The Case for International Government, briefly

For if it is true, as the Romans said, that inter arma silent leges (when arms speak, the laws fall silent), it is equally true that when the laws speak arms fall silent. Otherwise, who would bother with laws? Every peaceable tranfer of power in accord with the decision of an electorate is a coup d'etat avoided. Every court case - however acrimonious the lawyers - is a possible vendetta or bloodbath averted.

-Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World, p. 240

Of the tangled mess of sins at the heart of Bush's decision to go to war, surely the worst was the blow to the idea of an international system of nations, accountable to international law. As it turned out, the international order was able - thus far - to absorb that blow and stay standing. The UN was not only crucial before the Iraq war, but was soon enough begged by the US to a) give the US some fig leaf of legitimacy, and b) help clean up the mess. And the UN tried to do so, initially, despite the barely-legible screeds like this, by Richard Perle:

Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The "good works" part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order. As we sift the debris, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions.

Of course, while Perle was busy sneering at the idea of multilateralism, the US was sashaying in to a war that would do nothing to permanently undermine the UN, but instead would cripple American unilateralism for the rest of Bush's presidency. As I said, the UN endures while the US Army teeters. And when the US withdrawal from Iraq inevitably comes, the UN will be asked once again to clean up where the Americans left.

Anyone who argued in favour of the Iraq war because they were foolish enough to believe in the humanitarian cause - like certain Liberal leadership candidates - should ask themselves how you can protect human rights while undermining international laws. It's like saying you're going to fight rapists by abolishing the court system.

The reality-based community

If there's one thing worse than being on the only side that values facts, it's being on the one side that values honesty:

During George W. Bush's first term, reporters had a powerful confluence of motivations for their difficulty in calling the President to task. First was tradition; mere journalists lacked the authority to call a President a liar. Second, post-9/11 they were intimidated by Bush's McCarthyite with-us-or-ag'in-us rhetoric as well as by a bloodthirsty right-wing punditocracy. (New York Times White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller admitted that she and her colleagues found it "frightening to stand up there," and "no one wanted to get into an argument with the President at this very serious time.")

Finally, though much of what Bush said during his first term was laughable, it was not easily disprovable in a normative sense. Would the poor and the middle class be the primary beneficiaries of tax cuts designed almost exclusively to enrich the extremely wealthy?...

Now the results are in--and reporters, under siege from several directions, are still trapped in self-eviscerating sanctimony. Jim Lehrer explained the peculiar form of "objectivity" he and his colleagues practice to CJR Daily's Liz Cox Barrett not long ago: "I don't deal in terms like 'blatantly untrue,'" he averred. "That's for other people to decide.... I'm not in the judgment part of journalism. I'm in the reporting part of journalism." As Todd Gitlin pointed out on TPM Cafe, Lehrer's interview sounded an awful lot like Rob Corddry lecturing a befuddled Jon Stewart, "I don't have 'o-pin-i-ons.' I'm a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called 'objectivity'--might wanna look it up someday."

So truth is for "liberals." Were it not for the fact that our democracy is being undermined by the liars in office, we might be flattered. But even the collapse of the President's popularity has not installed much backbone in the press corps. Bush can still lie about whatever he wants whenever he wants; treasury secretaries one day; war the next. It's "just the President being the President."

Who will stick up for a free press, when the press won't even speak up for themselves?

Happy Anniversary, Everyone

The Pentagon Papers are 35 years old today. Daniel Ellsberg remembers:

What was it that prompted me in the fall of 1969 to begin copying 7,000 pages of highly classified documents — an act that I fully expected would send me to prison for life? (My later charges, indeed, totaled a potential 115 years in prison.) ... On Sept. 30, I read in the Los Angeles Times that charges brought by Creighton Abrams, the commanding general of U.S. forces in Vietnam, against several Special Forces officers accused of murdering a suspected double agent in their custody had been dismissed by the secretary of the Army.

The article... made clear that the reasons alleged by Secretary Stanley Resor for this dismissal were false (and that the order to dismiss the charges had most likely come directly from the White House). As I read on, it became increasingly clear that the whole chain of command, civilian and military, was participating in a coverup.

As I finished the article, it hit me: This is the system I have been part of, giving my unquestioning loyalty to for 15 years, as a Marine, a Pentagon official and a State Department officer in Vietnam. It's a system that lies reflexively, at every level from sergeant to commander in chief, about murder. And I had, sitting in my safe at Rand, 7,000 pages of documentary evidence to prove it.

The papers in my safe, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, constituted a complete set of a 47-volume, top-secret Defense Department history of American involvement in Vietnam titled, "U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68."

I had exclusive access to the papers for research purposes and had been reading them all summer; they made it very clear that I, like the rest of the American public, had been misled about the origins and purposes of the war I had participated in — just as are the 85% of the troops in Iraq today who still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and that he was allied with Al Qaeda.

I wonder what the effects of the Pentagon Papers would have been if Nixon hadn't fought it so vehemently. We'll never know, because Nixon immediately sued the New York Times, and later the Washington Post, in an effort to prevent the American people from knowing the truth. This famously went so far as getting the would-be Watergate burglars to break in to Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, in hopes of discrediting him.

(You've got to appreciate the delicious irony of the clinically-insane, drug-addled Nixon ordering somebody discredited because they - gasp! - see a shrink.)

The Nixon White House's efforts to halt the publication of the Pentagon Papers were so ham-fisted as to be counterproductive:

...top Justice Department official Robert Mardian refused to allow the government witnesses - even behind closed doors - to give any specifics about the alleged security threats the nation would face if secrets from the Pentagon Papers were revealed.

The arrogance that Mardian and other prosecutors and the government witnesses exhibited led New York District Court Judge Murray Gurfein to dismiss the restraining order he had temporarily issued against the newspaper when the case was first brought before him, two days after the Times began publishing the reports.

Judge Gurfein should be a hero to every journalist, every soldier, every American. In his decision to deny the White House's restraining order, he wrote - with incredible force and eloquence, considering this was his first week on the job: "The security of the Nation is not at the ramparts alone," Gurfein wrote. "Security also lies in the values of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know."

Upon his appeals, the Supreme Court - in its rational, constitutional, pre-Reagan days - found Nixon to be a lying, noxious bastard who deserved every sling and arrow the press could hurl at him. Don't believe me? Here is the decision written by Justice Hugo Black, in his judgement against the White House:

In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government....

...[We] are asked to hold that, despite the First Amendment's emphatic command, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws enjoining publication of current news and abridging freedom of the press in the name of "national security." The Government does not even attempt to rely on any act of Congress. Instead, it makes the bold and dangerously far-reaching contention that the courts should take it upon themselves to "make" a law abridging freedom of the press in the name of equity, presidential power and national security, even when the representatives of the people in Congress have adhered to the command of the First Amendment and refused to make such a law.

Not that any of that should sound familiar to you.

It's on this note that I see Karl Rove's lawyers telling us all he won't be indicted. And I think, well, that figures. After all, the whole story of the outing of Valerie Plame is essentially all about how the Washington press corps has abdicated any of the roles that Black and Gurfein ascribed to it. Instead of censuring the government, Elizabeth Bumiller tells us that it's "intimidating" to ask the President questions on TeeVee. We get otherwise decent organs like Salon positively rushing to discredit any claims that Bush stole the 2004 election. And at the root of the Plame affair we have noxious pond scum like Robert Novak and Judy Miller, all claiming the protections of the media without bearing any of the duties.

UN-couth

American punditry has many aggravating habits, one of them being the incredible disdain that is heaped upon the United Nations. This was on full display before the Iraq war, but well before then as well. The Clinton administration did pathetically little to try and improve the UN's image, and even if it had tried more would have been stymied by the Helms-Burton wing of the GOP which dominated Congress.

That is all really prologue to the nomination of John Bolton, who is shaping up to be one of the worst Ambassadors to the UN ever. Bolton has repeatedly held US support for reform unless it meets every requirement of the US government, without any compromises.

In response to this petulance, the Deputy Sec. Gen. of the UN (Mark Malloch Brown) called the US leadership out (PDF) for basically presenting a one-sided picture of the UN's deeds to the American public: rather than defend the good deeds of the UN, US leaders are all to willing to let the UN be slandered by the right:

"today, on a very wide number of areas, from Lebanon and Afghanistan to Syria, Iran and the Palestinian issue, the U.S. is constructively engaged with the UN. But that is not well known or understood, in part because much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. That is what I mean by “stealth” diplomacy: the UN’s role is in effect a secret in Middle America even as it is highlighted in the Middle East and other parts of the world."

Bolton, ever the childish lout, has demanded, and been refused, a public apology or repudiation by Kofi Annan. And this is a good thing. The US has been able, for too long, to have it both ways when it comes to the UN - benefiting immensely from the increased security and global stability that the UN provides, while fighting tooth and nail any efforts to strengthen the UN. For years - Years! - the US refused to even pay dues to the UN, to the point where the General Assembly threatened to suspend the US's vote in the General Assembly (where the US doesn't have a veto.)

