Oil's dark secret
Aug 10th 2006 | CARACAS AND LONDON
From The Economist print edition
Most of the world's oil reserves are in the hands of state-run companies, many of which are run badly
EXXON MOBIL is the world's most valuable listed company, with a market capitalisation of $412 billion. But if you compare oil companies by how much they have left in the ground, the American giant ranks a lowly fourteenth. All 13 of the oil firms that outshadow it are national oil companies (NOCs): partially or wholly state-owned firms through which governments retain the profits from oil production. Because these national champions control as much as 90% of the world's oil and gas, they can do far more than the likes of Exxon to assuage the current worries about supply and to influence the accompanying record prices. But like most state-owned firms, they are prone to over-staffing, underinvestment, political interference and corruption.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Suez Crisis
An affair to remember
Jul 27th 2006
From The Economist print edition
The Suez crisis of 50 years ago marked the end of an era, and the start of another, for Europe, America and the Middle East
ON JULY 26th 1956 Gamal Abdul Nasser, president of Egypt, addressed a huge crowd in the city of Alexandria. Broad-shouldered, handsome and passionate, Nasser stunned even this gathering of enthusiastic supporters with the vehemence of his diatribe against British imperialism. Britain had ruled Egypt, one way or another, from 1882 to 1922, when the protectorate gained nominal independence, and continued to influence Egyptian affairs thereafter, maintaining troops there and propping up the decadent monarchy overthrown by Nasser in 1952.
In that speech in Alexandria, though, Nasser chose to delve back even further into history, in a long digression on the building of the Suez canal a century earlier. That gave him the chance to mention the name of the Frenchman who had built the canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps. This he did at least 13 times. “De Lesseps”, it turned out, was the codeword for the Egyptian army to start the seizure, and nationalisation, of the canal. It also launched the start of a new era in the politics of Europe, the Middle East and America.
The Suez crisis, as the events of the following months came to be called, marked the humiliating end of imperial influence for two European countries, Britain and France. It cost the British prime minister, Anthony Eden, his job and, by showing up the shortcomings of the Fourth Republic in France, hastened the arrival of the Fifth Republic under Charles de Gaulle. It made unambiguous, even to the most nostalgic blimps, America's supremacy over its Western allies. It thereby strengthened the resolve of many Europeans to create what is now the European Union. It promoted pan-Arab nationalism and completed the transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute into an Israeli-Arab one. And it provided a distraction that encouraged the Soviet Union to put down an uprising in Hungary in the same year.
It also divided families and friends, at least in Britain and France, with a degree of bitterness that would not be seen in a foreign-policy dispute until the invasion of Iraq in 2003. If that is difficult to understand, remember that the world was a different place then. Many European politicians still believed their countries had a right to run the affairs of others. Many were also scarred by memories of appeasement in the 1930s. Faced with a provocation, even an entirely legal one involving the nationalisation of a foreign-owned asset like the Suez canal, the instinct of such Europeans was to go to war. They and their Israeli partners-in-invasion were restrained, eventually, by the United States, led by a Republican president and war hero, Dwight Eisenhower. The venture involved intrigue, lies, nemesis—and no end of a lesson. How did it come about?
The road to collusion
In Egypt, the British had become so resented for their racist, arrogant ways that by the early 1950s even Winston Churchill, the grand old imperialist who had returned as prime minister in 1951, felt he could resist the tide of nationalism no more. After 1951 the British were confined to the Suez canal zone, harassed by Egyptian irregulars who wanted them out altogether. By June 1956 the last British soldiers had left even the canal zone.
Yet Anglo-Egyptian relations did not improve. Nasser was enraged by America's withdrawal of its offer of loans to help pay for the building of a dam on the Nile at Aswan. This project was central to his ambitions to modernise Egypt. But John Foster Dulles, the American secretary of state, thought the dam would place too much strain on the resources of newly independent Egypt.
For their part, the British, mistrustful of Nasser and feeling the pinch, were also ready to withdraw their loan offer. So, thought Dulles, best to let the Russians take on the dam, as he knew they would if the West backed out. He did not, however, bargain for Nasser's immediate response—the nationalisation of the Suez canal, whose revenues, Nasser argued, Egypt now needed to replace the loans promised by Britain and America for the dam.
The reaction in Britain was unanimous in condemning “Grabber Nasser”, as the Daily Mirror put it. Comparisons were immediately made to Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s: if he got away with this, where would he—and other emboldened post-colonial leaders—stop? Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as prime minister the year before, argued that the canal was Britain's “great imperial lifeline”, especially for oil. Nasser could not be allowed to have his hand “on our windpipe”.
The French reacted just as strongly, but for different reasons. First, they had a stake in the Paris-based company that ran the canal. Second, they were fighting an increasingly nasty little colonial war in Algeria. The new government of Guy Mollet was resolved to put down an Arab uprising there with all the force that the Fourth Republic could muster. By the summer of 1956 France had about 400,000 soldiers in Algiers. Nasser backed the Arab insurgents, so the French were as eager as the British to see the back of him. Accordingly, Britain and France started to co-ordinate plans for a military invasion of Egypt and a reoccupation of the canal zone.
But their bellicosity was matched by the scepticism of the Americans, and of Eisenhower in particular, who from the beginning was against the use of force by his two main allies. One concern for him was the presidential election due that November, which he intended to win as the incumbent “peace” president. He knew that the voters would not thank him for taking them into a foreign imbroglio in which America had no direct interest.
Eisenhower was also motivated by an anti-imperialism rooted in the attitudes that had made Americans break free from the British empire. Intensifying his scepticism was a fear that, in the new cold war, any British and French bullying of Egypt would alienate Arabs, Asians and Africans and drive them towards the communist camp. To head off Anglo-French military action, Eisenhower and his secretary of state ensnared the Europeans in a fruitless round of talks and conferences.
Aware that they were on shaky legal ground for an invasion, the British and French reluctantly played along. But they were losing the momentum for military action, which was the American intention. The increasingly histrionic Eden, in particular, wanted not only the reversal of the canal's nationalisation but also regime change: he wanted Nasser “destroyed”.
The Israelis provided a way out. On September 30th a delegation secretly presented the French with a fabricated casus belli: Israel would invade Egypt and race to the canal. The French and British could then invade, posing as peacekeepers to separate the two sides, and occupy the canal, ostensibly to guarantee the free passage of shipping. When this plan was presented to Eden, he jumped at it. Thus was collusion born. The details were agreed on at a secret meeting in Sèvres, outside Paris. Not for nothing is the Suez crisis known in Egypt as the “tripartite aggression”.
The British and French forces now had a pretext to invade. For the Israelis, it would punish Egypt for its escalating incursions into Israel from Gaza. It would also hitch the major European powers to the cause of Israel: up to that point, the French had tried to be even-handed between Israel and its neighbours; the British had leaned towards the Arab states.
A complete mess and botch
Only a handful of people were let in on the collusion. Most of them thought it was mad from the start, arguing, quite correctly, that the cover for the invasion was so flimsy it would soon be blown. To disguise what was going on, the British, in particular, were drawn ever deeper into a bog of lies and deception, particularly with the Americans. Parliament was also deceived. Both Eden and Selwyn Lloyd, his foreign secretary, told the House of Commons that, as Lloyd put it, “there was no prior agreement” with Israel.
On October 29th, Israeli paratroopers, led by a zealous officer called Ariel Sharon, were dropped into Sinai to fulfil their side of the bargain. Feigning surprise, the British and French issued an ultimatum to both sides to cease fire. When the Egyptians rejected this, British planes started bombing the Egyptian air force on the ground and on November 5th Anglo-French troops went ashore to begin the invasion of the canal zone and, it was hoped, topple Nasser.
Eisenhower, kept completely in the dark, felt utterly betrayed by his erstwhile allies. “I've just never seen great powers make such a complete mess and botch of things,” he told his aides. He determined to put a stop to the whole enterprise.
America struck at Britain's fragile economy. It refused to allow the IMF to give emergency loans to Britain unless it called off the invasion. Faced by imminent financial collapse, as the British Treasury saw it, on November 7th Eden surrendered to American demands and stopped the operation, with his troops stranded half way down the canal. The French were furious, but obliged to agree; their troops were under British command.
America also proved adept at working through the UN. On November 2nd an American resolution demanding a ceasefire was passed by a majority of 64 to five, the Russians voting with the United States. And to sidestep Anglo-French vetoes at the Security Council, for the first time the General Assembly met in emergency session (where no country held a veto) and took up a Canadian suggestion to assemble an international emergency force to go to the canal and monitor the ceasefire. These were to be the first “blue hat” UN peacekeepers. The organisation was one of the clear winners of the crisis, gaining an enhanced role in the world. For the other participants in the drama, the consequences were more mixed.
The French drew the clearest lessons. Suez showed that they could never rely on perfide Albion. Britain, then Europe's strongest power, would, it seemed, always put its “special” relationship with America above its European interests. And the Americans, to the French, were both unreliable and annoyingly superior.
So the French would have to look elsewhere for more durable allies—a search that was, by one account, short. The story goes that on the evening of November 6th, when Mollet got the call from Eden that he was aborting the invasion, he happened to be with the German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. The French foreign minister, Christian Pineau, records Adenauer as saying that “France and England will never be powers comparable to the United States...Not Germany either. There remains to them only one way of playing a decisive role in the world: that is to unite Europe...We have no time to waste; Europe will be your revenge.”
Thus was born the six-country European common market, which has now become the 25-country European Union. The founding Treaty of Rome was signed the very next year, in 1957. And the French, particularly Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s, kept the British, America's Trojan horse, out of it for as long as they could, until 1973. France had by then made itself truly independent of American military power (unlike the British) by building its own nuclear deterrent from scratch and, in 1966, leaving NATO's integrated command structure.
It should have been no surprise, then, that in the months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it was the French who played the American role of 1956, though Jacques Chirac could hardly deliver the coup de grâce, as Eisenhower had done in 1956. In reaction to Suez, France had constructed a new identity as the ostensible leader of Europe, upholding a set of universal values in competition with the Americans.
The British were hurt most by Suez. Eden resigned soon afterwards, his health wrecked, his reputation in tatters, his lies and evasions damaging the country's always tendentious reputation for fair play. The crisis exploded Britain's lingering imperial pretensions, and hastened the independence of its colonies.
Some talked of a “Suez syndrome”, where, in Margaret Thatcher's words, Britain's rulers “went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing”. Certainly, much of Mrs Thatcher's prime ministership, particularly the retaking of the Falklands in 1982, was an essay in exorcising the demons of Suez. Tony Blair has not been afraid to take advantage of her success, by deploying British power in Sierra Leone, the Balkans and Iraq.
But never without the Americans' support. The major lesson of Suez for the British was that the country would never be able to act independently of America again. Unlike the French, who have sought to lead Europe, most British politicians have been content to play second fiddle to America.
Eden recuperated from the crisis in Ian Fleming's house, Goldeneye, in Jamaica. It was an appropriate choice, as it was Fleming who was to mythologise the new relationship in his James Bond novels. The first, “Casino Royale”, was published to little attention in 1953, but the series took off in the years after the Suez crisis, offering some sort of literary consolation to a country coming to terms with its new, humbler status. The partnership between Bond and Felix Leiter, a CIA agent, reflected the way the British now liked to see things, the one suave, smart and endlessly resourceful, the other with a lot of money and a slightly plodding manner.
Eisenhower won his election in America. The crisis affirmed the country's new status as the global superpower, challenged only by the Soviet Union. Suez was also to be the last incident in which America was to take strong action against Israel. As Eisenhower had feared, the Russians moved into the Middle East to fill the gap left by the disorderly retreat of the British, so the Americans felt compelled to get in as well. Thus the cold war spread to north Africa and Egypt (the Russians duly stepped in to finance the Aswan dam, and much else), and Israel became ever more closely tied to the United States.
Before 1956, Israel had been militarily vulnerable, but, beyond the Arab world, morally and politically unassailable. The Israeli occupation of Sinai (and Gaza) in 1956 began the gradual inversion of this state of affairs, as it marked the first expansion of Israel beyond its original borders, with all the subsequent criticisms of its occupation of Arab or Palestinian land. In 1956 the Israelis were quickly forced to withdraw from Sinai by American (and Russian) pressure. Never again, however, would an American president face down Israel as Eisenhower had done at Suez.
The rise of Nasserism
The chief victor of Suez, in the short term, was Nasser. Before the crisis he had faced lingering opposition in Egypt, not only from the former ruling class but also from communists and the radical Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood. “Pulling the Lion's tail”, and getting away with it, proved wildly popular. As dissidents fled, fell silent or filled its jails, Nasser's Egypt projected itself as the vanguard of Arab nationalism and a beacon to liberation movements across the third world.
Puffed up by his own success, Nasser launched misguided adventures such as a short-lived political union with Syria and disastrous nationalisations of Egyptian industry. And the Nasserist dream inspired a wave of pan-Arab nationalism that helped install lookalike leaderships, with similar flags, propaganda and secret police, across much of the Arab world. Saddam Hussein was one who drew inspiration. Nasser himself was largely discredited by Israel's crushing victory in the 1967 war, but the institutions of Nasserism still lived on, in Egypt and elsewhere, as effective systems of political control.
