The Dark Underbelly of Globalization

For us in the industrialized West, globalization is nothing new and has everything to do with improving living standards. But there is a dark underbelly to globalization - and don't get me wrong, for me globalization with all its warts and problems is the best thing since sliced bread, and maybe even better than that - that has mostly political overtones and not so much economic ones.

Ralph Peters is someone who I've been reading since his debut novel back in the 1980s and who is an excellent commentor on current affairs. His most recent piece for the Weekly Standard - which can be found here - gave me the nudge to comment on what he is saying.

His point is that globalization is a two-way street, one that has perhaps a huge lag, but one that despite being ignored for so long not cannot be ignored. Put simply, and do read the link because Peters goes into it with more detail than I want to go into right now, the tribes are back with a vengeance, and it is because of globalization that we now hear of the masscres and destruction wrought by tribal warfare.

In other words, the distribution channel for information is a two-way street. While the news of the West is piped throughout the world via CNN, BBC and the other "news" agencies, the news of the ROW (Rest Of World) for many, many years was nothing of consequence, to be reported only in areas of strife and in calamaties of both human and natural origin. The asymmetry of information, that the ROW needed to know more about the West than the other way around, was a given and was the norm.

But this is no longer entirely the case. The West, after 9/11 and the follow-on attacks, needs also to find out about the ROW, and the "news" agencies have increased their coverage, not the least because local viewers and advertisers also want to see what is going on (more exactly, want to see what the "news" agencies present). But this has a downside.

What tribes - and I am using that term very loosely here, as does Peters - don't want is news. Tribes are loyal to themselves to the exclusion of "others", and they want *their* news and not something that an external observer wants to bring. The demand therefore isn't for news, but rather triball propaganda, the twisting of events to fit the tribal view.

We now see this in Lebanon with the faking of news by Hezbollah propagandists, we see this in Iran as well.


That's why I'm using what are called "scare" quotes when I talk about "news" agencies. They aren't, any more: they are conduits for whoever informs them, and increasingly they themselves are part and parcel of the tribes that are feeding the "news" agency. The fake photos in Lebanon were, according to the "news" agencies affected, the work of lone stringers, but the abdication of editorial responsibility is reprehensible at best and downright criminal at worst.

There is another good post on this topic: Tribes, from Bill over at Eject!Eject!Eject!

We are entering a period where post-modernists in Western culture will be confronted by tribal warfare that threatens to explode in their backyards. Post-modernists aren't capable of understanding what you have to do in order to eliminate tribal warfare: you have to eliminate the "tribe" as the fundamental element of the conflict.

You can do this two ways: either physically or politically. Physical elimination is easy, but given the repugnance of megadeaths not really the solution (want to eliminate Iran's nuclear ability? 17 200 kt weapons would do it within a 45-minute time period. This would kill about 30% of Iran's population, with another 30% injured and without infrastructure, there would be no major cities left. Could we do it? Yes. Would we do it? Not unless Iran detonates a nuclear weapon in the US.)


Dealing with tribes on a political basis is difficult, as any historian of the British Empire will tell you. Colonial Brits had a term for the local leaders and businessmen: WOG. It stands for "Wily Oriental Gentleman" and is an apt description. We of the West aren't innately more intelligent or wily than the intellegentsia of anywhere in the ROW; to underestimate the potential sophistication of the opponent, who may be wearing rags and fighting with primitive methods, is the worst failure any in the West can make.

The key is to turn the weakness of the tribe against it, to destroy the very nature of the tribe. Remove the tribe and tribal warfare disappears. Civilization starts up again.

But doing that is an art form that we are now only slowly and painfully learning. Our problem is that there are those in the West who are so eager to adopt the behavior patterns of the tribe, entranced by its effectiveness and ignorant of the damage that tribes do to any advanced civilization.

Dr. Dean's triumphant woop is the battle cry of a tribe; the clamoring for a perp walk for Rove is the lament of the tribe for an enemy; the nascent mutterings of MoveOn and Kos are the collective mutterings of a tribe dedicated to destroying the "other" for which there is no tolerance.

Dark times ahead.

Butting the Plame...

Hitchens does it again. The man deserves more money because he has stuck to his guns and called things the way they *are*, rather than the way journalists want everyone to see them.

Blame for Plame lies directly with the "administration critics" who were anything but simply that.

Is David Corn going now to apologize for his diatribes? For starting the whole PlameGate nonsense? For now it is nonsense: the leaker was Richard Armitage who was basically showing off to a reporter. Not a revenge act from the Bush administration, not retribution.

Specifically Corn is wrong here:

"The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security."

This was wrong: not merely that Corn placed the blame wrongly, but that there even was a "Wilson smear." And the jibes were wrong, the whole basis for the article was wrong.

But will we see an apology, a retraction, an admittance that Corn & Isikoff were wrong?


Probably about the same time that Kerry releases his military records.

Interestingly, Corn's column is called "Capital Games."

Which is what we are seeing here: but the games aren't the games of the Administration, but rather of its opponents. And they are the ones whose politics trumps national security.

Interregnum...

It's not so much that I don't have anything to say, it's much more that there is so much to say.

But reality intrudes (TM) and I have forecasts to finish and ratings to run. Be back ASAP and I hope it really is soon.

Still on hte road...

Yep, still on the road...

Another unfinished post...

Finally we're off for vacation and blogging here will be even worse than normal. But here is yet another unfinished post, or rather I got too disgusted to go any farther...