Some recent scholars have justified US imperialism by saying that the US provides a form of global government. I disagree - the US provides "governance", but not "government". Government is institutions, and ideally some accountabe legitimacy. Governance can be anything as base as right makes might.

Meanwhile, the world could have both governance and government, if only the major powers - and the US is far from alone - would help build and strengthen true institutions of global government.

But for that to happen, the US needs to stop pretending that the UN is irrelevant.

Carbon Dioxide: We Call It Life

AP - Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.

The study reviewed three examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and western Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth.

Can you believe that some communists want us all to stop using coal?

Speaking of...

WASHINGTON, June 10 — President Bush's two-day strategy session starting Monday at Camp David is intended to revive highly tangible efforts to shore up Iraq's new government, from getting the electricity back on in Baghdad to purging the security forces of revenge-seeking militias, White House officials said. Three years of efforts to accomplish those goals have largely failed...

Mr. Bush on Friday made clear that the American commitment to the country will be long-term. Officials say the administration has begun to look at the costs of maintaining a force of roughly 50,000 troops there for years to come, roughly the size of the American presence maintained in the Philippines and Korea for decades after those conflicts.

But no decisions have been made, and Mr. Bush has carefully sidestepped any discussion of a long-term presence, insisting that American forces will be in the country only as long as the Iraqi government wants them there. Mr. Bush's aides said the meeting was not intended to focus on troop levels. But in many ways, that subject is the subtext of the entire discussion.

Indeed it is.

Imperial Pathologies

I've been quiet today, largely because after reading this post by Matthew Yglesias, I got very confused. (Also, errands.) On the matter of brobdignagian US defense spending:

The question then becomes what we're really accomplishing for all that. Since we're the richest country, and have a large population to boot, it makes perfect sense for us to spend the most -- we can afford it. But what's being achieved by spending the most by such a huge margin?

He then links to someone who links to this report by the CATO institute, amusingly titled "$400 Billion Defense Budget Unnecessary to Fight War on Terrorism". I expect the following documents from the CATO institute in the future: ".50 cal Machine Gun Unnecessary to Hunt Quail", or possibly "50-megaton Warhead Unnecessary in Luxembourg Trade Negotiations".

If you were American you might indeed ask what America gets for all the money it spends on Defense. This, of course, presupposes that American defense spending has anything to do with defending America anymore. What, pray tell, is the defensive purpose of the B2 bomber? Or any one of America's 12 Carrier groups? Or any one of the over 500 foreign military bases that America maintains around the globe?

The answer is of course nothing, unless you seriously think Uzbekistan is going to launch a sneak attack on Wyoming unless the Americans are in Kyrgistan. Well, we do have to fight them over there so we don't fight them over here, or so says the President.

What America gets for its elephantine war budget is exactly what you think it gets - unchallenged hegemony over the world, backed by unparalleled military might. America spends more than any five powers combined for the same reason the British Empire maintained a Navy that was equal to any two competitors combined - because that's what you need for empire. What's amusing is that anyone pretends that this state of affairs is somehow different from when the British, or French, or Romans, or Greeks did it.

I hope we aren't all labouring under the impression that an Empire requires jack-booted stormtroopers putting Emperor Palpatine on the throne. The Athenians ran one of the world's earliest empires, and did it with the most democratic constitution then existing. They simply maintained a double-standard that endured for decades: Athens was a democracy, and members of Athens' empire could be democracies, so long as they agreed with Athens. If not, well, ask the people of Melos - the ones who weren't enslaved by the Athenians for trying to remain neutral in the war.

Get that? It wasn't enough that Melos not take up arms with Athens' enemies: To the Athenians of the day, if you weren't a formal ally, you were an enemy to be destroyed. You were either for Athens or against Athens. Not that I think this is relevant or anything.

Rome did quite well as a Republic and still conquered huge swaths of the known world. (Ironically, the last Greek Empire - remnants of Alexander of Macedon's - was conquered by the Roman Republic.) Indeed, the formally-declared Empire really just added a bit more of North Africa, some of England, and Turkey to the corpus built up by the Republic. The conduct of France throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries was almost exclusively imperial, regardless of the form of government - Republican or Monarchy. Imperialism, in short, has no politics.

Empires always have incredibly selfless reasons for their conduct. The Athenians maintained their empire to protect Greece from the Persians, long after the Persian threat passed. The Romans were always defending themselves. Incredibly, Julius Caesar was defending Rome across the English Channel. Similarly, Napoleon claimed to be defending France - as he was entering the burning ruins of Moscow.

Alternately, some will say that Empires kind of spring up by accident - something the British have claimed for their time in the sun. Oops, we conquered India. You know how these things are. And then, before we knew it, we'd gone and conquered Egypt. Oh, and you can hardly blame us for South Africa. We were protecting the human rights of the South Africans. See how well that worked out?

(We'll not be so rude as to bring up the Opium Wars. Bad form, I say!)

The Americans, for their part, largely explain their empire as a reaction to Soviet aggression. Even granting that, it doesn't explain what 30,000 soldiers are still doing in Germany, nor does it explain why the borders of NATO keep moving closer towards Russia. It certainly doesn't explain why there are 50,000 soldiers in Japan, which can defend itself quite well, thank you.

Of course, the American Empire is older than NATO, and older than World War II. There's an unbroken ideological line from the pilgrims disembarking from the Mayflower, the first Indian Wars, Manifest Destiny, the War of 1812, the drive to the west, and the eventual invasions of Hawaii and later the Phillipines. A question: If American expansion began after World War II, why was there an American Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in 1941?

(Canadians have practised our own imperialism, lest anyone think I'm being one-sided. Just ask our First Nations how multilateral we were with them. But nobody cares about Canada's imperialism anyway. Certainly, people aren't dying in Iraq because of disagreements with the Nisgaa.)

If you think I'm being simplistic, you'll at least grant that the formation of the American Anti-Imperialist League - in 1898 - would seem to indicate that American imperialism existed before the Bolsheviks took power. Either that, or Mark Twain is a moron. And nobody calls Mark Twain a moron.

The inhabitants of Central and South America would find the idea that America was "isolationist" in the early years of the 20th century bizarre, to say the least. The repeated invasions of what would later be called Banana Republics - not to mention the creation of the country of Panama - were all undertaken on behalf of US commercial interests. The occupation of Haiti in 1915 lasted until 1934.

Of course, it would be unfair to list America's foreign adventures without noting that yes, America was crucial in the defeat of fascism and protecting large parts of Europe from Soviet rule afterwards. But it would be wrong to say that America's interests were in the world's interests, or that there is any symmetry there whatsoever. America's interests were America's and nobody else's. America - as a state, not its people - didn't particularly care whether Spain, Greece, or Turkey were democratic or not, so long as they were in NATO and not the Warsaw Pact. This alone should, I hope, dissuade anyone of the idea that America was out to protect Democracy. If that doesn't, the number of times America undermined or eliminated democracies in favour of pro-Washington autocracies should be.

Once again: You can be a democracy, so long as you agree with Athens. Or Rome. Or Paris. Or London. Or Washington.

One of the silliest ideas is that anyone - including Canada or the United Kingdom - has a "special relationship" with the United States. When Britain's interests were in line with America - like with the downfall of Mossadegh in Iran - America was happy to help. When Britain overstepped its bounds - like during the Suez Crisis - America was quick to slap it down. Tony Eden learned the hard way that he couldn't count on Washington, even though Washington expected London's obedience. You'd think this lesson would have stuck with the British foreign service, but somehow the myth of the "special relationship" endures.

(Interesting historical note: Britain's greatest ally in the war against Argentina? France, who provided crucial intelligence on defeating the Exocet missile.)

Finally, after the empire has been built, the imperialists argue that it's dangerous to not have an empire - after all, somebody else could fill the power vacuum. This has been the position of the United States since the end of the Cold War, throughout the Clinton years (when Madeleine Albright called the US the "indispensable nation", this is what she meant) and in to the Bush years. Once again, we can see echoes of empires past. Pericles, during the war he'd started with Sparta, argued that however Athens had acquired its empire, Athens could not now give it up without losing everything.

The problem with being an empire is simple: Big rewards come with big risks, and the rewards for the Americans have been huge. Nobody knows the risks that come with empire like the imperialists themselves, which makes them paranoid as all hell. This is why England and France nearly went to war over some misbegotten malarial village like Fashoda in 1898. It's why Europe collectively immolated itself in 1914-18. It's why America got bogged down in Vietnam. And it's why the Pentagon compares countries who try to work through the UN or the International Criminal Court to terrorists.

None of this is to say that Americans are bad people - far from it. But as citizens of the empire (as opposed to it's subjects) they are allowed an immense ignorance about the actions of their government. Nothing was quite so weird as hearing Americans plead, "why do they hate us?" in the days after 9/11. And even the better-educated ones - like Matthew Yglesias, Harvard graduate - seem to be fundamentally unaware as to what America does, and why it does it.

Once again, so no one confuses my point: There is a fundamental difference between the predations of the American state and the virtues of the American people. The former has been building an empire for more than a century now, and has been opposed by right-thinking people at every imperial turn. The latter have largely gone about their business, occasionally sacrificed much for their brothers and sisters across the seas, and should (mostly) take pride in building a nation that - even without its empire - would be the envy of all the emperors and tin-pot gods in the long, sad history of emperors and tin-pot gods.

