Political Ramblings

Happy Holidays

2008-12-27T13:07:00.002-05:00

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas (for those so inclined)!

Posting has been slow of late. I have spent Christmas with the family and for the past day I have bee in transit. I am now enjoying the fine weather of the Guatemalan mountains. I will not be as active until January 12th as I will be spending my time trekking in the moutains and jungle, improving my (pityful) spanish and having a good time.

Kony hiding in Central African Republic

2008-12-22T08:54:00.003-05:00

That is the price country pays for having failed states as neighbors. As the pressure became too great on the LRA in Uganda, they fled to South Sudan. When the fighting became problematic there they established bases in Democratic Republic of the Congo. And now that the governments of South Sudan, DRC and Uganda has jointly attacked the LRA, they have moved further northwest to CAR. If the LRA had been operating in Germany or in Malaysia, they would have had no choice but to abdicate after the pressure got too high in their country; there were simply no weak neighbors keep on fighting.

The LRA claims its whole leadership survived last week's attack. This is not too surprising given their skills at avoiding military strikes in the past. But although the guerrilla is alive and well, there is no escaping the fact that it is on the run and it is getting farther and farther from Uganda. While it is not the optimal solution for Northern Uganda, the distance between them and Kony allow reconstruction to happen and a semblance of normal life to restart. Hopefully by the time (and if) the LRA comes back, Acholi communities and the Ugandan government will be resilient enough to withstand them. As for CAR, god bless them; the last thing they needed was yet another rebel group.

Quote of the day

2008-12-21T10:34:00.002-05:00

Tradition is the living faith of the dead, Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. -Jaroslav Pelikan

Via Jeremiah Jenne

Sunday morning humor

2008-12-21T09:34:00.002-05:00

Go see Razib's post on some funny investing books and their raving reviews. Among them:

"Dow 30,000 by 2008" Why It's Different This Time
Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bus - And How You Can Profit from It: How to Build Wealth in Today's Expanding Real Estate Market
The Rules for Growing Rich: Making Money in the New Information Economy (written of course at the peak of the dot.com bubble)

I guess every genius is misunderstood in its own time.

Failed abstersion?

2008-12-21T09:09:00.004-05:00

Iraq’s interior minister said all 24 of his officers who had been arrested in a security crackdown this week would be released. And in a bold gesture of defiance, he publicly condemned his own government’s investigation, calling the accusations false and motivated purely by politics. -NY Times

As Robert Farley said, the purge did not seem to work out exactly how Maliki seemed to have intended. Joe Klein says there are two ways to look at the situation:

Glass half full: The nascent Iraqi democracy is apparently supple enough to derail this attempt at anti-democratic mayhem.

Glass half empty: We are witnessing the return to Iraqi politics as usual--a constant succession of coups and attempted coups that will produce something less than a democracy in the not-too-distant future.

I'll go with the glass half empty. I think Maliki thought he could get away with the firing but his support was not strong enough at the present time. I do not think they were released out of respect for abstract democratic ideals; the reasons were doubtless much more pragmatic. In any case, the situation does not bode well for Maliki.

The changing Darfuris

2008-12-21T08:42:00.005-05:00

There is a fascinating article in the NY Times that describes the increasing power of youths in Darfur's camp. What I found interesting is how their years in the camp changed their perspective on life:

“Before, our desires were simple when it came to education, to culture — all we really thought about was farming,” said Adam Haroun Ahmed, 20, who arrived in the camp at 15. “The colonization, the oppression, all the brutal things done to us by the janjaweed caused us to change our views.”
When asked to describe his old village, his school friends jostling around him shouted down the idea. “It is something in the past, almost imaginary,” one yelled. Another chimed in, “It is so far from our reality that we don’t want to be there.” -Neil Macfarquhar

Before the conflict they were (mostly) uneducated farmers with very little understanding of the wider world. But the experience in the war and the camps, with its politicization and western based NGO education, has broadened their horizon. This new awareness is a bad sign for the sheiks and other traditional Darfuri power brokers. As the article shows, the newly politicized youths are now taking over power in the camps. It is also a cause for concern for Khartoum, as controlling Darfur was easier when the populace was by and large uneducated and predominantly under the control of local chieftains.

But as the article says, the youths have very high expectations:

Mr. Abdullah reeled off four prerequisites before the shabab in any camp would agree to negotiations between Darfur rebels and the government: disarming the government militias; prosecuting those responsible for war crimes, starting with Mr. Bashir; expelling anyone who settled on land stolen from the displaced farmers; and carrying out all United Nations Security Council resolutions on Darfur.

Just like in the Palestinian refugee camps, education and politicization bred extremism and unrealistic expectations. This recipe did not exactly bring lasting peace in Palestine, let us hope the results will be more suitable in Darfur.

Attempted coup on Maliki?

2008-12-18T14:28:00.003-05:00

It's being spun as a thwarted coup on Maliki but I don't buy it. It looks more like Maliki is trying to strengthen his control of the government by slowly removing opponents so that he can become the next Iraqi strongman. As I said after SOFA passed, now that the endgame is in sight we will see a power struggle for control of the country in the post American era. Maliki looks like he is doing pretty well for himself for now.

BAGHDAD — A senior spokesman at the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior confirmed publicly on Thursday that 23 of its officials had been arrested in recent days under suspicion of being affiliated with a banned political party related to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. The ministry, in a statement, also said the scope of the investigation was wider than originally reported, with officials in other security ministries also arrested.

(...)
According to senior security officials in Baghdad who revealed the arrests earlier this week, up to 35 officials in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior ranking as high as general have been detained this week.
The arrests, according to those officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, included at least three generals. The officials also said that the arrests had come at the hand of an elite counterterrorism force that reports directly to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. -NYTimes

He sure proved them wrong

2008-12-15T09:21:00.003-05:00

He might have been old, but he sure as hell was not cranky.

DAKAR (Reuters) - A 70-year-old man opened fire with his hunting rifle on a rap group at a concert in northeast Senegal at the weekend because he felt their song lyrics were insulting him, police and local media said on Monday.

Five young people were wounded in the shooting incident at Lobali village in the Matam region on Senegal's border with Mauritania, some 700 km (440 miles) from the capital Dakar.

The man told the rappers to stop when they started singing about a "cranky old man", and when they did not, he opened fire with his rifle, a local police officer said.

Civil War to restart in South Sudan?

2008-12-14T22:38:00.004-05:00

There has been clashes in the oil-rich Southern Sudanese town of Abyei between Sudanese government soldiers (who were violating ceasefire agreement by being in the city) and the Southern Sudanese police, causing several thousands people to flee. The Sudanese troops have withdrawn for now but this is a bad sign. Both factions want to control this oil-rich region; Khartoum is deriving most of its foreign currency from it and the Southern Sudanese government knows it can not win if the Sudanese government controls the oil fields. This might be the first step toward faltering of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005 in Sudan and a return to the civil war which gripped the country for over 40 years. If this is correct, this is one of the saddest news of 2008, even for a skeptic like me who never believed too much in the CPA (but I still had a bit hope).

In seemingly unrelated news, DR Congo, Uganda and Southern Sudan have attacked LRA positions over the past days, breaking the peace process. Kony (LRA's leader) did not agree to sign a peace deal because of the ICC warrant on his head, (although it might be because after decades in the bush, he can not envision living any other way) so the governments of the region decided to attempt to eliminate him instead in a coordinated strike. Although it might not look connected to Abyei, it is. If the civil war is reignited in Sudan, the LRA will once again get funding and help from Khartoum; they will be in a stronger position and more difficult to deal with, causing more violence and destruction. That is why I said it was very important to reach a peace deal with Kony before the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan fell apart.

Let's hope the region does not fall apart.

Whatever your opinion of Bush is...

2008-12-14T15:55:00.003-05:00

You have to admit the man is good at dodging shoes.

On an unrelated subject, normal posting will resume in a few days when the final exams period is over.

Quote of the Day: Realism vs Liberalism

2008-12-11T08:51:00.001-05:00

I think this is where the prospects for liberal/realist synthesis really come into view. At its best, realism isn’t just cynicism, it’s a recognition of the important reality that other countries have their own real and perceived interests and that effective US foreign policy needs to take that into account. And at its worst, the liberal humanitarian impulse becomes less about actually helping other than about appropriating vaguely high-minded rhetoric to mass an agenda of arrogance (see e.g., Max Boot’s paen to the virtues of imperialism). Productive synthesis between this impulses can be a guide to good policy, and the useful corrective in both cases is empathy — the idea that others’ point of view should be taken seriously. -Mathew Yglesias

Majority for Charest

2008-12-08T23:08:00.003-05:00

Charest won a majority government tonight with a few seats more than the 63 he needed. Parti Québécois did much better than expected with around 51 seats, which will be seen as a victory for Marois. The ADQ has dropped to 17% with 7 seats and Dumont announced that he will step down in a few months and quit politics. Amir Khadir from Québec Solidaire won a seat so the velvet left will have a voice at the National Assembly, which will be highly entertaining.

I do not have much time to blog these days as I have several finals in the next week and a half and I am sick. Posting will be light in the coming days.

How not to solve the piracy problem

2008-12-06T11:52:00.003-05:00

There was some semblance of law and order in 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union, loosely linked with Al Qaeda, took over much of the country and imposed Shariah law. Though there were cruel tradeoffs, the Islamists virtually eradicated piracy. (The crime was a capital offense punishable by beheading.)

When Ethiopian forces, supported by the United States, replaced the Islamists with an ineffective transitional government in 2006, piracy returned with an intensity not seen since the 17th century.
It is evident that no nation can impose its will on Somalia; the colonial British and Italians learned the hard way. And certainly no nation can force Somalis to stop the best business in town. But if the West really hopes to eliminate the scourge of piracy in these strategic shipping lanes, then it should consider involving the courts union, the only entity that has proved it could govern the country, and its militant wing, Al Shabaab, in a new government. -John Burnett

John Burnett appears to be totally clueless about recent Somalia history; I wonder how he could get this article published in the New York Times. The ICU did not eradicate piracy, it was simply never as much of a problem as it is now. They did outlaw it, but the fact is the ICU never had any authority over the area where most of piracy comes from: Puntland. Here is a map that shows that maximum extent of ICU power (dark green). As you can see the Islamic Courts never controlled more than half of the country because, like the Transitional Government, it was an organization that was based mostly on clan affiliation and was thus opposed by the other clans. In this regard it is very similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, who drew their support from Pashtuns despite their Islamic rhetoric, except that the Taliban actually controlled the vast majority of the country when the USA invaded. There is nothing that could lead us to believe that the ICU could control all of Somalia. Even if they did, I do not see how you could argue for support of a movement that stone to death teenage girls for being raped (while not punishing the rapists) for the purpose of saving a few tens of millions to shipping companies; the fact is that piracy is not a huge problem, it is a nuisance that can be controlled.

Israeli pogrom

2008-12-06T11:13:00.002-05:00

An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All of
them women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn't a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in the house. The women cry for help, "Allahu Akhbar." Yet the neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events unfolding there. -Avi Issacharoff

I am generally more sympathetic to the Israeli point of view than the average western liberal, but there is simply no way to defend such behavior. Webster dictionary defines terrorism as "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion" and that is exactly what those settlers are doing.

Not the smartest fish in the pond

2008-12-06T11:07:00.004-05:00

Sometimes, it is better not to say anything at all.

The insurgents were invisible, hidden behind the thick mud walls of the compounds, their rifles poking through narrow slits.
“Small arms have no effect on the walls, and that’s what we were carrying,” Colonel Baluch said. “We did not know where to fire back.”
The attack came from three directions, but the guerrillas made a mistake.
“When they shouted, ‘God is great,’ it was helpful to us,” Colonel Baluch said. The voices gave away their location. -NYTimes (Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah)

Québec poll: Charest surging ahead three days before election

2008-12-05T07:07:00.006-05:00

With three days left before the election, this new CROP-La Presse poll has some very good news for Jean Charest. Results:

PLQ (Jean Charest): 45%
PQ (Pauline Marois): 29%
ADQ (Mario Dumont ): 15%

The Liberals have not moved since the last poll whereas the Parti Québécois dropped by 3 points and the ADQ increased its percentage by 3. These results would give a comfortable majority for Jean Charest. The Liberals are a mere one point behind the PQ (35% vs 36%) among french voters, an increase of two points since last poll; although unnecessary, a win among francophone would be a moral victory for Jean Charest.

The PQ is getting an astounding 8% less than the percentage of people who claim to be independentist, although it is unclear why those people are not voting for them (expect the hardliners to use this statistics as an argument in internal party fights after Monday). Mario Dumont is also heading toward disaster, with 15% he will get a few deputies at best and lose his standing as an official party. With three days left before the election, it is hard to see how the opposition parties could turn things around. It looks like Jean Charest will remain in power for at least four more years.

Quote of the Day II: Harper

2008-12-04T18:37:00.002-05:00

This is finals period so I do not have as much time as I would like to write, so I'll quote. Here is Jeff Jedras summing up my opinion of what Harper has done the past few weeks:

But I’ve digressed. I don’t blame Jean. I blame Harper. He put the Governor-General in this position, and now a very dangerous precedent has been set: illegitimate governments that have lost the support of the people’s representatives can govern with impunity, fleeing parliament at will to avoid accountability. Mark my words: Conservatives, and all Canadians, will come to regret the precedent set here today.

What we have today, however, is an illegitimate government that has lost the moral authority to govern. As El Presidente would say, Let Me Be Clear. Stephen Harper has lost the confidence of the House. You know it, I know it, he knows it. It is a fundamental tenant of our system of parliamentary democracy that, to be Prime Minister, you must command the confidence of the House. And he does not. That is abundantly clear.

Harper may go on to govern for many years. And he may even do some good things, anything is possible. But his scorched Earth, nuclear war campaign to maintain his tenuous grip on power has besmirched and weakened the very institutions he claims to be fighting to protect.

He has stoked the fires of Western alienation by exploiting the legitimate concerns of Western Canadians for his narrow political ends.

He has stoked the fires of Quebec nationalism with his narrow-minded attacks on the Bloc Quebecois, a party that draws broad support from Quebecers not for its pro-sovereignty policy, but for its pro-Quebec policy.

He has exploited the lack of understanding many Canadians have of our parliamentary system to portray opposition parties representing the majority of the population exercising legitimate mechanisms available to them under our system of government as undertaking acts of treason that constitute a coup, thereby weakening the confidence and respect the public has in its system of government. That’s very dangerous.

And he compounded the danger by putting the Governor-General in the untenable position of having to make a decision he should never have asked her to make, further weakening our system of governance. It was only his blinding ambition and lack of respect for democracy that but her in this bind, and his inability to do the right thing.

Harper gets his prorogation

2008-12-04T11:40:00.003-05:00

According to Radio-Canada, all the hints seem to indicate that Harper got what he wanted. He has been talking with Michaelle Jean for more than two hours now and he should be giving a speech shortly.

