instead, it seems safe to assume that the policies of the North Korean communist regime are greatly reducing the life expectancy of its people: North Korea's is 67.3 and South Korea's is 78.6.
I'm no expert on North Korea. I learned a lot from my friend Don Parrish's trip report, and from what I gather from news sources, the people in North Korea have systematically lied to for many decades and are very, very isolated. If/when the North Korean Communist regime falls, and the country opens up and attemptes to reintegrate with the rest of the world... what will it be like for the common individuals of that country? It is hard to imagine... and sad to think about... but I just hope we have some good reporters and/or social scientists on the ground when it happens to chronicle it all.
Labels: economics, international
Here is an interesting post from someone visiting China: Shadow of Mao: There's no memory of democracy's brief bloom in China. And then here is another one, on a similar subject.
Labels: individual_rights, international
The July issue of Wired had an interesting short article "Anyone Here Speak Chinglish?". Michael Erard describes how English is evolving into a global lingua franca, and how the living language is changing as a result. He notes that with current trends "By 2020, native English speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language."
Labels: culture, international
Spread out over a year now, the Wall Street Journal has run the occasional brief opinion piece under the title "Your U.N. at Work". These items are all rightfully critical of the United Nations. They've done four of these so far, and here are the links:
Labels: international, united_nations
An opinion piece in the June 10 WSJ by Edward J. Markey asks a very good question: Why is Bush Helping Saudi Arabia Build Nukes?
Saudi Arabia has poured money into developing its vast reserves of natural gas for domestic electricity production. It continues to invest in a national gas transportation pipeline and stepped-up exploration, building a solid foundation for domestic energy production that could meet its electricity needs for many decades. Nuclear energy, on the other hand, would require enormous investments in new infrastructure by a country with zero expertise in this complex technology.
Have Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush or Saudi leaders looked skyward? The Saudi desert is under almost constant sunshine. If Mr. Bush wanted to help his friends in Riyadh diversify their energy portfolio, he should have offered solar panels, not nuclear plants.
Labels: international

Labels: culture, individual_rights, international, religion
Each time I blog about Zimbabwe, I wonder how much it will get -- both the political crisis and the economic crisis. Check out the latest inflation numbers and prices in this article, Zimbabwe has shortage of food, abundance of zeros.
Labels: economics, individual_rights, international
Understatement of the year candidate? This AP news item included the following ridiculous tidbit:
On Thursday, Zimbabwe's central bank unveiled a new half-billion Zimbabwean dollar bank note.
The new bill and three others for 5 billion, 25 billion and 50 billion Zimbabwe dollars, called "special agro" checks intended for purchases and sales involved in farm production, were going into circulation next Tuesday, the central bank said.
Earlier this month, the bank floated the local currency exchange rate through commercial banks, where a single U.S. dollar sold Wednesday for around 240 million Zimbabwe dollars, slightly higher than the dominant black market rate for hard currency.
That change saw prices of goods soar, with unofficial estimates putting annual inflation at more than 700,000 percent.
Official inflation was given in February at 165,000 percent, and no further official figures have been released.
"Prices are now doubling every week instead of every month, and it is hard to see how we can survive to the end of June or how an election will be feasible at all if things continue to deteriorate at this pace," Harare economist John Robertson said.
The central bank said the "agro" checks, similar in appearance to the nation's existing range of bills, will be accepted by retailers and banks up to the end of the year.The previous highest denomination bill was for 250 million Zimbabwe dollars, enough to buy about two loaves of bread.
Labels: economics, funny, international
I doubt those two locations have often been tied together in a blog post or other web page! My friend Don Parrish has recently posted his reports on his trips to Afghanistan and Market Reef. As with all of his trip reports, the writeups and photos are very interesting.
Labels: international
Yet another interesting series of photos from the Amazing Things site. This one is Iranian Censorship: How Famous Magazines Look in Iran. Assuming this is true... it really is amazing indeed.
Labels: amazing, individual_rights, international
I find this website both sad and funny -- News From Korean Central News Agency of DPRK. Sad for obvious reasons, but funny because of both the English used and the ridiculous claims made and propaganda used. Many of the stories are a funny read, here is one example: Japan Assailed for Seeking "Triangular Cooperation Mechanism for Pressure". Here is a great segment:
This is, however, nothing but the way of thinking of a bat-blind person who has neither political sense nor judgment. The above-said cooperation mechanism had been sought by its master the U.S. as early as in the 1980s only to meet bitter frustration. It is a ridiculous and foolish daydream for Japan to try to build the above-mentioned mechanism, taking advantage of the changed political situation in south Korea, in a bid to pressurize someone and achieve its sinister political aim. This only betrays Japan's ignorance of the DPRK, diplomatic inability and anachronistic way of thinking.
Labels: funny, international
If you are like me then you have kept up with the news in recent years out of countries in East Africa such as Sudan and Somalia. Often involved in these stories has been Ethiopia, a country that it seems has been helping the US in various matters in the region. In the Nov. 3 issue of The Economist there was a good "briefing" article "A brittle Western ally in the Horn of Africa". It gives a good overview of recent history of that country, both improvements made in recent years and the many troubles still faced. The last half is mostly about the near-term strictly political issues, but what I found more interesting are the long-term and quite devastating economic (and political) issues. Here is that section:
The fact is that for all the aid money and Chinese loans coming in, Ethiopia's economy is neither growing fast enough nor producing enough jobs. The number of jobs created by flowers is insignificant beside an increase in population of about 2m a year, one of the fastest rates in Africa. Since every mother has about seven children, it is conceivable that Ethiopia, with 75m-plus people today, could overtake Nigeria (now 140m-strong) as Africa's most populous country by mid-century. Just to stand still, let alone make inroads into poverty, the country must produce hundreds of thousands of jobs a year.
It is hard to see where they will come from. The government claims that the economy has been growing at an impressive 10% a year since 2003-04, but the real figure is probably more like 5-6%, which is little more than the average for sub-Saharan Africa. And even that modestly improved rate, with a small building boom in Addis Ababa, for instance, has led to the overheating of the economy, with inflation moving up to 19% earlier this year before the government took remedial action.
The reasons for this economic crawl are not hard to find. Beyond the government-directed state, funded substantially by foreign aid, there is—almost uniquely in Africa—virtually no private-sector business at all. The IMF estimates that in 2005-06 the share of private investment in the country was just 11%, nearly unchanged since Mr Zenawi took over in the early 1990s. That is partly a reflection of the fact that, despite some privatisation since the centralised Marxist days of the Derg, large areas of the economy remain government monopolies, closed off to private business.
This is where Ethiopia misses out badly. Take telecoms. While the rest of Africa has been virtually transformed in just a few years by a revolution in mobile telephony, Ethiopia stumbles along with its inept and useless government-run services. Everywhere else, a plethora of South African, home-grown and European providers has leapt into the market to provide Africans with an extraordinary array of cheaper and more efficient services, now used even by the poorest of farmers, for instance, to check spot prices for agricultural goods in markets miles away. And the mobile-phone revolution has created thousands of new livelihoods; at times it seems as if every boy on a street corner is hawking a top-up card. Not in Ethiopia.
It is the same story in financial services, where, despite the growth of some smaller private banks, no foreign banks are allowed. Micro-finance schemes have expanded exponentially, but it remains almost impossible to find start-up loans for small or medium businesses.There is no official unemployment rate, but youth unemployment, some experts reckon, may be as high as 70%. All those graduates coming out of state-run universities will find it very hard to get jobs. The mood of the young is often restless and despairing; many dream of moving abroad. It was this mood of resentment that the opposition tapped into in 2005, and the capital's maybe 300,000 unemployed young men proved a combustible force on the streets. The ruling party, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), underestimated the degree of disillusion with its policies, and thus overreacted when the opposition polled much better than expected.
Unless the private sector is allowed to create jobs, the country's problems will continue to mount and the gains of development may be squandered. Sooner rather than later, 2m more people a year will overwhelm a state that is trying to provide most of the jobs itself.
Labels: economics, international
Here is an interesting article about the hurdles that bloggers in Cuba face. And yet there are some in America who still praise the totalitarian Communist regime that causes so much misery in Cuba.