My father sent me this.

I took a brief look at it.

First of all, it's very subjective, yet uses a numerical index to suggest that there is an objective basis for what they are saying. This is fundamentally dishonest: you cannot, legitimately, express uncertainties (subjective evaluations) as a number, which is based on objective analysis. This must be done rather with valences (such as +++ or ----) rather than a number. In my work, the moment where we start using numbers that are not based on "real" facts, we no longer publish them as numbes, but rather use valences. Otherwise you are misleading your customers that you have the real numbers, and in the commercial environment you will be found out and you will lose your reputation. Shame that this is apparenly not the case here. Shoddy work at best and deliberate misleading at worst...

Secondly, the environmental footprint claims to include something that I know as a professional international economist can't be included: they claim to be able to reduce the footprint of a country by excluding products and services that are exported, counting these instead with the importing country.

I work extensively with import-export data (UNIDO, UNCTAD, COMEXT databases are part of my daily bread and butter) and there are no such numbers available on the basis that they are claiming (of being able to identify which El Salvdorean bananas are sold to the US and consumed by the US, for example). While there are direction of trade statistics, and there are detailed direction of trade by product numbers available (this is the UNCTAD data set: roughly 6 mn time series!), the ownership of those products cannot be determined, and indeed is the basis for developing the statistics: anonymity is guaranteed and there is no way for this group to have ***any*** idea of whether a Chaquita plantation produces for the local market, whether it produces for a secondary downstream manufacturer located locally or whether it delivers directly to the mother company. This would make a HUGE difference in terms of how the ecological footprint is measured. I am professionally unaware of any one who claims to have world trade modelled at even a two-digit level of detail, let alone the 6-digit level of detail that the UNCTAD data base offers.

If they are working with proxies, these are not stated. Again, very poor.

And **if** they are working with the raw UNCTAD data, I'd like to know how they summate the data: is this an averaged number, is it simply the most recent data, is it modelled for the future, what? After all, they should have a forecast, since they are looking at things like

Third, only one of the three indicators is "real". This goes back to the first point. The life satisfaction and the environmental footprint are subjective or are based on proxied data; only the life expectancy is "real", and even here it appears that it is modified to account for some sort of "happiness" factor. There is a fundamental truth in economic modelling: GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. You can have the most exquisite models, but unless they are properly fed and cared for, they are useless.


I really wish that ideology wouldn't drive such attempts to make guesswork appear scientific. Economics is called the dismal science because it is the only branch of the human sciences that insists on at least a modicum of actual data and empirical verification of correlations and causality. If these folks were honest, they'd be using Chernekov faces instead of trying to look objective.

The goal of the group is not furthered by making numbers up. If anything, they make me very suspect of whatever their goal is, given that they are presenting subjective judgements as objective evaluations. And arguing that it is better to have something rather than nothing doesn't hold water: they are deliberately presenting these subjective evaluations as if they were objective facts.

Columbia as being one of the happiest places around? Give me a break: murderours drug wars, coupled with significant abject poverty. The only reason that they are so highly ranked is that their ecological footprint is "calculated" to be so low. This fails a first, basic assessment of how believeable their product is. It isn't.

Sorry to be so harsh, but I've run into too much bad "science" recently, of ideologically-driven "science" masquerading as "truth". Doing science properly is hard work and more often than nowarding: the benefits, especially in this area, of making stuff up (Mann et al with their hockey stick curve) for personal glory and financial gain are very seductive and very destructive. And the claim of a consensus is facetious at best and downright dishonest at worst.


Posting will be sporadic for the next several weeks...

Unfinished Post #1 - Asymmetry

Despite my best attempts, I haven't been able to finish this, but wanted to post it nonetheless. This will continue as a series of unfinished posts until I can finish them... :-)



Ah, finally some time after assorted deadlines, disappointments and triumphs. The bittersweet joys of parenting teenage children mixed with the deep sorrow of watching friends slowly die. The last quarter hasn't been the best. But I disgress...

This particular post was prodded by this post on The Adventures of Chester.

Up front: I'm a professional forecaster: I earn my money doing industrial forecasts and have been doing this successfully for the last 20 years. You won't read my name in the papers because I'm not interested in that: instead I provide my customers with the knowledge they need to make decisions today that changes their futures.

We live in a world which is undergoing massive infrastructure and demographic changes, changes that are rarely understood.

Read and see what the future will bring and why it's not the future many think it might be. And why asymmetry is going to be a real ball-buster for everyone involved. And when I say that I mean everyone involved, from the wooliest leftist intellectual to the gung-ho America firstest,  to the ignorant uneducated peasant to the highly trained Eurocrat, from the Nepali family living in abject poverty to the billionaires.

Demographics is sometimes hard for people to really get a grasp on because demographic changes are slow in coming and are even less reversible than climate changes (and no, I don't think climate change is anthropogenic: to believe that is an act of literally incredible and more than annoying hubris). It's also a matter of simple arithmetic and only slightly more advanced analysis.

Infrastructure changes refer not merely to roads and bridges, but more fundamentally to how societies actually function and meet the needs of their populations. Who controls the infrastructure also controls the nature of how citizens of that country will view the world and understand how to make their way within the sets of rules, procedures, taboos and limitations that characterize all societies.