Update: confirmed

Harper and Québec

2008-12-04T11:05:00.004-05:00

Harper has attempted to demonize the Bloc Québécois following the formation of the LPC/NPD/BQ coalition. I never voted for BQ or Parti Québécois, but the idea that their mere presence in a coalition is used as an argument against the coalition has greatly angered me (and pretty much every Québécois I have talked to). If Québec is to be a part of Canada, Québécois have every right to influence the direction that the country takes; if you attack the coalition on the basis of the support of the Bloc, you question whether or not Québécois should have a right to influence the country. This is low level demagoguery. The Bloc is not some kind of disreputable organization or a mafia; it is a political party playing by the rules of the Canadian Parliamentary system. If you are not happy, blame the system and not those who follow the rules.

Harper has destroyed in a few days all his efforts to build support for the CPC in Québec.

Quote of the Day: Economy

2008-12-04T09:18:00.001-05:00

So here’s what I’m wondering: will it, in fact, even be possible to pull the economy out of its nosedive before unemployment goes into double digits? I’m starting to wonder. -Paul Krugman

Quotes of the Day: Foreign policy

2008-12-03T21:01:00.002-05:00

The drive for radical change everywhere else–this is a broader, but more accurate, description of what I was trying to say when I referred to pro-invasion arguments that took for granted that “our government essentially has the right to shape and dominate the politics of other parts of the world and to use force to quash resistance to its efforts.” We seek this radical change partly because we do not really understand the world and want to make it more like ourselves, and partly because it gives us an occasion to celebrate ourselves. Both are ultimately a function of pride, but this is then formalized into an entire mythology, capped off by tales of the importance of Pax Americana. The war in Iraq has been a particularly blunt, cruel application of this pursuit of radical change, but it is the pursuit of such change that led Wilson to send our men into the slaughterhouse of WWI, inspired the creation of the Great Society on the Mekong and which has propelled the Second Inaugural’s ideas of American-led global democratic revolution. Obama referred to the “mindset that led to war” in his early primary speeches on Iraq. That mindset is that the world is ours to do with as we please, and anyone who says differently is aligned with malign forces that wish us ill. This radical change is necessarily violent and aimed at the destruction or dramatic reorganization of other polities. Boundaries will be redrawn as we wish (e.g., Kosovo), regimes will be overthrown, and foreign populations will be thrown into upheaval, and it will be an article of faith that everyone affected (except perhaps the dead) are better off. The striking thing is that this is considered to be well within the bounds of normal, respectable, sane discourse, and critiques of these views are considered to be ramblings of a wild and woolly-minded fringe. -Daniel Larison

And:

This is going to necessarily depend a lot on perspective, of course, but I think a huge amount of our foreign policy vision is predicated on assumptions that are radical; our people, meanwhile, don't understand their radicalism. Anyone who has considered our foreign policy aloud in various online fora will be aware that the idea that the United States can act with impunity in any country, at any time, for any reason, ever, is one that is held by many people. And it's not even as if this is some dearly-held belief that people defend rabidly; no, it slides by as though it needs no defense. It's just the baseline assumption for many Americans who don't traffic in foreign policy debate. -Freddie

PAD saved face, but did they win the battle?

2008-12-03T14:22:00.003-05:00

Correspondents say the airport blockade was becoming increasingly unpopular, so that Tuesday's court ruling against Mr Somchai offered a face-saving moment for the protesters to back down. -BBC

This was my opinion yesterday when I read the news. People's Alliance for Democracy protested for months for what? They destabilized the elected government and forced the removal of two Prime Minister (once in September and the last one yesterday when the court forced Mr Somchai to back down). But considering that the ruling party is just a front for Thaksin Shinawatra and that they will simply name another placeholder as PM, it can hardly be spun as a big win.

If you also take into account the fact that Thaksin was ousted in a coup two years ago by a military friendly to PAD's interests and that his party is back in power (under another name), as well as the fact that they withstood the opposition's heavy handed attempt to topple the party (and convinced the army not to do another coup), you can see where the wind is blowing. Soon enough Thaksin will attempt to come back in the country and this time it will be much harder for PAD to convince businessmen to support their protests; the odds are that they, along with the military, will realize that the alternative to a Thaksin return, something I'd called the Burma junta route, would be unacceptable.

Thaksin showed everyone that he can not be sidestepped, he's the big winner in all this. The losers are Thai people and PAD.

Text-message surgery

2008-12-03T13:57:00.006-05:00

Here is a story that combines my med school geekiness with international politics (sort of):

A British doctor volunteering in DR Congo used text message instructions from a colleague to perform a life-saving amputation on a boy.

Vascular surgeon David Nott helped the 16-year-old while working 24-hour shifts with medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Rutshuru.
The boy's left arm had been ripped off and was badly infected and gangrenous.
Mr Nott, 52, from London, had never performed the operation but followed instructions from a colleague who had.
(...)
There were just 6in (15cm) of the boy's arm remaining, much of the surrounding muscle had died and there was little skin to fold over the wound.
Mr Nott knew he needed to perform a forequarter amputation, requiring removal of the collar bone and shoulder blade.
He contacted Professor Meirion Thomas, from London's Royal Marsden Hospital, who had performed the operation before.
"I texted him and he texted back step by step instructions on how to do it," he said.

The operation he did, a forequarter amputation, would be considered a challenge by any surgeon, even in a world-class institution. That Dr Nott was able to do it for the first time with very little back up and text message instructions is amazing (although he is a vascular surgeon, so this is exactly the type of surgery he is used to do, but still). The operation is tricky because you have to remove the scapula and a portion of the clavicle in addition to the limb; this means you have to cut the thorax and avoid some of the body's most important blood vessels while you cut almost all the major muscles of the upper back and chest, remove the scapula and cut the clavicle. The boy is alive and well, a few weeks after the surgery. Had the surgeon not performed the operation, there is no doubt that the boy would be dead now.

But this amazing story is another reminder of the continuing violence in DR Congo. Humanitarian aid and highly technical and difficult operations might do good, but what the region truly need is a real political solution.

Mumbai vs Bombay

2008-12-03T12:57:00.003-05:00

Andrew Sullivan quotes a Christopher Hitchens article in Slate that claims we should name Mumbai Bombay because Mumbai is a new name "forcibly" imposed by Hindu fundamentalists based on the name of a Hindu goddess. But as Larison remarks, the name Mumbai has been in use in the region for centuries by speakers of Marathi (and a slightly different prononciation in Gujarati, although the Hindi prononciation (Bambai) is closer to the former name). The prononciation Bombay comes from an anglicized version of the Portugese version of the name of the place; it is by no mean the "original" name of the place but merely an approximation made by eurocentric European merchants and soldiers.

But even if the name had been imposed by Hindu fundamentalists for religious reasons, I do not see why I should favor the colonial name over it. While I dislike religious fundamentalism as much as Hitchens, I have trouble seeing how a colonial name is inherently superior over a religious based name.

Thailand a role model for China's middle class?

2008-12-03T12:43:00.005-05:00

Remember all those theories about how the emergence of an urban middle-classes is a force for democratisation, because the bourgeoise will demand political rights? Well, in Thailand the precise opposite is happening. The urban middle-classes are rising up and demanding that democracy be rescinded.

(...)

The middle-class backers of the PAD hate the fact that under universal suffrage, the votes of the rural poor in the north of Thailand are usually decisive. They see this as a formula for corruption and pork-barrel politics. Hence, their desire to roll back democracy.
The implications for China are fascinating. There too the urban middle-class seem to be emerging as a conservative force, suspicious of democracy and the peasant power that it might unleash. -Gideon Rachman

I mentioned this last week when I was that PAD was basically protesting against democracy to ensure they take power, but I did not see the implications for China. Very interesting comment.

Via Andrew Sullivan

Good news of the day: Georgia and Ukraine

2008-12-03T12:28:00.002-05:00

Nato has reaffirmed that Ukraine and Georgia will eventually join the alliance, without offering them formal roadmaps towards membership.
Instead, Nato foreign ministers meeting in Brussels said the two nations should pursue reforms needed to join the bloc, without giving any timetable for entry. -BBC

Last week, Rice attempted to make a final push to force NATO to accept Georgia and Ukraine before Bush steps down. I did not think she would succeed and thankfully, she did not. It seems European countries have a better understanding of the danger of accepting nations lead by unstable and unpredictable leaders bent on confronting Russia.

Obama also claims to back Georgia and Ukraine entry in the alliance, but at least we know that Bush did not manage to make it happen in his last months. We will have to wait and see what Obama does once in power, but we can sleep safe for a few months.

How to deal with Pakistan following Mumbai

2008-12-03T11:20:00.006-05:00

It is slightly depressing, yet totally foreseeable, to see the reactions following the terrorist attacks on Mumbai. It seems that everyone follow the script: the BJP talks tough, the Congress tries to look tough with Pakistan, Pakistan tries to appease India while Indians put all the blame on Pakistan. Those reactions are normal given the history of the region, it seems things have not changed much since the debate between Jinnah and Gandhi.

But an interesting aspect is that the reactions have been fairly muted until now; there is no trouble in Kashmir, there have been no violent riots in India and Pakistan is trying to be helpful. While nationalist tendencies push both countries to follow the usual route, it seems both governments try to keep the lid on the boiling cauldron. I find this an encouraging sign. This event could end up being important for the region because it might make the civilian government and the army in Islamabad realize that they are once again losing control of their country and their foreign policy.

When I heard that Obama was planning to spend energy trying to solve the Kashmir crisis, I said it was a dangerous waste of time. It was not because I did not believe that settling the Kashmir issue was worthwhile, it was because I did not believe it was possible under the current circumstance; largely because there is no consensus that could be achieved which would have widespread support in both nations and that the governments (especially Pakistan) have no control over actors that could easily spoil negotiations. This is exactly what happened in Mumbai. While the specific of the attacks could not be predicted, anyone could have predicted that third parties would try something similar and what would be the reactions.

So what is the solution? Like I said before the attacks, Obama should drop his Kashmir plans. They were unrealistic before the attacks and they look like daydreaming now. But I think he should attempt to spin recent events in Islamabad in a way that could benefit the region and the US. The argument would be that those attacks, as well as the recent Islamabad Marriot bombing show that the strategy of using armed groups to achieve political objectives might be good in the short term but ultimately lead to a loss of control over the country. I agree with Juan Cole that the attacks are more than likely a splinter group of a Kashmiri mujaheddin organization. To the government this means that they have their hands tied, they can not move the country in a direction if the third party groups they funded in the past disagree.

Zardari would be obviously in agreement with this, but the goal would be to bring the army to agree. Zardari is took weak to take on the ISI and the now largely independent Islamists, but with the army on board he might be able to turn things around. The problem is that since General Zia's coup in 1977, the army has been packed with fundamentalists; but even if they might be sympathetic to the aims of Islamists, their interests lie with the state (they are the state's strongest institution after all).

So what is my solution? Drop the ridiculous attempts at peace with Kashmir and attempt to convince state actors that clamping down on non-state organizations is in their interests. No durable peace will be achieved unless the Pakistani state can regain the control it once had, and the attacks of the last years (Bhutto, Marriot, Mumbai) might begin to make people in power realize that they need to take action for their own good (and not to please some hated distant US).

Quote of the Day: Lessons of Iraq

2008-12-02T19:13:00.000-05:00

My own (provisional) view is that the Iraq War tells us a great deal about the limits/costs of using large-scale military force in situations where the stakes are vastly higher for our opponents than for ourselves, a great deal about America's ability, or lack thereof, to transform dysfunctional societies through occupation, a fair amount about the limits of pro-democracy sentiment as a north star for policymaking, and a fair amount about the limits of American power, period. I think it tells us less than many liberals and conservatives think about the particular incompetence of Bush's war cabinet (though clearly it tells us something on that score!), less than many liberals (and some realists) think about the importance of international organizations and their utility for crisis management in high-stakes situations, and less than many progressives and paleoconservatives think about whether the U.S. should radically scale down its involvement in Middle Eastern politics, and more broadly abandon its informal-empire commitments around the world. -Ross Douthat

Iraq post American occupation

2008-12-02T18:56:00.003-05:00

From Michael Totten in Commentary:

Many American soldiers agree. “Everyone says things will implode after we leave,” Lieutenant Eric Kuylman told me. “They’ll blame it on politics and religion, but it’s not going to be any of that. It’s going to be about straight power. It’s going to be guys trying to one-up each other. It’s going to be key people in cities just like this who will want to seize the power gaps. It’s going to break down along tribal lines and these militias that we’ve put in place. When we pull out, there will be power vacuums. There will be pockets of people that we’ve put in power. I mean, everybody already has shaky alliances as it is. So what you’re going to see is the straight seizing of power. People are going to try to put their own tags on it, but it’s just about the seizure of power. It’s not going to be Sunni or Shia, nothing like it. It’s just going to be men who want control.”

I mostly agree with this. There will be more violence following USA withdrawal from Iraq because there will be power vacuums in a country overflowing with armed men used to settle conflicts with violence (because of their experiences of the last 5 years of course, not because they are inherently violent). But this does not mean that long term instability will follow; in my opinion, the odds that it goes the Somalia route are low, the internal stability in Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon (if you discount war against external enemies) is a more likely route. Why? Because unlike the Southern Vietnamese government, Maliki wants the US gone. It means he is fairly confident he can retain power even if they leave within a few years. It was Sadr and the Sunnis who were more uneasy about withdrawal; they are probably less confident in their abilities. As Totten writes at the end of the article:

He thinks Iraq will be okay, even so. The Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police are still shaky institutions at best, but they are much more competent than they were a few years ago. The Iraqi Army proved itself earlier this year, against nearly all expectations, when it took back areas under the control of Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in Basra and Sadr City with only a limited amount of help from Americans.

Things might go as planned, but if Maliki plays his cards right he will probably be able to fill the power vacuum.

Via Andrew Sullivan

How to end a war

2008-12-02T13:32:00.002-05:00

Somehow, I do not see too many people rushing to imitate their method:

WOMEN in Papua New Guinea's Highland region are killing their male babies to end a tribal war that has gone on for more than 20 years.

Two women from the Eastern Highlands spoke of the slaughter to PNG's National newspaper during a three-day peace and reconciliation course in the region's capital of Goroka.

Rona Luke and Kipiyona Belas, from two warring tribes, said male infanticide reduced the cyclical payback violence infamous in Highlands tribal fights.

If women stopped producing males, their tribe's stock would go down and this would force the men to end their fight, the women said.

"All the womenfolk agreed to have all babies born killed because they have had enough of men engaging in tribal conflicts and bringing misery to them," Ms Luke said.

Via Dorothy King

Thailand PM steps down and protests called off

2008-12-02T07:12:00.004-05:00

The constitutional court ordered Mr Somchai, the Prime Minister, to back down (at least temporarily) and to disband his party and his allies. This is the second time in less than a year that a Prime Minister from the PPP, the party allied with Thaksin Shinawatra, has been forced to resign by the court. In return, the protesters have agreed to leave the airport.