Labels: individual_rights, international, technology
I've been getting caught up recently on The Chronicle of Higher Education from the past couple of months. Here are some items I found interesting for various reasons... worth a read if you have an interest in any of these topics (some require subscription to access directly at CHE's site, so I'll try to provide links to free versions online):
"Don't Require Colleges to Spend More of Their Endowments", an 11/9 opinion piece that responds to the 11/2 cover news story. Many good points are made about legal and other technical hurdles to government proposals to force Harvard or others with huge endowments to spend more of that money sooner. Nor is it likely that a group of government bureaucrats will know best how and when such funds should be spent. However, the biggest question isn't raised: why should government be telling colleges how to spend their endowments? This is not a proper use of government force! This essential moral point is, as usual in such situations, not brought up. Otherwise, this is a good opinion piece though.
"Are Sacred Texts Sacred? The Challenge for Atheists", a 9/21 piece by Carlin Romano. Lots interesting stuff here, including much that should give bible literalists pause to say the least. But I agree with the Letter to the Editor in the 10/12 edition, from John T. Goldthwait (Prof. Emeritus of philosophy at SUNY, Plattsburgh), that Romano "gets the rules of the debate wrong". Romano's conclusion and suggestion is that Atheists should be polite to believers, and that is fine as far as it goes -- but it doesn't go very far. No need for an atheist to go out of his way to cruelly attack believers and the texts they call sacred -- but that doesn't mean that critics (Dawkins, Hitchens, et al.) of religions and their texts can't go on the offensive in books or articles they write. Believers aren't forced to buy those books or read those articles if they will find them offensive. Here is part of Goldthwait's letter on this matter:
Romano writes, "That behooves atheists, then, to have a clear definition of the sacred... and also a clear definition of text or book." But it is not up to the atheist to supply those definitions. The believer is the one who has claimed that a text -- some version of either the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the Koran -- is a sacred text and a source of revealed religion. That is what needs proving... Romano suggests characteristics for a sacred text. However, he assumes that there are such things as sacred texts... If there isn't any God, what becomes of a text whose alleged value is that it relates to God? The believer has the responsibility to establish the meaningfulness of his claim by establishing the existence of the referent of this explanatory term. If he cannot thus support his claims, we do not owe him our attention. Romano has not put before us a serious challenge, but merely a nice lesson in politeness.
Agreed. I look forward to writing some further thoughts on concepts like "sacred" in the future, but for now, I'll let this go.
The Intellectual Responsibility of Educators. In this brief "On the Contrary" piece, David Horowitz takes on the issue of indoctrination in the classroom, and is critical of the new report "Freedom in the Classroom" from American Association of University Professors.
Veiled Politics, by Joan Wallach Scott (11/23). Some interesting background on an issue (Islamic women, the veil, and rights) that is big in Europe, but that we don't hear as much about as a major political issue here in the USA.
The Two Faces of Al-Qaeda, by Raymond Ibrahim (9/21). The author makes clear the two types of messages that Al-Qaeda leaders send, and the importance of the message intended for their own followers and would-be recruits (the radical, theological message and the anti-Western civilization message) as opposed to what is intended for Western readers (criticism of USA foreign policy, etc.).
Rigid Scholarship on Male Sexuality, by Camille Paglia (9/21). Though I'm usually only in partial agreement with her views, Paglia is one of those authors that I always find interesting to read (like Christopher Hitchens). This review of three related books on male sexuality didn't disappoint. I haven't read any of these books, so I can't say whether her analysis of them is on-target or not. But I did like her taking one of them to task for postmodernist jargon, fashionable namedropping, and making leftist-academic assumptions common in so many social science and humanities departments these days -- I trust Paglia's opinions on that issue, bigtime.
The Choc Doc, by Piper Fogg (9/14, Academic Life). An interesting article about Patrick Fields, a professor who studies and teaches about the history and culture of chocolate. Fields treats chocolate as seriously as many people treat wine.
Saudi Arabia Puts Its Billions Behind Western-Style Higher Education, by Zvika Krieger (9/14). This article gives a lot of info on the increased funding of higher ed in Saudia Arabia, including the creation of the first co-ed institution in the country, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. While there are many good signs here, I consider the prospects for real success to be quite poor. The goal is to create a highly educated workforce, and more importantly, to create critical thinkers, creative thinkers, and entrepreneurs. That seems pretty unlikely, given the repressive and restrictive culture of Saudi Arabia (mostly because of its brand of Islam). Consider another university that is getting a lot of funding right now, in the hopes of reaching those goals:
Alfaisal [University] will also be coeducational, a big improvement for female
students, many of whom are taught by men through closed-circuit television at the country's women's colleges. Unlike at King Abdullah University, though, men and women will not be allowed to interact, in accordance with the country's legally mandated gender segregation. The university will have split-level classrooms, where women attend the same lectures as men but from balconies surrounded by one-way glass. An underground entrance for women — dropped off by their drivers — will lead directly to stairwells, elevators, and floors strictly segregated by gender. But since even those accommodations would raise many eyebrows in Saudi Arabia, Alfaisal is starting with male students only to gain social credibility first. "Philosophically, I would like to see women from Day 1, but the reality is difficult," Mr. Goodridge says. "We're probably a little ahead of where they're going."
Wow. They are going ridiculous lengths they are going to segregate the education of women from that of men. And that is just one example of why I just don't see how "throwing money at the problem" is really going to lead to major success. Consider this other blurb about Saudi Arabian culture:
But the country is a tough sell: Most public entertainment is prohibited (there are no movie theaters, for instance), alcohol is banned, and women must cover themselves almost completely in public and are not allowed to drive.
I have to agree with the Letter to the Editor from Ayesha Razzaque in the 10/12 issue -- it seems unlikely that we'll see major success in Saudi Arabia until significant cultural changes occur. A huge amount of educational content won't be taught, even at these new "liberal" schools, either because of outright bans or because of fear that the professor would get in trouble for even broaching the subject. How is free thought, critical thinking, creative thinking, and so on ever going to flourish in such a climate?
Labels: academia, culture, international, religion
Not a lot of things really annoy or upset me in life. In fact, my personality is such that I often laugh at things that most others would never laugh at -- serious, horrible, bad things, which I agree are serious, horrible, and bad, but that are also so ludicrous that my initial reaction is just to scoff and laugh at them. I'm one of the few people I know who have that as a personality trait -- and for many people, it can confuse them at times.
Labels: culture, international
Since he's a conservative Republican, there are many things that I disagree with Mitt Romney about. But there are some areas of agreement too, and his recent statements about the United Nations seem to be on the right track. See Romney Calls UN an 'Extraordinary Failure'.
Labels: international, united_nations, us_gov_politics
My friend and colleague Basia recently made a trip to Africa, to follow the wildebeest migration. She has been posting some incredible photos of her trip -- a "Top 5" series thus far. Here are the links to each post... enjoy!
Labels: amazing, international
Lately I've been reading some interesting blog postings on the topic of Ayn Rand/Objectivism and the country of India. This started with a posting simply titled India by blogger Myrhaf. The comments to this posting are as interesting as the posting itself, and include comments from blogger Ergo Sum, an editor from India. I had recently been reading his blog anyway, so this coincidence led me to read several dozen of his recent posts, and also a few older ones specifically on his views of life in India (including his criticisms of many aspects of the country. Particularly interesting posts include:
Labels: international
Jacob Sullum wrote a nice column on the continuing connection between the Taliban and America's drug war policies, America's Taliban-Support Program. Nothing new for me here, except some updated numbers. But this is an important item to read if you are a supporter of the "drug war" policies in the USA.
Labels: drug_war, international, us_gov_politics
Here is an interesting posting, The Bush Administration's Latest Deadly Evasion, on the topic of labelling the Iranian Republican Guard as a terrorist organization. The author is critical of this, though not for reasons that others are. The analogy here to the Mafia hitmen and Navy of the Nazis, is one I hadn't heard elsewhere. And then here is a question from a reader and response from the author.
Labels: international, us_gov_politics
No surprise, but the news out of Zimbabwe just keeps getting worse. The August 11 issue of The Economist has an article about the increasing number of people fleeing Zimbabwe for South Africa. There the unemployment rate is "only" 25-40%, which sounds awfully high until you learn that the rate in Zimbabwe is 80%. It also notes that, according to the IMF, the inflation rate is "heading for 100,000%". No wonder there are "severe shortages of meat, sugar, and cooking oil". This situation almost sounds like someone is trying to set records in Guinness or something.
Labels: economics, international
My friend and colleague Basia, who continues her superb blogging from Chennai, India, has reported on an incredible boat race. Would you believe row boats with 120 men? Take a look at her amazing photos!