Nasser's 1956 triumph endured in Arab memory as a moment of cathartic liberation. It inspired, to some extent, Saddam's dramatic moves, such as invading Iran and later Kuwait. A famous Egyptian film, “Nasser 56”, lingers nostalgically over the Egyptian leader. Amid rousing music, he is portrayed in black and white, shrouded in pensive solitude by a swirl of cigarette smoke, reaching his momentous decision to nationalise the canal. But the film jumps to the happy outcome, ignoring the fact that Nasser's victory was not won by this new Arab superman, but delivered by superpower intervention.
A wider lesson lies in the interpretation of history. Eden, who had honourably resigned as foreign secretary in 1938 in disapproval of the appeasement of Hitler and, especially, Mussolini, was nonetheless haunted by Neville Chamberlain's readiness to yield to tyrants. His impulses at Suez were surely complex. Eden was far from anti-American or indifferent to American concerns. He had resigned in 1938 partly because he thought his prime minister, Chamberlain, had treated Roosevelt shabbily. Yet he saw Nasser as a “Mussolini” and was plainly determined to avoid any charge of appeasement, even though the essential features of Munich and Suez were wholly different. Instead of saying that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, George Santayana might have better said that those who misinterpret the past are condemned to bungle the present.
Jul 27th 2006
From The Economist print edition
The Suez crisis of 50 years ago marked the end of an era, and the start of another, for Europe, America and the Middle East
ON JULY 26th 1956 Gamal Abdul Nasser, president of Egypt, addressed a huge crowd in the city of Alexandria. Broad-shouldered, handsome and passionate, Nasser stunned even this gathering of enthusiastic supporters with the vehemence of his diatribe against British imperialism. Britain had ruled Egypt, one way or another, from 1882 to 1922, when the protectorate gained nominal independence, and continued to influence Egyptian affairs thereafter, maintaining troops there and propping up the decadent monarchy overthrown by Nasser in 1952.
In that speech in Alexandria, though, Nasser chose to delve back even further into history, in a long digression on the building of the Suez canal a century earlier. That gave him the chance to mention the name of the Frenchman who had built the canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps. This he did at least 13 times. “De Lesseps”, it turned out, was the codeword for the Egyptian army to start the seizure, and nationalisation, of the canal. It also launched the start of a new era in the politics of Europe, the Middle East and America.
The Suez crisis, as the events of the following months came to be called, marked the humiliating end of imperial influence for two European countries, Britain and France. It cost the British prime minister, Anthony Eden, his job and, by showing up the shortcomings of the Fourth Republic in France, hastened the arrival of the Fifth Republic under Charles de Gaulle. It made unambiguous, even to the most nostalgic blimps, America's supremacy over its Western allies. It thereby strengthened the resolve of many Europeans to create what is now the European Union. It promoted pan-Arab nationalism and completed the transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute into an Israeli-Arab one. And it provided a distraction that encouraged the Soviet Union to put down an uprising in Hungary in the same year.
It also divided families and friends, at least in Britain and France, with a degree of bitterness that would not be seen in a foreign-policy dispute until the invasion of Iraq in 2003. If that is difficult to understand, remember that the world was a different place then. Many European politicians still believed their countries had a right to run the affairs of others. Many were also scarred by memories of appeasement in the 1930s. Faced with a provocation, even an entirely legal one involving the nationalisation of a foreign-owned asset like the Suez canal, the instinct of such Europeans was to go to war. They and their Israeli partners-in-invasion were restrained, eventually, by the United States, led by a Republican president and war hero, Dwight Eisenhower. The venture involved intrigue, lies, nemesis—and no end of a lesson. How did it come about?
The road to collusion
In Egypt, the British had become so resented for their racist, arrogant ways that by the early 1950s even Winston Churchill, the grand old imperialist who had returned as prime minister in 1951, felt he could resist the tide of nationalism no more. After 1951 the British were confined to the Suez canal zone, harassed by Egyptian irregulars who wanted them out altogether. By June 1956 the last British soldiers had left even the canal zone.
Yet Anglo-Egyptian relations did not improve. Nasser was enraged by America's withdrawal of its offer of loans to help pay for the building of a dam on the Nile at Aswan. This project was central to his ambitions to modernise Egypt. But John Foster Dulles, the American secretary of state, thought the dam would place too much strain on the resources of newly independent Egypt.
For their part, the British, mistrustful of Nasser and feeling the pinch, were also ready to withdraw their loan offer. So, thought Dulles, best to let the Russians take on the dam, as he knew they would if the West backed out. He did not, however, bargain for Nasser's immediate response—the nationalisation of the Suez canal, whose revenues, Nasser argued, Egypt now needed to replace the loans promised by Britain and America for the dam.
The reaction in Britain was unanimous in condemning “Grabber Nasser”, as the Daily Mirror put it. Comparisons were immediately made to Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s: if he got away with this, where would he—and other emboldened post-colonial leaders—stop? Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as prime minister the year before, argued that the canal was Britain's “great imperial lifeline”, especially for oil. Nasser could not be allowed to have his hand “on our windpipe”.
The French reacted just as strongly, but for different reasons. First, they had a stake in the Paris-based company that ran the canal. Second, they were fighting an increasingly nasty little colonial war in Algeria. The new government of Guy Mollet was resolved to put down an Arab uprising there with all the force that the Fourth Republic could muster. By the summer of 1956 France had about 400,000 soldiers in Algiers. Nasser backed the Arab insurgents, so the French were as eager as the British to see the back of him. Accordingly, Britain and France started to co-ordinate plans for a military invasion of Egypt and a reoccupation of the canal zone.
But their bellicosity was matched by the scepticism of the Americans, and of Eisenhower in particular, who from the beginning was against the use of force by his two main allies. One concern for him was the presidential election due that November, which he intended to win as the incumbent “peace” president. He knew that the voters would not thank him for taking them into a foreign imbroglio in which America had no direct interest.
Eisenhower was also motivated by an anti-imperialism rooted in the attitudes that had made Americans break free from the British empire. Intensifying his scepticism was a fear that, in the new cold war, any British and French bullying of Egypt would alienate Arabs, Asians and Africans and drive them towards the communist camp. To head off Anglo-French military action, Eisenhower and his secretary of state ensnared the Europeans in a fruitless round of talks and conferences.
Aware that they were on shaky legal ground for an invasion, the British and French reluctantly played along. But they were losing the momentum for military action, which was the American intention. The increasingly histrionic Eden, in particular, wanted not only the reversal of the canal's nationalisation but also regime change: he wanted Nasser “destroyed”.
The Israelis provided a way out. On September 30th a delegation secretly presented the French with a fabricated casus belli: Israel would invade Egypt and race to the canal. The French and British could then invade, posing as peacekeepers to separate the two sides, and occupy the canal, ostensibly to guarantee the free passage of shipping. When this plan was presented to Eden, he jumped at it. Thus was collusion born. The details were agreed on at a secret meeting in Sèvres, outside Paris. Not for nothing is the Suez crisis known in Egypt as the “tripartite aggression”.
The British and French forces now had a pretext to invade. For the Israelis, it would punish Egypt for its escalating incursions into Israel from Gaza. It would also hitch the major European powers to the cause of Israel: up to that point, the French had tried to be even-handed between Israel and its neighbours; the British had leaned towards the Arab states.
A complete mess and botch
Only a handful of people were let in on the collusion. Most of them thought it was mad from the start, arguing, quite correctly, that the cover for the invasion was so flimsy it would soon be blown. To disguise what was going on, the British, in particular, were drawn ever deeper into a bog of lies and deception, particularly with the Americans. Parliament was also deceived. Both Eden and Selwyn Lloyd, his foreign secretary, told the House of Commons that, as Lloyd put it, “there was no prior agreement” with Israel.
On October 29th, Israeli paratroopers, led by a zealous officer called Ariel Sharon, were dropped into Sinai to fulfil their side of the bargain. Feigning surprise, the British and French issued an ultimatum to both sides to cease fire. When the Egyptians rejected this, British planes started bombing the Egyptian air force on the ground and on November 5th Anglo-French troops went ashore to begin the invasion of the canal zone and, it was hoped, topple Nasser.
Eisenhower, kept completely in the dark, felt utterly betrayed by his erstwhile allies. “I've just never seen great powers make such a complete mess and botch of things,” he told his aides. He determined to put a stop to the whole enterprise.
America struck at Britain's fragile economy. It refused to allow the IMF to give emergency loans to Britain unless it called off the invasion. Faced by imminent financial collapse, as the British Treasury saw it, on November 7th Eden surrendered to American demands and stopped the operation, with his troops stranded half way down the canal. The French were furious, but obliged to agree; their troops were under British command.
America also proved adept at working through the UN. On November 2nd an American resolution demanding a ceasefire was passed by a majority of 64 to five, the Russians voting with the United States. And to sidestep Anglo-French vetoes at the Security Council, for the first time the General Assembly met in emergency session (where no country held a veto) and took up a Canadian suggestion to assemble an international emergency force to go to the canal and monitor the ceasefire. These were to be the first “blue hat” UN peacekeepers. The organisation was one of the clear winners of the crisis, gaining an enhanced role in the world. For the other participants in the drama, the consequences were more mixed.
The French drew the clearest lessons. Suez showed that they could never rely on perfide Albion. Britain, then Europe's strongest power, would, it seemed, always put its “special” relationship with America above its European interests. And the Americans, to the French, were both unreliable and annoyingly superior.
So the French would have to look elsewhere for more durable allies—a search that was, by one account, short. The story goes that on the evening of November 6th, when Mollet got the call from Eden that he was aborting the invasion, he happened to be with the German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. The French foreign minister, Christian Pineau, records Adenauer as saying that “France and England will never be powers comparable to the United States...Not Germany either. There remains to them only one way of playing a decisive role in the world: that is to unite Europe...We have no time to waste; Europe will be your revenge.”
Thus was born the six-country European common market, which has now become the 25-country European Union. The founding Treaty of Rome was signed the very next year, in 1957. And the French, particularly Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s, kept the British, America's Trojan horse, out of it for as long as they could, until 1973. France had by then made itself truly independent of American military power (unlike the British) by building its own nuclear deterrent from scratch and, in 1966, leaving NATO's integrated command structure.
It should have been no surprise, then, that in the months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it was the French who played the American role of 1956, though Jacques Chirac could hardly deliver the coup de grâce, as Eisenhower had done in 1956. In reaction to Suez, France had constructed a new identity as the ostensible leader of Europe, upholding a set of universal values in competition with the Americans.
The British were hurt most by Suez. Eden resigned soon afterwards, his health wrecked, his reputation in tatters, his lies and evasions damaging the country's always tendentious reputation for fair play. The crisis exploded Britain's lingering imperial pretensions, and hastened the independence of its colonies.
Some talked of a “Suez syndrome”, where, in Margaret Thatcher's words, Britain's rulers “went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing”. Certainly, much of Mrs Thatcher's prime ministership, particularly the retaking of the Falklands in 1982, was an essay in exorcising the demons of Suez. Tony Blair has not been afraid to take advantage of her success, by deploying British power in Sierra Leone, the Balkans and Iraq.
But never without the Americans' support. The major lesson of Suez for the British was that the country would never be able to act independently of America again. Unlike the French, who have sought to lead Europe, most British politicians have been content to play second fiddle to America.
Eden recuperated from the crisis in Ian Fleming's house, Goldeneye, in Jamaica. It was an appropriate choice, as it was Fleming who was to mythologise the new relationship in his James Bond novels. The first, “Casino Royale”, was published to little attention in 1953, but the series took off in the years after the Suez crisis, offering some sort of literary consolation to a country coming to terms with its new, humbler status. The partnership between Bond and Felix Leiter, a CIA agent, reflected the way the British now liked to see things, the one suave, smart and endlessly resourceful, the other with a lot of money and a slightly plodding manner.
Eisenhower won his election in America. The crisis affirmed the country's new status as the global superpower, challenged only by the Soviet Union. Suez was also to be the last incident in which America was to take strong action against Israel. As Eisenhower had feared, the Russians moved into the Middle East to fill the gap left by the disorderly retreat of the British, so the Americans felt compelled to get in as well. Thus the cold war spread to north Africa and Egypt (the Russians duly stepped in to finance the Aswan dam, and much else), and Israel became ever more closely tied to the United States.
Before 1956, Israel had been militarily vulnerable, but, beyond the Arab world, morally and politically unassailable. The Israeli occupation of Sinai (and Gaza) in 1956 began the gradual inversion of this state of affairs, as it marked the first expansion of Israel beyond its original borders, with all the subsequent criticisms of its occupation of Arab or Palestinian land. In 1956 the Israelis were quickly forced to withdraw from Sinai by American (and Russian) pressure. Never again, however, would an American president face down Israel as Eisenhower had done at Suez.
The rise of Nasserism
The chief victor of Suez, in the short term, was Nasser. Before the crisis he had faced lingering opposition in Egypt, not only from the former ruling class but also from communists and the radical Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood. “Pulling the Lion's tail”, and getting away with it, proved wildly popular. As dissidents fled, fell silent or filled its jails, Nasser's Egypt projected itself as the vanguard of Arab nationalism and a beacon to liberation movements across the third world.