We in the West see our lives within a strongly structured and delineated world. Local governments that provide services for which we pay taxes; state governments who ensure that local developments mesh with at least a modicum of sensibility; central governments who are tasked with dealing with the problems that local and state governments don't and can't deal with. This is true regardless as to the exact form of how a government is organized: in France, for instance, the central government is much more dominant, but the local bureaucrats appointed by the central government fill the function of local governments. We know, largely, who is responsible for what function, what we must do in order to build that deck on the back of the house, who to call when the garbage doesn't get picked up.

The third world isn't like that at all: you pay (bribe) to get even a moderate sense of stability in your life, unless, of course, you have no money: then your life is tremendously stable. Of course, it is also rather nasty, brutish and short as you do not own anything, cannot hope that your children have it better, and can expect that the government and the thugs that pass for government will take any and everything of value you may posess, up to and including your life.

Big contrast that. Biggest we have on the planet.

Why The Democrats Still Don't Understand It...

This shows that while some Democrats have learned to actually think, that the party as a whole is still adrift and doomed.

Air America is failing because no one wants to listen.

The demography of Democratic supporters, those who finance the party, says it all: the party is behoven to big moneyed interests, be it the unions (who are deeply undemocratic in spending their member's money) or the fat cats like Soros and his ilk. They have become what they always say the Republicans are, whose financing oddly enough is now grass-roots based and comes from their consituency.

Sad, really.

What this money means is that the radicalization of Democratic politics will continue at the cost of any sort of centrist development. Are we sure that Karl Rove isn't advising these folks?

Their pseudo-religious righteous anger won't win them elections: while "energizing" their base (all I can think of is the Energizer Bunny) it alienates the vast majority of voters, especially when you look a tad past the veneer and see how radical some of these folks really are.

And the secrecy is probably in violation of some sort of campaign or financing law - IANAL, so I don't know for sure - but is certainly indicative of the fundamental cowardice of these donors - they fear the light of publicity - and their fundamental contempt for how the American elective system is run.

Asymmetry...

OK, I'm a lousy blogger. But there's a lot going on on my plate, more than I want to talk about, and reality intrudes. :-)

I posted the following at Asymmetrical Information in response to this:

Two points.

First: the goal of the insurgent is to win the hearts and minds of those he sees as oppressed, to radicalize them into becoming as he is. This means that for the insurgent, the use of terror, as long as it is either non-ascribable (anonymous death squads) or directly from the opponent, is a fundamental part of his panoply of tools. He needs to radicalize the population, turning them into terrorists themselves, in order to win. This means that everything is fair, in his eyes, as long as the hated, existing government and society is destroyed and he, as a revolutionary elite, can recreate society in the way that he wants. I'm simplifying here, but this is fundamental to the ways that urban terrorists operate.

In other words, the terrorist, the insurgent, doesn't give a rat's crap about how he achieves his goal: the goal is taking power. Everything else is secondary. This is part of the legacy that the generation of communist training of 3rd-world terrorists by the former SovUnion has left us: this is part and parcel of how the Sovs trained their useful idiots to destabilize countries in order to achieve the revolution. If anything, you targeted the opponent's morality directly, get him to do terrible things in order to drive a moral dagger into his heart to destroy his will to resist. If he didn't do it, if he was strong enough to refuse to be manipulated into blowing up schools and churches that you were using, if his soldiers were so good that they would shoot between the human shields in order to get you, well then you create atrocities and get useful idiots to make it look like your opponent did it instead of you.

Second: the goal of the non-insurgent is to win the hearts and minds of the people, to get them to collectively deny and reject the terrorists. This is heavily dependent upon the structure of society: if you have a largely intact society, this is relatively easy, especially if the terrorists really don't have a base to operate from and really don't have legitimate grievances (like Baader-Meinhof in Germany).

The problem is when the society involved is in tatters, as it is in Iraq, as it was to a certain extent in Vietnam. Then you have the joint task of reconstructing society **while** denying the enemy the necessary radicalization at the same time. This is much, much more difficult than what the insurgent must do: he must merely destroy; you must not merely prevent the destruction, but also aid in the reconstruction.

This is part of the asymmetric nature of the conflict. It's not just that one side has all the neat toys and walks the walk, forcing poor Mr. Terrorist to hide and skulk (a rather irresponsible romanticizing of how terrorists work!); it's much more that Mr. Terrorist has a vastly simpler job, of using terror and the ensuing intimidation to dominate the situation. That's his advantage in the asymmetric side of the story.

So, given this, the key question becomes: are we even talking the same language here? Those perpetrating terror see their aims as being absolutely just, of having perfect and indeed moral certainty that their aims are just, that the society they are destroying is not one that is just and therefore MUST be destroyed (otherwise they'd not have bothered!).

But their goal is the destruction of the existing system. That is the difference, the fundamental and core difference. They are not interested in the niceties of restoring pre-war borders, or of returning territories once lost, or stopping genocide, or any such goal. They are only interested in destruction and acquiescence, and indeed have moved violence from the military to the population in order to force the issue.

The difference is fundamental: on the one side you have existing societies with their inherent problems, contradictions and conflicts. Wars may be fought, but tradition has it that you have a winner and a loser and that you no longer behave like a barbarian, slaughtering and depopulating in order to destroy your enemy.

On the other side you have the destroyers and nihilists, those who hate societies so much that they will do literally anything to destroy their structures. They are, literally, outside the realm of civilization.

And failing to see the fundamental difference between the two is an act of appalling political and cultural blindness.

Reality intrudes...

Hi -

As usual during the end of a quarter, Reality Intrudes (tm).