Labels: culture, international, sports
Each time I read about the declining situation in Zimbabwe, I post a blog entry about it. And each time I think that it can't get much worse. And then I read how it has gotten worse a few weeks later. I need to stop being amazed at this.
Labels: economics, international
Here is an interesting piece in The Daily Mail titled "I was a fanatic...I know their thinking, says former radical Islamist" (thanks to Shawn Klein for the link). Written by a former member of what he calls the "British Jihadi Network", the author argues that the primary reason for Islamic terrorism is not the foreign policy of the USA/Western countries, but rather Islamic theology (or at least their interpretation of it). This is of course a vital perspective, and runs counter to what so many on the left argue (and sadly, a great many libertartians, like Ron Paul in the Republican debates a while back). So often we hear that "they hate us because of our foreign policy". Well, the US and other Western countries have certainly made many foreign policy mistakes over the years, and the current Bush administration obviously has too. But people like this author make the point quite clear that these actions are not the primary engine of their violent ways -- their ideology is. The primary issue is cultural/philosophical, not foreign policy.
Labels: international, us_gov_politics
Read the comments from Philosophy professor Tibor Machan on the recent outrage from Muslim leaders in response to Britain's bestowing honors on Salman Rushdie. He makes several very obvious distinctions that seem to be eluding many folks, including many in the media.
Labels: international, religion
For some reason I thought I had blogged about this last year, but after doing a search of my blog it seems I didn't. So this isn't new material, just a late posting about something that I found amazing to watch.
Labels: culture, international, religion
Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chavez recently shutdown (by not renewing their license for political reasons) the longest standing television station in Venezuela, RCTV. This made news worldwide, with many free-speech advocate groups, governments, and others condemning the move. But when I read a version of this AP article in my local paper, I was pleased to learn the good effect that the Internet can continue to have on the world. This time it is YouTube which is providing the journalists at RCTV a means to continue to broadcast their viewpoint, even when they have been otherwise silenced by a tyrant.
Labels: international, technology
The April 14-20 issue of The Economist again has a good article about the situation in Venezuela, and the economic problems being caused by Chavez and his policies. I couldn't think of a better title for this than what they used: Scarcity Amid Abundance. As I've noted in earlier blog postings, such as in Let Them Eat Chicken Feet, the price controls imposed by the Chavez regime are leading to ridiculous shortages. This latest article also points out the very high inflation rates in Venezuela, which only makes the price-control-causing-shortages issue that much more pronounced and guaranteed to occur (since people will be much more careful with their goods and their money, knowing it will be worth far less in the coming months).
Labels: economics, international
The April 14-20 issue of The Economist had a good, brief editorial "Come in Number One, Your Time is Up" (subscription required, but also available here). It discusses the various ways that America is being pushed off its economic pedastal, whether by some European countries, China, or whoever. The last two paragraphs, subtitled "A Winnner in Second Place", are worth quoting:
There will be plenty of hand-wringing in the years ahead. But does being the biggest economy matter? It helps to ensure military superiority; it gives a country more say in fixing international rules; and as the issuer of the main reserve currency, America can borrow more cheaply. But being number one cannot be an end in itself. The goal of policy should be to maximise a country's absolute rate of growth, not its relative rate.
Losing top place in the economic league is different from being beaten in sport, where for every winner there is a loser. Economic competition is not a zero-sum game. China's economy will overtake America's not because the United States is in terminal decline, but because China is catching up. And faster growth in China and other emerging economies will benefit America's economy, not harm it. If an obsession with remaining number one foolishly caused America to adopt protectionist policies, that would reduce America's growth as much as China's. It is better to be number two in a fast-growing world than number one in a stagnant one.
Labels: economics, international, us_gov_politics
Stories of the fast growth of both China and India abound. There are of course many important differences in their growth stories, and one that is often mentioned is the generally abysmal state of India's infrastructure (roads, utilities, rural services, and so on). A recent BusinessWeek cover story, The Trouble with India, does a good job of describing this. There are many "online extras" linked from this page, that weren't in the print magazine too. But for me the most interesting bits of data were those in the chart "How the Global Giants Stack Up". Here we see Population, National Expressways, Major Airports, Electricity Production, Internet Penetration, and Port Shipments compared between India, China, and the US. I would have liked to have seen Europe and Russia included as two other "giants", but even just this three-way snapshot is interesting. India and China each have around 4 times the population of the US. The US has twice as many expressways as China, and more than 12 times as many as India. The US has more than three times as many airports as China, and 11 times as many as India. The US has 1.5 times as much electricity production as China, and 6 times as much as India. Internet penetration is nearly 7 times greater in the US than in China (and far less regulated!), and nearly 20 times greater than in India. China of course has far more port shipments -- two times as many as the US, who in turn as over three times as many as India. See the chart for the numbers.
Labels: economics, international
The March 31 issue of The Economist (subscription only) continued to keep the focus on Zimbabwe's criminal ruler Robert Mugabe, by including both an editorial and a longer article. The latter was particularly interesting because it goes beyond noting the latest horrors and gives some background on Mugabe's childhood and development. This helps to give a fuller picture of this criminal in charge of a country that was once relatively well-off and now is a basketcase (see my earlier blog item).
Astonishingly, Mr. Mugabe got more bouquets than brickbats. The assembled heads of state called for sanctions to be lifted to take the pressure of their comrade, and declared the grubby presidential election of 2002 free and fair. With this sort of endorsement rining in his ears, Mr. Mugabe smartly returned to what he knows best: intimidating his opponents. He called the beating of the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, not only "deserved" by promised more of the same. To cap his perfect week, Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party said Mr. Mugabe would be its presidential candidate in next year's election.
Labels: economics, individual_rights, international
The overall situation in Zimbabwe seems to be getting worse and worse. In June of last year I blogged about Zimbabwe, about a PBS special on the country in particular. Now the March 17-23 issue of the Economist provides both an editorial, Toppling a Tyrant , and an article, "The Face of Oppression", (both require subscription) about the latest news. The rule of Robert Mugabe (now 83 years old) continues on, and he talks of wanting to stay in power for many more years. Members of the Movement for Democratic Change (an opposition group) were beaten recently by Mugabe's henchmen. And then consider these latest numbers:
Once the bread-basket of southern Africa and one of the continent's wealthiest countries, Zimbabwe is now a basketcase and suffers a severe shortage of food. It is also the world's fastest-shrinking peacetime economy, with unemployment now standing at 80%. Its inflation rate is the world's highest: currently 1,730%, although the IMF thinks that figure could rise to over 4,000% by year's end. From infant mortality to life below the poverty line, the country's unhappiest trendlines run remorselessly upwards. To stifle dissent and quash opposition, Zimbabwe has been turned into a police state where elections are routinely rigged.
Labels: economics, individual_rights, international
My friend Basia has written a post with lots of pictures of all the places she has slept in the past three years. She travels a lot, so I suspect few people have slept in as many odd and exotic locations as she has! Check out her collection...
Labels: amazing, international
Consider if you will this video at YouTube of an Iranian "scholar" giving a lecture to students (or conference attendees, I'm not sure) giving his views on how the Tom and Jerry cartoon was created as a Jewish conspiracy.
Labels: international, religion
My friend and colleague Basia Kruszewska has recently compiled together over a hundred photographs from her travels in India and other Asian countries. They are arranged by color... that is, by the significant color in each image. To start the photo tour, start with Red. Then you can click on each color box at the top of the page to see the other colors' pages. Good stuff!
Labels: amazing, culture, international
This morning I posted my thoughts on the recent news of food shortages, and other major problems, that are increasing in Venezuela as a result of Hugo Chavez' socialist and rights-violating policies. If you haven't read that post yet, do so before continuing with this one...
"Im glad to find an article that tells reality and dont just celebrate Mr Chavez socialist project because it "helps the poor"..You said at the end "90 minutes turns into 4 hours, and it won't be fixed until 2010 at the earliest. When will the majority of people in Venezuela figure out it doesn't have to be this way?".. and for now, i must tell you the answer is No.... About your predictions well im thinking of buying candles and stuff. I think you will find interesting to read my blog (just started makin it, so it looks like crap now but anyways) and would be interesting to keep a discussion / reflection about this events with a foreigner. Anyways my blog is... http//antipatrioticvenezuelan.blogspot.com "Even with the poor English, her meaning is clear. It turns out she is a college student desperate to finish her major, and hopefully leave her rapidly deteriorating country.