All that said, I'm beginning to think that America got in to the global-empire business a bit too late. But that's for another post.

Now I've Seen Everything

I generally don't take libertarians seriously, because I've always figured that the best example of a libertarian paradise would be Somalia - look! No government! See how happy everyone isn't?

So it's with a mix of humour and depression that I read this:

The End of the Salad Days in Somalia

Fifteen glorious years without a central government in Somalia! It was typically described as a "power vacuum," as if the absence of a taxing, regulating, coercing junta is an unnatural state of affairs, one that cannot and should not last....

Since that time, Somalia has done quite well for itself, thank you (BBC: "Telecoms Thriving in Lawless Somalia").

It's a good thing Ayn Rand lends herself so easily to parody. I just wish every horse's ass I knew in high school hadn't tried to justify his horse-assedness with "objectivism."

Asian Politics Jamboree!

Staying with the Asian politics theme, Angelica has some insights as to why Taiwan's DPP is busy trying to unseat an unpopular president. If I understand correctly, it has more to do with inter-party rivalries within the opposition Pan-Blues than anything else.

A thousand miles northeast, there seems to be some glimmering signs of hope with the relationship between Japan and China. Basically, the Chinese seem to be saying that they're willing to let bygones be bygones when Japanese PM Koizumi leaves office. Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni shrine have been only the most public of his policy of appealing to conservative Japanese nationalists, and have made him persona non grata in Beijing (and, it should be said, other Asian capitals.)

There aren't a lot of areas where I'm willing to side unequivocally with Beijing, but Koizumi's actions have been provocative, and knowingly so. To be absolutely clear, the Yasukuni shrine exists as an embodied form of revisionist history, a kind of physical delusion on the same moral plane as holocaust denial. The shrine's museum proclaims that Japan was "forced" in to war in the 1930s to protect all of Asia from the depredations of western imperialism.

In the course of "protecting" Asia, over 15 million Chinese civilians were killed. The most horrific incident was the Rape of Nanking, something the Governor of Tokyo says was made up by the Chinese. Somehow, I think if the Mayor of Berlin was a holocaust denier, we'd be paying more attention. Just look at the reaction the west had when Austria's governing party brought Joerg Haider (who had praised the SS) in to government.

This isn't to say that reaction was particularly effective, only that when prominent Japanese politicians say noxious things, western politicians should at least not be silent. Instead, there seems to be an expression of the usual media convention - give both views equal time, and don't explitly call one crap.

I'm not pinning all of this on Koizumi by any means. Indeed, Koizumi seems to have both slyly encouraged, and ridden, a new wave a Japanese nationalism that predates his term as PM. There's an increasing sense in Japan that it needs to be a "regular" nation again, with an officially-sanctioned military among other things. Being a "regular" nation also seems to mean that Japan needs to leave behind any war guilt, for Japanese conservatives.

And if you're not repelled by right-wing denials of war crimes, it's worth remembering that Japanese claims of innocence keep ruining the relationship between Japan and China, Asia's two biggest economies. Whatever American interests in Asia are, they aren't well-served by tensions between these two countries.

The Dubya of the East

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Some 20,000 Taiwanese demonstrated in the capital Saturday, demanding the president resign over allegations some of his relatives engaged in insider trading.

The protest was part of an opposition campaign for a referendum to oust President Chen Shui-bian, whose term ends in 2008....

Although Chen has not been personally implicated in any wrongdoing, opposition leaders say he has lost the dignity to function as president. They have called on him to resign to spare the island more unrest.

"If a president isn't fit to rule, you can recall him. He doesn't have to commit a criminal act," said Ma Ying-Jeou, leader of the main opposition Nationalist Party.

Imagine that. Chen even has Bush-like approval ratings, with only 34% of Taiwanese saying he should complete his term. Another poll says Chen has an approval rating of just 28%, meaning there's at least one leader in the world who envies Bush's popularity. Almost enough to make me believe in Intelligent Design. There are more important issues in the Taiwan straits, of course.

I'm not terribly sure-footed around Taiwanese politics, but the more I read it seems like Chen is caught in the middle between his pro-independence supporters on the one hand, and the fact that any formal attempt at independence would be a disaster for Taiwan on the other. This forces Chen to be nominally pro-independence to appease his base, but unable to deliver substantively on this front for fear of the harm it would do to him and Taiwan.

Sound familiar?

If I were the Nationalists I wouldn't be using this tactic, however. Chen is far more useful in office, where he and his party are unlikely to recover. This would set the stage for a "pan-blue" victory in 2008, just a few months before the Beijing Olympics.

A Nationalist President of Taiwan would take an immense load off of everyone's mind in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, given that the main fear among some circles has been the DPP (Chen's party) would declare formal independence. This, the theory goes, would prevent China from retaliating against Taiwan and ruin their Olympics. The fact that Beijing has said subduing Taiwan is more important than the Olympics has apparently not dimmed the enthusiasm for this idea.

Were Chen to leave office, of course, its possible the DPP could recover their popularity and win the Presidency again, despite the recent gains by the Nationalists in the Legislative Yuan. My sentiment would be to leave Chen there and have him taint the DPP. After all, the Democrats are trying to keep Tom Delay on the ballot. The same principle should work here, shouldn't it?

Bushology

(Cross-Posted at Ezra Klein's.)

Kremlinology: During the Cold War, lack of reliable information about the country forced Western analysts to "read between the lines" and to use the tiniest tidbits, such as the removal of portraits, the rearranging of chairs, positions at the reviewing stand for May Day parades, and other indirect signs to try to understand what was happening in internal Soviet politics.

It seems to me we need an update. I've recently begun listening to the excellent radio show, Radio Open Source from Public Radio International. One of the more recent ones on Iran was bizarre, in that all the participants acknowledged the biggest problem with US diplomacy is that nobody knows who's in charge.

Read More...

Now, maybe it's my youth, but I don't remember any similar problems with the Clinton (or, for that matter, Bush I) administration. There might have been the occasional spat with William Cohen, but nobody seriously thought that Cohen and Albright were rival camps for the President's attention, right?

I'm certainly not the first person to say it: this is a direct consequence of electing a President who's an idiot. The excuse from 2000 was that whatever happened, Bush would have good advisors. Of course, the problem is that Bush lacks the mental or ethical faculties to actually be, in his words, the Decider. So instead of leadership, we get the situation we're in: the main foreign representative of the US government (Rice) makes a proposal to negotiate directly with Iran (kind of), but nobody knows whether to take it seriously or not.

Now, as confusing as this is for us and the press, it's got to be even more suspicious to the Iranians. They've got no reason to believe anything peaceful-sounding from this White House so long as Cheney and Rumsfeld retain their positions. There's a real danger here, even if you assume neither side actually wants war: the Iranians can effectively discount the "moderates" in this administration, because there's never been any evidence that the "moderates" have any credibility.

(The word moderates is in scare-quotes because they're still Republicans.)

The obvious retort is to say that, if anything, the Iranian government is more obscure than the US. This is true, and is exactly the point: The question of authority and influence in the government of the United States should not be comparable - at all - to that of an oil-rich theocracy.

Something else to note from that show - Joseph Cirincione had a perceptive turn of phrase: "If you liked Iraq, you're gonna love Iran." Cirincione was of course mocking the idea of a quick, easy war with Iran. But what frightens me is that some people have loved Iraq, from the moment it began to this very day. Crucially, most of these people are in the Pentagon and the White House. So I wouldn't dismiss the idea of war just yet.

Permanent What? Whuzzat Bases? Huh-raq?

Y'all should probably just read Matt Yglesias instead of me. From him, once again:

Iraq's Prime Minister semi-endorses an 18 month timetable for withdrawal and Bush, rather than embrace the opportunity to extricate ourselves, smacks him down. Did someone say "permanent bases"?

No, nobody said that. Matt links to Steve Benen at Political Animal:

Tom Engelhardt noted that the "debate" over permanent U.S. bases in Iraq was practically non-existent. After a search of the LexisNexis database, he explained, "American reporters adhere to a simple rule: The words 'permanent,' 'bases,' and 'Iraq' should never be placed in the same sentence, not even in the same paragraph; in fact, not even in the same news report."

With the U.S. set to build four "super-bases" in Iraq, which many believe will eventually be part of a massive permanent presence, maybe it's time to put the question on the table? According to one House Democrat, GOP lawmakers are avoiding the issue.

My question is simple: Why would any thinking person expect a debate over permanent bases? Imperialism is a self-sustaining process - so long as it's a consensus. The moment the debate begins (in a democracy, at least) the debate is lost. Nobody, after all, can logically or ethically defend perpetual bases in Iraq - unless the US aims to use Iraq as a point of departure for regional attacks.

Let's be clear - American bases are modern-day colonies. They are, for all intents and purposes, American soil. The law of the host countries does not apply on the bases. If an American soldier commits a crime - say, raping a schoolgirl - the only thing he needs to do to avoid punishment is get back to the base before the local law enforcement catches him. The military then ships the randy soldier back to the land of the free, never to return. South Korea and Okinawa have a long, sad, horrifying history of this.