So the currents crisis seems to be calming down but it did not solve any issue and it is unclear who will run the country now and violence is still a very likely possibility. Thaksin and his allies remain as popular as ever and whoever he backs will probably get elected in the next elections, the protesters did not get more than tacit support from the army and did not manage to get the changes they wanted to remain a force in Thai politics (that is a non-representative voting system). So all in all it is hard to see who "won" in the troubles of the last few months, we will have to see how things pan out in the next few days, but I'd have to vote for Thaksin and his friends as the "winners".

RIP Harper?

2008-12-01T12:32:00.004-05:00

Josée Legault believes that Harper's political career is over, even if he manages to survive the next confidence vote. I admit his star appears to be falling; he did not manage to score a majority government despite the Liberal Party being at an historic low, he ran a bad campaign and now he has shown that his political instincts might not be all that great. And it appears that more and more people are realizing that he is indeed a right wing ideologue despite all his attempts to change his image: cuts on culture funding, attack on women's right, no stimulus for the economy, suspension of the right to strike for government employee and his attempt to cut party funding, etc.

I would not count him out just yet, but I would not be surprised if he was kicked as a leader; and I am fairly certain the CPC will never win an election if they keep Harper against a LPC with a new leader.

Prescription heroin legal in Switzerland

2008-12-01T12:09:00.003-05:00

Very interesting development for those who favor attempting to find alternative solutions to the current drug prohibition: Swiss voters have voted in a referendum for allowing doctors to prescribe heroin for addicts in order to ensure clean conditions and close medical/psychiatric follow-up. The War on Drug has been largely a failure; the prices of drugs has fallen in the past decades, the quality has gone up and the availability has increased. Yet as Fester notes, we make others pay the price:

I believe that the maintenance of a very large, cash driven and profitable black market in narcotics destabilizes numerous nation states, including our own, decreases legitimacy and increases net disorder. Mexico is currently engaged in multiple narco-insurgencies as smuggling and production cartels are carving out sections of Mexico and creating effectively stateless zones that abut our borders. Reducing the black market cash flows will weaken these cartels as well as weaken the Taliban and other non-state actors that protect opium production.

Changing such a situation is not easy because the social consequences of decriminalization are largely unknown so politicians understandably do not want to spend political capital trying to push this idea, which is why it will be important to watch the results of this program.

The crisis in Ottawa helps Charest

2008-12-01T10:52:00.003-05:00

The crisis in Ottawa is the thing everyone is talking about right now in the political world; even with provincial elections a mere week away. This is good news for Charest because since he has been leading overwhelmingly in the polls, it gives less of a chance for the other parties to catch up and also because he can point to Ottawa as an example of why a minority government is not a good idea. For Charest, no provincial news is good news.

Update: An alternative view would be that the current crisis shows that a minority government is good because it allows other parties to prevent the government from doing whatever they want and that if Charest has a majority he will become "arrogant" like in 2003 whereas if it is a minority he will have to play nice as he has done since 2007. That might work to some extent, although I think the fear of an "unleashed" Charest is much much weaker than the fear of a despotic Harper among Québécois.

Oui nous pouvons!

2008-12-01T10:42:00.005-05:00

These posters were not made by Sarkozy. They're still pretty funny.

Thailand update 01/12/08

2008-12-01T10:25:00.002-05:00

Things are moving slowly in Thailand, and it seems things are looking brighter for the government. As I said Friday, I think the protesters overplayed their hand by occupying the airport; they lost the support of the business community by effectively strangulating the economy. The police has been blockading the protesters at the airport by occupying checkpoints, but they have not dared to forcibly remove the protesters. The government probably fears that if there is blood while they remove the protesters, the army will use this as an excuse to take the side of PAD. So they attempt to deal with the situation as smoothly as possible. The army has refused to get involved up until now, even though it is well known that they support PAD.

The protesters are still occupying the two airports but they are leaving government offices they had taken months ago to concentrate on the airports, which is a sign that they are stretched thin. They have struck a deal with the government to allow some flights and also alternative airports are being used all over Thailand; so people can fly in and out now. But the image of Thailand is taking a hit and every day that the airport protests continue, more tourists will cancel their trip or go elsewhere; so the business community will probably be forced to side with the government even if they do not like them. The protesters last chance is to force the hand of the army to get involved and they will do so by attempting to play martyr.

Lord's Resistance Army refuses to sign peace because of ICC

2008-12-01T07:15:00.004-05:00

Kony, the reclusive leader from one of the worst guerrilla group in the world, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) of Northern Uganda, has refused to sign a peace deal this weekend that he was apparently supposed to sign. "Kony says he will not sign until the issue of the ICC (International Criminal Court) is resolved, until the deferrals are made," according to Riek Machar, the vice president of South Sudan. The ICC issue is that Kony has been indicted for war crimes at the international court and it has proven to be a problem because the bureaucrats at The Hague refuse to negotiate. For them no deal is possible because Kony is a war criminal and should be brought to justice.

The LRA is one of the world's deadliest rebel groups. It has been in the field for over 20 years, mainly in Northern Uganda but also with bases in DR Congo and Southern Sudan. They have a reputation for being very dangerous and unpredictable, for raping entire villages and for forcing child to kill their family so that they can not go back in their villages before enrolling them as child soldiers. They have displaced over two millions people and killed several thousands.

So Kony IS a war criminal, there is no doubt about that. But the issue here is realism vs justice. Those who thinks western conception of justice should be imposed all over the world no matter the costs will applaud the ICC's attitude with the LRA. They think the population in the region will suffer greatly but it is all for the greater good of mankind. The logic being that when other rebel leaders see they can not escape ICC indictment, they will stop doing war crimes and the planet will be a better place (criminal law has not exactly stopped people in the west from doing crimes although it has probably reduced the number). These are very noble intentions.

But the other side of the argument is that the LRA, the Ugandan government, the Southern Sudan government and the people directly involved by the rebellion (Acholi in Northern Uganda being the main group) desperately want peace. The guerrilla has been operating for 20 years, making normal life totally impossible in the region, even though the rest of the country has been happy, prosperous and stable for that timeframe, growing at 6% a year. The people merely want to be able to lead normal lives and for this, they are ready to forgive Kony. Kony has repeatedly said over the past two years that he is ready for peace and that he wants a place to retire, but it is impossible because of the ICC warrants. Since the ICC has no power to arrest Kony and destroy the LRA, all this does is force the conflict to continue even though all parties involved wants it to end. In other words, the bureaucrats from The Hague have decided to make the people from this region continue to suffer for an untold number of years for their abstract conception of justice. The window for peace might be closing as the CPA elections and referendum in Sudan might reignite the civil war. If it restarts, Kony will most certainly receive heavy backing from Khartoum as he did before, and might not be amenable for negotiations for years to come.

This story has gone mostly unreported in the western world because Africans suffering and dying apparently does not make for an interesting news story. But I hope that at least the men and women working at the ICC realizes the cost they are asking the poorest people in the world to bear for their vision of justice. I hope they have trouble sleeping at night sometimes, because the people of Northern Uganda have been having nightmares for more than 20 years.

Deal reached between the Liberals and NDP

2008-11-30T22:32:00.002-05:00

That is interesting. I really did not see it coming at all. PM Dion... It will take time to get used to that if it does end up happening.

It seems that Harper opened a Pandora's box with his economic package. He might back down but it looks more and more that the opposition smelled blood and they are going for the kill no matter what. There is still plenty of time for another breakthrough though, so Harper is not out yet.

What an unexpected turn of events.

Via CalgaryGrit

The root cause of the financial crisis

2008-11-30T12:36:00.002-05:00

al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has the answer:

The American economy was afflicted by a downturn and loss of investor confidence in the market following the events of Sept. 11," he said.... Zawahri then called on the American people to "embrace Islam to live a life free of greed, exploitation and forbidden wealth.

I think al-Qaeda is getting desperate or its some form of twisted humor, I'm not sure which.

Hat tip: Steve Benen

Harper takes a week

2008-11-29T08:44:00.002-05:00

To find an alternative solution to the fall of his government. The vote will be held on December 8th now. There are talks of a coalition government under Dion, although everything is a bit unclear now. PM Dion... Who would've thought.

Friday Thailand update

2008-11-28T10:00:00.004-05:00

The crisis continues. The cabinet, currently meeting in the northern city of Chang Mai, has called an emergency situation at the two Bangkok airport and told the protesters to go away. The police has surrounded the airports but have not yet tried to forcibly remove them yet. Today the Prime Minister, Mr Somchai, dismissed the head of police and replaced him. The reasons are unclear but more than likely he did not want to follow orders from Chang Mai.

The BBC claims the Prime Minister has lost the confidence of the army chief, General Anupong Paochinda, but the implications are not clear. Many are talking about a potential coup, but the question I asked yesterday remains: if the army wanted to do another coup, why didn't they do it when Mr Somchai was out of the country earlier this week? Now they are in a tough situation because the government is in the north where they have widespread support. Deposing the government in that situation would be risky and the end result highly unpredictable.

But the longer the airport remains occupied, the more the business community will turn against the prosters. From the BBC:

Correspondents say the airport protesters appear increasingly isolated and are losing the support of their traditional sympathisers, the business elite.
The airport closure will cost the country around $4bn (£2.6bn) in lost business and cause serious damage to its reputation as a tourist destination, something which will take the country years to recover from, say analysts.

I think the protesters might have overplayed their hand here. By blocking the airports they are cutting the lifeline to tens of thousands of people who rely on it for business. Their financial interests force them to side with the government now even if their hearts might be with the protesters. The other option would be a military coup but it would be more risky as pro-government counter protests could continue to disrupt the economy or force a bloody repression that would ruin Thailand's image as a tourist destination for years.

My reading of the situation is that the government will end up winning and the PAD protesters will be dispersed.

Crisis in Ottawa?

2008-11-28T09:23:00.002-05:00

It appears that the minority Conservatives government might fall, a mere few weeks after gaining power. The three opposition parties find Thursday's economic package "unacceptable" and they are talking about voting it down and forming a minority coalition government. It seems the Liberals do not want to have a government under Dion and the rumor is that the Liberal caucus would more than likely vote Mr Ignatieff to lead the coalition government even though he has not yet won the leadership race. If you can read french, I suggest you read Chantal Hébert's blog for the best update on this situation. Here are her two latest posts which sums up the situation. I think it is time that I dust up my knowledge of the Canadian Constitution and Canadian federal political history because I'll admit it is not my area of expertise and the situation just got suddenly really interesting for the first time in (my) living memory.

Today in the World: South Africa

2008-11-27T19:24:00.003-05:00

South Africa will continue to manage its economy with restraint after next year's elections, despite pressure from leftist allies seeking to adopt more expansionary policies, ruling ANC leader Jacob Zuma said.
Zuma, who is likely to become president after the elections, told the American Chamber of Business late on Wednesday that the government would maintain the policies that had spurred a decade of strong growth and prepared the country well for the choppy economic waters ahead.

"We are proud of the fiscal discipline, sound macro-economic management and general manner in which the economy has been managed. That calls for continuity," he said in a copy of his speech. -Reuters

Why should you care about that? There are important divisions in the ANC, which is normal considering it was an umbrella organisation whose sole purpose had been to end the Apartheid and full equality for blacks. Divisions on other subjects did not matter when they were out of power, but ever since 1994 they have been the ruling party they have taken a growing importance. Mandela and his successor Mbeki decided to run South Africa in a pragmatic and business friendly way which did not please the leftists and the communists inside the party. They have managed to achieve good economic growth, but poverty remains rampant. The left wing and the communist in the party did not leave it to form another party, they stuck around and complained bitterly.

Zuma associated himself with this wing of the party, who successfully forced Mbeki to resign recently. There will be elections in 2009 and Zuma is widely expected to win. But after Mbeki resigned there was a split in the ANC with pro-Mbeki ministers defecting to form a new party. There was fear that the whole Mbeki faction and all the business interests that supports it would follow the split group, who is supposed to meet in a Congress in December. In this case it could have forced the first real electoral battle in South Africa since the end of Apartheid. But Zuma just said clearly that he will not change the way the economy is managed. Everything will stay the same. The odds are, the business community will stick with the ANC and support Zuma after what he has said.

The ones who seems to be the losers here are the leftist groups and the communists inside the ANC; they fought tooths and nails internally for years to have their voice heard and they managed to force Mbeki to resign through some internal infighting. The goal was supposed to put a lefties-friendly Zuma in power and instead they got a business-friendly Zuma. They will not be happy.

But it has to be said, the economy under Mbeki and Mandela has been doing quite good with solid growth, and it seems strong enough to withstand the current international crisis without too much problems. And the economic growth has not benefited only the very wealthy, it has created a brand new black middle class. But of course, wealth does not appears overnight and there is still widespread poverty left. Growth takes times, just look at China: even with 10% growth for decades it is still mostly poor even though it appears to be on the way to go the Taiwan/South Korea/Malaysia route in 2-3 decades.

The resilience of India

2008-11-27T14:47:00.002-05:00

Here is Joshui Brustein quoting Suketu Mehta's book:

The writer Suketu Mehta captured brilliantly the dogged, resilient compassion of Mumbai in his book “Maximum City: Mumbai Lost and Found.”

In remarks he has given based on the book, he spoke of asking a man named Asad bin Saif, who worked at an institute for secularism, whether the chaos and slums and filth made him pessimistic about human beings. Here is how Mr. Mehta continued the story:

“Not at all,” he responded. “Look at the hands from the trains.”
If you are late for work in the morning in Bombay, and you reach the station just as the train is leaving the platform, you can run up to the packed compartments and you will find many hands stretching out to grab you on board, unfolding outwards from the train like petals. As you run alongside the train, you will be picked up and some tiny space will be made for your feet on the edge of the compartment. The rest is up to you; you will probably have to hang on with your fingertips on
the door frame, being careful not to lean out too far lest you get decapitated by a pole placed too close to the tracks. But consider what has happened: your fellow-passengers, already packed tighter than cattle are legally allowed to be, their shirts already drenched in sweat in the badly ventilated compartment, having stood like this for hours, retain an empathy for you, know that your boss might yell at you or cut your pay if you miss this train, and will make space where none exists to take one more person with them. And at the moment of contact, they do not know if the hand that is reaching for theirs belongs to a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Brahmin or untouchable, or whether you were born in this city or arrived only this morning, or whether you live in Malabar Hill or Jogeshwari, whether you’re from Bombay or Mumbai or New York. All they know is that you’re trying to get to work in the city of gold, and that’s enough. Come on board, they say. We’ll adjust.

That quote comes from Suketu Mehta's amazing book on India called Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. Incidentally, I bought my copy from a street merchant a few blocks away from the Taj Mahal hotel. It is an investigation of Mumbai full of insights on the city and its inhabitants; from the glamour of the Taj and Bollywood to the prostitution in the ghettos to poor Bihari migrants trying to make it big to Shiv sena leaders and much more. I suggest you read it if you want an insight in today's India.

I want to echo Ross's post on the incredible resilience of India's society, because it is an important point. India has been suffering from an incredible number of terrorist attacks in recent years. 2300 people were killed in 2007, making India the country most affected by terrorism in the world, and it was not an exceptional year by India's standards. There has been several attacks this year, including a few with more than 100 casualties. Mumbai itself has been attacked six times since 1993, the last time being a mere two years ago which ended up killing more than 200 people.

