Going Global

According to Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar.

On globalization and outsourcing he says

You might think that the Pope would hail this as a great development for humanity. Instead he has parroted the bogus claims of the white labour aristocracy.

His encyclical says, “the so-called outsourcing of production can weaken the company’s sense of responsibility towards the stakeholders---namely the workers, the suppliers, the consumers, the natural environment, and broader society---in favour of the shareholders, who are not tied to a specific geographical area and who therefore enjoy extraordinary mobility.”

The racial implications of this leave me dumbstruck. The Pope has posed the issue as one of stakeholders versus shareholders. But are white stakeholders the only ones that matter? When IBM shifts 80,000 jobs to India, 80,000 Indian stakeholders replace American ones. Are the rights of 80,000 Indian stakeholders any less than those of the American ones they replace? When Chinese suppliers outbid American ones in supplying hardware to IBM, are the Chinese lesser stakeholders than the Americans they replace?

The Pope’s moral blunders on outsourcing (August 02, 2009)

The outsoucing debate has spread far and wide and been repeated over and over. But it hasnt curbed the wave of globalization that triggered it into somewhat of an unstoppable force. Needless to say, the pope's comments sparked intense outrage in the intellectual class of India, the worlds leading supplier of outsourcing services in the most advanced sectors.

The comments made by the pope appear somewhat misguided as he may have been only looking at the whole affair from one point of view. Whereas in business and economics there is nearly always an opposing view point. A benefit to one may be a disbenefit to another. The only way you'd be against such a thing is if you were indeed biased in some way. But that way lies the road to politics. And the Pope being theoretically in support of one united world, has come under fire for apparently 'racist' remarks.

But it took an economist to figure it out. And hey, you don't need to be an economist to get to the top of the vatican they tell me, so perhaps the pope deserves the benefit of the doubt. Another thing you don't need to be an economist to become is president.

Army of Dude links to this interesting article on soldiers who return home after war; namely Iraq. In the US, statistics have shown that war vets are 148% more likely to die in auto accidents than normal people are. Soldiers in the US take to motorbikes and bar fights to relieve adrenaline overloads. What of Sri Lankan soldiers though?

Being used to the adrenaline rush of war, and being around a climate of constant danger and uncertainty, conditions a soldier to thrive in such environments. Finding himself devoid of the excitement of battle denies him an outlet to this energy, sometimes resulting in disastrous effects to the soldier and society.

Deserters are a different story, although the crime waves influenced by army deserters over the past few years in Sri Lankan can probably be attributed to their disposition, one must also remember that usually crime is the only option available for an army deserter to make a living. (The Sri Lankan military recently pardoned all deserters btw.)

I live near an air force base where the soldiers are veterans who have been out of combat for a couple of years. Maybe this is a military strategy to ensure a more effective and long winded demobilization of the force, although i wondered why it was at the expense of the experienced and the battle hardened being kept away from the war during its peak; maybe my reasoning was off.

Anyways, new measures by the government to expand the military and maintain it as some form of peacekeeping force may contribute to calming the 'crotch rockets' of the Sri Lankan boys. Or who knows what would have happened if close to 200k battle high warriors started walking the streets looking for cheap thrills.

Freakonomics points to a study which researched why the Chinese save so much. Of all the more obvious answers that subsequent commenters on the post came up with (like economic prosperity, social values of thrift etc) they link it it to China's one child policy;

Apparently

China’s “one child” policy, which created a huge surplus of men in the country, has driven up the cost of getting married, as more and more men compete for fewer and fewer women. To keep up, families with sons have been holding off on spending to save up wealth that boosts their children’s marriage prospects.

This leads one to wonder why there are fewer women in China in the first place, and research studies have attributed this to hepatitis B (but later dispoved by the same author), sex relative wage rates and sex selective abortion as a practice.

Also as it turns out, or as i just found out, Ben Bernanke has been saying the increasing rates of saving in other countries caused the US housing collapse. He claims that increasing savings in other nations along with liberalization and the removal of capital flow barriers created a disconnect between US long term lending rates and Fed Monetary policy.