Puffed up by his own success, Nasser launched misguided adventures such as a short-lived political union with Syria and disastrous nationalisations of Egyptian industry. And the Nasserist dream inspired a wave of pan-Arab nationalism that helped install lookalike leaderships, with similar flags, propaganda and secret police, across much of the Arab world. Saddam Hussein was one who drew inspiration. Nasser himself was largely discredited by Israel's crushing victory in the 1967 war, but the institutions of Nasserism still lived on, in Egypt and elsewhere, as effective systems of political control.
Nasser's 1956 triumph endured in Arab memory as a moment of cathartic liberation. It inspired, to some extent, Saddam's dramatic moves, such as invading Iran and later Kuwait. A famous Egyptian film, “Nasser 56”, lingers nostalgically over the Egyptian leader. Amid rousing music, he is portrayed in black and white, shrouded in pensive solitude by a swirl of cigarette smoke, reaching his momentous decision to nationalise the canal. But the film jumps to the happy outcome, ignoring the fact that Nasser's victory was not won by this new Arab superman, but delivered by superpower intervention.
A wider lesson lies in the interpretation of history. Eden, who had honourably resigned as foreign secretary in 1938 in disapproval of the appeasement of Hitler and, especially, Mussolini, was nonetheless haunted by Neville Chamberlain's readiness to yield to tyrants. His impulses at Suez were surely complex. Eden was far from anti-American or indifferent to American concerns. He had resigned in 1938 partly because he thought his prime minister, Chamberlain, had treated Roosevelt shabbily. Yet he saw Nasser as a “Mussolini” and was plainly determined to avoid any charge of appeasement, even though the essential features of Munich and Suez were wholly different. Instead of saying that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, George Santayana might have better said that those who misinterpret the past are condemned to bungle the present.
Monday, July 10, 2006
The Passion
After one month, the World Cup is finished.
France appeared to play the better game, especially in the second half, but Italy won.
I cut my hair in homage to Zidane.
France appeared to play the better game, especially in the second half, but Italy won.
I cut my hair in homage to Zidane.
Friday, June 09, 2006
British Columbia: Garibaldi
Here it is folks. Lake Garibaldi. And real live glaciers. Glaciers! The calendar was ready to be turned to June and we encountered a lot of snow from 1100 meters up. The melt was on and we had packs on our backs. I was a little nervous about footing and the possibility of sinking into icey water.
Luckily, there was a shelter at the lake. We pitched our tent inside and from our protected vantage point enjoyed the sleet, snow, rain, and ephemeral sun. Weather.
This is the barrier. You might read this and not know how to pronounce it correctly. It is pronounced barrier, like you were in a monster truck rally radio commercial. You got it. The barrier. Ancient volcanoes and glaciers, battles between fire and ice. Fucking sweet. The barrier.
British Columbia: Juan de Fuca
We stopped for lunch at the Smoking Tuna restaurant in Sooke, in the midst of a fishermen's trailer park. We watched the sea lions follow the fishers, ready to dispose of the waste from cleaning fish. Then we hiked along the coast trail of the East Sooke Provincial Park. The clouds were low, fog was drifting in and out, the found horn was sounding. the air was heavy with moisture, the sitka spruce and the succelents were friendly, the sea blended into the sky, and it was nice.
We spent Monday night at the Sol Harbor Lodge in Port Renfrew. The lodge is owned by the Cash brothers, gourmet cooks who practice permaculture. I would have liked to talk more with them about their lifestyle. After reacquanting ourselves with the wonders of plumbing and dry shelter, we ate dinner at the Coastal Kitchen Cafe, which reminded us of the Mazama General Store. It was the place to be. I had Halibut and beers.
On Tuesday we hiked the Botanical Beach portion of the 47 kilometer Juan de Fuca trail. I took a sweet fall. Ask me about it. We camped on the ocean's edge at Sombrio Beach and watched the surfing channel. Yo, thirty surfers were in the water. Good times.
On Wednesday, we hiked from Sombrio Beach north on the Juan de Fuca trail. The trail was rugged, up and down, slimy, moist, rainy, refreshing, muddy, sluggish, soggy, slippery, rocky, mossy, and very alive.At the end of the afternoon we drove to Jordan River and ate at Shakies; the ravens waited politely. Then we drove to Goldstream Provincial Park and spent the night before taking the ferry back to Tsawwassen.
British Columbia: Strathcona
Marye and I flew into Vancouver on Thursday May 18. The next day we took the ferry from Tsawwassen to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island and drove to the Ralph River campground at Strathcona Provincial Park. Our campsite, nestled among western red cedar, western hemlock, and douglas fir, abutted Buttle Lake, which rises rapidly in late spring when the snow melts. (Left: the meadow next to the campground).
On Saturday we decided to hike the Flower Ridge Trail, a strenuous climb and quad-pounding descent. Unfortunately, turned back before we reached the alpine meadows promised by the hike description. We were impeded by snow at higher altitudes, not so much because it was impassable but because we were extremely wary of losing the trail. Next, we progressed to Lower Myra Falls (pictured left), a spectacular site created by an earthquake and fed by melting snow. After enthralling beauty of the intensely chaotic falls, we sat and read in a meadow. I was reading Walden. I observed several emerald-backed swallows, and I was waiting hopefully to see Roosevelt Elk, unique to the island. To cap the evening, we hiked the Wild Ginger Trail.
On Sunday we hiked Upper Myra Falls, checked out the Westmin zinc and copper mine, lunched at Lower Myra Falls, and lounged next to the clear, ice-cold water of the Ralph River. In the evening we hiked the Shephard Creek trail.We awoke Monday morning to a rain shower, a good day to drive but also a chance to experience weather. Goodbye Strathcona.
Commencement
Germany 4 - Costa Rica 2
The first match of the World Cup is complete.
I watched it at the Longfellow Grill, two blocks away from our house.
I called to inquire if the LG would be showing the World Cup and the woman I talked to said they didn't have TVs. God damn it. Why do you tell me such things. Did they take down the TVs above the bar. She put me on hold so she could discover they had TVs above the bar. Also, she didn't know whether they had Summit Scandia on tap. Maybe she was new. Anyway, I treated myself to a breakfast burrito and a few Maibocks. Germany's fourth goal was nasty and I started laughing because the keeper didn't have a chance. Two ladies sitting next to me thought I was crazy, but were reassured once they deduced I was having interactions with the TV. We talked a little about the World Cup. They thought Costa Rica was the favorite. Oh, Amerika.
The first match of the World Cup is complete.
I watched it at the Longfellow Grill, two blocks away from our house.
I called to inquire if the LG would be showing the World Cup and the woman I talked to said they didn't have TVs. God damn it. Why do you tell me such things. Did they take down the TVs above the bar. She put me on hold so she could discover they had TVs above the bar. Also, she didn't know whether they had Summit Scandia on tap. Maybe she was new. Anyway, I treated myself to a breakfast burrito and a few Maibocks. Germany's fourth goal was nasty and I started laughing because the keeper didn't have a chance. Two ladies sitting next to me thought I was crazy, but were reassured once they deduced I was having interactions with the TV. We talked a little about the World Cup. They thought Costa Rica was the favorite. Oh, Amerika.
Friday, June 02, 2006
Time Well Spent
Four big things since the last post:
1. Bathroom renovation phase I
2. Chillin with Aaron and Jennifer
3. Trip to British Columbia
4. Peeps in town for reunion
My dad drove up to Minnesota with a minivan full of tools and spent over a week helping us create a bigger bathroom. In summary, we tore the old drywall down, poured a little concrete, framed new walls, moved the sink, put up drywall, taped, and installed a drop-ceiling. During phase II, we will remove the old shower, finish the wall, install the new shower, put up a ceiling, and lay floor tiles. Lessons learned: tools are sweet and sanding joint compound deposits a fine powder everywhere.
Aaron and Jennifer were in town because they had siblings graduating from Macalester. As always, it was good to see them and be joined by others anxious to see the east coasters.
Marye and I spent twelve days exploring British Columbia provincial parks: Strathcona, Juan de Fuca, and Garibaldi. More later...
Tonight marks an omnium-gatherum of personalities for the class of 2001 Macalester College reunion. 63 Mac and honorary members have demonstrated stellar attendance: Jose, Sebas, Simon, Soren, Kofi, Ziyad, and Klinker. Superb.
1. Bathroom renovation phase I
2. Chillin with Aaron and Jennifer
3. Trip to British Columbia
4. Peeps in town for reunion
My dad drove up to Minnesota with a minivan full of tools and spent over a week helping us create a bigger bathroom. In summary, we tore the old drywall down, poured a little concrete, framed new walls, moved the sink, put up drywall, taped, and installed a drop-ceiling. During phase II, we will remove the old shower, finish the wall, install the new shower, put up a ceiling, and lay floor tiles. Lessons learned: tools are sweet and sanding joint compound deposits a fine powder everywhere.
Aaron and Jennifer were in town because they had siblings graduating from Macalester. As always, it was good to see them and be joined by others anxious to see the east coasters.
Marye and I spent twelve days exploring British Columbia provincial parks: Strathcona, Juan de Fuca, and Garibaldi. More later...
Tonight marks an omnium-gatherum of personalities for the class of 2001 Macalester College reunion. 63 Mac and honorary members have demonstrated stellar attendance: Jose, Sebas, Simon, Soren, Kofi, Ziyad, and Klinker. Superb.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Beer, Glorious Beer
Last night Marye and I went to Kagin Commons at Macalester College for a Family Tree Clinic fundraiser. Actually, I went for the tax-deductible beer; the forty dollar ticket price granted me a commemorative tasting glass and the opportunity to drink responsibly by drinking local beer. There were 13 local breweries and brew pubs. I'll walk you counterclockwise through Kagin, mentioning the brewer and the beer I sampled.
Finnegans Irish Amber: from Summit, brewed with potatoes
Lake Superior 7 Bridges brown ale: Duluth
Great Waters Apocalypse: American strong ale
Rock Bottom Cinco de Maibock
Bandana Sleepy Eye Schwarzbier: Mankato
Summit: they didn't have the Scandia and I've drank the rest
Bell's Cherry Stout: Kalamazoo, Michigan (is that local)
Barley John's Wild Brunette: brown ale, brewed with wild rice, somewhere near Roseville
Fitger's Brewhouse: 1) El Diablo: Belgian golden ale 2) Ted Koppelbock: maibock with honey
Schell Maifest: New Ulm
Rush River Small Axe: hefeweizen, Maiden Rock WI
Town Hall: 1) Foolish quadrupel: damn 2) Spring: maple syrup and chamomille tastes
Surly (brewed in Brooklyn Center by Mac grads): 1) Furious: hoppy, amber ale? 2) Bender: porter/brown ale/oatmeal
There you have it. Good times.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Korean Prostitutes Pictures
Recently someone from Korea visited my blog.
How were they drawn to this site.
"korean prostitute pictures"
Those were the keywords used in the search criteria.
I didn't recall posting any pictures as such, so I followed the link to the page of interest, which was a post about Pat Robertson. Funny.
How were they drawn to this site.
"korean prostitute pictures"
Those were the keywords used in the search criteria.
I didn't recall posting any pictures as such, so I followed the link to the page of interest, which was a post about Pat Robertson. Funny.
TCM
It's official.
Tim Pavlish is running Twin Cities Marathon on October 1.
So far he has recruited Mr. Shively, Paul, and me.
Jude is thinking about it. Yes, you are.
And perhaps B Lodge.
Who's in.
Tim Pavlish is running Twin Cities Marathon on October 1.
So far he has recruited Mr. Shively, Paul, and me.
Jude is thinking about it. Yes, you are.
And perhaps B Lodge.
Who's in.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Decorah
We traveled south to Decorah to visit Steve and Yarrow during the weekend of April fools' day. We were delighted to see their new house, from where I was able to throw a stone into the raging Upper Iowa River.
On Friday evening we walked through a mowed swath of the prairie along the river, restraining ourselves from the temptation of jumping on the ledges of undercut stream banks and enticing gravity to provide us a sudden thrill.
We ate dinner at Sabor Latino. Why would someone name a restaurant after a latino calvary sword with a curved blade? What? Anyway, we enjoyed magaritas, tortilla chips and guacamole, and enormous portions. After gorging ourselves, we went to a bar on main street. I drank Blue Moon. I ate peanuts and threw the shells on the floor. We met a few of the athletes, one who was quite notably sporting a mullet and mustache. Quality. On the way home from the bar Steve and I performed robin impressions at my behest. Good times. Back home, Yarrow noticed she had missed a call from Jude and Michelle. We returned the call and learned that the two are now betrothed. Congratulations. Your marriage will be a blessing for humanity. And for the record, Jude said I can play trombone at the wedding in Debs.
On Saturday Steve and Yarrow worked the morning and early afternoon at a indoor high school track meet on the blue Norse track. Luther College is a short commute from their Cape Code style home, which is - I almost forgot to mention - adorned with a friendly greeter in the window. I don't know the story behind the cult of personality, but a majority of Decorah residents have chosen to place the figure in the front window.