Labels: economics, individual_rights, international
I recently blogged about an innovative approach to getting eyeglasses to the poor, and before that I blogged about nobel-prize-winning Yunus and his micro-lending bank. This week I read of another development of how capitalism helps the poor.
They're working for GramIT, a 16-month-old nonprofit that's seeking to transplant India's tech services boom to some of the country's 600,000 villages.
Workers in Ethakota earn a fraction of what the outsourcing troops in Bangalore do, but they're not complaining. Srinivas Ruddireddy makes twice as much money arranging car services online for people in Hyderabad as he does from the two-acre rice plot he tends in the early morning. He now plans to send his 4-year-old son to private school. "My lifestyle has entirely changed," says the 30-year-old. "But I'm able to stay in the village."
Labels: economics, international
This Associated Press story about food shortages in Venezuela gave me a laugh. Although the situation is not good for many in that country, how can you not chuckle at this opening line:
Meat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits such as chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices.Naturally I found the reference to chicken feet funny. But beyond that, I got a laugh because this effect is so entirely predictable because its cause is so pathetically, blatantly obvious. You have a socialist demagogue soon-will-be complete dictator in Hugo Chavez ruling the country. What do people there expect? Are they entirely ignorant of the world's history (recent history of socialism in particular)? Are they likewise ignorant of basic economic theory? Have they been duped by the rhetoric and promises of the seemingly-always-smiling Chavez?
Yet inflation has soared to an accumulated 78 percent in the past four years in an economy awash in petrodollars, and food prices have increased particularly swiftly, creating a widening discrepancy between official prices and the true cost of getting goods to market in Venezuela.And then there are the other side effects that such a system produces, like black markets and people wasting their time (thereby not helping the economy be productive):
The state runs a nationwide network of subsidized food stores, but in recent months some items have become increasingly hard to find.At a giant outdoor market held last weekend by the government to address the problems, a street vendor crushed raw sugar cane to sell juice to weary shoppers waiting in line to buy sugar.And of course the government inevitably resorts to outright lies to try to fool the people and prevent panic. This happened throughout Soviet history, and has happened in countless other socialist and communist countries. Consider this example from the article:
"They say there are no shortages, but I'm not finding anything in the stores," grumbled Ana Diaz, a 70-year-old housewife who, after eight hours, had filled a bag with chicken, milk, vegetable oil and sugar at official prices.Here is a similar report from the BBC, this one focused on coffee beans and the shortages in that area. The following quote from Eduardo Bianco, a senior executive at Cafe Madrid, Venezuela's largest coffee producer, tells the story:
"Would you sell your products on the open market if you were sure you were goingGood point. But sadly, the nature of the brute force involved here has recently been made clear:
to make a loss?"
Venezuela's leftwing leader has authorised the use of the National Guard to "find every last kilogram of coffee" being stockpiled by coffee roasters. He even raised the prospect of nationalising the industry as a last resort.Note the knee-jerk reaction... government policy violates the rights of individuals and along the way ruins an area of the economy, so obviously we must then nationalize that sector! That will fix it!
"As far as the law is concerned, we're absolutely within our rights to seize coffee which is deliberately being withheld from sale," insists Samuel Ruh, a government appointed monitor of consumer rights.
"In fact, we have already carried out several successful raids at premises illegally holding thousands of tonnes of coffee."
Yet several food stores in Venezuela's capital city Caracas say the coffee raids are not addressing the fact that shops are also running low on sugar, maize, powdered milk and beans. Store managers insist they are not being supplied with new stock from wholesalers and importers, who were also complaining that the prices set by the government are too low.And then it goes beyond even food-related problems that Venezuela is facing:
His [Chavez'] government's woes are compounded by massive structural problems of a key road bridge linking the capital city, Caracas, to Venezuela's main international airport. The other day, President Chavez admitted that attempts by engineers to save the bridge from collapse had failed. Tens of thousands of motorists now face misery as they try to negotiate a bumpy road from and to Caracas. Trucks carrying goods from the airport now face a four-hour journey to the shops of the capital city, whereas the old route via the bridge took only 90 minutes. A new bridge will not be ready before the year 2010 according to government estimates.90 minutes turns into 4 hours, and it won't be fixed until 2010 at the earliest. When will the majority of people in Venezuela figure out it doesn't have to be this way?
Labels: economics, individual_rights, international
The January 15th issue of BusinessWeek had an interesting article titled "They're Muslims, And Yankees, Too". Nothing to do with baseball, as Yankee here just means American. The article talks about a large segment of Muslim Americans, and then spotlights four individuals in particularly, devoting a few paragraphs each to their stories. I found these tidbits about Muslim Americans interesting:
...As a group, they offer a model of assimilation and material success. An astounding 59% of Muslim adults in the U.S. have a college degree, compared with only 28% of all American adults. Surveys show that median family income among America's Muslims exceeds the national figure of $55,800. And four out of five eligible Muslims are registered to vote, slightly higher than the overall rate.
Siblani, a pro-business, anti-abortion Republican who drives a sleek black Mercedes and lives in a comfortable house complete with white pillars in front, helped organize Arab American support for George W. Bush in 2000. But the President's "war on terror" after 9/11 left him feeling that his adopted country had turned against Muslims. He abandoned Bush in 2004 and publicly branded the current administration the "Taliban in Washington."
Siblani reflects the complexity of American Islam, an intricate mixture of creeds and cultures: immigrant and native-born, devout and secular, moderate and radical. By comparison, most immigrant Muslims in such countries as France, England, and Spain have remained poorer, less well educated, and more marginalized. Europeans encouraged Muslim immigration as a source of menial labor, but until recently did little to integrate workers as citizens. And more generous welfare benefits in Europe allow Muslims and other immigrants to live indefinitely on the periphery of society. The American combination of a comparatively modest social safety net with greater economic opportunity appears to have drawn Muslims willing to adjust to new customs and acquire education needed for good jobs. So the ideologically motivated violence that has erupted in Muslim enclaves in Western Europe so far hasn't surfaced from within the U.S.
Labels: culture, international, us_gov_politics
I am currently getting a free subscription to Rolling Stone Magazine. We signed up for this when we visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last August.
As China tortures monks and drives Tibetans into poverty, many young activists are renouncing the Dalai Lama and resorting to violence. Is one of the world's most ancient cultures facing extinction?
Labels: culture, international
Skimming through the USA Weekend supplement to my local paper, I came across a two-paragraph blurb about a product called LifeStraw. It uses filters and other components to purify water as someone sucks it through a tube -- thereby making it very easy for people to get clean (or at least much cleaner) drinking water very easily. This is a brilliant invention, and sounds like it could really improve the health of millions who suffer from water-borne illnesses in third-world nations. They cost only $3.50 each, and the article said that international development agencies were developing. If this really does what it claims to do then, congratulations to Vestergaard Frandsen, the European company that developed the device!
Labels: international, technology
A few months ago I wrote briefly about the great trend towards microfinancing to aid the poor. In the Jan. 13 issue of The Economist they had a brief article on a similar concept. Often poor people need something as simple as a good pair of eyeglasses to greatly improve their ability to earn a living. And yet often aid money doesn't reach them at all, or reaches them in a way that helps with something else -- but doesn't get them the eyeglasses they need so that they can become self-supporting. But this article describes Scojo Vision, an American optical firm that produces eyeglasses and makes them available for just a few dollars to the world's poorest. While $3 is a lot to the poorest in third-world countries, it is a no-brainer investment for such indivduals because it enables them to earn much more due to improved vision. Another great instance of the market helping the poor where government continues to flounder.
Labels: economics, international
National Geographic Adventure magazine had an interesting article in its November 2006 issue: Iran: Travels in Hostile Territory. It is a bit long, but worth it.
Labels: culture, international
I found the article Secrets, Lies, and Sweatshops: How Chinese Suppliers Hide the Truth from U.S. Companies in the Nov. 27 issue of BusinessWeek to be rather poorly written. But I've come to expect this level of reporting from BusinessWeek, as say, compared with the generally far superior weekly, The Economist.
Labels: economics, individual_rights, international
I was browsing around the Moving Picture Institute's website today. This is the organization that supports the production of movies and documentaries that have a pro-liberty theme. I noted one of their productions in this earlier blog post, namely the very provocative movie Mine Your Own Business.