A credible argument, but it still doesn't explain how they could just let it happen, and the myriad other inconsistencies in the actions of the fed over the few years leading to the crisis.

From China's savings to Missing women to the Global Financial crisis; This is why i like Freakonomics.

GM has been on the verge of selling their Hummer brand to the Chinese Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery company. Thats quite a mouthful. I wonder why Chinese companies have such weird names. But i digress.

But GM's plans of downsizing and rightsizing itself while it shelters itself under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy may suffer a setback because it seems like the Chinese government is about to block the deal.

China has about 100 car manufaturers and the government does not want yet another one entering the market at a time when they are trying to aim for stability and cut competition in order to try and build a global giant capable of taking on the big ones.

Also, it seems the strategy is to focus on building a robust market based on fuel efficient and environmentally friendly vehicles, something a Hummer definitely is not (Hummers on average do a bout 15 miles per gallon, thats around 5 or so km's per litre).

China has also got a lot of stick in recent years about its pollution. And mass producing a brand like Hummer won't exactly help them in cleaning up this aspect of their image.

Hummer is estimated to be worth around $500million. GM is eager to unload its lossmaking units and have cleared the sale of Hummer, being in debt of about $172 Billion. Thats roughly twice the GDP of Sri Lanka.

The Chinese however have not completely overruled the deal. So we might yet see an iconic former US military vehicle being owned and manufactured by one of its key global rivals.

read more here and here.

The US was officially classed as an economy in recession after its last peak in December 2007 (NBER) after which it had two consecutive quarters of negative growth. A recession as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research is

 A significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators. A recession begins when the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends when the economy reaches its trough. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion.

Anyway to cut a long story short, they identified the last peak of the US economy as December 2007 after a significant period of decline followed it which was sufficient enought to be identified as a time of recession.

Taking the generally accepted definition of a recession i.e. 'a recession is indicated by two consecutive quarters of negative/a decline in real GDP' we can deduce that for the recession to stop and for growth to start the GDP should pick up.


The GDP of an economy is measured as follows

GDP = Consumer spending + Investments + Government spending + (Exports - Imports)

or GDP = C + I + G + (X - M)

Now according to this BBC report the The American Bankers Association's Economic Advisory Committee thinks the US economy is set to grow in the third quarter of 2009. Im sure this is good news all around as a recovery in the US economy will probably mean eventual growth for other nations as well.

But is it really going to be a sustained growth?

Opinions of different schools of economic thought vary on the best option to handle a recession. The end of the Great Depression of the 1930s is credited to the policy ideas of John Maynard Keynes who suggested increasing government spending as a method of boosting production. In practice, this can even involve activities metaphorically akin to the famous paying-people-to-dig-holes-and-fill-them-up-again scenario.

But some are of the opinion that the massive government spending of the second World War is what ultimately brought the world out of the depression, leading to uncomfortable thoughts on the current global economy and political environment.

Monetary economists advocate the use of expansionary monetary policy by reducing interest rates to stimulate borrowing and thereby increasing spending power and eventually consumer spending. The Supply-side economists advocate tax cuts to promote business capital investment.

The general consensus among most economists is that a recession is a problem born of a drop in aggregate demand (meaning the total demand for goods and services within an economy). Therefore, as we can see, theoretical suggestions are mainly directed at stimulating at least one area of an economy that would contribute to a pick up in GDP.

The US's new forecast of a growth of 0.5% seems largely due to an increase in consumer spending which can possibly be attributed to the drastic reduction we have seen in the US's interest rates over the past few months. Also, government spending on dying corporates and banks caused still more money to be injected into the system and would have boosted produtivity somehow, somwhere.

However, unemployment is set to increase to 10% and the overall outlook of employement does not look too good for the next year and a half or so although the increase in consumer spending (which two thirds of the the US economy is driven by), is hoped to temper this.