In the run-up to the war in Iraq, al-Jazeera ran an inconvenient truth of it's own: the majority of the territory of Kuwait was off-limits to the Kuwaiti people, as the American bases there had expanded dramatically in preparation for the war. This had some historical overtones that were less than flattering for the US: Access to Iranian soil was one of the major grievances of the Iranians under the Shah.

A discussion of American bases in Iraq might lead to an inconvenient discussion about American bases all over the world. This, of course, cannot be allowed. So the press carefully ignores the elephant in the room. Which is why I'm sure that when angry Iraqis eventually evict the Americans, we will no doubt hear cries of "why do they hate us?" and "what did we ever do to them?"

Nuclear: Still the wrong choice

via Dave Roberts at Gristmill, this is a fantastic argument against further nuclear expansion. It neatly breaks down all of the arguments against new nuclear construction, from the paucity of remaining uranium reserves, to the ugliness of technical alternatives (such as breeder reactors.) Not to mention the cost!

[edited out some extraneous suff. - June 10th.]

Worst US War Ever?

One of the frustrating things about blogging is that every once in a while, someone says something breathtakingly stupid, but you forget who exactly said what exactly, so you can't respond properly by finding the post and excoriating them. That said, one of the silliest things I saw in the run-up to the Iraq war was a claim that, however it turned out, the war was unlikely to be a long-term drain on the United States.

The example of Vietnam was cited, which is now basically a mini-China: authoritarian but happily exporting wares to the US throught a corrupt economy. If Vietnam and the US can be friends, the logic went, then certainly Iraq and the US can be, with the passage of time. It was memorably summed up with the phrase (from memory) "the biggest internation dispute between us now involves shrimp", referring to a trade dispute between the US and Vietnam.

I think this was a pretty vain hope from the beginning. Vietnam, as devastating as it was to the American psyche, was a relatively trivial loss (except for the dead, of course.) The Cold War was not decisively upset in favour of either side. The Soviets gained an American funded naval base, but not much else. The Chinese, for their part, gained a staunch ally in worker's solidarity... who they promptly attacked. In short, Vietnam wasn't a blow to the US because the stakes were relatively small, despite the Domino Theory.

Iraq is another matter entirely. Here is a oil-rich nation that will almost certainly be taken over by virulently anti-American and anti-Israeli theocrats along the Iranian model. The other outcomes, believe it or not, are worse. We're likely to see the price of oil climb further as this war drags on, and further enrich countries like Iran and Russia. And the damage to the US military may take a decade to repair. The damage to US credibility may very well be permanent.

In short, I think the fallout from Iraq may very well be a permanent re-ordering of the international sphere. So does Helena Cobban in Salon:

So as the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, there may be some developments in international politics that will strengthen global stability. The U.S. may lose the ability it has had for so long to block any resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute that does not conform to Israel's wishes. The U.S. and the other world powers may finally get serious about trying to stabilize Afghanistan (and other long-neglected parts of the world like Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Darfur), rather than leaving them to fester and thus incubate new al-Qaidas or other, as-yet-unseen networks of stakeless international troublemakers. And crucially, the gross power imbalance between the U.S.'s 300 million people and the 6 billion humans who are not U.S. citizens may finally shift toward a more egalitarian, and therefore more just and stable, position. But alongside these possible "gains" from the point of view of building a more just world, we also need to tally up the losses inflicted by the whole brutal Bush project in Iraq: primarily, the massive losses inflicted on Iraq's people, but also the losses of American lives and treasure.

I realize there are many Americans who are not as ready as I am to welcome the prospect of a diminishment (or, as I would say, a rectification) of the disproportionate amount of power our nation has been able to wield in world affairs over the past 60 years. Many Americans today -- like many British or French citizens 80 years ago -- think it is somehow "natural" that their nation intervene in the doings of other nations around the world and act as the crucial arbiter in international affairs. (And yes, throughout history nearly all such interventions have always come dressed in "salvationist" garb: Very few nations ever knowingly undertake a war or any other foreign intervention that its people clearly understand to be unjust at the time. If such understanding comes at all, it does so only later.)

Richard Holbrooke, meanwhile, thinks Iraq is going to consume American politics for at least another decade:

What Holbrooke argued was this: President Bush has already expressly acknowledged -- even affirmed -- that Iraq will be a problem he will hand off to his successor. Holbrooke then very carefully, and ominously, took us through the richochet-like sequence of consequences: the successor inherits Iraq and is bedeviled by it starting in 2009; Iraq becomes not a but the issue during the successor's reelection campaign in 2012; Iraq skews domestic and foreign policy during the successor's lame-duck term; Iraq continues to entrap the candidates running for President in 2016.

Frankly, I think this is optimistic - the US will need to withdraw from Iraq before then. But the point is clear - we're witnessing a diminishment of American power and authority (not the same thing, obviously) very much unlike the American defeat in Vietnam.

Petrorubles

So Russia, like Iran, is moving to try and switch its energy sales from the dollar to a preferred non-American currency - Iran is using the Euro, Russia is using the Ruble.

As I've said before, I'm skeptical that this will trigger, in and of itself, a flight from the dollar. That said, there's more than enough reason for private and public dollar-holders to run, screaming, from the greenback, so it's just possible that this will be the trigger event for the much-delayed dollar-correction.

Too Much Water Under the Bridge

Palestine is being punished for having voted Hamas into power. But the election in which that took place was only organized because the American government took the line that Israel shouldn't negotiate with the Palestinian Authority until it implemented democratic reforms.

Well, they did what we asked them to do, and the governing party lost to what everyone previously understood to be the main opposition party. In consequence, we shut down their hospitals. What kind of sense does this make? Palestine is supposed to have a democracy, but it was supposed to be a democracy where the voters only elected the party we preferred, which just happened to be the party that was already in power. It's a bit odd, is it not? What, exactly, has this series of initiatives been designed to accomplish?

Silly Matt. You're pretending that US (or Israeli) policy is deisgned to accomplish something. The main point of consensus in American policy in the middle east is simple: The Palestinians are not to be treated seriously, under any circumstances. Can't negotiate with them so long as there's even the chance of a single terrorist attack on a single Israeli citizen. Moreover, can't negotiate if things are peaceful, but people are saying nasty things about Israel. Oh, and to top it all off, the Palestinian authority is to be denied any means by which it could control its own people, by de-funding it and attacking anything like a state aparatus.

In this, US policy has succeeded remarkably well. As for why this should be so, I don't have a good idea anymore. I'm beginning to suspect that this generation of Israelis and Palestinians are so used to the violence and constant hatred that they don't know what else to do anymore.

Odd Chemistry Links

-A new way to make titanium, promising dramatically cheaper costs. Net result: More fuel efficient jets. I had actually always assumed that titanium was electrolyzed like aluminum, given that they both tend to exist naturally as tightly-bound oxides. Shows what I know.

-Cheap hydrogen, too. I'm not a fuel-cell booster, but any progress on electrolysis is a good thing: As natural gas runs out, our primary source of hydrogen is going to dry up and will need replacing. And not just for cars: the hydrogen from natural gas is used with atmospheric nitrogen to make fertilizer.

My Countrymen Are Dumb. D-U-M-Dumb.

A new poll suggests 80 per cent of Canadians expect gasoline prices to climb with the temperature this summer....

"Despite concerns about an energy shortage, Canadians historically have not demonstrated a commitment to change in behaviour when it comes when it comes to using gasoline," Tim More, senior vice-president for Ipsos Reid said in a written statement....

The poll also suggests Canadians aren't well informed about gas prices or where fuel comes from.

"Canada is a net exporter of gasoline but when you ask Canadians how much we produce domestically, most believe we get half our supply from somewhere else," said Colleen Killingsworth, president of the energy information centre.

The results reveal that more than a third of respondents thought Canadian gasoline prices were higher than those in Europe or Japan, when those foreign prices are twice as high as the Canadian rate, Ipsos Reid said.

I blame American media. Seriously. Just as deadbolt sales go up everytime Detroit television runs a crime special, Canadians seem to be under the mistaken impression that we - like our neighbours to the south - import most of our fuel.

Needless to say, I'd like to see the provincial breakdowns of those numbers. I would like to think that Albertans - at the very least! - know how much oil we make.

And the idea that we somehow think that Europeans or Japanese pay less for gasoline than Canada does is profoundly depressing.

For the record: Canada produces twice as much oil as it consumes, and is the second-least-taxed country in the industrial world when it comes to gasoline.

Saudi Production Slipping?

Via Peak Energy, this is genuinely confusing:

New York: Saudi Arabia cut oil production to 9.1 million barrels per day in April due to a drop in refinery demand, not a desire to lower stock levels, The Wall Street Journal yesterday quoted Oil Minister Ali Al Naimi as saying.

After the Opec meeting in Caracas, Al Naimi said other members are having trouble finding buyers for all their crude at a time when global storage is near full and many refiners have closed for routine maintenance, The Wall Street Journal said. "It's not just heavy oil. Even light oil is having problems" finding buyers.