Labels: culture, funny, history, international
The latest issue of Imprimis had an interesting piece titled "Freedom vs. Non-Freedom: A View from Russia", adopted from a speech by Andrei Illarionov, former chief economic advisor to Vladimir Putin. Full of facts and data, he chronicles the decline of freedom in Russia over the past several years. Given the bad news he has to report in this area, I have to wonder how much longer his "independent free market think tank in Moscow" will be allowed to operate.
Labels: economics, individual_rights, international
My friend Don Parrish went on a trip to 13 middle-eastern countries in 30 days this past fall. He is a member of the Travellers Century Club, which has a membership requirement that you have been to 100 or more countries! He recently posted his overview and highlights from this trip, which is a fascinating read with lots of great data about the countries he visited. See especially the section called "Overall Observations".
Labels: amazing, culture, international
Johann Norberg writes that in his view the book The White Man's Burden, by William Easterly, is book of the year for 2006. He begins:
Needless to say, this book has been added to my reading list.Politicians like Gordon Brown say that it is a shame that people die in poor countries when it could have been prevented with medicines that costs twelve cents, and suggest big new development aid projects to finance this. William Easterly points out that there is another problem: "This is the tragedy in which the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid in the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children".
With facts and studies, anecdotes and stories and both passion and a sense of humour, Easterly shows that the problem is that foreign aid has been dominated by Planners who have plans and promises, but don't motivate anyone to carry them out, and is never held accountable when they fail. That is why the $2.3 trillion reached tyrants in countries like Zaire, Sudan and Pakistan, but they rarely bought medicine for the children. In the Planners' place, Easterly puts Searchers, with local knowledge, step-by-step solutions, exposed to competition and held accountable for the results.
Labels: economics, international
Given the media bombardment of bad news, one might think the world is increasingly violent -- or at least no less violent than most decades of the 20th Century -- afterall, there is Iraq, Darfur, Israel, Afghanistan, Somalia, and so on. But Johann Norberg reports some interesting statistics regarding violence in the world. He draws these from the Human Security Brief 2006. He summarizes some key bits as follows:
So the story here is mixed, but the graph he provides covering 1950-2005 is quite striking. Take a look!At the same time, some problems have grown worse, especially attacks on civilians:
- Between 2002-2005, the number of armed conflicts in the world was reduced by 15 percent, from 66 to 56.
- Between 2002-2005, the number of battle-deaths was reduced by almost 40
percent (see graph below).- In 1989 there were 10 ongoing genocides worldwide, in 2005 there was one (Darfur).
- The number of displaced persons declined by 6 percent between 2003-2005.
- Between 2002-2005, the number of international terrorist incidents increased threefold (mostly in Iraq), and is now back where they were before the Cold War ended.
- Campaigns of organised violence against civilians have increased by 56 percent since 1989.
Labels: international
Daniel Pipes' Dec. 26th column, How the West Could Lose, offers an analysis of how the West could lose its battle with Islamism (defined as persons who demand to live by the sacred law of Islam, the Sharia), because of the triple affliction of pacifism, self-hatred, and complacency. An interesting read and also includes several bullet points that nicely summarize the formidable capabilities of the Islamists.
Labels: international, religion, us_gov_politics
I read two things recently on the issue of the individual rights of women around the world. First, the November 27th issue of US News and World Report had a brief item in their "The World" section. Titled "A Limited Win for Women in Pakistan", here it is in full:
Despite strong opposition from Islamic religious parties, Pakistan's National Assembly adopted the much-anticipated women's rights legislation reforming rape laws, which previously made it all but impossible for a woman to successfully bring charges against her attacker. Now, judges will have the discretion to send a rape case for trial in secular court under criminal laws rather than in an Islamic court using the Hudood laws that require a rape victim to produce four male Muslim witnesses or potentially face adultery charges herself based on her own testimony.This is good news, I guess... but the title is correct, as this is a very limited "win" for the individual rights of women in Pakistan. The rights of both men and women are still being violated on a massive scale though, since the new law "maintains consensual sex outside of marriage as a criminal act punishable by up to five years in prison." And the notion that this new law, which eliminates the death sentence as punishment for having such sex, will turn Pakistan into a "free-sex society" -- that would be laughable if it weren't so sad and ridiculous.
The new law maintains consensual sex outside marriage as a criminal act punishable by up to five years in prison, reduced from the old maximum punishment of death. A leader of the six-party religious alliance-which is threatening to create a political crisis by pulling its 53 members out of the 342-seat National Assembly-fretted that the legal changes will turn Pakistan into a "free-sex society."
Oppression can take several forms, including the denial of property rights, “honor” killings, dowry-related subjugation, and lack of legal protections. Often these injustices are widely accepted norms handed down from generation to generation.
Poverty and custom in developing countries drive extended families to live together under the same roof, making young couples subordinated to the traditional values of their parents and grandparents.
Unattached women, in particular, face stiff economic disadvantages. In some countries where subsistence farming is the main source of livelihood, customary law prevents women from owning land unless their fathers have no male heirs. If widowed, a wife loses access to her husband’s land, and must therefore spend even more hours each day fetching water.
Shockingly, “honor” killings, committed by relatives for “shame” brought on a family, claim the lives of thousands of women each year, mainly in predominantly Islamic countries. “In 2005, the Pakistani government rejected a pro-women bill that sought to strengthen the law against the practice of honor killing,” Cohen writes. Although Turkey has passed a law imposing life sentences on those convicted of honor killings, a survey shows that almost 40% of respondents supported the practice.
The overall picture of women in developing countries contrasts sharply with the growing educational and professional opportunities for women in developed countries. “Sweeping legal reforms have opened many doors for women in Western countries, but women have not always taken full advantage of these reforms,” Cohen writes. “As in developing countries, customary law may still prevail over the formal law. It is up to both men and women to challenge the traditional norms to bring about a genuine change in women’s condition.”
Indeed it is. But I'd like to make another point here, which is that far too often people, especially some on the political left, will excuse horrors around the world by resorting to ethical relativism. This is the notion that what is "right", or what is at least morally permissable, is entirely relative to a culture or a society, and that people from outsideof it cannot assess moral blame using their (equally relative) norms and pronouncements. This is most often stated indirectly, as an implicit charge against the West, the developed world, or even more specifically the United States, who are still portrayed as imperial powers, trying to oppress the rest of the world in various ways -- including through cultural or ethical bullying.
What this kind of view denies of course is that individuals -- qua individual persons -- have absolute rights, ones that are not relative to a society, a culture, or anything else. But individuals do have such ethical rights, have always had them, and will always have them -- based on their status as moral persons, and regardless of whether any particular government, culture, society, or legal system recognizes those rights or not.
Women have such individual rights -- qua individuals persons -- just as much and as fully as men do. This is true in the same way that brown-eyed people have them just as much blue-eyed people do, or blondes as much as brunettes as much as red-heads. People of each racial group, ethnic group, nationality, religious belief -- all individuals have individual rights. These are not rights based on group membership either, as moral rights are not collective-based, but are rather individual-based, and are hence identical for all individual persons, for all times.
As a thought experiment to see just how horrific the unequal treatment of women in Pakistan and elsewhere really is, just think how absurd it would be if a society or culture decided that any people (male or female) born each year between January and June would for all times have far fewer rights -- and would have all the injustices perpetrated on them as described by Cohen above -- as compared to those born between July and December. Assume that this splits the population roughly in half and you have the same split in numbers that we have between men and women in the world. Is there any more logic or good reason to limit the rights of women as there would be people born between January and June? Of course not! The fact that some religions or other cultural institutions "have always done it this way" is not one bit of reason to make it anything less than a horrific injustice.
So I urge you... if you ever find yourself saying or thinking something like "Well, that is just how that society or culture does things. We have no right to object, that is just their way."... remember this thought experiment and think carefully about the nature of individual rights.
Labels: individual_rights, international
Elan Journo voices a view of the Iraq and broader Middle East situation that is rarely heard. The title of my blog post comes from this section of Journo's article:
We triumphed over both Japan and Germany in less than four years after Pearl Harbor. Yet more than five years after 9/11, against a far weaker enemy, our soldiers still die daily in Iraq. Why? Because this war is neither assertive nor ruthless—it is a tragically meek pretense at war.
Consider what Washington has done. The Islamist regime in Iran remains untouched, fomenting terrorism. (And now our leaders hope to "engage" Iran diplomatically.)