Today's attack is not an isolated incident, it could not even be accurately described as an escalation (at least not in human terms, maybe in symbolism). Yet India's society is still holding strong. They have a Sikh Prime Minister who was largely elected by Hindus, about two decades after rebel Sikhs attempted to carve an independent state out of Punjab and Indira Gandhi's murder at the hands of her Sikh bodyguard (when she was Prime Minister). There are some Hindu extremists trying to rouse anti-Muslim sentiments, and they have been successful in certain instances. But most of the time, even in Hindutva organizations, pragmatism and relative moderation rules. And during the past decades, in the environment I just described, India has thrived. Try imagining any western country under these circumstances. Do you think we would react as wisely as India? I think asking the question is answering it.

Quote of the day: The Taj Mahal hotel

2008-11-27T14:25:00.004-05:00

But for one thing: The Four Seasons and the Waldorf-Astoria could never claim the pivotal role in New York life that the Taj could claim in Mumbai.

It is not another Hilton or Sheraton in another Asian city. Its cash cow may be foreign guests, but it is equally a fixture of local Mumbai life, the aorta through which anything glamorous, sentimental, confidential or profitable passes in the city.

(...)

Legend has it that Jamsetji Tata, a nineteenth-century industrialist, was once turned away from a hotel in British-era Mumbai because he happened to be Indian. He decided, in a strange kind of revenge, to
build the best hotel in the country, outfitted with German elevators, French bathtubs and other refinements from all around the world.
The hotel became, for many Indians, a symbol of the overthrow of the indignities of the colonial age. And it became a symbol of the best that could be had in a city paved with dreams. -Anand Giridharadas

Mumbai is simultaneously the Hollywood and the New York of India, and the Taj is the center of the glamour of Mumbai for many Indians. It might be popular with foreigners, but it is a deeply Indian institution; it is where every Indian dreams to eat when they have "made it", and it is a constant reminder that Indians can and will succeed. That explains why the attacks have such a deep resonance compared to, let's say, a bomb in Assam by separatists. It is an attack on a potent symbol of a proud and strong India.

I remember talking with some train employee in Uttar Pradesh and when I mentioned I was heading to Mumbai he told me all about the Taj Mahal hotel and how beautiful it was. He was proud of the hotel, even though he lived hundreds of kilometers away, he had never seen it and he probably could not afford even a meal there.

SOFA conditionally approved

2008-11-27T11:47:00.003-05:00

The Iraqi Parliament has approved the Status of Force Agreement, which sets the timetable for withdrawal of American troops, who are to stay in Iraq through 2011. It seems the concessions that Sunnis demanded yesterday, such as amnesty for Baath related crimes and the release of 16 000 Sunni prisoners was not mentioned today. Maybe they have been dropped or maybe there were some back-door deals that were done to ensure Sunni's support.

But there will be a referendum on SOFA in July 2009. If the Iraqis vote no, then the Americans will have one year to get out of the country under the terms of the deal, which incidentally would fit almost exactly with Barack Obama's proposed timetable. So we might not have a definitive timetable for withdrawal, but it will be either a year and a half from now or a bit more.

Sadr is opposing the deal, but he was not strong enough to torpedo it. We will see if his faction can convince the population in a few months.

Harper tries to slash parties funding

2008-11-27T09:13:00.004-05:00

This will be interesting to watch:

Symbolic cuts to politicians' perks, temporary relief for pension plans and a political grenade – ending the $30-million public subsidy to parties – are expected highlights of Thursday federal economic statement.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will ask the five political parties to give up the $1.95-per-vote subsidy that parties need to pay for staff and expenses.
(...)
Such a measure would cost the cash-strapped Liberals $7.7-million, the NDP $4.9-million, while the Bloc Québécois would take a $2.6-million hit and the fledgling Green party would be out $1.8-million.

Stephen Harper's Conservatives, who won the most votes, stand to lose $10-million.

But proportional to revenues raised last year, the taxpayer subsidy represents 37 per cent of the totals raised by the Tories. That's far less than the 63 per cent chop for Liberal coffers, 86 per cent for the Bloc and 57 per cent for the NDP. The Greens stand to lose 65 per cent of total revenues.

The Conservatives are trying to pass this by making it hard for opposition parties to vote it down. They are calling this an "austerity measure" designed to save money in tough economic times. They are bundling it with other measures that are popular, such as a trim on MP salary and an increase in pension plans. Opposition parties would look foolish if they voted it down. The Conservatives would not stop talking about how the opposition parties cared more about their perks and salaries than the interests of the taxpayers. At the same time, the Conservatives can claim the moral high ground by saying that they are the ones hurt most by this measure, which is true if you look at it in dollars. But of course if you look at it from the angle that matters, that is the percentage of funding that comes from public financing, the Conservatives would be the least affected, since they are very adept at raising money elsewhere. But it would be easy for the Conservatives to spin this in their favor.

It is also possible that they do not seriously intend to pass it, they just want to make the opposition looks bad and to ensure that they do not complain about the rest of the budget.

But if he does intend to push it through, I think Harper is taking a very narrow and short term view. If the measure passes, it will force the opposition parties to find new ways to look for money. They will all attempt to replicate Obama's model of campaign financing. They probably won't be as successful as Obama, since he had the advantage of being charismatic. But I think the LPC, if they elect a decent leader (Leblanc or Ignatieff), could revive the party using a social-networking, bottom-up, small donor, 308 ridings strategy. This measure might just force the LPC, out of economic necessity, to focus on their ground game and party building; and that might just be trouble for the CPC in the long run.

The party that stands the most to lose in this is the Bloc, because no one likes them. Québécois votes for them because they do not like the other options. But no one is enthusiastic enough about the Bloc to donate, which is why they get 83% of their funding from the government. Here is a fearless prediction: within days Duceppe will claim that Harper is trying to shut down opposition from Québec and that Québec's culture is threatened by this plan.

Hat tip: CalgaryGrit

Thailand update: state of emergency and call to resign

2008-11-27T08:34:00.004-05:00

Thailand's government cabinet has met in the northern city of Chang Mai. They decided to declare a state of emergency limited to Bangkok's two airports in order to remove the protesters who still block all flights. It is still unclear how and if it will be enforced. Yesterday, the head of the army called the Prime Minister, Somchai Wongsabat, to resign and call snap elections. So it is unclear whether the army will side with the government against the protesters if forced to make a choice. General Anupong refused to enforce a state of emergency to clear protesters from government office two months ago, but the airports are much more important to the nation's economy, and he himself has called the protesters to leave.

An interesting development is that the army has allowed Mr Somchai back in the country (or at least did not bar his return) from an international meeting in Peru yesterday. This seems to suggest that the army does not intend to do a coup as they would have more than likely done it when he was out of the country, as they did to Thaksin in 2006. But maybe there is internal dissent in the army over the course of action to take, so I think all options are still on the table. The showdown continues.

Mumbai update

2008-11-27T08:18:00.003-05:00

The death toll continues to rise with 101 death and over 300 injured. The hostages at the Taj Mahal appear to have been freed but there are still around 200 people stuck in their room at the Oberoi. There is also an Israeli rabbi and his family who are being held hostage at Nariman House, a Jewish centre.

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that the attacks were perpetrated by groups outside the country and that they would not tolerate "neighboring countries" that give a safe haven to terrorists, a clear reference to Pakistan. He also said the attacks were "well-planned and well-orchestrated... intended to create a sense of panic by choosing high profile targets and indiscriminately killing foreigners". It seems the government will attempt to put the blame on Pakistan and the ISI. It does seem like it could be a possibility, given the targets and the style of the attack.

Franklin Foer over at The Plank has an interesting analysis by an Indian friend that goes in a similar direction:

An organization called the Deccan Mujahideen claims responsibility. No one has heard of them. In the multiple attacks in Ahmedabad and Delhi earlier this year, a group called the Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility as revenge for the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002. But these Bombay attacks are different. The targets are not obviously Hindu at all--they are the main tourist locations in the city, and they were after Americans, British and Israelis. They went after a building called Nariman House, where several Israeli and Jewish families live. It was international, not domestic considerations which seems to be have been driving them. Also they seem very well-resourced. Apparently they came into the city on boats, used hand grenades and automatic weapons. It suggest some sort of Al Qaeda connection. But the Indians have been pretty good at tracking them. So, it is puzzling.

Another stupid statement on DR Congo

2008-11-27T07:28:00.004-05:00

The world is not sending enough troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo because of discrimination, a former top UN official has told the BBC.
There is "inbuilt discrimination when it comes to Africa", said Jan Egeland, pointing to the world's response to crises in the Middle East and Europe.
(...)

But Mr Egeland said this was not enough for DR Congo, which is almost the size of western Europe.
He referred to diplomatic peace efforts as a "seminar".
"There was not this indecisiveness in the Balkans, Iraq or the wider Middle East," the former UN aid chief told the BBC's Network Africa programme. -BBC

Wow. Where to begin. First, of course, he has no proof or data to back up his claim that this the "lack of action" due to "racism" or "discrimination" as he claims. Second, the world's largest peacekeeping force is in DR Congo, there are 17000 soldiers with another 3000 being added as we speak. It seems Mr Egeland would not be happy before the whole country was run by the UN. Third, his claim that there was no indecisiveness in the Balkans or Iraq is pure stupidity. America waited years before getting involved in Bosnia, months before getting involved on the land in Kosovo and they spent more than a decade watching sanctions kill 500 000 children in Iraq in the 1990s doing very little except fill the pockets of UN officials.

Here is a story. A few weeks ago, when the rebels were closing in on Goma, the government soldiers were losing control of the city and all hell was breaking lose. Now you have to understand that Goma is the epicenter of the UN and NGO effort. If a city in DR Congo should be protected by the UN, it is Goma. When I was there 2 years ago, the place was swarming with UN peacekeepers (mostly Indian if I remember right). During the rebel advance, there was this story (unfortunately one among many) about this woman being raped by government soldiers in her home a few hundred meters from the UN base. She was in the city with the most heavy UN presence in the country with the world's largest peacekeeping force and she was staying close to the UN base, yet she and countless other women during that week were raped and many others were killed. The peacekeepers did nothing, they were powerless.

The lesson is not that the peacekeeper are bad people. They're in a tough situation and they try to do what they can. But they can not police the country and they can not be everywhere, even in the city with the biggest UN presence. The lesson is that a peacekeeping force can not be the solution, as there is no way that a UN operation could be everywhere and prevent everything in a country the size of DR Congo.

The solution should be political. But the UN will never achieve a political solution when they support the government almost without conditions and, through the government, the Hutu militias that committed the genocide in 1994. As long as the UN brush aside this problem, peace will not go anywhere. The Tutsis learned the hard way in 1994 to never ever trust the international community for their security. If they want to be safe, they will have to do it themselves.

The solution should not more white men trying to police a country, it should be diplomatic. After Somalia 1993, Iraq and Afghanistan it should be obvious that armed humanitarian intervention is not the answer to the world's problems.

Today in the World: Mumbai

2008-11-26T20:45:00.003-05:00

I assume everyone has read about the attacks in Mumbai by now. This is an extremely sad day for India and I hope the death toll will not rise too much, as it is already awfully high. There are still hostages in the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels so we do not know yet how this will end.

Who did it? The Deccan Mujahideen, a previously unknown group, claimed the attacks but many thinks that it is probably the Indian Mujahideen who did it. They have already committed several attacks this year and had sent an email claiming Mumbai was its next target, out of revenge because of recent raids by the city's anti terrorism squad. It is the sixth time has been struck by a terrorist attack since 1993. Mumbai Blake Hounshell writes some interesting speculation on who might have done it:

Here's where it gets interesting -- and I stress here that I am just speculating. Lashkar-e-Taiba's main goal is to expel India from Kashmir. In the past, some have accused elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence services of having ties to the group. Pakistan's government has always hotly denied such accusations.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has in recent weeks moved closer to the United States, made some significant gestures toward India, and moved to shut down the political wing of the ISI, Pakisan's powerful intelligence service (that's the unit that tries to steal elections). How likely is it that some angry "rogue elements" of the ISI, aligned with Kashmiri jihadists and a team of Indian domestic extremists, sought to head off these moves? I have no idea, but it's definitely a theory worth exploring.

Worth exploring indeed, although I do not think it is that likely. It takes more than a few weeks, I'd think, to plan such an attack.

Another thing to keep an eye on in the next few days will be how Shiv sena and other hindutva groups will react. Let's hope things do not escalate. And let's hope that the Indian state manages to put a stop to the recent increase in attacks on civilians.

Stupid argument of the day: DR Congo

2008-11-26T19:56:00.004-05:00

Tim Butcher is making a ridiculous argument:

Those who try to explain the current fighting in terms of tribal differences, between the Tutsi-associated Banyamulenge of eastern Congo and some Hutu-linked groups, are missing the point. Yes, the spillover from the Rwandan genocide of 1994 affected this region. But, in a state as failed as the Congo, relatively small tribal frictions can be turned into a national crises. And the current crisis needs to be understood, as it was in King Leopold's day, as a battle over Congo's rich natural resources.

Relatively small tribal friction? This guy claims to have traveled in DR Congo but he certainly does not seems to appreciate the importance of recent history. So I'll explain it here briefly. 800 000 ethnic Tutsi were massacred in a few months in neighboring Rwanda, the Hutu militias migrated to DR Congo where they continued killing Tutsi and remain there to this day. The current "rebel" is one of those Tutsi. Yet we are to believe that this was just small friction, you know, nearly a million massacred, thousands of rapes in the genocide and then four to five times that number in the Second Congolese War just seems to be so close to normality for Mr. Butcher (very appropriate name), that the idea that this might matter to these people is totally ridiculous to him. The fact that the Congolese government was selling weapons to the Hutu militias that committed the genocide and that still claims to want to eliminate all Tutsis and invade Rwanda does not even enter the picture for Butcher.

The battle over resources is an important aspect of the conflicts in DR Congo. It certainly changes the dynamic of the country. But to paint a ridiculously simplified picture where this is the only aspect that matter is stupid. The main reason that explains the conflict that has started since August is simple; Nkunda signed the Nairobi Agreement in August 2007 with the government where they promised to disarm the Hutu militias within a year. In August 2008, they had done absolutely nothing to disarm them, in fact they were arming them. So Nkunda started the current conflict, to increase his influence in the region and reduce the Hutu militias and the government's influence. Resources are one part of the equation for sure, because they can give money and weapons, but they are fighting primarily because of the lessons everyone in the region learned in 1994 and during the Congolese Wars: the international community will never actually be able to help if there is serious trouble, if you want to survive and see your "tribe" survive, you'll have to ensure that you can defend yourself all alone.

There are several examples of conflict in Africa in regions with no important resources that lasted for decades, such as South Sudan, Northern Uganda, Eritrea and Somalia (in fact, South Sudan's conflict ended after the oil started being exploited). And there are many resource rich countries in Africa that have never had major civil war, such as Botswana, Gabon and South Africa. Resource rich countries can be peaceful and resource poor countries can suffer decades long civil wars, so the underlying dynamic is much more complex than the cartoon version of African politics that Mr Butcher wants you to believe. But then again, complexity is never welcome by those that want easy explanation, especially when those explanations allow you to blame the "evil" Chinese or your fellow westerners who caused the conflict by buying a cellphone that had a 1% chance of containing Congolese coltan.