But there are still deeper problems. According to the BBC the damage caused to the Public Finances and the Labor markets are still substantial and industrial production has fallen more than analysts expected.

There is also the problem of the US's growing trade deficit, which is not helping.

Therefore there are mixed signals on the status of this 'recovery'. It could be the beginning of a slow climb back to the top or it could just be a random spurt of growth brought on by arbitrary circumstances. We should hope for the former.

There is a trillion dollar scam happening in the US and its spelt like P-O-N-Z-I.

Except that the perpetrator is no Bernard Madoff type investment fraudist, it is the US government itself. The Social security system wroks like a very large Ponzi scheme according to this Mises Inst article, and its hitting deep deep trouble.

The Social Security program is much like a mass pension scheme akin to the one we have here in Sri Lanka. except for the fact that workers across all industries and sectors contribute to it. As such, it nets massive revenues. But the ratio of workers to non workers is decreasing due to various reasons, and new measures are needed for the system to sustain itself.

This will either involve a reduction in SS benefits or an increase in SS taxation, or a combination of both.

There is little reason why SS schemes shouldn't succeed IMO. As long as the revenue of the funds outstrips its outflow. But how fair are these on the people they tax?And there they really making as much return on their investements as they could be doing investing the money elsewhere? And is the government taking undue advantage of the existence of such a massive source of idling funds?

Most Ponzi schemes falter due to being unable to meet bulk withdrawals, this factor does not exist in a Social Security system, but it is also subject to the laws of the time value of money and relies on a share of its potential recipients never being able to claim their pension, prompting the writer's sarcastic suggestion that perhaps the government should rethink its tobbaco policy.

heres a quick fix to the financial crisis.

The whole thing happened cos the housing market failed right? So people defaulted on their loans and cleared outta their homes. Leaving banks stuck with useless debt and unsellable houses. So what do they do? They sell the houses to the Indians! and the Chinese and the Sri Lankans! im sure we'll (speaking for all Asians) be glad enough to lap up good houses going cheap in the most developed nation of the world.

But then they'd have to grant us VISAs. Otherwise whats the point? no ones gonna buy a house they cant live in. So they give us VISAs and a million or so more immigrants enter the US. In case ur thinking people over here cant afford to buy US homes, thats not true. Theres a lot of money around these parts. The Indian ocean is gleaming with it.

So the Zombie banks sell their houses cheap and recover most of their money. The people who went to the US are happy cos they are now in 'the land of the free'. The US doesn't mind a coupla million more immigrants as long as they work hard and pay their medical insurance. The defaulters can rent rooms in the houses being bought. OR the owners can stay in Asia and rent their new homes out to homeless Americans.

The crisis will be nullified due to all the toxic assets being taken care of (because every house will be sold to clamouring Indians and Chinese - and the odd Lankan politician - with bulging pockets), banks will be standing on their own two feet again, and soon theother banks wont be so suspicious anymore of lendng out money, and the velocity of money going around the economy will slowly increase and permeat the air with some green crispness.

Trade will pick up as credit eases and confidence increases. Recruitment will start and people will find work again. And we shall all start living life as normal. The rich will once again become richer at a steady pace. no more uncertainty for them. And the poor will once again be poor in confidence. No more uncerainty for them either.

There. problem solved.
Stay tuned for; Conspiracies of the Crunch - predicting possible future credit crunch conspiracy theories (cue ominous music).

So what has Obama done so far? Where is this 'change' that has been going around apparently for the whole world to see? Only change I see is a darker tone of skin in the white house.

People are still dying in Iraq, casualties have only increased lately including those of US soldiers. Violence has exacerbated in Pakistan, the Taliban has expanded its control. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank are no better. Sure, you may say that the 100;1 ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths officially still happened during Bush's last days but Obama was still president elect, and in the name of humanity, he could have said something or raised a protest. Reasonably supposing that he really knew what was going on.