That's a 400,00 barrel per day drop in Saudi production, and the idea that the Saudis couldn't find buyers is kind of ridiculous. As we've seen before, the Saudis are notoriously opaque when it comes to their numbers. We also know that once Saudi production starts to decline, its likely to accelerate and get nasty quick.

Now - ass-covering alert - the Saudis might be telling the truth, just to see what it feels like. But given their history, I'm not sure. And on a purely sarcastic note, I would really love for Saudi production to peak only a week after Greg Palast wrote his idiotic column about how peak oil was an Exxon conspiracy.

Zarqawi

Normally, when the US announces they've caught or captured some terrorist, I assume either a) his next video will be out by August, or b) somebody else did the legwork, and the US is taking credit for it.

Such may be the case with Zarqawi. Apparently, he's been increasingly marginalized by the Shia in Iraq, and has responded by calling the US, Shia in Iraq, and Iran all conspirators in a plot to destroy Islam. Needless to say, this hasn't made him any friends.

So the fact that the US has announced his death should be taken to mean only one thing: If the US managed to catch or neutralize him, he was probably already irrelevant.

Of course, we can now expect all the right wingers to reset their "six more months" clocks, as Zarqawi's death will be seen to mark another "turning point" in this war. Of course, it's meaningless. I don't believe Zarqawi was ever the leader in the way the US believed he was - but the Pentgaon still doesn't want to accept the fact that Iraq is a full-blown anti-American insurgency, not some al-Qaeda plot.

(via Susie Madrak.)

Shivers

Sometimes I forget what 9/11 felt like. Steve Gilliard lives in New York, and remembers:

Everyone in New York shared in 9/11, and not in that phony bullshit gated community cower from the brown people way. They buried the dead for a year, and the funerals made the papers seven days a week.

That's about Ann Coulter, and you should read Steve's brilliant takedown of her. (He also notes the different media reaction between the 9/11 widows and Cindy Sheehan.) During the actual day of 9/11, it all felt so surreal. For a long time, it didn't really sink in for me until some months later. My girlfriend and I were walking downtown, when a plane flew overhead - at just the wrong angle. You see planes flying overhead all the time, but this one was just a bit out of place, and was moving fast.

Before I knew it I was grabbing Vicki's hand, and my stomach was in my boots.

Of course, it turned out to be nothing, but I had never realized that 9/11 had imprinted itself in my mind so thoroughly. That said, I would like to think I wasn't driven mad by the experience, the way so many seem to have been. Christopher Hitchens is an example of someone who went from "leftist alcoholic" to "alcoholic leninist" with relative ease, and his extremism - like his drinks, undiluted - found a welcoming party on the other side of the rhetorical spectrum. (I say rhetorical because I assume Hitchens is motivated by the search for the limelight, not anything as cumbersome as intellectual scruple.)

So what to make of the news that the RCMP has caught a passel of young men - most younger than me, in fact - who were planning all kinds of nasty excercises?

Well, the snarky side of me says this: These guys had to be total fucking boobs. Any idea how bad you need to be if the RCMP can find you? This is the organization with one of the worst records - yet the best PR - in Canadian history. The RCMP spent most of the 1970s - when it had nominal responsibility for catching Soviet spies - bugging and disrupting NDP and Quebec separatist meetings. Seriously. Read some books. Hilarity.

On the more serious side, it is good that the RCMP did catch them. And yes, I want to see them given the full protections of the law. In fact, given how restricted our laws have gotten, I'd actually like to see them get more protections, something more in line with what a liberal democracy might do. And if Clayton Ruby isn't calling entrapment, I'm inclined to believe him. (Thanks, Skippy.)

Finally, you've got to wonder at the mentality that celebrates - calling spades spades - this kind of event as a justification of all their prejudice. You see, we always knew those dirty muslims should've just been rounded up in camps! Imagine how happy these people would've been if those 3 tons of ammonium nitrate had actually been used?

And to address the Afghanistan issue - this is irrelevant. Afghanistan was either a good or bad idea before this, and it is either a good or bad idea afterwards. Fighting Hitler didn't become a bad idea during the Blitz, and Vietnam didn't become a good idea after Tet. Iraq seems to have barely raised to the level of conscious thought, much less an idea, but its status was unaffected by the Madrid bombings - a fact recognized by the Spanish electorate. And the British electorate didn't change its majority-disapproval of Iraq, even after the London tube bombings.

I hereby call these arrests as out of bounds for the Afghanistan discussion. Argue on your merits, people!

Calls to increase surveillance on Muslims (we assume some is already ongoing) or somehow increase our discrimination against law-abiding citizens are similarly repugnant. Doesn't this event show that existing law enforcement has all the powers it needs?

In short, can't we all just keep doing what we're doing? Does this really need to become a football? Can't we all just look at these boobs and laugh at their idiocy? And if not, why not?

Yes Please

Angelica titles one of her posts "We need a hippocratic oath for economists", and needless to say I agree. Not least because the post in question happens to be about NAIRU, what James Galbraith calls "one of the worst ideas in the modern history of economics." Brief lesson: the concept of "natural unemployment" was used in North America - and is used in Europe today - to restrict inflationary pressures. It deliberately privileges inflation over employment. That is, it privileges accrued wealth in the hands of the few, rather than the working class.

Here's the thing - there's no evidence that economists can even define what NAIRU would be, or even if it exists at all. Nevertheless, this idea - again, totally fictional - motivated central bankers to keep interet rates high throughout the 1980s and 1990s, until US unemployment fell though what had been seen as the employment floor faster than Greenspan could raise rates.

It's important to note that Greenspan was as much an acolyte of NAIRU as anyone else, he was just blindsided by the sucess of the US economy. Greenspan deserves credit for not insisting that NAIRU still held and trying to strangle the US economy. This was a test that our own central banker in Canada, John Crow, failed.

Dean Baker - my favourite economist, as regulars will remember - has repeatedly shown that the biggest differential between European "struggling" economies and the US has nothing to do with "over-generous pensions" or strict labour codes, but is simply due to the fact that German bankers now control the monetary policy for the entire continent minus the holdouts. Germans are not known for their loose-money policies. (Anymore.) Talking about how the EU countries need to "liberalize" without recognizing this basic fact is an act of immense stupidity.

NAIRU in particular - and right-wing monetarism in general - is also largely responsible for the sordid state of our infrastructure, which I posted about recently. High-interest, low-spending policies do not lend themselves to large infrastructure projects. And of course, it's diametrically opposed to actually having the government employ people to do useful things.

So yes, please, let's have a hippocratic oath for economists. Of course, if we did then Jeffrey Sachs would lose his license and be shunned in polite company.

The Nazis Were Right, After All.

Also, Apartheid South Africa. It seems the way to run an increasingly-oppressive military state is with the use of coal-derived fuels.

The fact that the Nazis and Boers used coal-derived fuels to run their militaries is not really germane to whether or not it's a good idea. What is germane, however, is the fact that coal-derived fuels suck nads. They produce loads of CO2 (as all coal does) unnecessarily. Hell, tar sands oil is probably less carbon-intense than coal-fuels.

On the other hand, the fact that the US military is investing this much in what amounts to an alternative fuel is telling. It tells us that the Pentagon's planners a) don't expect the price of oil to go down soon, and b) aren't sure about existing supplies, either. "A" makes them smarter than the National Post, which shows only that Pentagon planners can outwit a jar of mayonnaise.

Still, you've got to love US policy. Apparently, the flow-chart of American energy policy goes something like this:

1) We can't invest in alternative fuels - they're too expensive.

2) We still need oil - a carrier group in the Persian Gulf should do.

3) Disastrous, illegal wars do nothing to lower the price or secure additional supplies for the US economy.

4) We need alternative fuels!

A bit more seriously, this is something I've said is the fallacy with "doomer nihilists" (to use Robert McLeod's invaluable taxonomy) pessimism over the future of civilization. To put it simply, the organs of the state will be certain they always have enough oil - even if it means the rest of us freeze in the dark. To wit: Cops don't line up with the rest of us. If the stresses of peak oil are even half as great as the nihilists believe, then what we're going to see is a massive reassertion of state power in the economy, and in what is nominally our "private lives".

In fact, much of our lives were never private in the sense that they were individual choices affecting no one else. Much of North American life is in fact dramatically public - driving a car down a road built and maintained with public funds, with publicly enforced regulations and laws, and public emergency services in case you're drunk. (Liquor, of course, is a state monopoly in Ontario.) But god forbid we, say, put cameras at red lights - that would be an "invasion of privacy." (That argument was always retarded.)

Fantasyland

This National Post article is fascinating, for what's missing - namely, any contact with reality whatsoever:

CALGARY - Canadians are getting accustomed to viewing the Athabasca oilsands as the Holy Grail to an oil-starved world, but the outside view remains cautious.

Cautious, you say? Why's that? The environmental costs? The dependence on natural gas? The fact that it's the definition of unsustainable?

Nope.

"There is much more awareness [of the oilsands worldwide] than a couple of years ago, but what I notice is that deeply in the mindset of the oilmen there is a scare that there will be an oversupply" of oil that will drive prices down, making Canada's high-cost oil less economic.