Marye and I explored Decorah, stopping at the grocery co-op, which can only be described as kick-ass, the quality chicks store (chicken hatchery), and the Magpie coffee house, where I contemplated picking up a free bible for Jude.Saturday afternoon was spent riding bikes and exploring land recently donated to Luther by an alumnus. A low-lying portion of the land along the Upper Iowa River is prime beaver real estate. Trees felled. Fresh wood chips. Stripped trunks. Busy as a beaver - fucking right. This society was advanced. We saw beaver sculpture art, but alas, the culture appeared not to be at its acme; we could not find a beaver ball. The end of the bike ride culminated with a stop at the Whippy Dip, the local icecream pusher. Yarrow made soup, salad, and Pad Thai for dinner. Good eats.
On Sunday we visited the Seed Savers Exchange, a 900-acre non-profit farm that grows 25,000 vegetable varieties, 800 apple varieties, 200 grape varieties, and raises white park cattle, a breed that predates Jesus Christ. Holy shit, that's a lot of genetic diversity. The lineage of most varieties are recorded. I bought Polish pepper seeds and Italian eggplant seeds. I'll probably plant them next year.
Good times in Decorah!
Friday, April 07, 2006
What It Is
After the scrabble triumph, Ben was quick to grab his crotch in exaltation and express himself to the local media.
Speed Scrabble
There it is, the effort of a stunning comeback victory in speed scrabble by Tim and Ben, two blue-collar workers, versus a doctor and a graduate student. Chalk up a W for the working class. The turning point in the game came when Tim and Ben were willing to cast aside aspersions associated with a long dangling appendage specific to the male anatomy that others were too prudish to consider. That penis was huge for us. Huge.
Nordkapp
I don't know if I posted about Nordkapp. And I'm too lazy to look at my own blog to see if I did. Over Presidents' Day weekend, we vacationed on the shore of Lake Superior near Lutsen at a cabin called Nordkapp. I will now post several essays.
The Grill Is Out
Just finished grilling with Marye and Tim. Chicken rubbed with lemon juice, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Grilled. Stuffed into pitas with thyme, basil, tomatoes, and lettuce. MMMMMMMMmmm.
We are currently listening to Salsa Celtica, a motley combination of sonido Mexicano and bagpipes.
Tonight we plan on going to the 331 Club in northeast Minneapolis where I will dance flamenco. Oh yes.
I drank yet another home brew. EPA. 22-ounce bottle, so much better than the poor 12-ounce.
Nothing is new with Marye and Tim, whereas lots is new with me.
Wait... this just in: Marye is closely monitoring and extremely excited about the bulbs burgeoning in the yard.
We are currently listening to Salsa Celtica, a motley combination of sonido Mexicano and bagpipes.
Tonight we plan on going to the 331 Club in northeast Minneapolis where I will dance flamenco. Oh yes.
I drank yet another home brew. EPA. 22-ounce bottle, so much better than the poor 12-ounce.
Nothing is new with Marye and Tim, whereas lots is new with me.
Wait... this just in: Marye is closely monitoring and extremely excited about the bulbs burgeoning in the yard.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Flying Spaghetti Monster Cartoons
This may be incendiary, but I support freedom of speech. Here are several of the highly controversial Flying Spaghetti Monster cartoons:
Caption: Flying Spaghetti Monster keeping women under thumb.
Caption: The Flying Spaghetti Monster depicted as a wanderer with a donkey.
Caption: In heaven, the Flying Spaghetti Monster tells a martyr "We're out of virgins."
Caption: Flying Spaghetti Monster keeping women under thumb.
Caption: The Flying Spaghetti Monster depicted as a wanderer with a donkey.
Caption: In heaven, the Flying Spaghetti Monster tells a martyr "We're out of virgins."
Monday, March 27, 2006
Weekend
Holly, Megan, Darryn, Marye, and I went climbing at Vertical Endeavors on Saturday. It was my first vertical climbing experience, and a welcome contrast to bouldering. Fun times. After the forearms were nonfunctional, we went to El Burrito Mercado and replenished ourselves with Mexican food. I was also lucky enough to find a vending machine selling water-adhesive Jesus tattoos and mud-flap girl tattoos for only fifty cents each. Booya. Later in the evening I found myself on a masculine sojourn, as the girls (Holly, Megan, Liz, Yarrow, Marye) wanted to reminisce about first periods. I went to the Lake Street Garage on Lake and 36th. Every Saturday and Sunday the Garage serves a trivia game starting at eight o' clock. Three women in their fifties (the three virgins as they called themselves) enlisted me to complete a four-person team. The pub quiz was slow-paced, so I ordered a chocolate shake and read an article in the Bridge about a development planned to rise up next to the historic Pillsbury mill site. Next I progressed westward on Lake Street to the Poodle Club (old balls club). I ordered a Summit EPA, watched basketball, and then left after an old lady started telling me about her breasts (apparently they weren't where they used to be). Eventually I received the green light to join the girls at Lee's Liquor Lounge where we listened to the live music of Reverse Cowgirl, which I just Googled tonight. I was not aware of what that position was called. On Sunday Paul and I went for an alumni run. Then we met peeps at the LG (Longfellow Grill), ate, and said farewell. Actually, Steve and Yarrow spent the night at our house and left for Decorah today.
Free Lunch
So, we have new neighbors across the street.
They subscribe to a wireless internet network.
The signal strength is 55% - too good to be true?
We'll see.
They subscribe to a wireless internet network.
The signal strength is 55% - too good to be true?
We'll see.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Hello
So...
I've been preoccupied. I was festooned with a mullet on my birthday. It was radical. I protested at the Danish-American Institute in Minneapolis. It was fulfilling. I bought a starter kit and EPA ingredients at Northern Brewer. The brewing and bottling is complete; I am waiting for the yeast to eat the priming sugar and carbonate the beverages.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Quadrennial Defense Review Report
Okay, so I was reading an article in the Economist about the Quadrennial Defense Review Report, which outlines how the military will respond to future needs. I navigated to the Department of Defense QDR web page and found the lengthy report...
Quadrennial Defense Review Report
FIGHTING THE LONG WAR
Afghanistan
Iraq
The Fight Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq
Humanitarian and Early Preventive Measures
The Department’s Role at Home
Operational Lessons Learned
OPERATIONALIZING THE STRATEGY
Defeating Terrorist Networks
Defending the Homeland in Depth
Shaping the Choices of Countries at Strategic Crossroads
Preventing the Acquisition or Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Refining the Department’s Force Planning Construct for Wartime
REORIENTING CAPABILITIES AND FORCES
Joint Ground Forces
Special Operations Forces (SOF)
Joint Air Capabilities
Joint Maritime Capabilities
Tailored Deterrence / New Triad
Combating WMD
Joint Mobility
Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR)
Achieving Net-Centricity
Joint Command and Control
RESHAPING THE DEFENSE ENTERPRISE
Toward A New Defense Enterprise
Governance Reforms
Management and Work Reforms
DEVELOPING A 21st CENTURY TOTAL FORCE
Reconfiguring the Total Force
Building the Right Skills
Designing an Information Age Human Capital Strategy
ACHIEVING UNITY OF EFFORT
Strengthening Interagency Operations
Working with International Allies and PartnersStrategic Communication
Quadrennial Defense Review Report
FIGHTING THE LONG WAR
Afghanistan
Iraq
The Fight Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq
Humanitarian and Early Preventive Measures
The Department’s Role at Home
Operational Lessons Learned
OPERATIONALIZING THE STRATEGY
Defeating Terrorist Networks
Defending the Homeland in Depth
Shaping the Choices of Countries at Strategic Crossroads
Preventing the Acquisition or Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Refining the Department’s Force Planning Construct for Wartime
REORIENTING CAPABILITIES AND FORCES
Joint Ground Forces
Special Operations Forces (SOF)
Joint Air Capabilities
Joint Maritime Capabilities
Tailored Deterrence / New Triad
Combating WMD
Joint Mobility
Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR)
Achieving Net-Centricity
Joint Command and Control
RESHAPING THE DEFENSE ENTERPRISE
Toward A New Defense Enterprise
Governance Reforms
Management and Work Reforms
DEVELOPING A 21st CENTURY TOTAL FORCE
Reconfiguring the Total Force
Building the Right Skills
Designing an Information Age Human Capital Strategy
ACHIEVING UNITY OF EFFORT
Strengthening Interagency Operations
Working with International Allies and PartnersStrategic Communication
U.S.-China Trade Relations
So, I was reading an article in the Economist about trade relations with China. Peeps in the US are upset with the huge trade deficit with China and the perceived undervaluation of China's currency. Peeps are threatened by China's growing economic and military might. What will Congress do? Let's visit the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
Robert Portman and the USTR have published a report...
U.S.-China Trade Relations: Entering a New Phase of Greater Accountability and Enforcement
Here is the table of contents:
REVIEW OF U.S. TRADE PRINCIPLES AND OBJECTIVES
Overall Trade Policy
China Trade Policy
Phase 1 (1986-2001)
Phase 2 (2001-2005)
Phase 3 (2006 forward)
KEY CHINA TRADE OBJECTIVES AND PRIORITY GOALS
Participation
Implementation and Compliance
Enforcement of U.S. Trade Laws
Further Market Access and Reform
Export Promotion
Proactive Identification and Resolution of Trade Problems
KEY ACTION ITEMS
Expand USTR Enforcement Capacity
Expand USTR Capability to Obtain & Apply Information on China’s Trade Regime
Expand Trade Policy and Negotiating Capacity in Beijing
Increase Coordination with Other Trading Partners
Deepen and Strengthen Regional Engagement
Increase Focus on Regulatory Reform in China
Increase Effectiveness of High-Level Meetings with China’s Leaders
Expand Bilateral Dialogues on Current and Potential Problem Areas
Strengthen U.S. Government Interagency Coordination
Strengthen the Executive-Congressional Partnership on China Trade
Robert Portman and the USTR have published a report...
U.S.-China Trade Relations: Entering a New Phase of Greater Accountability and Enforcement
Here is the table of contents:
REVIEW OF U.S. TRADE PRINCIPLES AND OBJECTIVES
Overall Trade Policy
China Trade Policy
Phase 1 (1986-2001)
Phase 2 (2001-2005)
Phase 3 (2006 forward)
KEY CHINA TRADE OBJECTIVES AND PRIORITY GOALS
Participation
Implementation and Compliance
Enforcement of U.S. Trade Laws
Further Market Access and Reform
Export Promotion
Proactive Identification and Resolution of Trade Problems
KEY ACTION ITEMS
Expand USTR Enforcement Capacity
Expand USTR Capability to Obtain & Apply Information on China’s Trade Regime
Expand Trade Policy and Negotiating Capacity in Beijing
Increase Coordination with Other Trading Partners
Deepen and Strengthen Regional Engagement
Increase Focus on Regulatory Reform in China
Increase Effectiveness of High-Level Meetings with China’s Leaders
Expand Bilateral Dialogues on Current and Potential Problem Areas
Strengthen U.S. Government Interagency Coordination
Strengthen the Executive-Congressional Partnership on China Trade
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Meet a Hamas Representative
Aljazeera has a website in English, and I have started visiting the site more often. I read an article containing excerpts from an interview with Aziz Duwaik, a professor of urban planning at the Najah University of Nablus and a winner of a parliamentary seat for the Change and Reform party in the Palestinian elections.
Monday, February 06, 2006
God Is Love by Pope Benedict XVI
I read about the Pope's encyclical in the Economist. It sounded interesting so I decided to read the real thing.
Deus Caritas Est (in English: God is Love) is the first encyclical written by Pope Benedict XVI. It was promulgated at 11:00 UTC on 25 January 2006 in Latin and in translations into seven other languages (English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish). The encyclical contains almost 16,000 words in 42 paragraphs over 70 pages, and reflects on the concepts of eros (possessive, often sexual, love), agape (unconditional, self-sacrificing love), logos (the word), and their relationship with the teachings of Jesus. It is the first encyclical to be published since the Vatican decided to assert copyright in the official writings of the Pope.
Encyclical Letter of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI to the Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, men and women religious, and all the lay faithful on Christian love
God Is Love
Part I: The Unit of Love in Creation and in Salvation History
A problem of language
Eros and Agape - difference and unity
The newness of biblical faith
Jesus Christ - the incarnate love of God
Love of God and love of neighbor
Part II: The Practice of Love by the Church as a Community of Love
The Church's charitable activity as a manifestation of Trinitarian love
Charity as a responsibility of the Church
Justice and charity
The multiple structures of charitable service in the social context of the present day
The distinctiveness of the Church's charitable activityThose responsible for the Church's charitable activity
Deus Caritas Est (in English: God is Love) is the first encyclical written by Pope Benedict XVI. It was promulgated at 11:00 UTC on 25 January 2006 in Latin and in translations into seven other languages (English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish). The encyclical contains almost 16,000 words in 42 paragraphs over 70 pages, and reflects on the concepts of eros (possessive, often sexual, love), agape (unconditional, self-sacrificing love), logos (the word), and their relationship with the teachings of Jesus. It is the first encyclical to be published since the Vatican decided to assert copyright in the official writings of the Pope.
Encyclical Letter of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI to the Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, men and women religious, and all the lay faithful on Christian love
God Is Love
Part I: The Unit of Love in Creation and in Salvation History
A problem of language
Eros and Agape - difference and unity
The newness of biblical faith
Jesus Christ - the incarnate love of God
Love of God and love of neighbor
Part II: The Practice of Love by the Church as a Community of Love
The Church's charitable activity as a manifestation of Trinitarian love
Charity as a responsibility of the Church
Justice and charity
The multiple structures of charitable service in the social context of the present day
The distinctiveness of the Church's charitable activityThose responsible for the Church's charitable activity
Spengler
worth reading...