The UN security council was going to pass a motion, simply a statement condemning the Israeli attacks, but even a mere statement against the war crimes being committed by Israel was vetoed by the United States. This was the same United States whose public was caught up in the wave of 'change' and 'Rebranding America' etc. Obama didn’t even raise a finger in protest. Hiding behind his 'presidential elect' status to absolve himself of any responsibility.

His flumbering beginnings in handling the 'Financial Crisis' have proven inadequate to say the least. The much harped about G20 produced nothing less than 'heroic hypocrisy, unreliable sums, weak promises, meaningless language and self-serving commitments other than a very few worthwhile achievements' (read more of Miles Saltiel's report). His 'stimulus' packages have drawn widespread criticism from many economists (big names like Krugman and Stiglitz) as being extremely inappropriate given the current banking system.

It is increasingly looking like the boom-bust cycle will need to run its course until markets make their own recovery and Keynesian style hole digging and re-filling stimulus plans may or may not get us there quicker, but they will not work in the US is pumping its money into largely inefficient and loss making banks.

Also, where is the inquest into what happened in the Bush years? Where is all the war crime and 9/11 conspiracies that need to be investigated? The advent of Obama and his main calling card 'change' served the most effective purposes of brainwashing the world community into forgetting all about the previous years of US rule. It had the effect of making them think that 'hey, here's a new guy, let’s just forget the old guy, let’s change and move on'. But that change itself was insubstantial and mostly made up of clever and emotionally appealing rhetoric. And those of us who expected some actual substance from the man after he gained office will soon be sorely disappointed.

Something i recieved in the mail. I thought i'd share this..highlighted a few phrases that stood out in particular.

*****
‘Chance of political settlement open’
SHELLEY WALIA

Interview with Noam Chomsky on the situation in West Asia following the Israeli assault on Gaza.

ISRAEL continues to terrorise and bomb at will. West Asia waits for a malicious twist to the already dead road map. A viable Palestinian state now seems to be like something in the distant future. A bloody retribution, a tit-for-tat flare-up; that is all that is left after the terrible Christmas massacre in Gaza. While young children played soccer and families slept in residential neighbourhoods, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) unleashed one of the severest attacks on Gaza in the last month of 2008, this time determined to enforce a military solution to the daily skirmishes on the border, thereby deterring the incorrigible Hamas belligerence.

In truth, it was Israel that first broke the ceasefire on November 1, 2008, and justified its air and ground attacks on Gaza as the final move to end the daily nuisance of missiles from across the border. It is a fact that in spite of the siege of the past two months no missiles were fired by Hamas. Israel has thrown to the wind the rules laid by the Fourth Geneva Convention, of the Nuremberg Principles, of all of the laws of war generated in the 20th century.

The West Asia problem is now the concern of the global community and is no longer singularly within American turf. In the past, the United States had always, without fail, rejected any such international intervention. However, Prof. Noam Chomsky argues, with no provision of an international vigilance force to oversee the implementation of any peace plan, Israel has the option to do what it pleases and has support from the U.S. for its incorrigible stance of “rejectionism”.

Sadly, the United Nations Security Council has been rendered ineffective by the U.S. veto, though more than 150 members in the General Assembly have voted for the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. There is no doubt that without the authorisation of the U.S. government and its support of Israel not a single military attack on Palestine can take place. Israel is a military base and complies with U.S. foreign policy. Military confrontation, control of gas wells on the borders of Gaza, as well as motives of expansionism have been the apparent interests of the two partners. Since the 1973 encroachment into the Egyptian Sinai, any diplomatic resolution to end the impasse between the two nations has been consistently elusive. With the recent destruction of Gaza, the solution has become all the more protean.

Public opinion in Israel calls for giving up land in Palestine in exchange for peace, but the country’s leaders look on. Their convictions as “Christian Zionists” seem to bestow on them the theological right to continue doing what they do despite what happens to a few million Palestinian “terrorists”. In the meantime, the two nations sink neck deep into uncontrolled violence, leaving behind an unsolvable conundrum.