Update on last Sunday's "attack" on Georgian and Polish presidents

2008-11-26T14:55:00.005-05:00

Remember the attack on the motorcade of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili who was visiting the border with South Ossetia with his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski last Sunday? The Georgian public relation machine immediately blamed the Russians, with "unconfirmed reports" claiming South Ossetians border guard had been seen shooting near the motorcade.

Well, here's an update. The Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) came to the conclusion that the incident was more than likely staged by the Georgians:

The daily “Dziennik” cites an Internal Security Agency (ABW) report saying that the shooting incident in Georgia involving Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Georgian President Saakashvili was most likely staged by the Georgians.

According to the daily, ABW head Krzysztof Bondaryk sent the report to the top sixteen people in Poland. The report states the shots fired near the presidential motorcade were most likely fired by Georgians as a provocation and propaganda tool.

If confirmed, add this to the long list of reasons why Georgia should never be given NATO membership. Saakashvili has proved to be dangerous and manipulative; if given membership he could cause real trouble by attempting to force confrontation with Russia. This would be disastrous because NATO members could be forced to side with Georgia against Russia. Let's not get sucked into a mutual defense pact with this madman.

Georgians are trying hard to portray themselves as the poor victim of evil Russia, even though they started the conflict this summer. The MSM in the U. S. is largely buying this narrative, and my instinct tells me that this report will not change this situation; in fact I'm fairly sure it will be largely ignored by the MSM.

Hat tip: Paul Wells

Syria first

2008-11-26T10:55:00.004-05:00

Someone in the mainstream media agrees with me on the Middle East Here is Aaron David Miller in the Washington Post arguing for a Syria first approach to the Middle East:

The more compelling argument is for a major push on another negotiation: between Israel and Syria. Here, there are two states at the table, rather than one state and a dysfunctional national movement. A quiet border, courtesy of Henry Kissinger's 1974 disengagement diplomacy, prevails. And there are fewer settlers on the Golan Heights and no megaton issues such as the status of Jerusalem to blow up the talks. Indeed, the issues are straightforward -- withdrawal, peace, security and water -- and the gaps are clear and ready to be bridged.

For a president looking for a way to buck up America's credibility, an Israeli-Syrian agreement offers a potential bonus. Such a deal would begin to realign the region's architecture in a way that serves broader U.S. interests. The White House would have to be patient. Syria won't walk away from a 30-year relationship with Iran; weaning the Syrians from Iran would have to occur gradually, requiring a major international effort to marshal economic and political support for Damascus. Still, an Israeli-Syrian peace treaty would confront Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran with tough choices and reduced options.

I've made a similar argument before. Also here.

Via Matthew Yglesias

Update: Itamar Rabinovich over at Jerusalem Post makes essentially the same arguments (hat tip FP Passport)

Peace in Northern Uganda?

2008-11-26T08:53:00.003-05:00

JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) - Uganda's fugitive rebel leader Joseph Kony will sign a final peace deal at the weekend to end a two-decade insurgency that has destabilised a swathe of central Africa, the talks' chief mediator said on Wednesday.

Mediators gave Kony, head of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), until the end of November to sign the pact after he repeatedly snubbed negotiators and plunged the peace process into disarray in April when he failed to ink the deal.

The chief mediator and south Sudan's vice president, Riek Machar, told reporters Kony had said he would sign the agreement on Saturday on the remote border between Congo and southern Sudan, which has hosted the tortuous peace talks since 2006.

"Yes, he has said that, and the indications are that he will," Machar told reporters in south Sudan's capital Juba. -Reuters

I would not start dancing in the streets just yet. Kony is not the most reliable guy on earth and it would not be the first time that he lied. But he has shown signs of wanting to get out of this conflict for the past two years, I guess he is tired of living guerrilla style. Also, it will be interesting to see how the ICC reacts if a peace is signed. Will they cut a deal or will they seek "justice" despite what the Southern Sudanese government, the Ugandan government and the LRA wants? Something to follow.

Something to keep in mind when you see huge bailout numbers

2008-11-26T08:39:00.001-05:00

From Kevin Drum:

Can we please stop this? Calling this a "$326 billion" bailout is crazy. It's a $20 billion capital injection plus a bunch of asset guarantees with a maximum cost of $250 billion and a probable cost in the low billions. (Possibly zero, in fact.) The capital will probably be repaid eventually, but even if it isn't it's highly unlikely that Uncle Sam is on the hook for more than $30-40 billion.

This stuff has gotten completely out of hand, with "estimates" of the bailout these days ranging from $3 trillion to $7 trillion even though the vast bulk of this sum comes in the form of loan guarantees, lending facilities, and capital injections. The government will almost certainly end up spending a lot of money rescuing the financial system (I wouldn't be surprised if the final tab comes to $1 trillion over five years, maybe $2 trillion at the outside), but it's not $7 trillion or anything close to it. People really need to stop throwing around these numbers as if the bailout is comparable to World War II or something. That's not reality based, folks.

Who won the debate?

2008-11-26T07:51:00.004-05:00

Here is the result of a CROP-La Presse poll on who won the debate. Marois 38%, Dumont 34% and Charest 30%... Well I was totally wrong since I had declared Charest the winner. We will see how this play out in the "real" polls in the next few days. But I still do not think that this debate, even if it was won by Marois, will turn things around because Marois did not win a decisive victory.

Update: Something to keep in mind before you take the results of this poll seriously. According to the article, 34% intended to vote for the PQ if elections were held today, 33% for the PLQ and 14% for the ADQ, which looks good for Marois at first look. But according to the pollster, all parties won just one percent after the debate compared to how people intended to vote for before, which would put the PQ at 33%, the PLQ at 32% and the ADQ at 13%. In other words, the pollster selected a biased sample since its latest poll, released on Nov. 24th puts PLQ at 45%, PQ at 32% and ADQ at 12%. Why would that be? Maybe because there were 94% french speakers in the sample whereas the real percentage is 79% of the population. In CROP latest poll, PQ won over PLQ 39-36% over french speakers.

So I think overall you should be wary in how to interpret this debate poll. It does not mean Charest lost or that Marois looked better. It means that he "lost" and that Marois looked better among french speakers. Keeping in mind that Charest was losing by 3 points among french speakers but winning by 13% overall should help you put things in perspective. If the poll had reflected the real demographics of Québec we'd be able to get a better picture, but I guess it is harder to get English speakers to answer this poll since they are less likely to have watched the debate.

The shape of things to come

2008-11-26T00:09:00.004-05:00

Okay, the new national security team is now officially unofficially leaked. We’ll have General James Jones as National Security Adviser with Tom Donilon as his Deputy. And Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, with James Steinberg as her deputy. And Robert Gates will stay on at the Pentagon. Susan Rice will become UN Ambassador. -Matthew Yglesias

UN Ambassador is a cushy job, but it is probably not what Rice wanted. She will be stuck in New York, far away from any important policy decisions. She was one of the most "left wing" serious foreign policy advisers for Barack Obama during the campaign and she has supported him from the start. That she is being kept away from the decision making process signals that Obama will not be very "liberal" in his foreign policy. That should not come as a shock to anyone who has listened to what he said during the campaign.

If you look at all the people on the list that will actually have a say in policy, I think it becomes clear that we will have a Scowcroft/Brzezinsky realist type of foreign policy.

Smart take: Israel, Palestine and Syria

2008-11-25T23:50:00.002-05:00

Blake Houndshell makes two good point:

Most of these ideas, regardless of whether Gates really intends to implement them, are worth exploring. I really, wonder, though, about the viability of a "big push on Israel-Palestine peace" at this point.
It hasn't gotten a lot of coverage, but the Palestinian Authority is in huge trouble right now. Hamas insists that Mahmoud Abbas's term as president expires on Jan. 9. For his part, Abbas is threatening to call presidential and parliamentary elections, the latter of which Hamas would deem illegal.
It's a huge mess, making it hard to imagine Israel engaging in serious negotiations, much less allowing a failed state to set up shop next door. As peace process veteran Aaron David Miller bluntly puts it, "The dysfunction and confusion in Palestine make a conflict-ending agreement almost impossible."

That is a huge problem right now. Whoever attempts a peace process will have to recognize that there will need to be at least 2 Palestinian representatives at the negotiating table, or that Fatah and Hamas agree to form some sort of coalition government, which is unlikely. I still think that if Kadima is reelected, there might be a way to work around it because the Arab Peace Initiative is a proposal made by Saudi Arabia and supported by the Arab League. If Hamas wants to spoil the peace process, the Arab countries are much better placed to pressure them into negotiating than any tough talking American politician. The Arab states currently believe it is in their interests to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem because they are worried that it is fueling fundamentalism in their own country. This is an important window of opportunity for peace between Israel and Palestine, maybe in 10-15 years Arab governments will not be as worried about fundamentalism and will not actively support a peace process.

The second point:

Second, if I were Barack Obama, I'd probe the Syrians to find out what their price is for making peace with the Israelis. If it seems doable, I'd start laying the groundwork so that once the new Israeli government is in place, direct talks could quickly follow with the United States, not Turkey, as a mediator.
Claims that getting the Syrians to stop supporting Hamas will cause the Palestians to be less radical are probably overblown -- if anything, the exiled political leadership in Damascus is more pragmatic than the guys in Gaza -- but a Syria-Israel peace deal has its own logic. Syria has foolishly spurned such opportunities before, but it's worth a shot.

That is also very important. Syria has no ideological reason for not being at peace with the West and Israel. Negotiations with Syria would be one of my top priority if I was Obama (assuming Kadima is also elected in February, if Netanyahu wins, forget all hopes for peace for a while).

Today in the World: Ahmadinejad the humorist

2008-11-25T23:43:00.003-05:00

Ahmadinejad is giving us some brilliantly insightful economic analysis:

Iran's President Ahmadinejad has said his country will not be damaged by falling oil prices.
This is despite the fact that the country relies on oil for the vast majority of its export earnings and government revenue.
He insisted the fall in oil prices would not cause major problems, even if it dropped to five dollars a barrel.

Gotta give it to him, he can be funny.

Thailand update

2008-11-25T23:10:00.003-05:00

The PAD protesters have surrounded the airport, delaying flights and causing headaches for tourists; but more importantly they are pressuring the government because the cabinet is now meeting in offices at the airport, because crowds have been surrounding the Parliament and government offices making it impossible to use those.

The situation is very tricky. The military coup worked only temporarily in 2006 for the Bangkok elites, they lost again to Thaksin's allies in 2007. That is the whole problem of this "revolution", Thaksin was ousted in a coup in 2006, but then his allies won in 2007, so the government's supporters (rightfully) believe they have a very strong claim to power. If the PAD manages to bring down government, there will be a lot of anger that could lead to civil unrest. There is an interesting article at the BBC on the class and regional struggle that are behind the political divisions (which I mentioned yesterday).

The army appears to be siding with the PAD, but what will they do if the government asks it to clear the protesters? They will probably refuse but what if there is internal dissension over this, with some officer attempting to rise in power by siding with the elected government, who agrees to do it. Could we see a breakdown of Thailand and a descent into some sort of civil war if the rest of the army side with PAD?

I doubt it. If things get too bad, the King can intervene and he has enough moral authority to stop serious troubles (I think). But things are looking bad for Thailand. Either the Bangkok elites accept the democratically elected government or they manage to take power and use the army to suppress dissidents. Let's hope they go for the former.

What is the project of the PQ for the province?

2008-11-25T22:50:00.004-05:00

There was an answer by Pauline Marois that I found fascinating. A young man mentioned Barack Obama and how he had reignited the American Dream before asking the leaders what was their vision of the future for Québec.

Marois' answer was remarkable more in what she did not mention than in what she talked about. She spoke about taking care of families and education. But she did not even hint at independence in her answer. Sure, she mentioned it briefly elsewhere in the debate, but very little. But it was striking that the leader of the independence party of Québec, when asked what is her project for the future of Québec does not even mention the long term goal of independence. Of course she does not want a referendum unless she thinks she can win, and she knows Québécois do not want to talk about independence now; but I found it fascinating that she would not even mention it in her project for the province.

Debate liveblogging

2008-11-25T20:04:00.035-05:00

Alright it's over. I could not liveblog for the last 20 minutes. Charest was a bit weaker at the end and his closing statement was unconvincing. Marois defended her support of reopening the topic of the Constitution, I'm not sure how that's gonna play out.

Overall I'd have to give it to Charest. He looked more in control than the others and managed to avoid any major gaffe. That is all he needed to win since he just needed a draw to win since he is 12% ahead of Marois. I do not see how Marois could close the gap with tonight's performance.

9:37 Good call by Charest. He clearly points out that both Dumont and Marois wants to reopen up the Constitutional problem. Dumont tries to change the subject by talking about cigarettes smuggling. Bizarre.

9:36 Well scratch that, she clearly state that she will hold a referendum on the cultural issue if Harper does not give her everything she wants. Dumont thinks it is a bad idea.

9:33 Charest attempts to position himself as the champion of Québécois in Ottawa. Marois does not shy away from saying that she wants independence but does not talk of referendum yet.

9:30 Next topic: Québec of tomorrow... First question: what will you do to reverse the demographic trend that reduce Québec's weight in Canada.

9:27 Asked how the government would help a stay-at-home mom with 2 kids, Marois honestly tells her that she will not do anything about it since she is focusing on the daycare at 7$/day.

9:26 But Dumont keeps dodging the question of where he will cut the 2 billions. It makes him look like an amateur.

9:24 Gotta give a point to Dumont when he criticize Marois for focusing entirely on daycare. He says, quite rightly, that not everyone with kids has the same kind of needs and his proposition to give 100$ per week per kid for each family is more interesting and flexible than a government run daycare system.

9:22 The first mention of the word "souverain" (sovereignty) by Marois, 88 minutes into the debate. It shows how eager she is to talk about it.

9:21 Marois tries to pass the message that she will do what she promises to do while Charest promises a lot but does not deliver. She has said that several times during the debate.

9:15 Charest asks Dumont where he will cut the 2 billions he promises to cut. Dumont replies by attacking Charest, dodging the question.

9:13 The debate feels very different from the federal debate. That's because Dumont has to hit both Marois and Charest and these only focus on each other. It feels more like a real debate than a 4 on 1 gangbang.

9:08 Charest is hitting low. After being blamed of not funding daycare enough he countered by saying that the PQ left the PLQ with 4.3 billions in debt in 2003 which forced him to face reality. Then he says: "Well we and Quebecois have to face reality. You might not have to face it but we do. You're not showing compassion". He is trying to hit on the perception of Marois as rich and out of touch with "real" Quebecois. Cheap shot.

9:04 Economy is over, now education. It is hard to say who was the strongest on the economy, but it was closer than in health care.

8:57 Dumont saying that the problem at the Caisse (Social security) is due to speculation is downright ridiculous

8:55 Marois is trying to cut Charest very aggressively and she seems a bit exasperated. She keeps talking while others are talking.