Why can't Muslims take a joke?
The Mohammed cartoon affair is even worse than it looks, yet the images are tame compared with other topics that the mainstream media avoid. With freedom of choice and access to information come doubt. Christianity and Judaism are bloodied - indeed, drained almost dry - by nearly two centuries of scriptural criticism; Islam's turn barely has begun.
When even the pope has to whisper
Why can't Muslims take a joke?
The Mohammed cartoon affair is even worse than it looks, yet the images are tame compared with other topics that the mainstream media avoid. With freedom of choice and access to information come doubt. Christianity and Judaism are bloodied - indeed, drained almost dry - by nearly two centuries of scriptural criticism; Islam's turn barely has begun.
When even the pope has to whisper
ATOL re: Cartoons
this man is angry:
Punishing Denmark, the wrong enemy
Publication of a cartoon insulting the Prophet Mohammed was indeed irresponsible and intellectually inept, but it is strange that the Arab/Muslim world can manage to coordinate an attack on a small European country over a drawing in a newspaper while it fails to do so against much more serious acts of Western and Israeli aggression.
ATOL Editor's Note
Cartoons and the clash of 'freedoms'
If someone yells "fire" in a crowded theater, is he exercising his freedom of speech or is he being recklessly irresponsible? To many Westerners, insulting Muslims by publishing offensive cartoons of their Prophet is seen as their sacred and inflexible right; but the unrestrained exercise of "freedom" without respecting others' sacred tenets is misplaced in today's global village.
The misplaced defense of free speech
Free press? Or cowardly media eager to please their wealthy masters? The media do little to ask for the impeachment of the consummate liars and mass-murderers who occupy elected positions in more than one Western democracy today, even as they pretend to teach lessons in political morals to less fortunate countries.
Punishing Denmark, the wrong enemy
Publication of a cartoon insulting the Prophet Mohammed was indeed irresponsible and intellectually inept, but it is strange that the Arab/Muslim world can manage to coordinate an attack on a small European country over a drawing in a newspaper while it fails to do so against much more serious acts of Western and Israeli aggression.
ATOL Editor's Note
Cartoons and the clash of 'freedoms'
If someone yells "fire" in a crowded theater, is he exercising his freedom of speech or is he being recklessly irresponsible? To many Westerners, insulting Muslims by publishing offensive cartoons of their Prophet is seen as their sacred and inflexible right; but the unrestrained exercise of "freedom" without respecting others' sacred tenets is misplaced in today's global village.
The misplaced defense of free speech
Free press? Or cowardly media eager to please their wealthy masters? The media do little to ask for the impeachment of the consummate liars and mass-murderers who occupy elected positions in more than one Western democracy today, even as they pretend to teach lessons in political morals to less fortunate countries.
Sunni v Shi'a
Islam
Sunni Islam
Shi'a Islam
Sunni-Shi'a Divorce
The Historic background of the Sunni-Shi'a split in Islam started with prophet Muhammad's death in 632 CE, which was followed by a dispute over who was to lead the Muslim community, and how the leader was to be chosen. A gathering of Muslims at Saqifah gave their allegiance to Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father-in-law, as the first caliph. Sunni Muslims accept Abu Bakr as a righteous and rightful caliph. Shi'a Muslims believe that the prophet had appointed his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor and that in following Abu Bakr, the Muslim community had strayed from the true path. For further discussion of this contentious matter, see Succession to Muhammad.
Later, some thirty years after Muhammad's death, the Islamic community plunged into the First Islamic civil war. This civil war led to the emergence of three distinct Islamic groups:
Sunnis - Sunnis regard the first four caliphs (Abu Bakr, Umar ibn al-Khattab, Uthman, and Ali) as Rightly Guided Caliphs, that is, caliphs who ruled in accordance with the Qur'an and the sunnah, or way of Muhammad. Sunnis believe that most of the succeeding caliphs failed to live up to these standards. In spite of these failures on the part of the secular leadership, the Sunni clergy (the ulema) counseled believers to submit to the authorities; this was better than constant community strife. The full name of the Sunni branch is Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jama'ah.
Shi'a - Shi'a generally reject all caliphates except that of Ali, believing that his was the only "Rightly Guided" caliphate, and that only the household and descendants of Muhammad have the right to rule. Shi'as and a handful of Sunni scholars accepted Hasan ibn Ali's claim as caliph, though historical consensus states that Hasan never ruled, and never actually held the title. Some Sunnis, particularly the Salafis, do not accept certain groups of the Shi'a as Muslims.
Khwarij, or Kharijites - The Khwarij were initially loyal to Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth caliph, but turned against him after he accepted arbitration during the First Islamic civil war. Because the Khwarij had a very narrow view of what constitutes kufr (acts that invalidate one's Islam), they quickly split up into sects within themselves, each accusing one another of having fallen into disbelief. Though one branch of the Khwarij survives in Yemen and Oman as the Ibadi denomination of Islam, Khwarij doctrine has been largely rejected and relegated to the history books.
Other divisions have arisen since the civil war of the 7th century CE. Some groups are now extinct. Of the existing groups, Sunni Muslims do not accept members of the Nation of Islam, Ahmadiyya, and Zikri as fellow Muslims.
Sunni Islam
Shi'a Islam
Sunni-Shi'a Divorce
The Historic background of the Sunni-Shi'a split in Islam started with prophet Muhammad's death in 632 CE, which was followed by a dispute over who was to lead the Muslim community, and how the leader was to be chosen. A gathering of Muslims at Saqifah gave their allegiance to Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father-in-law, as the first caliph. Sunni Muslims accept Abu Bakr as a righteous and rightful caliph. Shi'a Muslims believe that the prophet had appointed his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor and that in following Abu Bakr, the Muslim community had strayed from the true path. For further discussion of this contentious matter, see Succession to Muhammad.
Later, some thirty years after Muhammad's death, the Islamic community plunged into the First Islamic civil war. This civil war led to the emergence of three distinct Islamic groups:
Sunnis - Sunnis regard the first four caliphs (Abu Bakr, Umar ibn al-Khattab, Uthman, and Ali) as Rightly Guided Caliphs, that is, caliphs who ruled in accordance with the Qur'an and the sunnah, or way of Muhammad. Sunnis believe that most of the succeeding caliphs failed to live up to these standards. In spite of these failures on the part of the secular leadership, the Sunni clergy (the ulema) counseled believers to submit to the authorities; this was better than constant community strife. The full name of the Sunni branch is Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jama'ah.
Shi'a - Shi'a generally reject all caliphates except that of Ali, believing that his was the only "Rightly Guided" caliphate, and that only the household and descendants of Muhammad have the right to rule. Shi'as and a handful of Sunni scholars accepted Hasan ibn Ali's claim as caliph, though historical consensus states that Hasan never ruled, and never actually held the title. Some Sunnis, particularly the Salafis, do not accept certain groups of the Shi'a as Muslims.
Khwarij, or Kharijites - The Khwarij were initially loyal to Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth caliph, but turned against him after he accepted arbitration during the First Islamic civil war. Because the Khwarij had a very narrow view of what constitutes kufr (acts that invalidate one's Islam), they quickly split up into sects within themselves, each accusing one another of having fallen into disbelief. Though one branch of the Khwarij survives in Yemen and Oman as the Ibadi denomination of Islam, Khwarij doctrine has been largely rejected and relegated to the history books.
Other divisions have arisen since the civil war of the 7th century CE. Some groups are now extinct. Of the existing groups, Sunni Muslims do not accept members of the Nation of Islam, Ahmadiyya, and Zikri as fellow Muslims.
Court Decisions re: US Freedom of Speech
great source:
Library of Court Decisions for Freedom of Speech in the US
Historical Development
1. English Heritage
2. to WWI
Controls upon the Content of Speech
3. Political Heresy: Sedition in the US Since 1917
4. Defamation and Invasion of Privacy
5. Religio-Moral Heresy: From Blasphemy to Obscenity
6. Provocation to Anger and Words That Wound
7. Commercial Speech
Special Issues
8. Prior Restraint
9. Special Problems of a Free Press
10. Constraints of Time, Place, and Manner
11. Institutional Constraints: Schools, the Military, Prisons
Technology
12. Copyright
13. Broadcasting, Cable, and Access Theory
14. The Internet
Freedom of Speech
Blasphemy
United States free speech case law
Freedom of Speech in the United States
Abrams v. United States
Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court involving the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it a criminal offense to criticize the U.S. federal government. The Court ruled 7-2 that the Act did not violate civil rights under the First Amendment, with Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis dissenting. The case was overturned during the Vietnam War era.
Library of Court Decisions for Freedom of Speech in the US
Historical Development
1. English Heritage
2. to WWI
Controls upon the Content of Speech
3. Political Heresy: Sedition in the US Since 1917
4. Defamation and Invasion of Privacy
5. Religio-Moral Heresy: From Blasphemy to Obscenity
6. Provocation to Anger and Words That Wound
7. Commercial Speech
Special Issues
8. Prior Restraint
9. Special Problems of a Free Press
10. Constraints of Time, Place, and Manner
11. Institutional Constraints: Schools, the Military, Prisons
Technology
12. Copyright
13. Broadcasting, Cable, and Access Theory
14. The Internet
Freedom of Speech
Blasphemy
United States free speech case law
Freedom of Speech in the United States
Abrams v. United States
Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court involving the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it a criminal offense to criticize the U.S. federal government. The Court ruled 7-2 that the Act did not violate civil rights under the First Amendment, with Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis dissenting. The case was overturned during the Vietnam War era.
Respect for the Sacred
Here's a good BBC article:
Cartoon row highlights deep divisions
In Damascus, Syria, both the Norwegian embassy and a building containing the Danish, Swedish, and Chilean embassies were stormed and set afire by protesters. The Danish General Consulate in Beirut was burned down by more than 10,000 protesters.
Beirut Mob Burns Danish Mission Building Over Cartoons
An early morning march through downtown Beirut soon exploded into violence, when a breakaway crowd surged toward a high-rise building that houses the Austrian and Danish Missions, chanting obscene anti-Danish slogans in Arabic and vandalizing cars, office buildings and a Maronite Catholic church nearby. Other protesters burned Danish flags and flags bearing images of the cross.
"This was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration, but people who love God and Muhammad are becoming overwhelmed by their anger."
Main article: Aniconism
The Qur'an, the Islamic holy book, does not explicitly prohibit the depiction of human figures; it merely condemns idolatry (verses 41 and 52). Direct prohibitions of pictorial art, or any depiction of sacred figures, are present in the Hadith.
Views regarding pictorial representation within the Muslim community have varied from group to group, and from time to time. Shi'a Muslims have been generally tolerant of pictorial representation of human figures, Sunni Muslims less so. However, the Sunni Ottomans, the last dynasty to claim the caliphate, were not only tolerant but even patrons of the miniaturists' art. Many Ottoman miniatures depict Muhammad; they usually show Muhammad's face covered with a veil or as a featureless void emanating light (depicted as flames). Pictorial surveys of Islamic religious art can be found on the internet.[25][26][27] Note that the last site also contains some extremely and intentionally offensive modern depictions of Muhammad.
Most contemporary Muslims believe that ordinary portraits and photos, films and illustrations, are permissible. Only some Salafi and Islamist interpretations of Sunni Islam still condemn pictorial representations of any kind. Offensive satirical pictures are a somewhat different case — disrespect to Islam or to Muhammad is still widely considered blasphemous or sacrilegious.
According to the BBC "It is the satirical intent of the cartoonists, and the association of the Prophet with terrorism, that is so offensive to the vast majority of Muslims."[28] As Muhammad is the proto-typical Muslim this association with terrorism is comparable to a generalisation to all Muslims. Furthermore, the cartoons were published in a conservative mainstream newspaper in the context of what many Muslims perceive to be an Islamophobic mood in many of the western countries involved France hijab ban, Submission, and 2005 Cronulla race riots. In this context the effect of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons on Muslims differs significantly from the effect of comparable cartoons on a Christian living in the west.
Cartoon row highlights deep divisions
In Damascus, Syria, both the Norwegian embassy and a building containing the Danish, Swedish, and Chilean embassies were stormed and set afire by protesters. The Danish General Consulate in Beirut was burned down by more than 10,000 protesters.
Beirut Mob Burns Danish Mission Building Over Cartoons
An early morning march through downtown Beirut soon exploded into violence, when a breakaway crowd surged toward a high-rise building that houses the Austrian and Danish Missions, chanting obscene anti-Danish slogans in Arabic and vandalizing cars, office buildings and a Maronite Catholic church nearby. Other protesters burned Danish flags and flags bearing images of the cross.
"This was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration, but people who love God and Muhammad are becoming overwhelmed by their anger."
Main article: Aniconism
The Qur'an, the Islamic holy book, does not explicitly prohibit the depiction of human figures; it merely condemns idolatry (verses 41 and 52). Direct prohibitions of pictorial art, or any depiction of sacred figures, are present in the Hadith.