But come this weekend and I may have some time...

Sorry to be such a bad blogger, but reality does intrude at times...

One small step...

Well, it seems that the Iranian government is taking its next step down the road to perdition.

One of the keys to demonizing a part of society is to clearly mark them in one way or another.

It turns out that this was something that the Germans didn't even invent: the use of markers to publicly identify Jews has a long history in the Middle East.

But the story isn't complete there: they are taking another leaf out of the plan book of the National Socialist movement: the German word is "Gleichschaltung", of removing differences between individual citizens, subjugating them to the dictates of the State. The Iranian parliament has decided that Iranians need to be wearing standardized Islamic garb.

Within fascism, citizens of the State are there to serve the State. There is no room for any alternative to the decisions of the State, any freedom is a grant of the State. People who think otherwise, who dare to question the State's decisions, are enemies of the State - per definitio - and their lives, the lives of their spouses and their children, are forfeit. The fascist state - duh - is totalitarian, brooking no alternatives to its power.


The Iranian people are entering an even darker period of their history. The Islamic revolution was, fundamentally, a revolt against modernism, against the destruction by the Shah of the special rights and priviledges of the clergy. To properly cover the history of Iran would take many, many posts for which I do not have the time, but suffice to say that the clergy in Iran enjoy enormous benefits and priviledges that have historical roots, yet have allowed them to have enormous economic and political power for which there is no democratic justification. Entry into the clergy is carefully controlled to ensur orthodoxy and control over the religious beliefs of the majority, controlled to ensure that there are no heretics, no future Luthers that could challenge the orthodoxy and the power of the clergy from within.

Key to the taking of power was radicalization and forcing people in Iran to take sides, of taking actions that made them commit to the Iranian revolution and break with their past. The taking of the US embassy served this purpose: it broke all diplomatic rules and gave those involved revolutionary legitimacy in the eyes of the clergy: remember that the revolution was not merely against the Shah, but also against the entire western world. This is the core of Iranian fascism, of that the revolutionaries are so radical that only the word of God has any meaning, the conventions of the west are irrelevant and must be ignored if it meets the needs of the Islamic Revolution.

The parallels, either deliberate or accidental, of the Islamic Revolution with the concepts and methodologies of National Socialism are too great to be ignored.


The problem is that neither Germans nor Italians (nor the Japanese) threw off their fascist form of government on their own, and indeed those who fought against it domestically failed and were executed with great prejudice (by hanging with piano wire to ensure great pain while slowly choking to death, since the victims were not dropped, breaking their necks, but rather simply raised from the ground by pulling on the wire, for instance).

The great danger (and the great seduction) of fascism is that once the State has been institutionalized, once the population is subjugated, once life becomes completely dominated by the whims of the fascists in charge, allowing on the one side people to lead a "normal" life, but ensuring that this normality is one determined by the State and controlled and enforced by the State. Neither the average German nor the average Italian nor the average Japanese realized how their freedoms, such as they were, were being taken away one after another: the method is to ensure that the average citizen isn't affected, but rather indeed benefits from the development, up to the point where they no longer make much in the way of any decision without first consulting the State.

So what can the Iranians do?


Good question. I'll be honest: I don't have an answer.


What will come next? We will see increasing arrests of dissidents and people who could oppose power: union members;ucators who might serve at universities as a source of dissension and as catalysts for student agitation; non-Islamic religious figures and members of those religions; homosexuals and "sexual deviates" will all start to disappear from Iranian society as the State starts to take over public life even more than it has. Expect a "Kristallnacht" where a minority is publically attacked by the thugs of the government and thereafter are exploited to further radicalize the public. Expect a crackdown on nonconformity with death sentences and disappearances; expect that the government will increasingly try to form a whole generation of children according to the precepts of the State, forming them to believe that the State is mother, father and family. The State will deliberately alienate portions of Iranian society from each other, but yet appear to be the only one who can reconcile the differing groups, ensuring that whatever problems the Iranian populace has, the State is not and cannot be part of the problem, but rather is benevolant and controlling.

It's a slow spiral to perdition. The real problem is that it took WW2 to thoroughly destroy fascism in Italy, Germany and Japan, and it took the dedication to insist not on some sort of peace process, but rather to fight so that fascism would be proven to the German, Italian and Japanese public of the time as to be a complete and total failure, a plague upon those lands.

That Iran must go through this process will destroy the country as we know it today. That's the great tragedy of Iran, the necessity of destroying the fascist nature of the Islamic Revolution in order to save the Iranians from their own worst natures. A tragedy is unfolding in slow, slow motion in front of us.

Mad Dogs and Iranians...

...out in the noonday sun.

So.

Ahmadineschad rejects the offer of the EU before it is even made as a pathetic sop and an insult to Iran.

Do we see a pattern building here? Ahmadineschad has the external boogeyman that he needs to maintain his internal power plays, of suppressing alternatives, increasing control and a general extension of Islamist control over Iranian society. I've now seen estimates that Ahmadineschad can only count on 15%-20% of the populace for direct and unequivocal support, and oddly enough this 15%-20% basically controls the county as is.

Regardless of what the EU or the UN will offer, it will be ridiculed and rejected out of hand.

Why?

Because Ahmadineschad needs to be able to do this, be able to "show up" the West. All he needs to do is start strutting and preening, and add a few pounds so that he doesn't merely act, but also looks like Mussolini.