8:52 Charest tries to frame the debate with some of Marois' budget decision in 2002 but it does not work as well as during the health care debate. Marois and Dumont manages to corner Charest on the subject of the increased deficit which he tried to hide.

8:51 It is pretty hard to understand the policies of the Party with this debate. It is more of a (very entertaining) shout fest.

8:45 Dumont has clearly never read Keynes. Calls for the government to cut some government spending during an economic crisis.

8:42 Marois is stronger on the economy because she manages to set the frame of the debate on Charest's government results.

8:39 Wow. Dumont tells Charest that he had a good idea. Does not happen often.

8:37 Next topic: Economy.

8:28 Marois is not doing well. She totally lost the health care debate.

8:26 Dumont is always much better when complaining about the shortcomings of others than when proposing something.

8:24 Dumont is looking down when talking. Very bizarre body language. He does not look at the camera or who he is talking to.

8:21 Charest successfully managed to frame the health care woes around Marois' decision in the 1990's. Marois is looking weak on this, she should be on the attack on this subject and she is on the defensive.

8:18 "Madame Marois je vous arrête, vous l'avez géré vous le système de santé et puis vous ne l'avez pas amélioré." Ouch. That one hurt. (he told her she administered the health system in the past and she did not improve it). Dumont attempts to position himself as an alternative, but I do not think anyone takes him seriously anymore.

8:17 Marois does not even bother to attack Dumont. She uses her conversation with him to attack Charest.

8:13 Charest tries to pin the blame of the current problems of the health care system on Marois' decisions in the 1990s and she admits she made a mistake. Very heated argument between the two. Charest sounds a bit angry.

8:11 Charest is tearing Dumont a new one on health care. He was ready for the attacks and countered them really well. Dumont's proposal of cutting 2 billion on the health care system won't go well and Charest know it.

8:09 Marois is not wearing any jewel except for some very low key earrings. Still trying to be careful to avoid that "snobby" image which has been plaguing her for several years.

8:05 : Charest starts by trying to frame the election in term of the economy. Marois claims Charest started elections that no one wanted for no good reason but his self interest. She claims she has a plan which is based on "gros bon sens". She beat ADQ to his punchline! Maroi Dumont claims he brought change to Québec and cite his only achievement is bringing back numbered grades in school. A real paradigm shift!

The debate live

2008-11-25T20:01:00.001-05:00

The debate is starting now. Go watch it there: Radio-canada

I'll give my comments during and after.

How to deal with Iran

2008-11-25T16:19:00.004-05:00

Karim Sadjadpour has a 6 point plans on how to deal with Iran. Here are his 6 recommendations:

Build confidence on issue of common interest
Understand where the power lies
Speak softly
Don't let the spoilers set the tenor (ie interests groups in Iran or allied with Iran that benefit from a confrontational US-Iran relation)
Maintain an international approach
Get the timing right

These are all very good points. Obama should not rush to try to solve the Iran problem in a few months. He should start diplomacy slowly and build a relationship. He should recognize that doing that while acting tough might be popular domestically in the short term, his long term interest is to play nice to try to bring back Iran in the fold of the international community. Negotiating this way with Iran would make Obama susceptible to attacks by hawks and neocons who would paint him as naive, but I think it is a risk worth taking because the odds of a success are fairly high. A point not mentioned would be to also negotiate with Syria in an attempt to normalize its relation with Israel and the US; the dual goal being peace with Syria but also a weakening of Iran's position in the region, which would reflect itself at the negotiating table.

Via Matthew Yglesias

Another Québec poll update

2008-11-25T09:29:00.003-05:00

A CROP/La Presse poll shows similar results to the Léger Marketing one we saw yesterday. PLQ is at 45%, PQ at 32% and ADQ at 12%. Satisfaction for the Charest's government has dropped from 59 to 51% in the past 2 weeks, but the significance of this is not clear since his poll number actually increased during that period. Charest is slightly behind among francophones with 36% of the vote compared to 39% for Marois. Although not necessary for a majority, winning a plurality among francophone would be a moral victory for Charest. The debate tonight will be important for both Marois and Charest. If they can't score major points, they will have a hard time preventing a majority government. It is also Dumont's last chance of preventing a total breakdown of the ADQ.

All in all, another good poll for Charest.

More on the bailout

2008-11-25T09:23:00.003-05:00

If the U.S. were to take another equity stake, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wanted it to be small, since otherwise the government would end up owning Citigroup. The officials worried that appearing to nationalize the company would further roil markets. -WSJ

This focus on the short term impacts is purely insane. Everyone know the crisis is severe, everyone know that Citi was in deep trouble and nobody feel safer now after the bailout. Au contraire, I think nationalizing would have sent exactly the right message: whatever the costs, we won't let the economy fail, but if you made a stupid decision we might not reward you for it. Here's Felix Salmon's comment:

Color me unconvinced. If there's one thing we've learned during this crisis, it's that just-enough is never enough.

Now is not the time to worry about optics: how it would look to nationalize Citi, or to squeeze out Pandit. Paulson would have done well to call up Gordon Brown for advice: if you're putting in the kind of money which gives the government a majority stake, then so be it. And the owner naturally has the right to choose the CEO.

What's more, I can't think of anybody whose confidence in Citi has been shored up by the weekend's cash injections, especially since the mechanism -- weird second-loss asset guarantees on a small part of Citi's balance sheet -- is so opaque. If it was short sellers who "led the way in driving down Citigroup's stock last week", I don't for a minute believe that they will have decided that Citi is now untouchably secure. No bank with as little tangible common equity as Citigroup counts as secure -- and its official communications are also helping to reinforce the sense of panic.

Why everyone but Midwesterners hate the Big 3

2008-11-25T08:57:00.003-05:00

Still, I wonder if there aren't also some other factors at work in the relatively hostile reaction to the Detroit Three. Most Americans simply no longer identify with the domestic auto industry (or with the states of Michigan and Ohio). To the Southerners who now make up the core constituency of the Republican Party, it's a bunch of coddled, unionized workers trying to get handouts that the South's auto industry (Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Mercedes, BMW ...) doesn't need. To the coastal urbanites and suburbanites who now make up the core constituency of the Democratic Party, it's an industry that makes crappy big cars and fights against higher fuel efficiency standards. And to the business press it's the worst thing of all: a trio of companies that are neither exciting nor financially successful. -Justin Fox

But then again, Obama's support was very high in the Midwest. If he did nothing about the Big 3, he would almost certainly have to find a way to win in 2012 without Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. That alone will make sure that there is a form of bailout for the Big 3.

Moral hazard and bailout

2008-11-25T08:39:00.003-05:00

Um . . . yeah. Look, I think these concerns about moral hazard can be overrated. Looking back on Lehman Brothers, plunging the entire world economy into a downward spiral just to teach a lesson to some uppity investment bankers doesn’t look so smart. But Paulson is proceeding as if this isn’t a concern at all. Or, rather, as if the health and welfare of wall street managers and shareholders is his primary responsibility. Sending such a giant pile of money over to Citigroup without removing the management, without clawing back the fortunes the management earned creating the mess, without adequately diluting the ownership stake of the bailed-out shareholders, and without taking any control on the board of directors is ridiculous. -Matthew Yglesias

This is exactly my position. Totally avoiding moral hazard should not be the main priority right now. Priority should be on preventing further collapse of the economy, which is why the Lehman Brothers decision, although great from a moral hazard perspective, was stupid. But as said above, bailing out should not be focused on executives or shareholders who made idiotic decisions. The bailout should look disadvantageous, but necessary given the circumstances to these groups, with the overall objective being an attempt to stabilize the market. The Citigroup bailout is ridiculous in that it is much more beneficial than necessary to executives and shareholders. There will be winners and losers in this recession and the government should try to ensure, when possible, that those who made the bad decisions be punished by the market. If the government doesn't, the cost will fall back to the taxpayers. Or as Chomsky (I think) said: "Privatize the gains, socialize the costs".

Why Obama's plan for alternative energy is more important than ever

2008-11-25T08:14:00.004-05:00

Against this, the current economic slump could have serious long-term environmental consequences, because it may reduce investment in greener production technologies without fundamentally changing the longer-term emissions picture. With so many renewable energy projects and programs in their nascent stages, their success is easily undercut by lack of credit or financing.-Elisabeth Rosenthal, NY Times

One more reason why I am happy that Barack Obama has been elected. With the global slowdown and dropping oil prices, alternative energy will be less attractive for investors for a certain period. That is why Obama's plan to invest massively in alternative energy is more important than ever. Government funding can help the industry while times are rough so that it is able to continue to develop. This way when the economy kicks in and oil prices go back to 150$/gallon, alternative energy sources might actually present itself as some sort of alternative.

Smooth sailing for Charest

2008-11-24T19:29:00.003-05:00

This Léger Marketing poll looks quite good with 3070 respondents over the last 6 days, which gives a margin of error of 1.8%. The results are very good news for the Liberals: 46% for PLQ, 34% for PQ and 12% for ADQ. Very little change, almost all of which is within the margin of error.

The debate is tomorrow, so I'll see how that goes before I make a prediction, but things are looking good for Jean and disastrous for the two other leaders

Arggggg maties! Pirates flair new opportunities

2008-11-24T10:43:00.005-05:00

From the Globe and Mail:

The Somali pirates, renegade Somalis known for hijacking ships for ransom in the Gulf of Aden, are negotiating a purchase of Citigroup.
The pirates would buy Citigroup with new debt and their existing cash stockpiles, earned most recently from hijacking numerous ships, including most recently a $200 million Saudi Arabian oil tanker. The Somali pirates are offering up to $0.10 per share for Citigroup, pirate spokesman Sugule Ali said earlier today. The negotiations have entered the final stage, Ali said.

"You may not like our price, but we are not in the business of paying for things. Be happy we are in the mood to
offer the shareholders anything," said Ali.

The pirates will finance part of the purchase by selling new Pirate Ransom Backed Securities. The PRBS's are backed by the cash flows from future ransom payments from hijackings in the Gulf of Aden. Moody's and S&P have already issued their top investment grade ratings for the PRBS's.

Via Andrew Sullivan

The Thailand protests in a paragraph

2008-11-24T10:09:00.004-05:00

Protests against the government are ongoing in Thailand, with tens of thousands of protesters surrounding the parliament. They are led by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), who claims that the government is corrupt and hostile to the monarchy. What is going on? Well the current government, led by Somchai Wongsawat, is widely seen as a pawn of Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a military coup in 2006. Thaksin is unpopular with Bangkok elites, but widely loved in the countryside. They managed to get him out of power in 2006, through protests and a military coup, but it was temporary. The protest is an attempt by this segment of the population to control the government more permanently. "The PAD wants to replace Thailand's one-man, one-vote system with one in which some representatives are chosen by professions and social groups rather than the general electorate." according to the BBC. In other words, they are protesting against democracy.

Quote of the Day

2008-11-24T09:55:00.001-05:00

The honor goes to Paul Krugman:

The answer is, eliminate the capital gains tax. Now, what was the question?
(...)

This brings back a memory: on Sept. 13, 2001, I got frantic calls from staffers on Capitol Hill. They informed me that Republican leaders in the House were trying to use the terrorist attack to ram through, you guessed it, a cut in the capital gains tax.

Citigroup bailout reaction

2008-11-24T09:44:00.004-05:00

Here is Paul Krugman on the Citigroup bailout:

A bailout was necessary — but this bailout is an outrage: a lousy deal for the taxpayers, no accountability for management, and just to make things perfect, quite possibly inadequate, so that Citi will be back for more.
Amazing how much damage the lame ducks can do in the time remaining.

The incompetence of the Bush administration never ceases to amaze me. Their irrational blindness to the weaknesses of their pet ideology is slowly wavering but clearly not fast enough to make a difference. Hopefully the next bailouts will look more like the Swedish model.

Today in the world: Thailand

2008-11-24T07:41:00.002-05:00

A MAVERICK Thai general who has threatened to bomb anti-government protesters and drop snakes on them from helicopters has been reassigned as an aerobics teacher, the Bangkok Post said on Friday.
Major-general Khattiya Sawasdipol, a Rambo-esque anti-communist fighter more commonly known as Seh Daeng, reacted with disappointment to his new role as a military instructor promoting public fitness at marketplaces.
'It is ridiculous to send me, a warrior, to dance at markets,' he said, before launching an attack on his boss, army chief Anupong Paochinda. -Reuters

2008 is definitely not mavericks' best year. As Hilzoy said, there might be a lesson there in how to deal with past Bush officials.

Today in the World: Georgia

2008-11-23T17:41:00.005-05:00

According to the BBC, shots were fired near the Georgian leader today.

Georgian President Mikhail Sakaashvili was showing his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski the border between Georgia and the "sort of independent" republic of South Ossetia. The shot was heard when the motorcade came within 30m of the border. According to a witness, it was a South Ossetian border guard who fired warning shots.

It is likely that the shots were not aimed at the Sakaashvili, it would have been a total public relation disaster for Russia to accidentally kill Kaczynski. But it is even more likely that the shots were approved by someone high up in the Russian government. Russia might be aggressive but they are not crazy; the last thing they want is some border soldier in the Caucasus starting troubles they did not want. In all likelihood this was a message to Sakaashvili: "If you want to make trouble you better watch your back, and you better not come close to South Ossetia again."

Hindu terror

2008-11-23T16:54:00.003-05:00

India has arrested members of a Hindu terror cell that has been found responsible for several bomb attacks in Maharashtra and possibly the 2007 Samjhauta Express (Delhi-Lahore train) bombing. According to the report, this news has caused shock in India.

Hindu nationalist violence has a long history in India; Gandhi himself was killed by a member of a Hindu nationalist organization. Communal violence has been slowly on the rise in recent years, even though it never actually died down. A Hindu nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), gained power in the late 1990s' until its 2004 loss against the Indian National Congress, but it is still a force to be reckoned as the official opposition. Some leaders from smaller Hindutva organisations (linked to BJP) are not shy about voicing their opinion:

Meanwhile, senior right-wing leaders have made no secret of their wish that Hindus should form suicide squads to protect themselves against Muslim extremists. Bal Thackeray, leader of a group called the Shiv Sena, which has been responsible for communal and regional violence in Mumbai, wrote recently in the party's magazine: "The threat of Islamic terror in India is rising. It is time to counter the same with Hindu terror. Hindu suicide squads should be readied to ensure the existence of Hindu society and to protect the nation." -Andrew Buncombe

What does this all mean? It is hard to tell. After all, India was engulfed in massive religious based massacres a mere 60 years ago, which makes today's problems look like small potatoes, yet things got better for a while after. So maybe it is just going through a "phase". The fact that the arrest was made at all is good news, suggesting that the government is not giving a free pass to Hindu nationalists as some have claimed; in fact it might be what caused the "shock" at the arrests.

A thing for sure, those who claim that India's rise is inevitable need to tone down their optimism a bit. Even if chances are good that the violence will not get out of control, unfortunately it still remains a possibility; and it might be Hindus that start the conflict.