Views regarding pictorial representation within the Muslim community have varied from group to group, and from time to time. Shi'a Muslims have been generally tolerant of pictorial representation of human figures, Sunni Muslims less so. However, the Sunni Ottomans, the last dynasty to claim the caliphate, were not only tolerant but even patrons of the miniaturists' art. Many Ottoman miniatures depict Muhammad; they usually show Muhammad's face covered with a veil or as a featureless void emanating light (depicted as flames). Pictorial surveys of Islamic religious art can be found on the internet.[25][26][27] Note that the last site also contains some extremely and intentionally offensive modern depictions of Muhammad.
Most contemporary Muslims believe that ordinary portraits and photos, films and illustrations, are permissible. Only some Salafi and Islamist interpretations of Sunni Islam still condemn pictorial representations of any kind. Offensive satirical pictures are a somewhat different case — disrespect to Islam or to Muhammad is still widely considered blasphemous or sacrilegious.
According to the BBC "It is the satirical intent of the cartoonists, and the association of the Prophet with terrorism, that is so offensive to the vast majority of Muslims."[28] As Muhammad is the proto-typical Muslim this association with terrorism is comparable to a generalisation to all Muslims. Furthermore, the cartoons were published in a conservative mainstream newspaper in the context of what many Muslims perceive to be an Islamophobic mood in many of the western countries involved France hijab ban, Submission, and 2005 Cronulla race riots. In this context the effect of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons on Muslims differs significantly from the effect of comparable cartoons on a Christian living in the west.
Medicare
Rival Visions Led to Rocky Start for Drug Benefit
"Medicare is an enduring commitment of our country," said Mr. Bush, locked in a tight race with Vice President Al Gore. "It must be modernized for our times." What emerged in the next three years, culminating in the passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, was an effort to blend a classic big government program from the Great Society with the conservative, market-oriented philosophy of the Republicans in power.
Medicare
Medicare is a health insurance program for the elderly and disabled in the USA. It was first passed on July 30, 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson as amendments to Social Security legislation.
Medicare is partially financed by taxes imposed by the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) and the Self-Employment Contributions Act of 1954. In the case of employees, the tax is equal to 2.9% (1.45% withheld from the worker and a matching 1.45% paid by the employer) of the wages, salaries and other compensation in connection with employment.
Generally, Medicare is available for people age 65 or older, younger people with disabilities, and people with End Stage Renal Disease (permanent kidney failure requiring dialysis or transplant).
Medicare has several parts: Part A (Hospital Insurance), and Part B (Medical Insurance, helps cover doctors' services, outpatient hospital care, and some other medical services that Part A does not cover). Neither Part A nor Part B pays for all of a covered person's medical costs. The program contains deductibles and co-pays (payments due from the covered individual). Previously, certain medical needs such as drug prescriptions were excluded. Medicare Part D went into effect on January 1, 2006. Anyone with Parts A and B is eligible for Part D. It was made possible by the passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act.
Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (108th Congress)
H.R.1 (enrolled as agreed to or passed by both house and senate)
"Medicare is an enduring commitment of our country," said Mr. Bush, locked in a tight race with Vice President Al Gore. "It must be modernized for our times." What emerged in the next three years, culminating in the passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, was an effort to blend a classic big government program from the Great Society with the conservative, market-oriented philosophy of the Republicans in power.
Medicare
Medicare is a health insurance program for the elderly and disabled in the USA. It was first passed on July 30, 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson as amendments to Social Security legislation.
Medicare is partially financed by taxes imposed by the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) and the Self-Employment Contributions Act of 1954. In the case of employees, the tax is equal to 2.9% (1.45% withheld from the worker and a matching 1.45% paid by the employer) of the wages, salaries and other compensation in connection with employment.
Generally, Medicare is available for people age 65 or older, younger people with disabilities, and people with End Stage Renal Disease (permanent kidney failure requiring dialysis or transplant).
Medicare has several parts: Part A (Hospital Insurance), and Part B (Medical Insurance, helps cover doctors' services, outpatient hospital care, and some other medical services that Part A does not cover). Neither Part A nor Part B pays for all of a covered person's medical costs. The program contains deductibles and co-pays (payments due from the covered individual). Previously, certain medical needs such as drug prescriptions were excluded. Medicare Part D went into effect on January 1, 2006. Anyone with Parts A and B is eligible for Part D. It was made possible by the passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act.
Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (108th Congress)
H.R.1 (enrolled as agreed to or passed by both house and senate)
Friday, February 03, 2006
Economic Competitiveness
In Energy Work, One Hand Giveth and the Other Taketh
About one research dollar in every five appropriated by Congress for the development of renewable energy sources is for a specific project inserted directly into the budget on behalf of a member of the House or Senate, and directed to a contractor or a university in the lawmaker's state or district. When ordered to pay for such pet projects, known as earmarks, the Energy Department reduces spending on similar projects at its own laboratories.
Behind Bush's New Stress on Science, Lobbying by Republican Executives
The industry and science leaders told the officials that the administration needed to respond to concerns laid out in a report by a National Academy of Sciences panel headed by Mr. Augustine. It warned of a rapid erosion in science, technology and education that threatened American economic competitiveness.
The report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future," has been circulating in draft form since October. It was put together by a group of top technology and science leaders, who say the country faces a crisis that the Bush administration is ignoring.
The executives said that the administration had also been induced to respond by a growing bipartisan movement in Congress supporting basic research and education.
Two bills tackling this matter have recently been introduced. One is the Protect America's Competitive Edge Act, by Senators Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico; Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico; Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee; and Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland. A similar bill was introduced by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut. Several of the senators met with President Bush in December to encourage him to support the competitiveness legislation.
Apple
Making add-ons/accessories for the iPod is a $1 billion business. Does that sound like hyperbole? Consider this. Last year, Apple sold 32 million iPods, or one every second. But for every $3 spent on an iPod, at least $1 is spent on an accessory.
The Case for Cutting the Chief's Paycheck
Corporate America has made some progress in cleaning up its governance, but overly high compensation levels for chief executives show that much remains to be done, says Nell Minow, editor, founder and chairman of the Corporate Library, a research group based in Portland, Me. This article contains excerpts from a conversation.
About one research dollar in every five appropriated by Congress for the development of renewable energy sources is for a specific project inserted directly into the budget on behalf of a member of the House or Senate, and directed to a contractor or a university in the lawmaker's state or district. When ordered to pay for such pet projects, known as earmarks, the Energy Department reduces spending on similar projects at its own laboratories.
Behind Bush's New Stress on Science, Lobbying by Republican Executives
The industry and science leaders told the officials that the administration needed to respond to concerns laid out in a report by a National Academy of Sciences panel headed by Mr. Augustine. It warned of a rapid erosion in science, technology and education that threatened American economic competitiveness.
The report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future," has been circulating in draft form since October. It was put together by a group of top technology and science leaders, who say the country faces a crisis that the Bush administration is ignoring.
The executives said that the administration had also been induced to respond by a growing bipartisan movement in Congress supporting basic research and education.
Two bills tackling this matter have recently been introduced. One is the Protect America's Competitive Edge Act, by Senators Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico; Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico; Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee; and Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland. A similar bill was introduced by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut. Several of the senators met with President Bush in December to encourage him to support the competitiveness legislation.
Apple
Making add-ons/accessories for the iPod is a $1 billion business. Does that sound like hyperbole? Consider this. Last year, Apple sold 32 million iPods, or one every second. But for every $3 spent on an iPod, at least $1 is spent on an accessory.
The Case for Cutting the Chief's Paycheck
Corporate America has made some progress in cleaning up its governance, but overly high compensation levels for chief executives show that much remains to be done, says Nell Minow, editor, founder and chairman of the Corporate Library, a research group based in Portland, Me. This article contains excerpts from a conversation.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Muhammed Cartoons Controversy
Debate about self-censorship
On 17 September 2005, the Danish newspaper Politiken ran an article under the headline "Dyb angst for kritik af islam"[2] ("Deep fear of criticism of Islam"). The article discussed the difficulty encountered by the writer Kåre Bluitgen, who was initially unable to find an illustrator who was prepared to work with Bluitgen on his children's book "Koranen og profeten Muhammeds liv" ("The Qur'an and the prophet Muhammad's life"). Three artists declined Bluitgen's proposal before an artist agreed to assist anonymously. According to Bluitgen:
One [artist declined], with reference to the murder in Amsterdam of the film director Theo van Gogh, while another [declined, citing the attack on] the lecturer at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute in Copenhagen. [In October 2004, a lecturer was assaulted by five assailants who opposed the lecturer's reading of the Qur'an to non-Muslims during a lecture at the Niebuhr institute at the University of Copenhagen[3]].
The refusal of the first three artists to participate was seen as evidence of self-censorship and led to much debate in Denmark, with other examples for similar reasons soon emerging. The comedian Frank Hvam declared that he did not dare satirise the Qur'an on television, while the translators of an essay collection critical of Islam also wished to remain anonymous due to concerns about violent reaction.
Publication of the drawings
On 30 September 2005, the daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten ("Jutland Post") published an article titled "Muhammeds ansigt"[4] ("Muhammad's face"). The article consisted of 12 satirical drawings of Muhammad and an explanatory text, in which Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Posten's culture editor, commented:
The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with temporal democracy and freedom of speech, where you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always equally attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is less important in this context. [...] we are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end. That is why Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him. [...]" [5]
The twelve drawings were drawn by twelve different caricaturists, after an invitation from Jyllands-Posten for around forty different artists to give their interpretation on how Muhammad may have looked. Each of the twelve drawings portrays Muhammad in a different fashion. In the clockwise direction:
The face of Muhammad as a part of the Islamic star and crescent symbol, his right eye the star.
The most controversial drawing shows Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, with a lit fuse and the Islamic creed written on the bomb.
Muhammad standing with a halo in the shape of a crescent moon.
An abstract drawing of crescent moons and Stars of David, and a poem on oppression of women "Profet! Med kuk og knald i låget som holder kvinder under åget!". In English the poem could be read as: "Prophet! daft and dumb, keeping woman under thumb"
Muhammad as a wanderer, with a donkey.
One shows a nervous caricaturist, shakingly drawing Muhammad while looking over his shoulder.
Two angry Muslims charge forward with sabres and bombs, while Muhammad addresses them with: "Rolig, venner, når alt kommer til alt er det jo bare en tegning lavet af en vantro sønderjyde" (loosely, "Relax guys, it's just a drawing made by some infidel South Jutlander"). A South Jutlander is a person from South Jutland; the reference is to a common Danish expression for a person from the middle of nowhere, which is how many Danes regard South Jutland.
An Oriental looking boy in front of a blackboard, pointing to the Farsi chalkings, which translate into "the editorial team of Jyllands-Posten is a bunch of reactionary provocateurs". The boy is labelled "Mohammed, Valby school, 7.A", implying that this Muhammed is a Danish second-generation immigrant rather than the man Muslims believe was a prophet. On his shirt is written "Fremtiden" (the future). According to the editor of Jyllands Posten, he didn't know what was written on the blackboard before it was published.
Another drawing shows Muhammad with a knife and a black bar over his eyes. He is flanked by two women in burqas.
Muhammad standing on a cloud, greeting dead suicide bombers with "Stop Stop vi er løbet tør for Jomfruer!" ("Stop, stop, we ran out of virgins!"), an allusion to the promised reward to martyrs.
Another shows Kåre Bluitgen, wearing a turban with the proverbial orange dropping, with the inscription "Publicity stunt". An "orange in the turban" is a Danish proverb meaning "a stroke of luck." In his hand is a stick drawing of Muhammad.
And in the center:
A police line-up of seven people, with the witness saying: "Hm... jeg kan ikke lige genkende ham" ("Hm... I can't really recognise him"). Not all people in the line-up are immediately identifiable. They are: 1) A generic Hippie (possibly Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen) 2) Politician Pia Kjærsgaard 3) Possible Jesus 4) Possible Buddha 5) Possible Muhammad 6) A generic Indian Guru (although some people claim to recognise the image as Imam Ahmad Abu Laban ) 7) Journalist Kåre Bluitgen, carrying a sign saying: "Kåres PR, ring og få et tilbud" ("Kåre's public relations, call and get an offer")
Not all of these drawings were wholly new, according to the chief editor of Jyllands Posten; one or more had already been published in the newspaper at earlier dates without drawing major criticism.
On 17 September 2005, the Danish newspaper Politiken ran an article under the headline "Dyb angst for kritik af islam"[2] ("Deep fear of criticism of Islam"). The article discussed the difficulty encountered by the writer Kåre Bluitgen, who was initially unable to find an illustrator who was prepared to work with Bluitgen on his children's book "Koranen og profeten Muhammeds liv" ("The Qur'an and the prophet Muhammad's life"). Three artists declined Bluitgen's proposal before an artist agreed to assist anonymously. According to Bluitgen:
One [artist declined], with reference to the murder in Amsterdam of the film director Theo van Gogh, while another [declined, citing the attack on] the lecturer at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute in Copenhagen. [In October 2004, a lecturer was assaulted by five assailants who opposed the lecturer's reading of the Qur'an to non-Muslims during a lecture at the Niebuhr institute at the University of Copenhagen[3]].
The refusal of the first three artists to participate was seen as evidence of self-censorship and led to much debate in Denmark, with other examples for similar reasons soon emerging. The comedian Frank Hvam declared that he did not dare satirise the Qur'an on television, while the translators of an essay collection critical of Islam also wished to remain anonymous due to concerns about violent reaction.