This is the Iranian tactic: buy time, buy time, buy time. Ridicule your opponent and make yourself appear to be the paramount of reason and the epitome of the cultured, wise leader, your external opponents will fall over themselves trying to get on your good side and your internal opponents will be severely weakened as well. "Standing up to the West" is guaranteed to get the attention of the populace, one that has been inculcated in blaming the West for their decline (Islam and Mossadegh), one that has been taught that the problems the country is facing are not domestic problems, home made problems, but are instead the result of a conspiracy to deny Iran its rightful place in the world of nations and scheme of things, to deny Iran the same status as a great power.

Because Ahmadineschad and Co. believe that this is Iran's proper position, as *the* dominant power in the Gulf region. Not merely that this is something they'd like on an abstract sort of level, but more fundamentally that the Persian Empire needs to be reborn and that Persian dominance of the region is a god-given right, as it were, so that the benevolant dictator - Ahmadineschad - can exercise the power that Iran has as the principle center of Islamism.

In other words, he's behaving like the Germans and the Italians did in the late 1930s: bluff and see how far the stupid bourgeois, corrupt and incompetent, will allow power to be seized on the flimsiest of pretexes.

So I'm a lousy blogger...

Reality intrudes more than I'd like, sometimes. :-)

I'll just put a short comment here for thought. These are based on a number of blog and other articles over the last several years: a hat tip to all those willing to look at this without descending into the usual Marxist absurdities in dealing with these developments.


Iran has been, since the "revolution", an incipient fascist state. Why fascist? Fascist governments show several attributes that remain in common after you remove all the disparities. This is true for Germany, for Italy, for Japan in the 1930s, and now for Iran. Syria is also a candidate, but I know too little about Syria to say for sure.

Fascism isn't so much an ideology as much more a method of taking, keeping and extending political power. Ideologies like communism have a canon, a bible as it were, that true believers can refer to in order to convert the unbelievers or to discipline the rest. Fascism doesn't really have such a canon - sure, there are books about fascism, but there's no book that really establishes fascism, not even "Mein Kampf", which is less a book about fascism and its supposed virtues as much more a personal tirade, an example of the political pamphlet in best agitprop tradition.

Fascism is based on resentment, a population with a feeling of impotence and betrayal, with racial and societal overtones. By deliberately and carefully exploiting these feelings and by either creating or using an existing external bogeyman to concretize these generally vague public sentiments, fascists recreate a feeling of superiority, overcompensating the feelings of inferiority (justified or not), using carefully constructed agitation and control over opinion makers in order to shape public opinions to the point where they are no longer mere opinions, but gain the quality of belief. To do this you need trained orators and agitators, an intimate knowledge of the society involved, and convenient targets that either can't or don't hit back until it's too late.

Why is Iran, to date, been merely an "incipient" fascist state? Because there hasn't been a point where the fascists there have felt the need to openly act as such. One of the development principles of fascist parties is to hide their true aims and goals until they have achieved power, since those arrayed against them shouldn't be given any opportunity to enlarve them.

But now, with Iran's basically open commitment to acquiring nuclear weapons, the time has come that the government of Iran shows its true nature.


They have established what is fundamentally a religious fascism, using less the racial playing card and much more the religious one. Fundamentally the view there is that unless you are a Shi'ite, you are less than human, deserving of no considerations that you would give your fellow man. This fulfills one of the first tenets for fascism: the "we are superior" factor. The bogeyman, the external enemy (this includes those living inside the country: Jews were externalized within their own community), is of course the Little and the Big Satan, the US and Israel, with strong antisemitic underscores lifted directly from old German and Russian antisemitic agitprop. The political savior, the patriarchical, principled leader that will thrash the enemy and restore the country to its rightful place, is of course the current Iranian president. Control of society to "save" it from unhealthy, corrupting influences, is already in place in Iran and weighs as a heavy hand upon the populace.

Understanding this helps to understand why the Iranian President writes the letters he does and why he does the things he does. Nothing is not calculated: the letter served multiple purposes, not the least of which is the offering of accepting submission before the attack that appears to be a precept of Islamist expansion. The letter serves notice: it will appear for many to be the sweet voice of reason; it places the blame for all problems clearly on the external enemies of Iran for both domestic and international sympathy; to respond to it means acceptance of the game rules of who is to blame and not, while not responding at all means that you've ignored what appears to be a rational offering of dialogue; and finally it is a carefully calculated insult.

I don't, unfortunately, have the time to get into the letter and properly fisk it (and it deserves one).

Suffice to say that in the late 1930s the fascist countries united and presented the western world with one bluff after another to gain political prestige and power, which led them to believe that western countries had no backbone and were unwilling to defend themselves (which fit into their belief structure of rejection of western values as being corrupt and incapable of meeting modern international challenges). This is the same situation we are facing today with Iran: you have people in Iran that are dedicated to the re-establishment of the Persian empire within the framework of a Shi'ite theocracy. You have thugs on the street in Iran ensuring that people "behave"; you have complete and total control of all aspects of government within a facade of democracy (controlling who can be a candidate is the Iranian method here); you have an evangelical leader who knows how to use the "bully pulpit"; you have an expansionist agenda (the Iranian interference in Iranian and Afghanistan affairs is rampant and expansionary); you have increasing militaristic tendencies (the Iranians came out recently with an entire group of "wonder weapons") and a policy of using salami tactics to slowly whittle away the options and alternatives of any opposition.