Exactly where is this oversupply going to come from, I wonder. Exactly which part of the planet Earth is going to suddenly start spewing forth oil in such volume that we will not only satisfy world demand, but exceed it and have a glut?

The answer is Nowheresville - population: The National Post, apparently.

Speaking of, I'd just like to make a request: If you're going to write a critical review of Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, could you please try to avoid comparisons to Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, or Mao? It makes you look, well, crazy.

Somedays I think it must be nice to be a right-wing hack - the work is much easier, apparently.

Cool. Want one.

I have no idea why someone would jump out of a perfectly good airplane, but if you were to do such a silly thing, you should take one of these.

But that's Communism

Atrios and Yglesias both mention that the government should be providing public goods, such as roads, bridges, and sidewalks. That this even needs to be said is a sign of how the right has triumphed in our discourse.

OF COURSE the government should deliver roads, bridges, highways, water, electricity, and any number of other services. Natural monopolies - that is, networks where competition is impossible - should by definition by controlled by the public, for a very simple reason: A private entity - unless strictly controlled by the government - is really required to treat a network it controls as a source of revenue to be maximized, not a public commodity. Of course, if we're going to strictly control a private utility, you might as well nationalize it and put it under government watch.

And there's a huge list of things that could be done, even after we're done repaving the roads and reinforcing the bridges. How about adding to our rail capacity, and electrifying it? This would allow freight companies to ship goods across the country more cheaply, and at greater speed, even without a French- or Japanesestyle bullet train system. Speaking of, why not a bullet train system? The eastern half of the continent is more then densely populated enough. (Electrified rail is also an excellent way to stave off peak oil problems.) How about fiber-optic networks to every home? The electrification of Ontario was almost certainly more demanding, and was entirely public. How about a truly national electrical grid, allowing the whole country to benefit from the winds and sun of the prairies, and letting the prairies profit in the process?

(My girlfriend's asked me to suggest a chocolate pipeline to every town and village. Add your suggestions in comments below.)

If we're really serious, we need to think about more than just refurbishing existing infrastructure in Canada. We need to build in such a way as to encourage development in rural communities. Again, these links - communications, energy, transport - need to be publicly owned and operated. Toronto is going to suffer immensely in the next twenty years if all we can think to do is cram more and more people in the GTA.

Just to be clear, I don't think the government should be nationalizing Ford Motors Canada (well, maybe) but the idea that we ever sold Ontario Hydro is an act of madmen and criminals. Thanks, Tories.

Note that the few jurisdictions in North America who did not deregulate their power supplies (Los Angeles and Medicine Hat) pay substantially lower rates than the privatized markets. Note that a public organization - UTOPIA - is building one of America's most advanced fiber networks, without private help, and in fact with great private opposition. Note that the sale of Highway 407 has been a fiasco for the commuters of Ontario. Again, again, and again, we see that privatization of vital networks and services does nothing but ruin those networks and services.

This isn't to say that public organizations can't have problems of their own: Ontario Hydro, enthralled by what one consultant called a "nuclear cult", dug itself in to such a deep debt hole that the Harris government was able to sell this ratepayer rape as a kindness. Moreover, Ontario Hydro had been such a monster for Ontario politicians for so long, that most parties - even the NDP, despite their claims in the last election - welcomed the dismantling of Hydro when it came.

But the fact that Ontario Hydro was out of control isn't an argument against public ownership any more than $100 hammers are an argument against national defense. What it's an argument for is tougher public accountability, and maybe a Minister of Energy who's willing to swing an axe or five. But this kind of accountability is basically impossible once you've privatized things - and we have to ask a simple question: As bad as Ontario Hydro was, would we prefer Enron?

Interesting

So apparently we're actually closing in on a deal with Iran. The key, it seems, is the US offer to give Iran light-water nuclear technology, the kind that the US gave to North Korea.

Of course, it's received wisdom in wingnut circles that the deal Clinton made with North Korea was an act of treason for which Clinton should have been shot. I wonder what they'll say about Bush - will the fact that Bush is giving nuclear technology to the hated ayatollahs force the base to turn around, or will they just turn on Clinton?

Matthew Yglesias is making sense

On why the US needs to leave Iraq, now:

Now ask yourself if anything in that regard has changed in the past twelve months. Have we accomplished anything at all worth accomplishing in that time period? To be sure, things have happened. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent, American troops have been killed, other American troops have perpetrated some massacres, Shiite militias have grown more adept at extrajudicial killings of Sunni Arabs, Sunni Arabs have killed lots of Shiite civilians, etc. But have we achieved anything? Are we closer or further from "full-blown civil war" or whatever it is that's supposed to distinguish the current situation from what might happen if we leave? Does anyone expect liberty to blossom in the desert at this point?

Needless to say, I agree - as I've said before, the most crucial question to ask when using force is: can we achieve our goals? If we can't - and the Americans manifestly cannot in Iraq - then the answer is simple: leave. Bad things happen in war, and bad things happen when wars end. This isn't a reason to stay - it's a reason not to go to war in the first place.

Going Bananas

One cliched acronym - NIMBY (not in my backyard) - has given way to a new cliched acronym: BANANA: Build absolutely nothing, anyhere near anything. There are sometimes legitimate issues with siting industrial or generation plants near population centres, or in sensitive ecological zones, I'll be the first to concede.

But what's incredibly frustrating is the near-universal reaction against wind power farms. This isn't to say that the opposition to wind power is widespread - it isn't. If anything, the opposition is usually a small but vocal minority. But it does crop up everywhere where a wind farm does.

As far as I can tell, there are two reasons why the opposition succeeds as they do is a) the media, who love a "environmentalist fratricide" story, and b) the application process for these farms.

As frustrating as they are, I'm not so short-sighted as to propose reducing the regulatory burden on wind farms - they should pass any environmental assessment with flying colours, anyway. And cases where they can't would have to be pretty obviously bad.

That leaves the media. Could reporters please stop treating wind farm opponents like they have, oh, any credibility? My ability to breathe clean air and have a liveable planet in the next fifty years doesn't take second place to your view.

More on Plasma

So municipal waste disposal is in the news today, with the Ottawa Citizen running a story on the number of GTA municipalities that are looking at incineration for waste disposal. (Unfortunately, their story is behind a pay wall.) The Swedes are busy selling their well-tested combined heat and power (CHP) systems for garbage disposal, and even the Ontario Environment Commissioner is cautiously on board.

The main selling point with these CHP systems is that they are relatively low emissions, and they can deliver energy on to the grid in the form of steam for heating and electricity.

Looking at a plasma waste disposal system - which could feed an ethanol plant, as we've seen - has some interesting advantages over traditional incineration. The first is that the temperatures are much higher, leading to a greater destruction of harmful organic compounds like dioxin. At a certain temperature, the all hydrocarbons dissociate in to carbon monoxide and hyrdogen. That's syngas, and it's a useful feedstock for all sorts of chemistry, not just ethanol.

Another advantage is that with a high enough temperature, there's little need to sort trash before you burn it - even aluminum and zinc can be in the mix, and they'll just be sorted out of the dross afterwards. This actuall leads to another important point with gasification (as opposed to incineration): in gasification, things like sulphr and nitrogen can be filtered out of the waste stream before being vented - the sulphur can be sold commercially, as I imagine could the nitrogen (fertilizer anyone?)

Whatever's left in the solids can then be treated with silicates and covered in an obsidian-like matrix, leaving it essentially bound up and contained for millions of years. This technique has been proposed for low-level nuclear waste disposal, so it should be fine for things like mercury. This is a clear advantage over incineration or regular gasification.

The big drawback is that, while CHP incinerators are net producers of energy, a plasma reactor (on its own) would be a net consumer of electricity. That's not to say it couldn't sill produce some of it's own electricity, and there's liable to be plenty of heat to use for district heating. But using the numbers for a sea-based plasma system here, I'm calculating roughly 4.2kw of power to dispose of one kg per hour.

That means that to dispose of the one billion kilograms of waste Toronto sends to landfill every year, we'd need to have 500 megawatts of power running 24/7, though I'm not assuming any kind of electrical or heat exports. That's a lot of electricity for a city that already has supply issues.

The reason the electricity demand is so high is that a lot of that energy would be contained in the syngas, and would be exported as ethanol (or whatever fuel is best.) So while the facility would be a net electricity consumer, it would hopefully be a net energy producer.

Of course, I wouldn't want plasma disposal to be seen as an alternative to recycling or the successful green bin program, but the fact remains that Toronto is always going to produce a lot of landfill wate, even with optimistic projections for recycling and composting. Given plasma's other advantages over incineration or conventional gasification, I'd say it's worth exploring.

Oh yeah...

It seems to me I used to write about energy issues, or at least tried to more frequently than I have. Part of that is I have recently found paid remuneration, but unfortunately this leaves me with little time to write substantive posts on much of anything, unless I blog during work hours - which I have been doing, of course.