If Washington was sincere and committed to move West Asia towards peace, there should have been some sign of a reprimand to Israel for its recent attack on Gaza. In the light of the recent history of peace initiatives and unrestrained violence, there seems to be only one way out: an international solution on the lines of what took place in East Timor through the pressure exerted by international opinion. One cannot change the nature of the West Asia problem through war or bloodshed, and democracy cannot come on the wings of a bomber.

Then where does the solution lie? While it cannot come from the Right in Israel, the Left remains unelectable. In Palestine, on the other hand, there is no check on militant agitation. Peace can never come from top down; it is the people at the bottom who can put an end to violence and terrorism.

Will the new President in the White House invest his full powers to bring the two antagonists to the table and negotiate for a solution to one of the most serious political issues of our time? Or will he continue to put forward the American propensity to befriend Israel as a priority that would supersede an objectivity that his presidency promises to the world? The Clinton plan of bringing durable peace by returning to the 1967 boundaries, of sharing Jerusalem and permitting Palestinian refugees to return to their homes remains a viable model for President Barack Obama to follow unless he reinvents a road map that will anticipate the end of hostility.

At the end of the day, it will depend on the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. to persuade the American leadership to either initiate peace or escalate conflict in West Asia. Obama will scarcely be left with a choice against such a formidable force from within his own fortress. The world waits to see whether he succeeds in introducing a comprehensive diplomatic initiative towards Iran along with the prioritising of the Arab-Israeli peacemaking.

In the light of the West Asia “ulcer”, Prof. Shelley Walia asked Prof. Noam Chomsky for his views on this conundrum. Chomsky, as is well known, has probably been the single most important voice in international politics for several decades. His main works, from Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (with Edward S. Herman) to Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, from Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy to Perilous Powers: The Middle East & U.S. Foreign Policy: Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War, and Justice (with Gilbert Achcar and Stephen R. Shalom [editor]), along with his daily interventions, have challenged the deceptions of media reportage and of the devious agendas of Western regimes. As Edward Said emphasised some years ago, “Noam Chomsky is one of the most significant challengers of unjust power and delusions; he goes against every assumption about American altruism and humanitarianism.”

Chomsky was kind enough to take time off from his busy schedule and answer a number of questions on the Arab-Israel conflict. His invigorating zeal remains unabated, as is visible from his remarkable consistency of involvement with issues of human rights and peace. Excerpts from the interview:

Coming directly to the reasons for the Israeli attack on Gaza, do you believe that there could be a larger plan at work that has as its planner the U.S. aiming to finally provoke Iran to enter the ongoing conflict?

I doubt it. It would have been highly unlikely for Iran to respond more than verbally to the attack. There is a straightforward reason, I believe. Israel wants to take over the valuable parts of the West Bank and to leave the remnants of Palestinian society barely viable. And it, of course, wants to do so without disruption. It has succeeded, by violence, to suppress resistance within the West Bank. But the other part of occupied Palestine, Gaza, is still not completely under control. For other reasons, Israel has refused to abide by any of the ceasefires that have been reached and intends to maintain the siege that is suffocating Gaza. Invasion was a means to suppress resistance to its ongoing (U.S.-backed) crimes in the occupied territories.

The fertile part of Gaza represents about a third of the Gaza Strip, this being the part Israel has always wanted to retain owing to its economic productivity and sale of produce to Europe. How would you then react to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza a few years ago? Is it because the maintenance and protection of Israeli settlers was proving rather costly for the Israeli government or because the U.S. nudged [then Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon in that direction, or because Sharon had his own agenda?

The motives do not seem obscure. Gaza has been turned into a disaster area under Israeli military occupation of 38 years. A few thousand Israeli settlers take a substantial part of the scarce land and resources and have to be protected by a large part of the Israeli army. Sane Israeli hawks understand that it makes no sense to continue with these arrangements. The settlers, who were subsidised to establish themselves there, are now being subsidised to settle elsewhere, leaving the population of Gaza to rot in a virtual prison. The few scattered West Bank outposts that are being abandoned are also simply an annoyance for Israel.