It's a very, very dangerous game, since their goal is to achieve checkmate (chess being, of course, a Persian passion) without allowign the opponent to get his pieces into play. It's a dangerous illusion, since it purports two equal opponents in the game, which is not the case. It has the potential of exactly the same results of the Axis before WW2: pushing smaller countries and percieved weaker opponents around until war becomes at the end of the day the only option.

A very, very dangerous game.

A modest proposal...

Economists, pundits and politicians in Germany are talking these days about the "resurging" German economy.

The official forecast for 2006 has been moved up to 1.8% growth. That's right, up to 1.8% growth.



There are myraid reasons why German economic growth is so weak - to be honest, 1.8% growth only means that the economy isn't in meltdown and is hardly resurging in any shape that could be called realistic - and I won't go into them here.

This links to Donald Luskin's talk he recently gave in Washington DC to the National Association of Investment Professionals.

I'll briefly sum what's important: tax cuts and the ensuing incentives to invest and grow the economy.


It's really rather simple: lowering taxes means that there is a positive incentive to work harder and earn more money, since you actually get to keep it. Any one out there has a point where extra effort ceases to be profitable: everyone has their limits. When the government works hard at taking what you earn, the limits are so much lower than they would be otherwise. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about, having recently seen a modest bonus turned into a pittance by the taxman. My wife has it even worse: after taxes her Christmas bonus wasn't enough to fill the tank of our car with diesel...

My modest proposal is that to get the German economy running at anything like normal - as far as I am concerned, long-term growth rates MUST exceed 3% if the German economy is going to be able to maintain its ability to compete internationally while providing domestic jobs - that the German government eliminates any and all taxes on revenues from corporate financial instruments, be it stocks, bonds, direct investments, venture capital or whatever clever instruments the financial people dream up. In addition, German companies investing in German factories, offices and the like may deduct the cost of their investments 100% in the first year from their taxable income AND may fully depreciate the investment as they normally do.

German finances will suffer: they are already catastrophic, so losing revenue won't really make that much of a difference. But the downside is small, with the potential on the upside being huge.

What Luskin points out and which few I think understand outside of the US (and many in the US don't understand either) is that by letting people keep what they earn you allow them to make the rational choices for their consumption. Germans today show little propensity to add value to relatively high income levels because all that happens is that the government takes around half of it. Which completely and totally removes any incentive to take that extra step and improve something so that value is created.


And the 3% growth rate for Germany - no economist that I know expects this, and indeed I don't expect Germany to reach these growth levels - is based on the need in Germany to recapitalize its economy. Germany is living no longer off its fat, but rather is burning muscle in order to generate the very weak growth of the last several years. Germany needs to invest between 8% and 10% per year for the next 10 years in order to improve its infrastructure, one of the best in Europe if not the world: the current investment levels don't allow the current infrastucture to even be maintained, ensuring that things here are going to get worse before they get better.


It's not like I'm recommending eating babies or anything like that.

My modest proposal, of course, has absolutely no chance of being implemented by any of the political parties here.

A small comparison...

It's been far too quiet here. But there's been work to do.

This remains chilling.

But what really is chilling is the last paragraph of the article:

Ahmadinejad often gives long, rambling speeches but Monday was one of the rare occasions when he allowed foreign journalists to question him. He seemed to enjoy the encounter, joking and bantering with reporters.

And just so that we can put this in perspective, Hitler was known to be extremely charming and captivating when he was on a political roll...and yes, I am making the comparison explicitly. Don't know if Mr. A is a vegetarian or not: his goal is genocide.


Ye gods. These Iranians are so completely and totally divorced from reality that for me it is chilling.


But not the chill of fear. More the chill of the graves to come.


The catastrophe is looming, politicians in Europe are putting their collective heads into the sand, there is no western unity, and even bin Laden has declared jihad on the UN.

Want to know what a nuclear Iran will be like?

Imagine that the bluster we hear now is no longer bluster, but demands. Backed up with the belief that nothing will happen to them because they have nuclear weapons. Their belief will push them into realms that they cannot get out of: playing brinksmanship with the UN is one thing, playing it with the US is another.

Once Iran has the bomb, then the Saudis, the Egyptians, probably even Oman will want to start developing their own bombs as well. Nuclear proliferation.


Largely because the UN is increasingly a farce. Bush 43 saved the UN from being exposed as the farce it increasingly appears to be by bypassing it and doing what had to be done. But the rot is there. It is not going away. The rot is "business as usual", corruption as usual, incompetence as usual.


A pox on the Russians and on the Chinese for finally destroying what little credibility the UN once had. When push comes to shove, it will be because of the UN, not despite it.

We're where we were 6 months ago, but with no slowing of the Iranian development programs.


At this point we're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. What do we do? Bomb and kill thousands? Do nothing and kill millions?

Keeping things in perspective...

I've been a long-time reader of this blog, and have known Steve Conover for quite a while, back to the good old UseNet days on Sci.Econ, which now is just a looney tunes convention.

Steve has a very balanced view of things and takes the time to think things through.

His brand-new debt clock is great.

It doesn't simply look at the debt. Instead, it adds the GDP of the US to put things in perspective, and he calculates the debt-to-GDP ratio, which is the thing that really matters.

Nice job, Steve. I'm gonna see if I can get his code to show it too...

-

Oh so true...

LAWS OF THE NATURAL UNIVERSE

Law of Mechanical Repair:
After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch or you'll have to pee.