Via Cernig

Truth and Reconciliation?

2008-11-23T12:55:00.004-05:00

I just read Michael Isikoff in Newsweek who reports that Obama might implement a 9/11-style commission to "investigate counterterrorism policies and make public as many details as possible" but will not launch a criminal investigation. I'm largely in agreement with Kevin Drum here:

I find myself surprisingly torn by all this. My instinctive reaction is to turn over every last shred of paper in open court and mercilessly toss into jail anyone associated in any way with this stuff. But I suspect Obama is reacting more wisely than me in this matter. Not only would trials and jail sentences set off a firestorm of protest, but in the end they might not accomplish much either. That's discouraging as hell to write, but at bottom we still have a public opinion problem here: like it or not, half the country still seems to think that torturing al-Qaeda suspects was perfectly acceptable.
So in the end, perhaps we'll get half of a Truth and Reconciliation commission: we'll get the truth, but not the reconciliation, since I doubt that any of the perpetrators of this stuff are inclined to show the slightest remorse for what they did. I suppose that here in the real world this might be the most we can expect, but I don't have to like it. And I don't. -Kevin Drum

The problem is that the crimes committed under the Bush administration are broadly supported in America. Bush became unpopular because the wars dragged on (costing American life), because of his attempts to privatize Social Security and because of the disastrous management of Katrina, but not because of Guantanamo or the use of torture. There is a broad, bipartisan consensus regarding the killing of non Americans under the pretense of national security, as has been pointed by Andrew Bacevich in his latest book. An example taken from his book is Madeleine Albright's answer when she was asked to comment on a UNICEF report that claimed that up to 500 000 Iraqis children had died due to U. S. sanctions: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.". There was widespread, bipartisan consensus for the sanctions despite the heavy and well known human cost and the very limited results of the sanctions. The difference between torture under Bush and sanction-linked famine under Clinton is one of process. But the end goal, supported de facto by the population, was the same: fight "them" over there so we don't have to suffer or limit our consumption over here.

Greenspan's mistake

2008-11-23T11:53:00.005-05:00

It seems to me, after reading Applebaum and Nakashima's excellent article in the Washington Post on the failure of regulation that allowed the disaster of the subprime mortgage market, that the main mistake that was made and that led to the current crisis was to assume that companies act according to their own interests, as Greenspan famously admitted recently.

The problems lie in that executives' interests are not necessarily synonymous with the ones of the company; their salaries and promotions are tied almost exclusively to short term metrics, mostly profit. The problem is the divergence between executives massive incentives to increase short term profits and the almost total lack of punishment for long term problems; which creates a personal moral hazard and to the distorted behavior of firms. The "irrational" behavior at the firm level is explained by rational behavior at the individual level. A step in the good direction would be to diminish rewards for short term profits and increase incentives to promote the long term interests of the company. I don't have all the answers, but increasing by law the power of shareholders would be a good start.

Additionally, a healthy skepticism about firms ability to act according to their self-interests would lead to an increased respect for the benefits of regulation, as Spanish and us Canadians can attest.

India: land of opportunity?

2008-11-23T08:53:00.004-05:00

Anand Giridharadas wrote an article in the NY Times in which he explains how his parents felt stifled in post-independence India where you had to be connected to be able to realize your ambitions and how they ended up immigrating to America. But Anand feels that the U. S. has lost its optimism after 9/11 and it is no longer the land of possibilities, whereas India has opened up.

So he decided to move back to India, along with a growing number of Indians. It is undoubtedly true that India has opened up compared to the post-independence period, but there is a key element that Anand forgets to mention: as an "American", he is at the top of the hierarchy in the job market in India. I did not realize this before I travelled and talked with several returnees in different developing countries, but after coming back from the West, their identities are often not defined by the "class" of their parents (as before) but rather by the fact that they are western educated and westernized. This gives them an enormous edge compared to others who never left the country.

Whereas his father was stuck in a business where advancement depended on age rather than talent, he is an America educated professional with a network of fellow American-Indian immigrants; which is more than enough to land him very interesting and challenging jobs. India might have changed, but what changed most for Anand is his social status. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, it means the hard work of his parents paid off, but it should be mentioned. It explains quite a bit of the temptation to return; whereas in America he is an average Joe, in India he is almost automatically a member of the upper class. I have not met a single returnee in my travels, from Philippines to Kenya (including India), who was not very rich compared to the median of the population.

But there is a very interesting quote in the article:

Countries like India once fretted about a “brain drain.” We are learning now that “brain circulation,” as some call it, may be more apt.
India did not export brains; it invested them. -Anand Giridharadas

Brain circulation. Very fitting. It'd be interesting to see an economic analysis from this perspective, to try to see which country has benefitted most of its "brain investment" and which sent immigrants who integrated in the west and never came back or sent money back.

Québec election poll update

2008-11-22T16:16:00.003-05:00

A new Nanos poll done this week has PLQ at 44%, PQ at 36% and the ADQ at an incredible 12%. That should be enough to give Jean Charest a majority government, like I predicted. The ADQ continues its free fall; with results like this they'll be completely wiped off the map. But the interesting part of the poll is that, when asked the question of which leader is the most competent, Charest (PLQ) gets 48%, Marois (PQ) gets 25% and Dumont (ADQ) gets 8%. This is a bad sign for Marois, she is very experienced and well known so she should be scoring higher on this. The only question that remains: minority or majority government?

Interesting parallel between ancient frankincense and modern drug trade

2008-11-22T13:13:00.005-05:00

I am currently reading William Bernstein's new book called A Splendid Exchange, which is about the history of trade from the prehistoric man and Sumer all the way to the present. It is quite fascinating, although the topic is extremely broad and at 400 pages, it moves a bit too fast for my taste.

In the book, Bernstein makes an interesting parallel between the antique frankincense trade and the modern drug trade. Quoting Pliny, he shows that the growers of southwest Arabia (modern Yemen) did not steal from each other even if there were no guards or fences to protect the valuable trees; they instead relied on a system of honor and integrity which seemed to work. But the wonderful integrity stopped there. City states in Yemen and along the Red Sea coast, Shabwah, Thomna and Marib among others, attempted to monopolize the trade by threatening with the death penalty those who dared try to bypass the official route (and, of course, the official levy).

But even more interesting is Pliny's description of the warehouse at Alexandria, where workers had to undergo strict security checks at the beginning and end of every work day--including taking all their clothes off at the end of the day for inspection--to ensure that they had not stolen any of the precious aromatic. As Bernstein says:

The ancient incense trade was thus no different from modern cocaine and heroine trades: relatively safe around the raw agricultural source, but highly risky around the finished product and its ultimate consumers. -William Bernstein

I guess it is not too surprising when you think about it. The growers' wealth depend on the land and is thus fixed, the incentives to steal are lower because it would invariably lead to reciprocal thefts on their own land as well as fights; all of which would lower productivity. The most efficient system is one that recognizes property rights, secured by traditions and more than likely a small justice system established by the local ruler. At the other hand, in cosmopolitan Alexandria, the warehouse workers have no such incentives against stealing and the finished product is much more valuable given its proximity to the buyers; forcing the merchants to invest in security to protect its investment against workers (and, we assume, competitors).

Today in the world

2008-11-22T12:53:00.003-05:00

A man has been attacked by a panda at a park in southern China, after he climbed into its enclosure hoping to cuddle the creature.
The 20-year-old student had ignored warning signs and scaled a two-metre (6.5ft) barrier to get into the pen.
State media say the panda bit him on his arms and legs, and he had to be rescued by the animal's keepers.
Speaking from his hospital bed, the injured man said the panda had looked so cute he had just wanted to hug it. -BBC

Don't worry, the panda is alright.

Blocking health care reform to survive

2008-11-22T08:45:00.003-05:00

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival."" -James Pethokoukis

They do have a point. If universal health care is passed, it will be a game changer in American politics. We Canadians might whine loudly about our health care system, but the reality is that it is one of the most appreciated institution in the country. If enacted, it will not go away on its own; Newt Gingrich realized in 1994 just how hard it was to attempt to tear down health entitlements. If such a policy is passed, it will force the GOP leftward.

But I'll leave you on a quote from hilzoy which sums up how I felt when I first read their argument:

An honest conservative might accept this claim and say: well, I guess our ideas are unpopular, so we'll just have to make our case more persuasively.
But that's not the conclusion they draw. Pethokoukis and Cannon say: because people will like health care reform, if we do not block it, our party will lose support. So precisely because people would like it if they tried it, we need to make sure that it fails. -hilzoy

Clinton at Secretary of State

2008-11-22T08:23:00.003-05:00

Well it appears to be semi official now, Hillary will be Obama's Secretary of State. I did not expect the rumor to be true, but it seems I was wrong. It is still strange to me that Hillary has accepted to lead Foggy Bottom when she had a safe seat in the Senate which she could use as a springboard for her 2016 (or maybe 2012) campaign. Maybe she decided that she would be too old in 2016 at 69 years old, or maybe she found the experience too harrowing this time around to want to try a second time.

But here I will make a second prediction, hopefully more accurate than the first. Obama convinced Clinton to accept the job because he told her he had big plans in foreign policy, and so he wanted someone experienced just like her to run the State department. I am thinking he mentioned either his support of the Arab Peace Initiative for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or his policy on Kashmir. Either way, I am certain he managed to convince her by promising, or hinting at a place in history.

Why Obama will not try to solve Somalia

2008-11-21T16:12:00.004-05:00

Expending political capital on such a knotty problem--over a dozen transitional governments have tried and failed over the past 17 years--might seem imprudent at first blush. But the Somalis' very recalcitrance has yielded such low expectations that very little would actually be at risk. Moreover, an earnest attempt at conflict-resolution in Somalia would enable Mr. Obama to showcase the differences between him and his predecessor. -Jonathan Stevenson

The solution proposed by Stevenson involves talks with al-Shabaab, the strongest Islamist group in Somalia, removing them from the terrorist organization list and involving them in the peace process. That is all good advice; if a durable peace is to be established in Somalia, the USA needs to talk to all parties involved.

But where Stevenson's argument is weak is when he claims that attempting to solve the Somali puzzle would be low risk because expectations are low. This shows his total incomprehension of the domestic political environment Obama has to live in. The right wingers, the neocons and all the hawks perceive Obama as more "dovish" in foreign policy -- which is hogwash -- and they will go up in arms if Obama starts talking with "terrorists", even more if they have very low expectations of him achieving something. If he talks to al-Shabaab, it will cost him politically, because the US is still, by and large, uneasy about the necessity of talking with terrorist groups.

He could do it, but it would mean holding back on some other foreign policy problems, where there is at least a small chance of success. And it is not as if Obama was desperately trying to find things to do in January...

The reasons for Ethiopia's failure in Somalia

2008-11-21T12:01:00.004-05:00

But the Ethiopians can't afford to stay much longer, and their repressive tactics have lost Somali hearts and minds, allowing the Islamists to regain social as well as military traction. Earlier this month, in a brutally populist application of sharia law, a 13-year old girl was stoned to death in the southern Somali city of Kismayu for alleged adultery in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators. -Jonathan Stevenson

It seems the author is unable to see the contradiction between the two sentences. He claims that the Ethiopians are losing to the "Islamists" because of their violent and repressive ways, yet in the next sentence he gives an example of even worse brutality by the Islamists -- the stoning of a young girl because she had been raped by three men, as well as the shooting of unharmed civilians who tried to help her. But nowhere in the article does he seem to believe that this brutality might be a problem for Islamists.

In fact, Ethiopians were hated because they are widely seen as infidel foreigners. They're also seen as century long occupiers of the Ogaden, which Somalis claim as belonging to them and where 7 millions Somalis live. Somalis have fought Ethiopians in 1977-78 over this land (and lost badly). They are afraid that Ethiopia wishes to continue its eastward expansion and assimilation.

But more importantly, Ethiopia failed in Somalia because it associated itself closely with the transitional government which was almost exclusively controlled by the Darood clan who lives mainly in the northeast. They used Ethiopian support to increase their influence at the expense of the other clans, especially in and around the capital, Mogadishu. That led the clans controlling Mogadishu and southern Somalia to throw its weight in support of the Islamists, the only organized alternative to the Darood/Ethiopian alliance. They found themselves sucked in clan warfare with no end in sight; and with the political winds changing in Washington, Zenawi decided he had nothing to gain by fighting forever. That is what caused Ethiopia to fail.

Québécois' obsession with "culture"

2008-11-20T22:19:00.005-05:00

My fellow Québécois appear to be bizarrely scared of having their "culture" stolen. During his first term, the Harper government had decided to cut 45 millions $ in arts funding. This was not something unexpected; Harper's philosophy favors small government, so this decision was totally in line with what would be expected from a Conservative. The cut did not focus on any particular province, it was an across the board cut that would affect both English and french projects. Yet the people in Québec were up in arms; there was a widespread feeling here that the "English" were trying to destroy our distinct french culture. A very popular video by some prominent Québécois artists was made during the campaign, playing on the theme of submissive Frenchman vs arrogant Englishmen in power (despite the fact that this bore little relation to reality, the video was a success because it pushed the right buttons). The Bloc Québécois exploited the issue; the end result was that the Conservatives ended up doing far worse than predicted in Québec.

Now, politicians in the current provincial election are trying hard to position themselves as pro culture. Charest (PLQ, Liberals) announced his new policy of removing provincial tax on Québécois' cultural products such as movie tickets. But today, Marois (PQ, pro independence) brought out the big guns. She said that if elected, she will force the federal government to transfer its few cultural responsibilities to Québec; she promised to call a referendum on this specific issue if they refuse. It's too early to tell how this will play out, but my gut feeling is that this will be a winning issue for Marois.

This whole cultural issue resonates with the population because it plays perfectly with our own mythology: the poor humiliated french speakers being trampled on by the arrogant Englishmen who wish to assimilate us. This is sad because it shows that despite the enormous gains of the past decades, Québécois are still insecure. They still see their existence as a separate people somewhat threatened; despite the fact that almost all important decisions about culture and language are taken at the provincial level. Another reason why this makes me sad is the ridiculous notion that culture is dependent on the state. The underlying logic is that Québec culture is so weak that if it was not artificially kept alive it would die a fast death. Again the theme is insecurity.

These insecurity would not be cured by independence either. There are very few important responsibilities in the federal government and we already run the show in regard to language, education or culture; in short all the important Ministries that can do something to preserve Québécois' culture and language. What independentists do not realize is that people decide to speak or work in English not because they have been successfully colonized by the Canadian English or out of deep belief in Trudeau's bilingualism, they do so for the same reason that Spanish, German or Chinese kids learn English: it is the world's lingua franca (as well as our deep economic links with our southern neighbour). The incentives for speaking English would be exactly the same in an independent Québec, and the tools at the disposal of the government to encourage "frenchness" would be exactly the same. So the culture/language fundamentalists would keep on harping the coming extinction of our way of life with the same paranoia and the same pathological insecurity. In the meanwhile, I'll continue to dissent here, in a format that allows me to escape the bubble.

Syria or Iran first?