We went to battle not with theocratic Iran, but with the secular dictatorship of Iraq. And the campaign there was not aimed at crushing whatever threat Hussein's regime posed to us. "Shock and awe" bombing never materialized. Our brave and capable forces were hamstrung: ordered not to bomb key targets such as power plants and to avoid firing into mosques (where insurgents hide) lest we offend Muslim sensibilities. Instead, we sent our troops to lift Iraq out of poverty, open new schools, fix up hospitals, feed the hungry, unclog sewers—a Peace Corps, not an army corps, mission.
It is true that the "war on terror" is being waged as something different than traditional wars. But the reasons most give for amount to a dangerous mistake. Consider:
Those who say this is a "new kind of conflict" against a "faceless enemy" are wrong. The enemy Washington evasively calls "terrorism" is actually an ideologically inspired political movement: Islamic totalitarianism. It seeks to subjugate the West under a totalitarian Islamic regime by means of terrorism, negotiation, war—anything that will win its jihad. The movement's inspiration, its first triumph, its standard-bearer, is the theocracy of Iran. Iran's regime has, for decades, used terrorist proxies to attack America. It openly seeks nuclear weapons and zealously sponsors and harbors jihadists. Without Iran's support, legions of holy warriors would be untrained, unarmed, unmotivated, impotent.
Destroying Islamic totalitarianism requires a punishing military onslaught to end its primary state representative and demoralize its supporters. We need to deploy all necessary force to destroy Iran's ability to fight, while minimizing our own casualties. We need a campaign that ruthlessly inflicts the pain of war so intensely that the jihadists renounce their cause as hopeless and fear to take up arms against us. This is how America and its Allies defeated both Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan.
One crucial mistake the US continues to make in its "war on terror" is to not aggressively target those individuals -- the government and religious leaders -- who actually sponsor and foment terrorism. We have tried to go after Osama Bin Laden and that is good to do. But whenever Iran and Syria are mentioned, inevitably it is said that "military options are not on the table". And in Iraq, while we have successfully gone after some terrorists and their supporters, what about Moktadr al-Sadr?
Another crucial mistake that the US continues to make is to push primarily for "democracy". While Bush speaks of "liberty" and "freedom" almost ad nauseam, he really doesn't understand what those concepts are and what they require and presuppose on the ground. This comes out everytime he, or a member of his adminstration, says they are in favor of spreading "democracy" and a "constitution" for Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., but that they don't have to be patterned on the USA version of a consitutional republic that protects individual rights. That is, they don't need to be modelled on western values, they don't need to be even remotely capitalist, or strongly respectful of women's rights, minority rights, religious rights, and so on. Such a "democracy-is-what-matters" viewpoint is doomed to failure. As Journo notes:
When asked whether he would accept just such an outcome from the elections, Bush said that of course he would, because "democracy is democracy."
And that is exactly the problem. Democracy is not the end-game that leads to peace. Constitutionally governed republics, that respect individual rights, and are at least moderately laissez-faire capitalist, are what produce peaceful, prosperous societies. Democracy is just one small aspect of that -- necessary, to be sure, but far, far from sufficient.
Labels: international, us_gov_politics
My friend and colleague Basia Kruszewska (about) maintains a fascinating blog named India Ink. There she describes her experiences, travels, and so on while working in India (we both work for Element K, a global e-Learning company). She started the blog back in 2003, so she has a wealth of great material online, and has actually drawn quite a wide readership beyond the humble beginnings of friends and family. This is in part because included in many of her posts are incredible photographs. Basia is a very talented photographer, and India -- and many other Asian countries she has visited -- provide ample opportunity to take photos of people, places, and things that most Americans and other Westerners (such as myself) will likely never see in person.
If you like that series, then I encourage you to check out some of her other postings. See the categorizations on the right (scroll down a bit, and see esp. the ones for her various travel locations).
Labels: culture, international
Insight on the situation in Darfur, Sudan, comes from Anne Applebaum at Slate (thanks to Stephen Hicks for the link). In particular, consider these paragraphs:
I can offer no scientific explanation for why the tragedy of Darfur conjures up the specter of history's judgment and why other tragedies do not. But the answer must lie in the fact that this conflict has so few strategic or geopolitical implications. Because it seems to be in no one's "interest" do so so, a call for a U.N. intervention in Darfur surely feels—at least to Americans and Europeans who haven't followed China's involvement in Sudan's oil industry—like an act of real charity and not more evidence of the West pursuing its interests.
Equally important is the fact that Sudan plays no real role in Western domestic politics. Any discussion of North Korea will still evoke the Cold War, any conversation about Iran must touch on radical Islam. By contrast, when most of us look at Sudan, all we see is what Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, last weekend called "acts of inexplicable terror." Taking a stand against genocide in Sudan does not require anyone to take a parallel stand on communism, the war on terror, or the war in Iraq. It does not imply that you are left wing, right wing, pro- or anti-Bush. Once the United Nations is there, this may change: The U.S. intervention in Somalia immediately politicized what had also appeared to be an apolitical conflict. But at the moment, it is still possible to think of Darfur as an appropriate target for neutral humanitarianism.
None of this, I should emphasize, is meant to disparage the work of the extraordinary Darfur coalition, which has pushed an obscure and terrible war into the center of the international spotlight. Nor do I mean to deny that "history will judge us," for surely it will. But when future generations look back on this era, they will judge us not only for how we responded to the most primitive and the most apolitical of horrors. They will also judge us by the consistency with which Western and international institutions battled sophisticated totalitarianism in all its forms: That is, they will judge us by the United Nations' application of its own declarations on human rights, by America's ability to live up to the rhetoric of its leaders, by Europe's willingness to stand behind its stated values. The creation of an international coalition to end genocide is a stunning achievement, but its goals are still not deep or broad enough.
Labels: individual_rights, international, united_nations
A very interesting column by John Stossel on American charitable giving and foreign aid. He first notes the well-reported facts that America gives less than many other Western countries in foreign aid as a percentage of GDP. However, he then correctly notes that this is equating "American giving" with only government giving -- i.e., only the giving that is forced giving. It doesn't include the much larger voluntary giving done by individuals. When you factor in charitable giving from the private sector, you get a very different picture.
Labels: economics, international, united_nations, us_gov_politics
Mara D. Bellaby's brief AP article was picked up in my local Rochester paper. She describes a recent gathering in Kiev, Ukraine to mourn the 10 million Ukrainians "killed by a famine orchestrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin" in 1932-33. As she describes it: "Stalin provoked the famine to coerce peasants into giving up their private farms and joining agriculture collectives being formed across the Soviet Union. Villages were ordered to provide the state with set amounts of grain, but the demands typically exceeded crop yields. As village after village failed to meet their quotas, officials seized all food and residents were barred from leaving -- condemning them to starve. Farmers in Ukraine, which was the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, fiercely resisted and bore the brunt of the human-caused disaster."
Labels: history, individual_rights, international
Here is something I had not heard of before... Scambaiting. You know all those spam emails that offer some scheme that will make you rich if you just help someone in a foreign country get around some law or whatnot to get money out of their country? Most infamous are the ones coming from Nigeria (or claiming to be), but not all of them are.
Labels: funny, international
For me, this falls under the "Nearly a laugh, but really a cry" category for sure: New Zealand students may 'text-speak' in exams.
Labels: education_k-12, international
Check out this brief article in the Oct. 23, 2006 issue of US News and World Report: A Man With a Very Different Kind of Bank. I've read a few articles in recent years about the growing trend of "micro-lending", especially in third world countries, and especially to poor women. This particular article is about Muhammad Yunus, who along with his Bank was given the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in this area. Efforts such as this are having great results, pulling tens of millions of people out of poverty by helping them help themselves.
"Charity is not an answer to poverty," he writes of the company's business model, which last year helped Grameen log $15 million in profits. "It only helps poverty to continue. It creates dependency and takes away individuals' initiative to break through the wall of poverty. Unleashing of energy and creativity in each human being is the answer to poverty."
Labels: economics, international
Read this great little blurb in the October 23, 2006 US News and World Report. Scam interviews successfully highlighted "legislative hypocrisy after the parliament earlier this year toughened Italy's drug laws." It turns out that of 50 lawmakers who unknowingly had their perspiration tested for drug use in the past 36 hours, 12 were positive for cannabis, and 4 for cocaine. Oh the hypocrisy. LOL.