Law of the Workshop:
Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

Law of Probability:
The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

Law of the Telephone:
If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal.

Law of the Alibi:
If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire.

Variation Law:
If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will start to move faster than the one you are in now (works every time).

Law of the Bath:
When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.

Law of Close Encounters:
The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with

Law of the Result:
When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will.

Law of Biomechanics:
The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

Law of the Theatre:
At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle arrive last.

Law of Coffee:
As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

Murphy's Law of Lockers:
If there are only two people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

Law of Rugs/Carpets:
The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor covering are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet/rug.

Law of Location:
No matter where you go, there you are.

Law of Logical Argument:
Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

Brown's Law:
If the shoe fits, it's ugly.

Oliver's Law:
A closed mouth gathers no feet.

Wilson's Law:
As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

Intermezzo...

Sorry, blogging has been way down on my list of priorities as my usual quarterly deadline encroaches.

But here is an article in today's FT that should be read. Unfortunately it's behind the usual barrier.


But what is relevant is that he's right: the idea that bloggers can replace the MSM as a source of news is severly mistaken.

Bloggers can, at best, be fact-checkers and opinion-writers. In other words, bloggers are, at best, editors.

But they're not the people who actually go out and write up the news.

Good point from John Gapper.

The reason that people like La Huffington think that they are a source of "news" is that for many, far too many, there is little or no distinction between news and opinion, since they think that they, the journalists, must tell people what reality is rather than "merely" to report it. The liberal media - The New York Times, Time, Newsweek - are particularly guilty of this, with scarcely a proper reporting without spin visible.

And that is where the MSM can still shine and why it still makes sense to actually read old news on dead trees. Local news is the alpha and omega of success here, whereby Gapper most properly points out that "local news" can also mean local in the sense of specialized interest groups. Me, I'd love to have such a feed on vintage watches (actually, I do: I am a co-moderator on WatchUSeek's vintage watch forum and have another blog where I occasionally write about my vintage watches and why I like them. Rather pathetic for most people, but then again, WIS are often seen that way...)

Will be back to blogging more seriously at the beginning of April...

Hollywood and Reality...

Now this is great, the real reason that the Internet is God's gift to thinking people everywhere.


It's not just that the guy's picture looks exactyl like Sgt. Rock of comic book fame (couldn't find a drawing, but you get the idea...).

It's just the best fisking of the basic story line of Syriana I've seen.


Hollywood and the collected barking moonbats that seem to populate it no longer make dreams reality, they're no longer the dream factory of yesterday.

Instead they're now clearly what they always have been: films are vehicles to tell a story.

It's just a question of whether the story is coherent and sensible, or merely a mayhem of mishaps and mistakes.


Unfortunately, those making movies, reaping enormous monetary rewards, have come to think that making lots of money means that what you do actually means anything, and that their opinions need to be listened to as carefully as the words of scholars and experts.


Reality needs to feed those who feast upon the soul of Hollywood a good ass-whuppin' so as to establish that these maggots are the not reality, but rather, to paraphrase Monthy Python, very silly people.

Why The MSM Is Sometimes Still Worth Reading...

This post on, of all places, the Boston Globe's web site, is an excellent overview of what is at stake with Iran: it is a slow, slow unfolding of a nuclear crisis.

What is different between the Cuban crisis and this one is the difference between someone yelling and taunting you directly (Krushschev) and a Kuang Grade Mark Eleven (the impenetrable and shadowy Iranian administration for outsiders).

Kuang Grade Mark Eleven?


If you don't know what that means, let me take you on a slight exegis. But NOT into the world of Gibson, where the Kuang Grade Mark Eleven is an anti-ICE program, a slow virus.

But rather here.

You see, the Kuang is a real tool in attempting to take over a computer system that doesn't work with holes in the system, but rather, as SU-Kuang, finds mistakes in the protection configuration. It is an attack-oriented tool that exploits how security people, those in charge of ensuring that no unauthorized users gain access to a system, make mistakes in how they give authorized access to the computer, enabling the SU-Kuang to acquire superuser rights (hence SU for superuser).

And acquiring superuser rights is simple: it's a procedure to achieve a true state for the rules of the system. It's the procedure by which to achieve goals you set subgoals, where a rule is evaluated to achive a subgoal that leads to the final goal. It's the classic salami tactics of regime destabilization, of taking power very slowly, one single small step at a time, consolidating only to move on to the next step.

To express it another way, in order to implement a Kuang you create a list of groups accessible to the attacker and the target goal. The SU-Kuang then examines how the targets are protected and compiles then a lost of way that target goals can be achieved from the initial state.A goal-tree is built from an empirically derived set of rules of how to gain control. Once the blueprint, the goal-tree, is establised, then sequences of steps can be worked out of hot to get from A to B.


This is what we are facing: not an in-your-face Soviet challenge (although there are some aspects of this as wlel), but more fundamentally a slow and deliberate destabilization according to Iran's interests. Hence the completely deniable but clearly present interference of Iran in Iraq; hence the completely deniable yet clearly present financing of Hamas, with the destabilization of Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza as the direct corrolary. Why would Iran be interested in this destabilization? Because it doesn't allow its enemies to have their own borders be stable and points to the supposed role of Israel as being disruptive to the peace of the region.

Am I making the Iranians too sophisticated, too clever?


Not at all: they are not dumb. According to our standards, they're stone bonkered crazy, but they aren't dumb. It would be a major, major error to assume that.