Anyway, the latest thing that got me thinking is this - another syngas process for making ethanol. The last one of these we saw was a plasma-FT process, which sounded extraordinary to me. This is apparently a less-demanding variation on the same theme: carbon-rich material is gasified, and reacted with a catalyst to make ethanol. The process promises even higher yields than cellulosic ethanol, which has been the industry leader thus far. More importantly, this process - like the plasma-FT process - opens up a lot more sources of ethanol for production than just corn grain.

The ethanol wave seems to be cresting among energy intellectuals, and I think that's a shame. There seems to be this consensus that, like hydrogen before it, there's no way that ethanol will ever present a serious solution to our liquid fuel needs. I think it's far from proven that ethanol production must have a low energy return. Indeed, with processes like the above, I think the reverse may be true.

Setting the bar low

From Salon.com:

For his part, Warner tried to downplay the cleavage in the party, since he is, most assuredly, not running as the 2008 version of Joe Lieberman. Warner has added a few red-meat lines to his still evolving stump speech, mostly notably his call for "an administration that doesn't have an on-and-off switch when it comes to following the law."

I'd take an administration that had an "on" switch when it came to following the law, or even basic morality.

These guys don't seem to qualify.

Let's see...

How high oil goes tomorrow.

About Russia

I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday, so of course the topic of Putin and Russia came up. Yes, I have those kinds of friends. But it's relevant to yesterday's post about the SCO, so I'd like to repeat myself a bit.

In the western discussion of Putin and Russia, much is made about Putin clawing back democracy, and a lot of it is with good reason. But almost never do you hear a simple, basic fact about Russian history for the last, oh, 15 years or so:

Democracy failed in Russia. It failed in every single test of governance. The economy imploded, Russia's international stature declined dramatically, the security situation got worse inside Russia, and even before Putin, the political system was (at best!) a joke of corruption and cronyism. And we in the west watched as it happened, and did pathetically little to stop it. In fact, through our proxies in the IMF, we actually encouraged the economic meltdown that occured.

Now, I'm not saying that I believe Putin is right to do what he's doing. I believe that democracy is an absolute good, not a relative or utilitarian one. That said, you can hardly expect Russians today to be full-throated champions of liberalism, when liberalism is seen as the reason Russia is in such bad straits. As one example: The Russian economy grew an average of 6.7% from 1999-2003, which is hardly Chinese-level growth, but is still better than the US or Canada have managed in the same period. This is even more significant when you consider that in the period of 1991-1998, the Russian economy probably shrank by at least 50%.

Dean Baker has said that, outside of a major war, no economy has ever been destroyed the way Russia's has. I'd go even further: Thanks to the work of Jeffrey Sachs and others, Russia suffered more at the hands of global capitalism than it did from the Wehrmacht.

In no way is Putin responsible for Russia's economic recovery - the devaluation of the ruble, and the increase in energy prices did that. But it is nevertheless true that Russians are doing better under Putin than they were under Yeltsin. It is also true that Putin has managed some serious political reforms in Russia that were necessary, even if unpopular in the west. One example would be Putin's transformation of Russia from a federal to a near-unitary state: Regional and local governors, once elected, are now appointed by the Kremlin. Given how Russia came close to flying apart under Yeltsin, this was a necessary step - even if it makes Russia a less democratic state.

The SCO, too, is an obviously troubling development. Many describe it as Russia's attempt to rebuild an empire in Asia. This a) ignores the fact that the SCO was founded by China, and b) might still be accurate. But once again, most Russians see the post-Soviet decline in Russia's power as a great tragedy, and would be happy to see Russia regain some of its glory. Had we in the west worked to give Russia a gentler transition to democracy and capitalism, this might not have happened.

A NATO Rival?

That's the rather breathless conclusion to this piece in The Toronto Star today:

MOSCOW—After a decade as a largely unknown body bringing together Russia, China and a number of Central Asian states, the Shanghai Co-operation Organization is evolving into a security and political bloc that could become a key global player with the clout to challenge NATO, experts say.

Russian and Chinese leaders praised the organization this week as parliamentary leaders from its six member states met in Moscow ahead of a major SCO summit on June 15 in Shanghai. Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan founded the group as the "Shanghai Five" in 1996 and it was expanded to include Uzbekistan, renamed the SCO and given a written charter in 2001....

At the same time, however, the SCO has increasingly formed the basis for military co-operation between its member states. Last year, more than 10,000 troops from SCO member countries participated in the group's first joint military exercises and another set of war games are planned for next year....

In the run-up to the June summit, SCO members have laid out ambitious plans to increase the group's political role and to consider expanding its membership to more countries, including Iran. Russia and China have blocked efforts to impose sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program and Tehran has said it would welcome membership in the SCO. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to attend the June summit.

Now there's an obvious flash point that has some pretty nasty potential: An attack on Iran (as a member of some proto-alliance) that suddenly involves Russia, the 'stans, and China for good measure.

That said, hold your horses. First off, Mainville (the author of this piece) is pretty frequently printed in the Washington (Moonie) Times and the Free Republic. Moreover, one of the quotes cited is the Heritage Foundation. None of the above are credible sources where international security issues are concerned. The Moonie Times in particular has a record of trying to beat the China drum pretty shamelessly. I'm not dismissing this outright - Putin is pretty clearly in favour of expanding Russia's sphere of interest in to Central Asia - but have a sense of perspective, please.

Neither Russia or China wants to give Iran a security guarantee that would put them in direct conflict with the US, for obvious reasons: despite recent improvements, the Americans almost certainly still have the upper hand on China or Russia (though perhaps not China AND Russia.) Moreover, the Russians and Chinese have to be aware of US nuclear superiority.

Outside of the Iranian context, SCO has a number of fascinating possibilities. Much is made of the Chinese-Russian alliance, probably more due to unreconstructed red-baiters in the Pentagon than anything else. More interestingly is that India and Pakistan are also "observer" members - not full members, but interested. Russia has said that India and Pakistan should join simultaneously, much the same way Greece and Turkey joined NATO. This would be an interesting development in South Asia. Of course, as we saw recently, joining a mutual alliance doesn't mean you don't occasionally kill people.

In the medium-term, I honestly can't imagine the SCO posing any kind of rivalry to NATO - the combined members of NATO are richer and better-armed than the combined members of the SCO. Of course, by 2030 both India and China are expected to have economies at least as large as the US. An SCO that contained Pakistan, India, and China would have something like 1/3 of the Earth's people, and a huge geographical size - though much of that would be Russia alone. The SCO also includes 4 nuclear powers at the moment (vs. NATO's 3.) Russia stands to gain hugely as Chinese and Indian economic growth increases demand for Russian resources. Of course, the inclusion of India would also be a blow to the stated US desire to contain China.

Finally, in the furthest realms of speculation, what happens if Turkey decides that siding with Europe and the west is a losing proposition (the EU seems to be unwilling to let brown countries in, after 30 years of pleading by the Turks) and Turkey's government decides to leave NATO and join the SCO? Turkey is already sick of having the EU door slammed in its face, and the slower European growth will make EU membership less interesting than the SCO's economic arrangements. Of course, Turkey would carry over whatever American weaponry they had, dealing a blow to NATO and a godsend to the SCO.

So many interesting possibilities. Assuming it doesn't end in nuclear war.

Oh Please

PARIS, June 1 — Rising consumer popularity is turning AllofMP3.com, a music downloading service based in Moscow, into a global Internet success story, except for one important detail: The site may well be illegal.

Except that, of course, it isn't. As a different source puts it:

According to Russia's 1993 copyright law, however, collecting societies are permitted to act on behalf of rights holders who have not authorized them to do so. Collecting societies have thus been set up to gather royalties for foreign copyright holders without their authorization. Infringement cases have also affected foreign-produced software, films and books.

Now, I'll concede this is a pretty bad law, and it should clearly be changed. But just as clearly, it is the law as it stands. So how, by the many arms of Vishnu, could a reporter possibly justify writing that it might be illegal?

Probably the same way I justify saying the second quote came from a different source than the first: In fact, both quotes come from the same story, so the reporter should have known what the hell he was talking about. But I wanted to mislead you, just like this reporter obviously wanted to mislead you.

The only assertion that allofMP3.com is illegal comes from the music industry, who don't actually decide such matters - contrary to their own inflated sense of importance. Rather, copyright is decided by national law, and in this case Russian law says this thing is legal. If the reporter were honest, the real headline would be:

"Recording Industry full of arrogant pricks who think they make Russian law. Putin sez: Bring it."

Well said

Rob McLelland on yesterday's terror arrests:

It was accomplished by good old fashioned police work. The exact sort of thing the left has been claiming since 9/11 is the proper way to deal with the threat posed by terrorism.

In other words, the left is right and the right is wrong so it’s now time for the right whingers to shut the fuck up and let the sane adults of the world do this the right way.

Anything I might add would be redundant.

God Bless Canada, indeed

I dunno about you, but this single sentence makes me happier to be Canadian then anything else I've read lately:

Several Conservatives, most recently Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn, who originally said no to same-sex unions, now say they would not vote to reopen the issue, arguing that Canada has moved on.

Yes, that's right. This issue - which was a life-and-death struggle to preserve the sanctity of our bodily fluids, puppies, and sunny days only a year ago - is now something that Canada has "moved on" from.