Publication of the drawings
On 30 September 2005, the daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten ("Jutland Post") published an article titled "Muhammeds ansigt"[4] ("Muhammad's face"). The article consisted of 12 satirical drawings of Muhammad and an explanatory text, in which Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Posten's culture editor, commented:
The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with temporal democracy and freedom of speech, where you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always equally attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is less important in this context. [...] we are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end. That is why Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him. [...]" [5]
The twelve drawings were drawn by twelve different caricaturists, after an invitation from Jyllands-Posten for around forty different artists to give their interpretation on how Muhammad may have looked. Each of the twelve drawings portrays Muhammad in a different fashion. In the clockwise direction:
The face of Muhammad as a part of the Islamic star and crescent symbol, his right eye the star.
The most controversial drawing shows Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, with a lit fuse and the Islamic creed written on the bomb.
Muhammad standing with a halo in the shape of a crescent moon.
An abstract drawing of crescent moons and Stars of David, and a poem on oppression of women "Profet! Med kuk og knald i låget som holder kvinder under åget!". In English the poem could be read as: "Prophet! daft and dumb, keeping woman under thumb"
Muhammad as a wanderer, with a donkey.
One shows a nervous caricaturist, shakingly drawing Muhammad while looking over his shoulder.
Two angry Muslims charge forward with sabres and bombs, while Muhammad addresses them with: "Rolig, venner, når alt kommer til alt er det jo bare en tegning lavet af en vantro sønderjyde" (loosely, "Relax guys, it's just a drawing made by some infidel South Jutlander"). A South Jutlander is a person from South Jutland; the reference is to a common Danish expression for a person from the middle of nowhere, which is how many Danes regard South Jutland.
An Oriental looking boy in front of a blackboard, pointing to the Farsi chalkings, which translate into "the editorial team of Jyllands-Posten is a bunch of reactionary provocateurs". The boy is labelled "Mohammed, Valby school, 7.A", implying that this Muhammed is a Danish second-generation immigrant rather than the man Muslims believe was a prophet. On his shirt is written "Fremtiden" (the future). According to the editor of Jyllands Posten, he didn't know what was written on the blackboard before it was published.
Another drawing shows Muhammad with a knife and a black bar over his eyes. He is flanked by two women in burqas.
Muhammad standing on a cloud, greeting dead suicide bombers with "Stop Stop vi er løbet tør for Jomfruer!" ("Stop, stop, we ran out of virgins!"), an allusion to the promised reward to martyrs.
Another shows Kåre Bluitgen, wearing a turban with the proverbial orange dropping, with the inscription "Publicity stunt". An "orange in the turban" is a Danish proverb meaning "a stroke of luck." In his hand is a stick drawing of Muhammad.
And in the center:
A police line-up of seven people, with the witness saying: "Hm... jeg kan ikke lige genkende ham" ("Hm... I can't really recognise him"). Not all people in the line-up are immediately identifiable. They are: 1) A generic Hippie (possibly Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen) 2) Politician Pia Kjærsgaard 3) Possible Jesus 4) Possible Buddha 5) Possible Muhammad 6) A generic Indian Guru (although some people claim to recognise the image as Imam Ahmad Abu Laban ) 7) Journalist Kåre Bluitgen, carrying a sign saying: "Kåres PR, ring og få et tilbud" ("Kåre's public relations, call and get an offer")
Not all of these drawings were wholly new, according to the chief editor of Jyllands Posten; one or more had already been published in the newspaper at earlier dates without drawing major criticism.
Cross Country Skiing
I bought cross country skis, bindings, boots, and poles at REI.
I've been cc skiing once before and I look forward to improving my balance.
Now show me the snow.
I've been cc skiing once before and I look forward to improving my balance.
Now show me the snow.
Friday, January 27, 2006
GW: Big Spender
From the Cato Institute:
Congressional Budget Office Releases New Deficit Numbers
Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the U.S. budget deficit will reach $337 billion this year, and it is likely to increase.
Stephen Slivinski, Cato's director of budget studies, comments: "The new CBO numbers show that Bush is still the biggest spending president since Lyndon Johnson. In fact, the growth rate of the 2006 budget was, even after adjusting for inflation, one of the highest rates of growth in 15 years. All of this at a time when Republicans are trying to claim they are the party of small government.
"In order for Bush to be successful in meeting his target of cutting the deficit in half as a percentage of GDP, spending would have to stay at 4 percent growth each year until the end of his term. But under Bush and a Republican Congress, spending has averaged over 7 percent growth every year since 2001. There has yet to be any sign that Republicans are willing to really do what it takes to get the budget under control."
· "The Grand Old Spending Party: How Republicans Became Big Spenders," by Stephen Slivinski, Cato Policy Analysis no. 543, May 3, 2005.
· "Bush Beats Johnson: Comparing the Presidents," by Stephen Slivinski, Cato's Tax & Budget Bulletin, October 2005.
Chris Edwards, Cato's director of tax policy studies, comments: "President Bush and Republicans in Congress keep claiming that they are getting spending under control and that spending growth rates are falling. That is simply not correct. The 8.0 percent growth rate in 2006, and massive 43 percent spending increase the past five years (FY2001 to FY2006), shows that federal government growth is completely out-of-control under the Republicans.
"President Bush's goal of cutting the deficit in half is not good enough. He should lay out a plan to bring the federal deficit down to zero by the end of the decade by cutting spending."
· Downsizing the Federal Government, by Chris Edwards.
· List of proposed Federal budget cuts from Downsizing the Federal Government
· "Potomac Fever," by Chris Edwards, December 12, 2005.
Congressional Budget Office Releases New Deficit Numbers
Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the U.S. budget deficit will reach $337 billion this year, and it is likely to increase.
Stephen Slivinski, Cato's director of budget studies, comments: "The new CBO numbers show that Bush is still the biggest spending president since Lyndon Johnson. In fact, the growth rate of the 2006 budget was, even after adjusting for inflation, one of the highest rates of growth in 15 years. All of this at a time when Republicans are trying to claim they are the party of small government.
"In order for Bush to be successful in meeting his target of cutting the deficit in half as a percentage of GDP, spending would have to stay at 4 percent growth each year until the end of his term. But under Bush and a Republican Congress, spending has averaged over 7 percent growth every year since 2001. There has yet to be any sign that Republicans are willing to really do what it takes to get the budget under control."
· "The Grand Old Spending Party: How Republicans Became Big Spenders," by Stephen Slivinski, Cato Policy Analysis no. 543, May 3, 2005.
· "Bush Beats Johnson: Comparing the Presidents," by Stephen Slivinski, Cato's Tax & Budget Bulletin, October 2005.
Chris Edwards, Cato's director of tax policy studies, comments: "President Bush and Republicans in Congress keep claiming that they are getting spending under control and that spending growth rates are falling. That is simply not correct. The 8.0 percent growth rate in 2006, and massive 43 percent spending increase the past five years (FY2001 to FY2006), shows that federal government growth is completely out-of-control under the Republicans.
"President Bush's goal of cutting the deficit in half is not good enough. He should lay out a plan to bring the federal deficit down to zero by the end of the decade by cutting spending."
· Downsizing the Federal Government, by Chris Edwards.
· List of proposed Federal budget cuts from Downsizing the Federal Government
· "Potomac Fever," by Chris Edwards, December 12, 2005.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Assisted-Suicide
Supreme Court upholds Oregon assisted suicide law, 6-3
Activist judges: Roberts, Scalia, Thomas
Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General, et al., Petitioners v. Oregon, et al.
No. 04-623, 1/17/06
The Controlled Substances Act does not allow the Attorney General to prohibit doctors from prescribing regulated drugs for use in physician-assisted suicide under state law permitting the procedure.
Orgal Argument Transcript (pdf)
Slip Opinion (pdf)
Slip Opinion from FindLaw (html)
Euthanasia (from Greek: ευθανασία - ευ "good", θανατος "death") refers to assisted dying. The assistance ends the life of a person or an animal in a painless or minimally painful way. Euthanasia is most often performed in a merciful way, in order to end suffering.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia
Under Oregon’s law permitting physician-assisted suicide, the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) – previously called the Oregon Health Division (OHD) – is required to collect information, review a sample of cases and publish a yearly statistical report. (1) Since the law, called the "Death with Dignity Act," went into effect in 1997, seven official reports have been published. However, due to major flaws in the law and the state's reporting system, there is no way to know for sure how many or under what circumstances patients have died from physician-assisted suicide.
Oregon DHS Physician-Assisted Suicide
On October 27, 1997 physician-assisted suicide became a legal medical option for terminally ill Oregonians. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act requires that the Oregon Health Services (OHS) monitor compliance with the law, collect information about the patients and physicians who participate in legal physician-assisted suicide, and publish an annual statistical report.
The Oregon Death with Dignity Act, a citizens' initiative, was first passed by Oregon voters in November 1994 by a margin of 51% in favor and 49% opposed. Immediate implementation of the Act was delayed by a legal injunction. After multiple legal proceedings, including a petition that was denied by the United States Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction on October 27, 1997 and physician-assisted suicide then became a legal option for terminally ill patients in Oregon. In November 1997, Measure 51 (authorized by Oregon House Bill 2954) was placed on the general election ballot and asked Oregon voters to repeal the Death with Dignity Act. Voters chose to retain the Act by a margin of 60% to 40%.
The Death with Dignity Act allows terminally ill Oregon residents to obtain from their physicians and use prescriptions for self-administered, lethal medications. The Act states that ending one's life in accordance with the law does not constitute suicide. However, we have used the term "physician-assisted suicide" rather than "Death with Dignity" to describe the provisions of this law because physician-assisted suicide is the term used by the public, and by the medical literature, to describe ending life through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose. The Death with Dignity Act legalizes physician-assisted suicide, but specifically prohibits euthanasia, where a physician or other person directly administers a medication to end another's life.
Another good resource:
Seven years of assisted suicide in Oregon - information courtesy of the tendentious International Task Force.
Activist judges: Roberts, Scalia, Thomas
Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General, et al., Petitioners v. Oregon, et al.
No. 04-623, 1/17/06
The Controlled Substances Act does not allow the Attorney General to prohibit doctors from prescribing regulated drugs for use in physician-assisted suicide under state law permitting the procedure.
Orgal Argument Transcript (pdf)
Slip Opinion (pdf)
Slip Opinion from FindLaw (html)
Euthanasia (from Greek: ευθανασία - ευ "good", θανατος "death") refers to assisted dying. The assistance ends the life of a person or an animal in a painless or minimally painful way. Euthanasia is most often performed in a merciful way, in order to end suffering.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia
Under Oregon’s law permitting physician-assisted suicide, the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) – previously called the Oregon Health Division (OHD) – is required to collect information, review a sample of cases and publish a yearly statistical report. (1) Since the law, called the "Death with Dignity Act," went into effect in 1997, seven official reports have been published. However, due to major flaws in the law and the state's reporting system, there is no way to know for sure how many or under what circumstances patients have died from physician-assisted suicide.
Oregon DHS Physician-Assisted Suicide
On October 27, 1997 physician-assisted suicide became a legal medical option for terminally ill Oregonians. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act requires that the Oregon Health Services (OHS) monitor compliance with the law, collect information about the patients and physicians who participate in legal physician-assisted suicide, and publish an annual statistical report.
The Oregon Death with Dignity Act, a citizens' initiative, was first passed by Oregon voters in November 1994 by a margin of 51% in favor and 49% opposed. Immediate implementation of the Act was delayed by a legal injunction. After multiple legal proceedings, including a petition that was denied by the United States Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction on October 27, 1997 and physician-assisted suicide then became a legal option for terminally ill patients in Oregon. In November 1997, Measure 51 (authorized by Oregon House Bill 2954) was placed on the general election ballot and asked Oregon voters to repeal the Death with Dignity Act. Voters chose to retain the Act by a margin of 60% to 40%.
The Death with Dignity Act allows terminally ill Oregon residents to obtain from their physicians and use prescriptions for self-administered, lethal medications. The Act states that ending one's life in accordance with the law does not constitute suicide. However, we have used the term "physician-assisted suicide" rather than "Death with Dignity" to describe the provisions of this law because physician-assisted suicide is the term used by the public, and by the medical literature, to describe ending life through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose. The Death with Dignity Act legalizes physician-assisted suicide, but specifically prohibits euthanasia, where a physician or other person directly administers a medication to end another's life.
Another good resource:
Seven years of assisted suicide in Oregon - information courtesy of the tendentious International Task Force.
Hamas Proves Democracy Is Panacea
On January 25, 2006, elections were held for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the legislature of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). This was the first election to the PLC since 1996; elections have been repeatedly postponed due to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian voters in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem were eligible to participate in the election.
Hamas appears to have scored a major upset and defeated the ruling Fatah party in parliamentary elections.
Hamas, acronym of Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah (Arabic: حركة المقاومة الاسلامية, literally "Islamic Resistance Movement" and Arabic for 'zeal'), is a Palestinian Islamist movement closely related to the Muslim Brotherhood and is the democratically elected representative government of the Palestinian people. Its stated goal is to establish an Islamic theocracy in the area that is currently Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza strip.