2008-11-20T09:32:00.004-05:00

Indeed, the Syrian elite itself may be split over Western overtures and their Iranian relationship. Whether or not it is as quixotic a dalliance as the Times suggests, it is correct that Iran is the key, and a resolution of that standoff will force Syria to move so as not to risk further isolation. -Boz

I think the logic is backward here. After eight years of a Bush administration which strengthened Iran's standing in the region through a succession of blunders, Iran's position is strong enough to be able to extract significant concessions on any sort of deal it would agree to sign with western powers. I do not think that a new President in the White House will magically shift the balance of power in the Middle East; we saw how that worked at Vienna in 1961 in regard to Russia. Iran has few incentives to give up on its nuclear program now; it knows that if it manages to build nuclear bombs, the balance of power will be further shifted toward them. I think the smart thing to do is weaken Iran's position through diplomacy and then reach a deal, rather than attempt to do so when Iran's position is strong.

Syria has shown its willingness to negotiate with Israel and to work with the west even during the Bush years. The leaders of the country are largely secular and come from a small religious minority of the population (Alawite) who have had problems of their own with fundamentalists. Therefore, they do not have any ideological objections to cooperation against terrorism. While allegedly "allied" with Iran, Syria is definitely the minor partner in the operation. The odds are that they dislike Iran's new influence in Lebanon through Hezbollah, since Syria considers Lebanon its own backyard. Again, Syria has no ideological commitment to its alliance with Iran, it is simply a marriage of convenience by two countries hated by the west. I think Syria would be much easier to bring into a peace deal with the west and Israel, by giving them back Golan Heights, normalizing relations and maybe recognizing its "special relation" with Lebanon*.

Making a deal with Syria would improve chances of reaching a satisfying peace deal with Iran, especially if other policies intended to isolate Iran diplomatically such as improved relations with Russia are pursued.

*The caveat is that this strategy depends on a Livni win in February.

Via: Arthur Goldhammer

The unpopular kid...

2008-11-20T08:57:00.001-05:00

Ouch

Via Ataturk

A saint?

2008-11-19T19:13:00.002-05:00

I can honestly say that he's probably a much better person than I am: His tolerance for Joe Lieberman--who questioned his patriotism--is saintly (and also smart politics). -Joe Klein

Not saintly at all, but very smart politics indeed. The President's revenge will be slowly cruel to Joe: Obama will be become a historic figure. Joe Lieberman will leave politics in a few years with few friends and even fewer accomplishments. This is a man who came ridiculously close to vice-presidency in 2000. He crossed the floor to the Republican side this campaign cycle, hoping to be picked by his friend John McCain to be vice-president nominee but he failed again. After McCain's defeat, he had to swallow his pride and ask the Democratic caucus for forgiveness to retain at least some semblance of influence. Obama does not need to punish him, Lieberman punished himself by acting like a fool. The cost of retaining some token influence will be steep: supine obediency. It is much smarter to use him to vote for projects that will be hailed in history as the legacy of President Obama as well as being a much sweeter and long lasting revenge.

Look like I'm not the only one trying to guess what Obama will do

2008-11-19T15:52:00.004-05:00

Ross Douthat makes a prediction on how Obama will run his administration:

Here's a fearless prediction: On an awful lot of issues, the Obama foreign policy will end cutting to the right of Bill Clinton's foreign policy, which was already more center-left than left. Even with the GOP brand in the toilet, Republicans are still trusted as much or more than Dems on foreign policy, mostly for somewhat nebulous "toughness" reasons. So why give the Right a chance to play what's just about its only winning card, when you can satisfy your base with a phased withdrawal from Iraq that's scheduled to happen anyway while waxing hawkish on Pakistan, Afghanistan ... and who knows, maybe Iran as well? (I have a sneaking suspicion that a President Obama will be slightly more likely to authorize airstrikes against Iran than a President McCain would have been.) Meanwhile, on detainee policy, wiretapping, etc. you can earn plaudits from liberals for showily abandoning the worst excesses of the Bush era, while actually holding on to most of the post-9/11 powers that the Bushies claimed. Obama already made fans of Niall Ferguson and Eli Lake; by 2012, I wouldn't be surprised if he's converted Max Boot as well.

And with his right flank safely guarded (assuming, of course, that Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iran doesn't become his Administration's Iraq), he'll have that much more political for the big-ticket goals that will guarantee his place in the liberal pantheon - universal health care, a New Deal for energy policy, a succession of young liberal judges who will tilt the Supreme Court leftward for a generation, etc. Among right-wing hawks, there will be strange-new-respectful talk about Obama's centrist instincts, his Scoop Jackson-ish tendencies, his Reaganesque blend of idealism, pragmatism and strength. Meanwhile, the rest of the right-wing coalition will be getting steamrolled. -Ross Douthat

He basically reached the same conclusion as I did.

An attempt to understand Barack Obama

2008-11-19T15:14:00.006-05:00

In the past year, numerous people have tried to understand Obama. Was he an extreme liberal? Was he naive or a Chicago pol? Was he an opportunist? Or maybe he was simply a human manifestation of pure ethereal change? Everyone had their opinion on who the man was and what he thought. The explanation I found most convincing was articulated by Daniel Larison, who maintained that Obama was a careful, centrist, consensus building, establishment politician who sought compromise and did not rock the boat. This explanation was concordant with his calm and attentive persona. It also explained why his positions from health care to foreign policy were extremely centrists, despite his more leftist record and the fiery rhetoric. His position to talk with Iran and Syria, while controversial, is centrist in that it is merely a logical extension of the Anbar Awakening and negotiations with North Korea. Only his initial opposition to the Iraq War could be seen as a significant break from the establishment. Overall, he had center-left positions during the campaign, clearly within the mainstream of the Democratic Party; and to the right of his primary opponents.

This vision of the man has a fairly good explanatory power, yet it is not perfect. For example, it does not explain how he ran one of the best campaign in recent history that defied conventional wisdom in so many way and managed to largely bypass established interest groups. But more importantly, it's an approximation of the man based on his actions before he became President. The incentives are different now, which should affect his future actions.

I believe his pragmatic, consensus seeking persona of the past few years was due to two main factors. First, he does seem to have the personality of someone who favors consensus building, based on all I have read about his history and his management style. The second is that he is the ultimate striver, the kind of man ambitious enough to become President of the United States at 47 years old. He knew that as the young and inexperienced candidate, he had no chances of being elected if he had positions that were not approved by the establishment. But the incentives are different now that he is in power in a political climate as favorable as can be. As President, his ambition will push him into doing things that will make him remembered as a great President.

We know that he is deeply aware of his history and we saw in the campaign that he thinks more in the long term than most politicians. Obama has been compared to Kennedy, but he has repeatedly said that his ideal is Lincoln. He also greatly respects Reagan because he left much more of a mark on the country than Clinton ever did. This is a very important aspect of Obama. He wants to be seen as a Jackson, Lincoln or FDR and not a Buchanan, Hoover or Carter. Of course, if poll numbers drop in the coming years, he might focus on policies that are popular in the short term. But right now I doubt Obama is in survival mode; he's definitely feeling the wind of change and he intends to ride it in a way that satisfy his more ambitious side.

What I think Obama will do as a President is steer very close to the "centrist consensus" on the majority of issues just like the Obama we are accustomed to, but on several issues he will attempt massive changes in policy. The major factor which will decide where he spend his political capital will be how it will affect his legacy.

I think we are starting to have a few examples of this. The first one is alternative energy. Obama supports a major investment to support the growth of this burgeoning industry. This makes perfect sense if one look at the long term trends on energy. Oil production will peak or slow, causing prices increase which will force a more widespread use of alternative energy. This is inevitable in the long term given the current trends. When this happens, history will remember Obama as the first President to get serious about alternative energy.

Second, we learned Sunday that Obama supports the Arab Peace Initiative for the Israeli Palestinian conflict. This is perhaps the most ambitious peace deal the region has ever seen; all Arab states would recognize Israel, it would withdraw to the lines of 1967 and recognize the state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital. This would be the most important landmark for peace in the Middle East since the creation of the state of Israel. Needless to say it is more interesting to have your name associated with this kind of deal than, let's say, an easier to achieve Israel-Syria bilateral peace.

Third, Obama has apparently bought the argument that if Pakistan can not be safe on its eastern border, it will not manage to be stable in the west. Since stability in Afghanistan depends on the ability of Pakistan to control its western frontier, to bring peace in Afghanistan he must reach a peace deal on Kashmir. The logic is tenuous at best; there is simply no evidence that the instability in western Pakistan is due to trouble on the eastern border; western Pakistan was lawless during the Raj, it was lawless during the Indio-Pakistani wars and it was lawless during ceasefires. But the rewards are great for Obama; if he succeed he will be widely hailed as the leader who brought peace to one of the most dangerous battle zone in the world, whereas only a few historians will care about whether his argument for involving the US in this conflict was sound.

Fourth, although it is too early to tell how Barack will move on the subject, it is interesting that the Baucus health care reform blueprint goes further than Obama's campaign promises, all the way to universality of health care. Obama has not balked at this at all, in fact several serious observers believe he is happy that the legislators are going farther than he promised to, since he clung more to the center during the campaign to avoid feeding the "extreme liberal" meme. Given the current environment, Obama will definitely try to make such a plan pass. Being the President associated with universality of health care ensures a place in the textbooks.

The final example is Proposition 8. Quite a few people have asked why Obama, who was safely cruising to election days before the Nov. 4th, did not say anything to help the "No" vote on Proposition 8, or why he did not say anything about it since the result has been known. Why did he decide not to stick his neck out for this subject? I think it is because there is very little to gain in term of legacy. People who fight for gay rights have been slowly but surely winning the "war" during the past decades, and Proposition 8 will be seen as a mere bump in a long term trend favoring gay rights. Obama has no intention of spending political capital for a bump that will be seen as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. He know he will be mostly seen as pro gay anyway. This is different than alternative energy, where Obama can be seen as the first president with the "correct" vision on the topic and thus secure a place in history.

So do not be surprised too see bold actions by an Obama administration despite his carefully crafted centrist image.

Quote of the Day

2008-11-19T13:31:00.000-05:00

The rebellion by American youth against the money culture never happened. Why bother to overturn your parents’ world when you can buy it, slice it up into tranches, and sell off the pieces? -Michael Lewis

Though love

2008-11-19T11:49:00.002-05:00

Here is an excerpt of Peter Morici's address to the Senate hearing on the auto industry bailout:

If Chapter 11 is put off to the -- if Chapter 11 is put off, the industry will continue to shrink. And inevitably, when it happens, and we go through the process, fewer jobs will be saved, because fewer jobs will be there to be saved. Sooner or later, this industry has to go through the ultimate reorganization that brings its cost structure absolutely in line with its competition. It may not be fair, it may not be what we would want to see, but it is inevitable.

In my mind, Chapter 11 is viable. The assets of these companies are needed by the domestic automobile market. They make over 40 percent, near 50 percent, depending on which estimate you use, of the cars driven in America. They can't go out of business completely.

New Frum website

2008-11-19T11:18:00.003-05:00

Adjust your bookmarks.

I want to assist in that conversation. Starting over Inauguration Weekend, I'll be launching a new website, NewMajority.com. It will be a group blog, featuring many different voices. Not all of them identify as conservatives or Republicans. But they - and people like them - are the people conservatives and Republicans need. I hope we will debate policy as well as politics. I hope above all that we can create an online community that will be exciting and appealing to younger readers, a generation often repelled by today's mainstream conservatism. -David Frum

It is a good sign to see conservatives trying to revive a healthy internal debate by escaping the suffocating environment of some journal such as National Review. Watching the conclusions conservatives reach and how they react to an Obama administration will tell us as much about the future of this country than watching the every moves of the Democrats in Washington. So pay attention.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

Let's not build a Maginot line

2008-11-19T10:13:00.005-05:00

Interesting post at Yglesias on how understanding the exact causes of the present crisis is not necessary vital to prevent a future problem.

The basic reason is that we can be pretty sure that no matter what we do, we don’t need to worry about this exact thing happening all over again. Investors will be extremely reluctant to get involved in the exact kinds of products that recently crashed, everyone will worry that the first sign of housing price increases is a bubble, and regulators will be keenly aware of everyone’s pet theory of what went wrong. But the crux of the matter is that though the phenomenon of financial crises repeat over time, but no individual crisis repeats itself. The trick, if you can pull it off, isn’t to prevent a repeat of the current crisis, but to prevent (or mitigate) the next crisis which is something else entirely.

The main problem was that the majority of people who were supposed to know better failed to looked critically at what became conventional wisdom. The focus should be on understanding why there was such a failure of critical thinking, not how to prevent another housing bubble.

Iran calls Iraq to resist the Security deal

2008-11-18T18:57:00.002-05:00

The Iranian parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, has called the Iraqis to reject the US security pact.
He said Washington's goal was to "strengthening comprehensive U.S. hegemony in Iraq." and he called for continued resistance: "The Iraqi nation and parliament should realize that the time for resistance is not over yet,".

That should give pause to those who bemoan the massive influence of Iran in Iraq. But why would Iran be opposed to a deal that effectively makes Iraq a nation independent from "US meddling" in about 2-3 years if they thought they could control it? The logical conclusion is that their influence is not that deep inside Iraq despite religious similitude with the new rulers of the country; else they should welcome the withdrawal of the US.

The reality is that Arab Iraqis, even Shiites, see Iranians as Farsi foreigners. During the Iran-Iraq war, Shiites and Sunnis fought Iranians side by side and there are no history of widespread Shiites opposition to the war based on sectarian arguments. Iraqis and Persians might share a religion but there does not appear to be any sign that the former will be submissive to Iran. We saw the relevance of Iran's opposition in the cabinet vote which went 27-1. The lone dissenter was Sunni, so the odds that he voted no because of Iran pressure are, let's say, fairly low. We will see what kind of influence Iran has in the parliament vote, but I doubt it will be impressive.

Now that is not to say that Iran will not have an influence in Iraq. It is one of the major power in the region, along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and it will have more power than during the Ba'ath years. But those hyperventilating about how the US gave Iraq to Iran can calm down; Iraqis are proud enough not to let foreigners run the show.

There are a few caveats to my argument. Ali Larijani is not Ali Khamenei or Ahmadinejad, what he said should be taken with a grain of salt before we assume that it is the position of the Iranian government. Also, it is possible that Iran oppose the deals because they believe if Iraq waits until BO takes over, it will get a better deal and a faster withdrawal. But it is hard to see why they would get worked up on a 6-12 months earlier withdrawal; the end result would be the same.

Quote of the Day II

2008-11-17T13:15:00.001-05:00

Yglesias on the bailout:

Everyone says that part of the conditions of doing a bailout is going to have to be some major restructuring of this and that. But normally Chapter 11 bankruptcy is precisely the means through which such restructuring is done. If unusual circumstances mean we can’t do Chapter 11 and we need extraordinary congressional intervention, then it seems to me that the extraordinary intervention should be aimed at making Chapter 11 possible. Of course key GM stakeholders on both the management and the union side would prefer to avoid that scenario. But the reason they’d prefer to avoid it is precisely that they’d prefer to avoid major restructuring.