They'll hold this vote on SSM again, they'll lose again, despite being the government, and hopefully we can all shut up about what the grooms (or brides) do with their naughty bits.

Hahaha. Just kidding. Expect Stephen Harper to use his 2nd loss on this issue to say that what he really needs is to be the leader of a Conservative majority, so he can stop the icky gayz from having teh marriage. Maybe, if he's lucky, after the next election he'll still have official party status.

James K. Galbraith speaks

About the death of his father. I've been waiting for this.

"It is told that the such are the aerodynamics and wing-loading of the bumble-bee that, in principle, it cannot fly. It does, and the knowledge that it defies the august authority of Isaac Newton and Orville Wright must keep the bee in constant fear of a crack-up. One can assume, in addition, that it is apprehensive of the matriarchy to which it is subject, for this is known to be an oppressive form of government. The bumblebee is a successful but an insecure insect."

So wrote John Kenneth Galbraith at the start of his first big book, American Capitalism. Those first words were published in 1952--as it happens, the year I was born. And so my life and his literary career have gone along together, up to now.

What was it like to grow up in his home? Summers on the unfarmed farm, long walks through the woods, buttered corn flying to Mother who almost never missed a catch, the mornings of typing never to be disturbed, "grown- up hour" when Arthur or Gloria or George might be around. Christmas in Gstaad with the Buckleys. India - one grand word that says it all. At sixteen he set me free--off alone to Prague and Paris, out of Andover to Berkeley, Harvard and Cambridge, his places that became also mine. And along the road that led us through Chicago in '68 and Miami Beach in '72, we were always on the same side.

Until the end, John Kenneth Galbraith was my father, my mentor, my coach, my critic and my friend. If he had one enduring law, it was Galbraith's First: "modesty is a vastly overrated virtue." On April 26th, I showed him an article on "predatory capitalism." He said, "You should write a small book, on corporate predation. You can make yourself into the leading economic figure in the country. If I could do it, I would put you in the shade. When you're well along, run up to Cambridge and I'll give you my ideas. I've been working it out every night for weeks."

Like Bogart in Casablanca, I've heard a lot of stories lately. 'Mister, I read an economist once," they always begin. I reply: "so did I." It's not so bad. For as long as we have him to read, he has us to carry on. One of my students called his legacy, "the thinking man's suspicion that the emperor has no clothes." In an age of naked emperors there's a use for that.

I have a letter I'm proud of. It begins, "Dear Jamie, you and I have had the privilege of having fathers who were mighty giants... I am greatly blessed as my father was, to have known both you and your Dad's time, talent, wit and wisdom." And it ends, "With a lifetime of admiration and love, Luci Baines Johnson."

And here in Cambridge a few days ago I called for a cab. I gave my number and my name, and the dispatcher said, "are you The Professor?"-- as if in Cambridge there were only one. I cut her off : "I'm his son." And she asked me how he was, and I had to give her the news. She fell silent, and for a moment it felt as though Cambridge had lost the only professor it had. But then she said, "He was a very nice man, always kind and gentle, and very appreciated by all of us. He'll be missed here."

Evanescent China Threat

via Matt Yglesias, the Pentagon is still beating the China drum:

Every day and night, hundreds of Air Force generals and Navy admirals must thank their lucky stars for China. Without the specter of a rising Chinese military, there would be no rationale for such a large fleet of American nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, or for a new generation of stealth combat fighters—no rationale for about a quarter of the Pentagon's budget.

Of course, that's not actually the article that Kaplan writes. The article that Kaplan writes - and one I agree with - is that even with China's rising military, there's no justification for US military spending at the obscene levels we see today.

Keep in mind that, as I've argued before, the US probably gets less for its defense dollar than any other country in the world - both because of its political system and its global ambitions. That said, the idea of China winning a fight with the US (today, or in the near future) is hallucinatory.

Matt points to Alex Tabarrok, who argues:

rich, capitalist nations are much less dangerous than poor, communist nations. Consider how well China has treated Hong Kong. Moreover, democracy will not be long in coming to China.

First of all, one rich, capitalist nation has been extraordinarily dangerous to poor, Communist nations like North Korea, Vietnam, and yes, China. (The US Army is estimated to have killed something like 3/4 of a million Chinese in combat in Korea.)

Once again, we see an adherent to the democratic peace theory. But Alex neglects to mention one of the important refinements to DPT: that the most dangerous countries of all are recently authoritarian, now-democratic states. Consider Revolutionary France: They were attacking other countries in Europe before they'd even finished abolishing the monarchy. There are a number of reasons for this - domestic politics, fear of outside attackers, etc.

Of course, I'm an opponent of the DPT in any case - it's either so limited to be useless, or so broad as to be meaningless. To put it more clearly: A theoretically useful version of the democratic peace theory would be: "No two liberal democracies older than three years - who both perceive each other as democratic bodies - will declare war against each other and incur fatal casualties in excess of 1,000 combat deaths." And still, this might not cover Finland.

On the other extreme, there's the broad "democracies are less likely to fight each other." Which is broadly true, but again, useless. In truth, I have problems even with the more theoretically rigorous version, because (as I've said before) it excludes so many activities that, while not "WAR", come pretty damn close. For example, DPT has nothing to say about US assaults on democratic but socialist regimes across Latin America or the Middle East. DPT theorists will say that these weren't wars, or that the US didn't "perceive" Allende as a democratic leader. This, to my mind, is where DPT reaches the absurd - if DPT allows the attacks on Chile, or the death squads in Nicaragua, then it allows everything, and is meaningless.

To bring it back to China, we have some obvious problems with the "Democratic China = Friendly China" theory. First is the obvious one: A new Republic of China, likely facing internal divisions (at the very least, Tibet and the Uighurs want out) may decide to pick a fight with someone nearby in order to silence domestic opposition. But I think more importantly, there's a real likelihood that a democratic China is going to keep doing things that drive the Pentagon batty. This could very well lead to a situation where a democratic Chinese leadership is viewed much the same way that Hugo Chavez is today. In that case, I can very well see the US start a war with a Democratic China.

To finish this post off, I'd like to take yet another swipe at Michael Ignatieff: This is why opposing Iraq mattered. The lies were so transparent before the war began, I now fear that the next time a President - any President - wants to go to war, he'll just need to read the same playbook and get whatever he wants. If Democratic China starts nationalizing US assets and Uncle Sam decided to respond the only way he knows how, he'll just need to follow Bush's script. So when a few hundred thousand Taiwanese are dead in the cross-fire, Ignatieff can at least say he's proud to support their liberation.

Hmmm.

via Clean Break, a Sillicon Valley company (appealingly named Tesla Motors) has just announced that its secured US$40 million in new investment. Among the investors are Google inventors Sergei Brin and Larry Page. Tesla Motors' objective? A high-performance electric car.

You may remember EEStor, the ultracapacitor company, secured early invesment from Kleiner Perkins, the same people who funded Google early in its life. EEStor's ESU would of course make an excellent storage system for a high-performance electric car.

Here's what I'm thinking. A friend at Kleiner Perkins gave Brin, Page, and others a call, and said something to the effect of "hey, there's this new startup we're backing that's got exactly what you're looking for. Start moving now, because this thing is for real and you want in on the ground floor." This phone call may very well have been illegal if it actually occurred. Nevertheless, I'm always astonished at how many important historical events have hinged on someone who knew somebody who was a friend of someone else's.

Forget politics - everything is personal.

Tentacle Rape Sold Separately

Apparently, Nerf decided that kids these days needed a bukkake gun.

Well, what would you call it?

(via Xoverboard.)

What kind of nuclear?

Between Canada, the UK, and the United States, a number of countries are now considering building new nuclear. Regulars know I'm not keen on nuclear, but if it's going to happen, what shape should nuclear take?

Well, the best path is probably to have a single corporation control all the nuclear assets and activities - reactors, fuel and waste management, insurance and decomissioning. Either have it publicly-owned, or make it privately owned but heavily regulated.

All of these are important to keep externalities from being dumped on taxpayers. I'll admit that there's an ulterior motive here: I believe that a nuclear industry that was forced to insure its own reactors and pay for its own decomissioning and waste disposal costs would be simply uncompetitive.

The market, as it exists today, is prepared to build nuclear only with massive government subsidy. If people are given the true price information on nuclear, I don't think it will look nearly as rosy.

The Boys from Brazil

Robert Rapier has an excellent post on why, exactly, ethanol has worked in Brazil - and why it won't work here (all by itself):

According to Per Capita Oil Consumption and Production, oil consumption in Brazil is 4.2 barrels per person per year. In the U.S., oil consumption is 27 barrels per person per year, 6.4 times as much per person as Brazil's....This is the factor that the media and the politicians have overlooked. On the other hand, if the U.S. had the same per capita energy consumption as Brazil, we would be net oil exporters. In fact, our per capita energy consumption could be 11 barrels per person per year - triple the consumption of Brazil - and our production and demand would be in balance. We would be energy independent.

This is one of the reasons that I keep thumping on plug-in hybrids and other forms of conservation. Without conservation, alternative fuels are worse than useless. With conservation, they open up some truly spectacular possibilities.