Labels: drug_war, international
The always-a-good-read Daniel Pipes provides several interesting proposals in his recent posting In Iraq, Stay the Course - But Change It.
Labels: international, us_gov_politics
In recent years, and especially this year, the name "Big Oil" has been used ad nauseam, and often in a derogatory way by folks on the political left. The most common refrain has no doubt been decrying the "big profits of Big Oil". The referents of "Big Oil" almost always seem to be the big corporations, such as Exxon Mobil, that are well known in America and the rest of the West. Debate is sometimes had over just how big the profits have been in the past year or two -- with one side focusing on how much total profit was earned, while the other side notes that the profit margins that are being earned aren't really that high compared to many other industries.
Labels: economics, international
And another thanks to Diana for linking to this awesome animation showing the various empires and such that have ruled the Middle East over the past 5,000 years.
Labels: history, international
I have recently written (here and here) about the United Nations and why I think it is not just problematic at present, but flawed at its core, and that the US should immediately announce our intention to leave the world body by a set date (say, six months from now). But of course, my primary criticism of the UN -- that it sanctions countries 'led' by criminals (dictators and other statists who deny, on principle and by their very existence, individual rights on a massive scale) -- also applies to some actions and policies of the US (and other countries) in our direct dealings with such criminal leaders.
Labels: economics, individual_rights, international, united_nations, us_gov_politics
Walter Williams makes many good points about foreign trade and the US trade deficit, and along the way rightly criticizes protectionists like Pat Buchanan. And I really liked the end of this column:
Buchanan, like so many others, points to the government subsidies and tariff protections given to businesses in other countries, a practice from which we can’t plead complete innocence. Protectionists call for “free trade but fair trade.” They call for a “level playing field.”
In effect, they’re saying that if other governments rip off their citizens with business subsidies and import duties, forcing them to pay higher prices, our government should retaliate by using the same tools to rip off its citizens.
The next time I see Pat, I might ask him what he would do if we both were at sea in a rowboat and I shot a hole in my end of the boat. Would he retaliate by shooting a hole in his end?
Labels: economics, individual_rights, international, us_gov_politics
This editorial by Frank J. is hilarious. I was laughing throughout, but then lost it when I got to the line near the end "The Iraq war certainly is something." While reading this I had visions of the countless news reports and pundit roundtables I've seen in the past several years from FoxNews, CNN, PBS, and more. Well done...
Labels: funny, international, us_gov_politics
Stephen Browne, who lived and travelled for many years in various Eastern European countries, offers many interesting anecdotes about the people there, and especially how they differ from Americans, what their views of America are, and related issues. This is a really interesting post, full of fascinating anecdotes. If I had to pick one favorite, it would be this one though:
Perhaps it’s not so odd that our real friends in Europe are in the East. For one thing, they know about dictators here and cry no tears at the fall of onemore murderous s.o.b. And for another, they are not shocked at the prospect of American forces crossing another country's borders to get that dictatorwhen for two generations they would have been overjoyed to see those forces pouring across their borders.
I once stated that point in a conversation with an Englishwoman who still admired the Soviet Union and said the crimes of the USSR were "just Stalin". She poo-poohed the idea, "You're just looking at the world through your American goggles." I nodded towards the two Poles at the table and said, “Ask them.” She turned to them and said, “Is this true?” They both nodded, “Oh yes, of course.” She looked uncomfortable and changed the subject.
Labels: culture, international
Robert Bidinotto reports on the odd bit of news that Mongolia's parliament is trying to ban the use of "Genghis Khan's name or portrait in a degrading or insulting manner, or to serve the interests of political parties or non-governmental bodies". He is seen very differently in Mongolia than just about anywhere else in the world (see Wikipedia entry).
Labels: culture, international
I have recently seen several commercials demanding that George Bush (and by extension, the US) "End the Genocide... NOW", referring of course to the horrific situation in the Darfur region of the Sudan.
Labels: individual_rights, international, united_nations, us_gov_politics
A few weeks ago I linked to Part 1 of Stephen Browne's "Observations on Arabs". He has now provided another seven points, which again I found to be worthwhile reading given his first-hand experience in Saudi Arabia.
Labels: culture, international, religion
After my recent post suggesting that the US should abandon the UN, I was glad to read Daniel Pipes' posting about NATO. It is a discussion of a study by FAES, the think tank of former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, titled "NATO: An Alliance for Freedom". The ending of Pipes piece is particularly worth quoting here I think:
NATO's mission, therefore, must be "to combat Islamic jihadism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction mainly, but not exclusively, among Islamic groups and governments." This means "placing the war against Islamic jihadism at the center of the Allied strategy" and that defeating Islamic jihadism will remain the organization's "key mission" for many years.
A second key recommendation in NATO: An Alliance for Freedom: That NATO
invite for full membership countries that are both liberal democracies and able and willing to contribute to the war against Islamic jihadism. The study emphasizes bringing Israel into the Alliance as "an extremely important step," and it endorses Japan and Australia for full membership. I might propose, in addition, Taiwan, South Korea, and Chile. To encourage other, struggling, states, the study suggests an associate membership for countries like Columbia and India. To which I suggest that Mexico and Sri Lanka could join their ranks.
One topic that FAES does not explicitly take up but hints at: that NATO could replace the United Nations as the key world body. As the UN sinks from one low spot to ever-slimier depths, it becomes increasingly obvious that for an international organization to behave in an adult manner requires limiting its membership to democratic states. A new organization could be created from scratch, to be sure, but it is easier, cheaper, and quicker to build on an existing structure especially one with
proven capabilities. NATO offers itself as the obvious candidate, especially as
reconceptualized by FAES.
Mr. Aznar and his team have produced the best plan yet for confronting radical Islam. Will politicians take it up?
Labels: international, united_nations, us_gov_politics
Here is a provocative video intended to help the world's poor... its likely does not have the message you would guess it would, or that you have seen anywhere else. (HT: Robert Bidinotto)
Labels: economics, environment, international
Last week sure was full of craziness at the United Nations. With each new headline I kept thinking... when will the USA pull out of the UN altogether?
The first question is debatable. Like I said, I won't deny that the UN -- with all its various programs and things it has done since its creation -- hasn't helped some people at some times. But it has also done a lot of outright harm as well. Plus we must consider the opportunity cost that its existence represents -- if it does some good things, but does them inefficiently, then the funds and resources it uses could have been used to help more people if the UN didn't exist.
So this is a complicated question. However, some of the reasons I think that the good the UN has done over the years is not enough reason for the US to continue to be a part of it can be found in articles such as Mark Steyn's superb "America and the United Nations". Very impressive, and highly recommended!
The second question is the more fundamental, and it is why I have always been against the America's involvement in the UN, and why I don't think it should ever have existed in the way that it has.
On principle, I don't think that countries such as the US, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, and many others should be members of international bodies that also have as members countries such as North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and so on. Any country that doesn't meet the minimal criteria I mentioned earlier should not be included in such a gathering of nations: some form of democratic elections on a regular basis, a constitution or similar mechanism that limits the government and protects basic individual rights (the principle of the rule of law vs. the rule of men), and some sort of at least partially capitalist system that respects property rights, free trade, and so on. Even very small countries that have monarchies that are unelected, but whom the people don't have major grievances with, alas, such countries should not be included either -- they don't meet all the minimum qualifications.
It should be noted that the leaders of countries that violate individual rights as a matter of policy and routine and who do not have fair and open elections, such countries are actually ruled by criminals. Such leaders do not have the right to lead their countries.
Think of this by analogy to regular criminals and their relationship with the citizens they prey on and with law enforcement. We do not sit down with those who violate our rights and negotiate our differences; we don't sit down at a big table or in a massive lecture hall and hear the points of view of murderers, thieves, kidnappers, and rapists. So why do we pay respect to, and give sanction to, the illegitimate leaders and representatives of countries who deserve no such respect, who by their very nature as the kind of leaders they are (or as representatives of those kinds of governments) necessarily commit crimes by violating individual rights?
We should instead shun them completely. No ambassadors, no official government connections of any kind, and no fellow membership in the same international organizations. Until they change their ways of course.
I'll note that if private individuals or companies want to do business in such countries (tourism, trade, etc.), that should, for the most part, be up to them. But at the same time, if something happens to them in such countries, the US government shouldn't be responsible for stepping in to save such folks either.