Culture of Deception - Part V

Yep, back again to this briefly. It's something that is still percolating through the back of my mind, not entirely ready for prime time...as it were.

This links to those fabulous cartoonist, Cox and Forkum.

This links to Threat Watch, one of the more interesting web sites around.

What is the link between the two?

Both underscore the culture of deception that is slowly bringing the conflict of civilizations to forefront.


On the one hand, you've got CAIR, a lobby group "just like" any other lobby group, with one exception: they are engaged in systematic deception as to their true goals.

On the other hand, you've got now clear evidence that the Iranian government is and has been intending to deceive the West about its plans to weaponize nuclear technology.


What's the connection?


Deception is one of the core political principles of Islam: here is a list of what the Koran says: my response is in italics...

Bukhari:V7B67N427 "The Prophet said, 'If I take an oath and later find something else better than that, then I do what is better and expiate my oath.'"

In other words, the political expediency of deception.

Bukhari:V4B52N268 "Allah's Apostle said, 'War is deceit.'

In other words, the military expediency of deception.

Koran 4:142 "Surely the hypocrites strive to deceive Allah. He shall retaliate by deceiving them."

In other words, the epistemological expediency of deception.

Bukhari:V7B71N661 "Magic was worked on Allah's Apostle and he was bewitched so that he began to imagine doing things which in fact, he had not done."

In other words, the psychological expediency of deception.

Koran 74:31 "We have appointed nineteen angels to be the wardens of the Hell Fire. We made a stumbling-block for those who disbelieve and We have fixed their number as a trial for unbelievers in order that the people of the Book may arrive with certainty, and that no doubts may be left for the people of the Book, those in whose hearts is a disease. And for those to whom the Scripture Book has been given, and the believers, there should be no doubt. The unbelievers may say, 'What does the Lord intend by this?' The Lord will lead astray whomever He pleases, and He will guide whomever He pleases: and none can know the armies of your Lord except He, and this is no other than a warning to mankind."

In other words, the religious expediency of deception, but with a twist: God himself is the master of deception and does as he wills with no regard to truth. What a different concept from the Jewish or Christian tradition of God, who despises deception and says clearly: The Truth Will Set You Free.The banning of Adam and Eve from the garden was punishment for deception: both were told not to eat of the fruit of knowledge, and when asked they denied that they had done so.

Bukhari:V2B24N555 "I heard the Prophet say, 'Allah hates for you for asking too many questions.'"

This borders on comedy writing...

Ishaq:519 "Hajjaj said to the Apostle, 'I have money scattered among the Meccan merchants, so give me permission to go and get it.' Having got Muhammad's permission, he said, 'I must tell lies.' The Apostle said, 'Tell them.'"

The economic expediency of deception...

Koran 8:58 "If you apprehend treachery from a people with whom you have a treaty, retaliate by breaking off relations with them."

What's good for the goose isn't good for the gander, in other words...deception is only for the true believers...

Koran 5:41 "Whomever Allah wants to deceive you cannot help. Allah does not want them to know the truth because he intends to disgrace them and then torture them."

Again, the religious expediency and the repeat of what is apparently the picture of a vengeful and capricious God.

Ishaq:365/Tabari VII:94 "Muhammad bin Maslamah said, 'O Messenger, we shall have to tell lies.' 'Say what you like,' Muhammad replied. 'You are absolved, free to say whatever you must.'"

Again the political expediency of deception...

Bukhari:V5B59N369 "Allah's Apostle said, 'Who is willing to kill Ka'b bin Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?' Thereupon Muhammad bin Maslamah got up saying, 'O Allah's Apostle! Would you like me to kill him?' The Prophet said, 'Yes,' Maslamah said, 'Then allow me to say false things in order to deceive him.' The Prophet said, 'You may say such things.'"

Again the political expediency of deception...

Ishaq:442 "By Muhammad's order we beguiled them."

Absolving the deceivers of the responsibility for their deception...

Tabari VIII:23 "The Messenger and his Companions continued in the fear and distress that Allah has described in the Koran. Then Nu'aym came to the Prophet. 'I 've become a Muslim, but my tribe does not know of my Islam; so command me whatever you will.' Muhammad said, 'Make them abandon each other if you can so that they will leave us; for war is deception.'"

Again the political expediency of deception: deception to create disarry within your enemy's ranks...


There are other quotes given in the link, but they merely repeat and underscore.


This fundamentally deceptive thread in Islam is not accidental: it is deliberate. It belongs to Al-Taqiya, a fundamental strategy of Islam. And while the above links are from non-Islam sources, this one isn't: it's about the core of deception, of lying.

What is not allowed: lying to and about God, lying to and about Mohammed.

Everything else? Whatever serves the purposes of Islam, whatever they might be. There is even a word for it: kithman. To deliberately deceive about one's beliefs. This is particularly true for Shi'a moslems, but does apply to all.


Getting back to Cox & Forkum: they clearly mention that CAIR is fundamentally deceptive, presenting one face to the world and having a hidden agenda.

The link at Threats Watch also underscores what this very real problem with deception is: Iran has built large-scale underground bunkers that are part of the move to build nuclear weapons that the current Iranian government has been pushing for the last 18 years.

Think of that: no wonder the government of Iran is behaving like it does. They've been working on decieving the West for 18 years. Eighteen years.


It's not as grand a deception as the Soviets or the ChiComs led, but it's way up there on the list of long-term deceptions. How many millions will die as a result?