The “disengagement plan” is in reality an expansion plan, as was made plain at once. The presentation of the plan was coupled with an announcement of tens of millions of dollars for West Bank settlements and infrastructure development, a further expansion of the programmes designed to ensure that valuable land and resources will be incorporated within Israel, while Palestinians will be left in scarcely viable cantons. The shameful “separation wall” is one particularly ugly feature of these programmes. The actions are gross violations of international law and elementary human rights but can continue as long as they are supported by the reigning superpower. American citizens are the only ones who can put an end to these continuing and very severe crimes.

The operation was a complete scam, a repeat of “Operation National Trauma ’82” as the press called it at the time, carefully orchestrated, a media triumph, intended to convey the message: “Never again must Jews suffer so; the West Bank is ours.”

Would you agree that there is the complicity of [Palestinian President] Mahmoud Abbas with the Palestinian contras who are backed by the U.S. and Israel? He does not have the authority, moral or otherwise, to call together the Palestinian people for anything.

Abbas is in a difficult position, no doubt. He does not want to accept the results of the democratic election that was won by his rival Hamas. With U.S. support, he attempted a military coup in Gaza, but that was beaten back and Hamas took over total control. His forces have been trained and armed by the U.S. and its regional allies, and assigned the task of suppressing any opposition in the West Bank, in particular, opposition to Israeli crimes in Gaza. One result is that he has very little credibility. There may be some chance of a unity government. It is possible that Israel’s decision to violate the ceasefire by invading Gaza on November 4, 2008, was intended to disrupt planned meetings in Cairo to establish a unity government. The pretexts offered were too absurd to merit comment.

How far do you think that the military action of Israel is disproportionate to the ends that it hopes to achieve? Is it legitimate under international law? Israel is crossing every red line of the Fourth Geneva Convention, of the Nuremberg Principles, of all of the laws of war that were developed in the 20th century. It has the backing of the U.S. and thus feels cocksure of its actions.

That depends on what we think it hoped to achieve. The attack did succeed in killing many civilians and destroying villages, institutions, and infrastructure, while also devastating much of the agricultural land and the limited industrial capacity of Gaza. The actions were “proportional” to achieving such ends, which we can only assume were the real ones. Of course, all of this is in gross violation of international law, as is U.S. support for it. In fact, all of this is in direct violation of U.S. law, which bans the use of U.S.-supplied arms apart for “legitimate self-defence”, and it is transparent that Israel’s actions do not fall under that category.

Do you think that there may be some reason for going into the attack on Gaza at a juncture when the Bush administration was leaving office and Barack Obama was to be sworn in on January 20? Was there a feeling that the U.S. government at that point would not react in any negative way? Labour gained 50 per cent more in the elections, mainly because Ehud Barak was the man who was mostly identified with this operation. He was the Minister of Defence, as you know. Or, do you think it is just overreaction?

We know from Israeli sources that the attack was meticulously planned in advance. It would only make sense, from Israel’s point of view, to carry out the attack so that it could do maximal damage but end immediately before Obama’s inauguration, which is what happened. That way Obama could pretend that he could not comment on it, because “there is only one President” (that didn’t prevent him from commenting on many other things, including bitter condemnation of the Mumbai terror and the “hateful ideology” behind it). And since the attack had formally ended immediately before the inauguration, he could maintain his silence after assuming the presidency, thereby continuing Bush’s policies, as he has done on other matters as well.

It was not an attack on Hamas but on the whole structure of the society of Palestinians. Hospitals, universities, mosques were not spared. And if you keep citizens under such a harsh siege there are no options but to retaliate. The only democratic election in West Asia should have been given time to prove itself. Hamas is not guilty. Israel is for breaking the ceasefire and killing civilians. The aim is to see that democracy does not succeed. In spite of the siege of the past two months, no bombs were thrown by Hamas. Any comments?