So, with that viewpoint in mind, what would happen if the US announced a position such as this, and intentions to leave the UN because of it? What if a US president, at some point in the future, gave an historic speech in which he announced the above principles and that, unless the UN self-reformed along these lines (by kicking out a great many nation states), the US would be pulling out of the organization in, say, six months? What would happen? Perhaps the UN would buckle and reform along such lines. But I think more likely, the six months would pass by, the US would pull out, several other nations woulf follow, the UN would have to relocate to some city other than New York (we could give them a bit more time to do that), and the US would then work to have strong relations with countries that have the positive attributes outlined above. Potentially, we might work with Great Britain and others to start up a new UN-like organization, if we all thought it was worthwhile to do so. Or we could devote more effort and resources to private charities that attempt to help third world countries, help stop human rights violations, etc.
Think about this while you read the article by Steyn linked above (which I strongly recommend).
Or think about it in relation to the newly formed Human Rights Council (which replaces the disgraced Human Rights Commission). The United States rightly voted against (along with only Israel, Palau, and the Marshal Islands) the formation of this council due to its serious deficiencies. For instance, how is it that the first group of 47 members includes Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia, whose inclusion is absurd, as well as major countries with mixed human rights records in recent years such as China and Russia? And consider that several of its first major actions have been to begin investigations into Israel's alleged human rights violations in the recent war with Lebanon/Hezbollah, while not taking similar actions to look into Hezbollah's actions? This is exactly the kind of thing that brought criticism to the old HR Commission! (See the Wikipedia entry on the new HRC for some quick info about the new organization.)
Of course, I don't see the US making such a bold decision and taking such a course of action with regards to the UN anytime soon. Sadly, to get our government and the sentiments of a majority of US citizens to that point, I think it would take several more incidents (of various kinds, perhaps) of the magnitude of 9/11. And I don't wish for that of course.
Labels: international, united_nations, us_gov_politics
Stephen Browne has posted part one of a very interesting column over at the Atlasphere, Observations on Arabs. Having lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for a year, he is able to make cultural comparisons that most Americans cannot.
Labels: culture, international, religion
Lee Harris at TCS Daily has provided some excellent commentary regarding the reaction to the Pope's recent controversial speech. In particular, the analogy he gives is just outstanding! (Much thanks to Stephen Hicks for this link.)
Labels: international, religion
Jacob Sullum does a nice job of explaining the increasing poppy-growth in Afghanistan that is coinciding with the resurgence of the Taliban.
Labels: drug_war, international, us_gov_politics
One of my favorite contemporary philosophers, Tibor Machan, was smuggled out of Hungary in 1956 at the age of 14. I was hoping he would comment on the current crisis in that country, and he did so recently in this column posted at the Atlasphere. Good stuff.
Labels: economics, individual_rights, international, philosophy
Christopher Hitchens is always a worthwhile read. His Slate article last Monday, in response to the Pope's speech (that many Muslims reacted violently to), is no exception. A great analysis, and one that ends with the following excellent bit that refocuses the reader on the key issue of reason vs. faith:
...throughout [the Pope's] address to the audience at Regensburg, the man who modestly considers himself the vicar of Christ on Earth maintained a steady attack on the idea that reason and the individual conscience can be preferred to faith. He pretends that the word Logos can mean either "the word" or "reason," which it can in Greek but never does in the Bible, where it is presented as heavenly truth. He mentions Kant and Descartes in passing, leaves out Spinoza and Hume entirely, and dishonestly tries to make it seem as if religion and the Enlightenment and science are ultimately compatible, when the whole effort of free inquiry always had to be asserted, at great risk, against the fantastic illusion of "revealed" truth and its all-too-earthly human potentates. It is often said—and was said by Ratzinger when he was an underling of the last Roman prelate—that Islam is not capable of a Reformation. We would not even have this word in our language if the Roman Catholic Church had been able to have its own way. Now its new reactionary leader has really "offended" the Muslim world, while simultaneously asking us to distrust the only reliable weapon—reason—that we possess in these dark times. A fine day's work, and one that we could well have done without.
Labels: international, religion
Princeton's Bernard Lewis, who is arguably the most influential scholar on Mid-East Studies and Islam, has written "Freedom and Justice in Islam" (adapted from a lecture he delivered on July 16, 2006). I recommend this article for historical background you might not have gotten elsewhere.
Labels: history, international, religion
The following is from a speech from Iranian "President" Ahmadinejad:
If you want to have good relations with the Iranian people in the future, you should acknowledge the right and the might of the Iranian people, and you should bow and surrender to the might of the Iranian people. If you do not accept this, the Iranian people will force you to bow and surrender.
Labels: international, religion
One of the benefits of subscribing to The Economist magazine, besides getting a generally fine magazine each week, is receiving the Pocket World in Figures booklet. Split into two sections, World Rankings and Country Profiles, it provides statistics on a wide variety of things, from standard things like population and size, to other things such as environmental health and percentage of homes that own televisions.
Labels: economics, international
Finally... some sanity on the issue of DDT use for Malaria control in Africa. Its about time!
“Indoor spraying is like providing a huge mosquito net over an entire household for around-the-clock protection,” said U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, a leading advocate for global malaria control efforts. “Finally, with WHO’s unambiguous leadership on the issue, we can put to rest the junk science and myths that have provided aid and comfort to the real enemy – mosquitoes – which threaten the lives of more than 300 million children each year.”
Labels: health_care, international
I have to agree with Ted Galen Carpenter when he writes of the "War on Terror" that It Is Not Another World War. The numbers and scope just don't add up to that, at this time.
Labels: international, us_gov_politics
MEMRI has created an impressive video, about the conspiracy theories that have come from Middle East media, political, and religious leaders about who was responsible for 9/11. It is narrated by actor Ron Silver, and is very well done. Even at 40 minutes, it is well worth your time to watch. Very interesting...
Labels: international
Recently former Iranian "president" Mohammed Khatami gave a speech at Harvard titled "Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence". As reported by Harvard's Gazette, he did denounce Bin Laden. But he characterized America as imperialist, similar to pre-WWII Europe. This demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of America's intentions and what "imperialist" means. America has no plans or desire to take over any country on the planet, period. We are interested in trade, not in takeovers -- and this is the key distinction -- the trader principle vs. the initiation of force.
Labels: academia, international, religion
Thanks much to this post from Josh Zader at the Atlasphere regarding the news (reported here in the Guardian) that Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries. Unlike Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and other big companies, Jimmy has a spine and is acting on principle. The excerpt by Josh quotes Jimmy making a great point too: while China wants to keep entries on conflicts with the government and on topics such as Falun Gong out of their citizens' reach, they also end up keeping Chinese citizens from sharing their culture, ideas, influence, and so on (he uses the example of a small village that has a wonderful local tradition that won't be able to share this through Wikipedia).
Labels: individual_rights, international, technology
My friend Basia provides some great photos of the Pulikkali in Kerala, India. Very impressive tiger-themed body painting and costumes.
Labels: culture, international
Back in April Peter Cresswell blogged very succinctly (brief bullet points) on 14 lessons of history, ones often ignored or evaded. An interesting list (thanks to Stephen Hicks for the link).
Labels: history, international
Diana Hsieh had a very funny post that quotes some fake "warning level" systems for various countries. This includes the Britains increasing their warning level from "Irritated" to "A Bit Cross", and the French raising theirs from "Run" to "Hide" (with further levels being "Surrender" and "Collaborate"). The levels for Italy and Germany were funny as well. And then Diana's addition for America's alert levels are superb:
Labels: funny, international
Ted Carpenter of Cato had a nice post last week about what to do in the face of the latest antics of North Korea's Kim Jong Il (further missile launches, etc.). He suggests that "it's time to test the radical alternative of encouraging China to overthrow Kim's regime, in return for America agreeing to end its military presence on the peninsula." Since the US should be systematically ending its defense of South Korea anyway (they can defend themselves against the North, and we need to deploy our troops in other areas that are actually relevant to defending America today). . . this sounds like a great idea to me.
Labels: international, us_gov_politics
The July 31 issue of BusinessWeek had an interesting brief article, "A Little Money Goes a Long Way". It describes Kiva and other online systems that, through the power of the free markets, have connected people with money to those who need money. And the amounts we are talking about here are very small -- loans of $100 or even just $25. Such amounts aren't much to folks in the US, but they can mean a lot to those in third-world countries such as African nations.
Labels: economics, international