Hamas regards historic Palestine - present-day Israel as well as the Palestinian territories - as an inalienable Islamic waqf or religious bequest, which can never be surrendered to non-Muslims. It asserts that struggle (jihad) to wrest control of the land from Israel is a religious duty incumbent on every Muslim individually (fard `ain). This position is more radical than that now held by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which in 1988 recognized Israel's sovereignty. Hamas does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state and refers to it as the "Zionist entity", a common hostile term for it in Arab political rhetoric. It has, however, dropped from its electoral manifesto the call for its destruction.
The Hamas Covenant, written in 1988, states that the organization's goal is to "raise the banner of God over every inch of Palestine," i.e. to eliminate the State of Israel (and any secular Palestinian state which may be established), and to replace it with an Islamic Republic.
What is more important: democracy/republic or rights?
Hamas appears to have scored a major upset and defeated the ruling Fatah party in parliamentary elections.
Hamas, acronym of Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah (Arabic: حركة المقاومة الاسلامية, literally "Islamic Resistance Movement" and Arabic for 'zeal'), is a Palestinian Islamist movement closely related to the Muslim Brotherhood and is the democratically elected representative government of the Palestinian people. Its stated goal is to establish an Islamic theocracy in the area that is currently Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza strip.
Hamas regards historic Palestine - present-day Israel as well as the Palestinian territories - as an inalienable Islamic waqf or religious bequest, which can never be surrendered to non-Muslims. It asserts that struggle (jihad) to wrest control of the land from Israel is a religious duty incumbent on every Muslim individually (fard `ain). This position is more radical than that now held by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which in 1988 recognized Israel's sovereignty. Hamas does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state and refers to it as the "Zionist entity", a common hostile term for it in Arab political rhetoric. It has, however, dropped from its electoral manifesto the call for its destruction.
The Hamas Covenant, written in 1988, states that the organization's goal is to "raise the banner of God over every inch of Palestine," i.e. to eliminate the State of Israel (and any secular Palestinian state which may be established), and to replace it with an Islamic Republic.
What is more important: democracy/republic or rights?
Monday, January 23, 2006
Folks
We had visitors on the weekend of January 6. Jude and Michelle were traveling abroad from Mississippi. Alf drove from Milwaukee to join us on Saturday.On Friday we (Jude, Michelle, Paul, Mary, Marye, and I) ate at an Indian restaurant on Franklin called Moti Mahal. Dinner was followed by competitive games of Yahtzee and Aggravation.
On Saturday evening, Paul and Mary served chili and corn bread for dinner. We played Cranium. Alf was humdinger champion.
On Sunday Alf, Jude, Paul, Tim, and I ran four+ miles at alumni pace. Then we ate breakfast and enjoyed a lazy afternoon in the man room watching football. Later that evening, Tim, Alf, Marye, and I went over to Lucy's to celebrate her birthday.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Economist
I recently subscribed to the Economist. I haven't received the magazine in the mail yet, but I can read articles online. Here are a couple good quotes:
Part of America's current prosperity is based not on genuine gains in income, nor on high productivity growth, but on borrowing from the future. The words of Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian economist of the early 20th century, nicely sum up the illusion: “It may sometimes be expedient for a man to heat the stove with his furniture. But he should not delude himself by believing that he has discovered a wonderful new method of heating his premises.”
But America's domestic demand needs to grow more slowly in order to bring the saving rate and the current-account deficit back to sustainable levels. If demand fails to slow, he will need to push rates higher. This will be risky, given households' heavy debts. After 13 increases in interest rates, the tide of easy money is now flowing out, and many American households are going to be shockingly exposed. In the words of Warren Buffett, “It's only when the tide goes out that you can see who's swimming naked.”
Part of America's current prosperity is based not on genuine gains in income, nor on high productivity growth, but on borrowing from the future. The words of Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian economist of the early 20th century, nicely sum up the illusion: “It may sometimes be expedient for a man to heat the stove with his furniture. But he should not delude himself by believing that he has discovered a wonderful new method of heating his premises.”
But America's domestic demand needs to grow more slowly in order to bring the saving rate and the current-account deficit back to sustainable levels. If demand fails to slow, he will need to push rates higher. This will be risky, given households' heavy debts. After 13 increases in interest rates, the tide of easy money is now flowing out, and many American households are going to be shockingly exposed. In the words of Warren Buffett, “It's only when the tide goes out that you can see who's swimming naked.”
Monday, January 09, 2006
Shining Path
Terrorism and Democracy: Two Documentaries Address the Peruvian Example
Of all the insurgent groups active in Latin America over the last half-century, none fitted the description of "terrorist" more aptly than Peru's Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path. It began armed action in 1980, committed atrocities for more than a decade and was defeated under a president who was driven from office in 2000 for abuse of power.
So does Peru's war on terror offer any lessons to the United States?
"State of Fear: The Truth About Terrorism," directed by Ms. Yates, which opens Wednesday for a week, follows up on the work of Peru's Truth Commission, which concluded that more than 69,000 people were killed in terrorist or government-sponsored violence in Peru between 1980 and 2000. It also underlines how the war on terror was used to justify erosion of the country's democracy.
"The Fall of Fujimori," directed by Ms. Perry, which runs for two weeks starting Jan. 18, goes over some of the same ground, but much of it is based on interviews with Alberto Fujimori, Peru's president from 1990 to 2000, who is allowed to explain his strategy and claim credit for wiping out the Shining Path.
*
In "The Fall of Fujimori," Mr. Fujimori points out that he was overwhelmingly re-elected for a second term in 1995. "What were Peruvians willing to do in the name of peace?" Ms. Perry wondered in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "They allowed military tribunals, they allowed death squads, they knew this was going on." And, she added: "I'm perplexed that they're going after him on pre-1995 charges when his re-election was a landslide."
*
Founded by Abimael Guzmán, a former philosophy professor, the Shining Path promised to reverse centuries of injustice suffered by Peru's Indian population.
Shining Path was founded in the late 1960s by former university philosophy professor Abimael Guzmán (also known as Presidente Gonzalo), whose teachings created the foundation for its militant Maoist doctrine. It was an offshoot of the Communist Party of Peru — Bandera Roja ("red flag"), which in turn split from the original Peruvian Communist Party in 1964.
Of all the insurgent groups active in Latin America over the last half-century, none fitted the description of "terrorist" more aptly than Peru's Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path. It began armed action in 1980, committed atrocities for more than a decade and was defeated under a president who was driven from office in 2000 for abuse of power.
So does Peru's war on terror offer any lessons to the United States?
"State of Fear: The Truth About Terrorism," directed by Ms. Yates, which opens Wednesday for a week, follows up on the work of Peru's Truth Commission, which concluded that more than 69,000 people were killed in terrorist or government-sponsored violence in Peru between 1980 and 2000. It also underlines how the war on terror was used to justify erosion of the country's democracy.
"The Fall of Fujimori," directed by Ms. Perry, which runs for two weeks starting Jan. 18, goes over some of the same ground, but much of it is based on interviews with Alberto Fujimori, Peru's president from 1990 to 2000, who is allowed to explain his strategy and claim credit for wiping out the Shining Path.
*
In "The Fall of Fujimori," Mr. Fujimori points out that he was overwhelmingly re-elected for a second term in 1995. "What were Peruvians willing to do in the name of peace?" Ms. Perry wondered in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "They allowed military tribunals, they allowed death squads, they knew this was going on." And, she added: "I'm perplexed that they're going after him on pre-1995 charges when his re-election was a landslide."
*
Founded by Abimael Guzmán, a former philosophy professor, the Shining Path promised to reverse centuries of injustice suffered by Peru's Indian population.
Shining Path was founded in the late 1960s by former university philosophy professor Abimael Guzmán (also known as Presidente Gonzalo), whose teachings created the foundation for its militant Maoist doctrine. It was an offshoot of the Communist Party of Peru — Bandera Roja ("red flag"), which in turn split from the original Peruvian Communist Party in 1964.
Friday, January 06, 2006
First Book of the New Year
The Plague by Albert Camus
Setting: Oran, Algeria
A plague inflicts the city of Oran, first killing rats and then hundreds of people each day. As a prophylactic measure, the city is sealed off from the outside world, exiled, imprisoned.
More later.
effulgence: radiant splendor, brilliance
suspiration: a long deep breath, sigh
Setting: Oran, Algeria
A plague inflicts the city of Oran, first killing rats and then hundreds of people each day. As a prophylactic measure, the city is sealed off from the outside world, exiled, imprisoned.
More later.
effulgence: radiant splendor, brilliance
suspiration: a long deep breath, sigh
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Jenna Jameson
So I was reading an article in the Economist about strip clubs in Scottsdale, Arizona. The article mentioned club owner Jenna Jameson, who is a porn star. I queried her name in Wikipedia and I read something I would like to share with you:
In 2005, her moan tones (moaning sounds) were made available for downloads as ringtones.
Yes.
In 2005, her moan tones (moaning sounds) were made available for downloads as ringtones.
Yes.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Driving Like the British
My sources tell me that in 64 of 243 countries, drivers proceed of the left-hand side of the road:
Anguilla
Antigua & Barbuda
Australia
Bahamas
Bangladesh
Barbados
Bermuda
Bhutan
Bophuthatswana
Botswana
British Virgin Islands
Brunei
Cayman Islands
Channel Islands
Ciskei
Cyprus
Dominica
Falkland Islands
Fiji
Grenada
Guyana
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Jamaica
Japan
Kenya
Lesotho
Macau
Malawi
Malaysia
Malta
Mauritius
Montserrat
Mozambique
Namibia
Nepal
New Zealand
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea
St. Vincent & Grenadines
Seychelles
Sikkim
Singapore
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
Sri Lanka
St Kitts & Nevis
St. Helena
St. Lucia
Surinam
Swaziland
Tanzania
Thailand
Tonga
Trinidad & Tobago
Uganda
United Kingdom
US Virgin Islands
Venda
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Anguilla
Antigua & Barbuda
Australia
Bahamas
Bangladesh
Barbados
Bermuda
Bhutan
Bophuthatswana
Botswana
British Virgin Islands
Brunei
Cayman Islands
Channel Islands
Ciskei
Cyprus
Dominica
Falkland Islands
Fiji
Grenada
Guyana
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Jamaica
Japan
Kenya
Lesotho
Macau
Malawi
Malaysia
Malta
Mauritius
Montserrat
Mozambique
Namibia
Nepal
New Zealand
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea
St. Vincent & Grenadines
Seychelles
Sikkim
Singapore
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
Sri Lanka
St Kitts & Nevis
St. Helena
St. Lucia
Surinam
Swaziland
Tanzania
Thailand
Tonga
Trinidad & Tobago
Uganda
United Kingdom
US Virgin Islands
Venda
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Contact Strength
I bought a Metolius Slim Gym fingerboard at REI and installed it above the doorway to our bedroom.
First, I used 10x3 wood screws to mount a 10x36" piece of 3/4" plywood onto the wall, anchored by three studs, which were 16" apart from center to center. Then I screwed the fingerboard into the plywood. Now it is time to start strengthening tendons and ligaments.
Here's what the fingerboard has:
* 3 full-hand jugs
* 2 full-hand rounded slopes
* 1 set of 3 finger pockets
* 1 centered 3 finger pockets
* 1 set of 2 finger pockets
* 1 2-hand edge
Since I am weak, workouts will consist of open-handed dead hangs.
First, I used 10x3 wood screws to mount a 10x36" piece of 3/4" plywood onto the wall, anchored by three studs, which were 16" apart from center to center. Then I screwed the fingerboard into the plywood. Now it is time to start strengthening tendons and ligaments.
Here's what the fingerboard has:
* 3 full-hand jugs
* 2 full-hand rounded slopes
* 1 set of 3 finger pockets
* 1 centered 3 finger pockets
* 1 set of 2 finger pockets
* 1 2-hand edge
Since I am weak, workouts will consist of open-handed dead hangs.
Customized Google Home Page
Below is one screen shot split into three images; top to bottom is left to right.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Quotes
Here are some quotes from books I've read.
From the Federalist:
Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war or the continual effort and alarm attendent on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty, to resort for repose and security, to institutions, which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.
To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude, that the fiery and destructive passions of war, reign in the human breast, with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peaces; and, that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.
From John Kenneth Galbraith:
We associate truth with convenience, with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation to life. We find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem.
Economic and social behavior are complex, and to comprehend their character is mentally tiring. Therefore we adhere, as though to a raft, to those ideas which represent our understanding.
From Nietzsche:
A thing that rarely strikes his senses will generally have but little influence upon his mind.
The vanity of others offends our taste only when it offends our vanity.
Cute
The Cute Factor
Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.
*
A Blogger Creates a Blogger for a Trip Back to 2004
"Dog Days," by Ana Marie Cox
Ms. Cox has made her own dent in the political process with www.wonkette.com, the foxy blog that has made her well known in Washington circles. And "Dog Days" is predicated on the thought that it is a short leap from a blog to a blovel.
Interesting, but it sounds like the book sucks.
Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.
*
A Blogger Creates a Blogger for a Trip Back to 2004
"Dog Days," by Ana Marie Cox
Ms. Cox has made her own dent in the political process with www.wonkette.com, the foxy blog that has made her well known in Washington circles. And "Dog Days" is predicated on the thought that it is a short leap from a blog to a blovel.
Interesting, but it sounds like the book sucks.
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