A recent poll of Muslim opinion found that large majorities “see U.S. support for democracy in Muslim countries as conditional at best. Only very small minorities say ‘the U.S. favours democracy in Muslim countries whether or not the government is cooperative with the U.S.’. The most common response is that the U.S. favours democracy only if the government is cooperative, while nearly as many say that the U.S. simply opposes democracy in the Muslim countries.” I am quoting from the summary by one of the world’s most respected polling agencies. The large majority are surely correct, and the same principle holds elsewhere. As the most strongly pro-government scholarship has conceded, the U.S. has supported democracy if and only if it conforms to strategic and economic objectives. Europe is, of course, the same.

Western intellectuals and their allies elsewhere naturally prefer a different story, but as is often the case, the victims have much clearer insight into reality than the servants of power.

Do you agree that the provocation has come from Israel and not Hamas. It broke the ceasefire two months earlier and is conveniently blaming Hamas. And then it is asking the residents to leave Gaza. How is it possible? Where should they go when there is that crippling blockade in operation? This notion that Israel has a right to defend itself – against whom?

A state has the right of self-defence by force only if it has exhausted peaceful means. In this case, Israel plainly had peaceful means that it refused to pursue: ceasefire, and termination of criminal actions in the occupied territory. Accordingly, it cannot appeal to the right of self-defence.

Do you not think that the result of this kind of provocation will bring about the third Intifada instead of peace and security? Do you think the last chance for negotiations is now destroyed? The Hamas leadership in Damascus is against any ceasefire.

Before the attack, the Israeli government was aware that Hamas, including the Damascus political leadership, was calling for a ceasefire – but a real one, which would end the siege. A siege is an act of war. Israel has always insisted on that. In fact, Israel launched two wars (1956, 1967) in large part on the claim that its access to the outside was partially limited, which is far less than a siege. The possibility of a political settlement remains open. As before, it turns on whether the U.S. will abandon the strong rejectionist policies it has pursued (with Israel), in international isolation, since the mid-1970s.

Would you say that the two-nation theory is now in jeopardy, especially now with the escalation of war? Palestinians will now have to seek refuge in Jordan or Egypt if Israel decides to push them out of the West Bank. Egypt and, to some extent, Jordan have been thrown off balance by the withering criticism they have faced. The alliance of Iran, Syria, Hizbollah and Hamas – the quartet that is fighting against a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – is critical of Jordan and Egypt as well of the two-state solution.

I think your description, while conventional, is an error, a reflection of the force of Western propaganda. The facts are quite clear. There has been an overwhelming consensus in support of a two-state settlement since 1976, when the U.S. first vetoed a Security Council resolution to this effect put forth by the Arab states (including Syria, which still supports it). It is now supported by virtually everyone, including Hamas, which has repeatedly and quite publicly called for it. Iran has made clear that it would back the position of the Arab states, which formally support this policy, and call for normalisation of relations with Israel in that context. Hizbollah’s position is that it will not disrupt anything that Palestinians accept. That leaves the U.S. and Israel, the leaders of the rejection front since the 1970s. There has been one break in U.S.-Israeli rejectionism: negotiations in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001, which were coming very close to an agreement when Israel terminated them prematurely.

It is not too late for the two rejectionist states to return to what was almost achieved there, and if the U.S. decided to do so, Israel would surely go along. Unfortunately, Obama has clearly rejected that position. In his first foreign policy declaration, he praised the Arab League position as “constructive” and urged the Arab states to proceed with normalisation of relations with Israel. But he carefully omitted the crucial precondition for normalisation: a two-state settlement. He is an intelligent man and chooses his words carefully. He could hardly have been more explicit in rejecting the international consensus.

What do you think is Egypt’s role in the peace process at this juncture? Its role as the chief negotiator in the Muslim world has been sagging owing to its declining economic situation and escalating poverty.

The Egyptian dictatorship despises Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which would surely do very well in Egypt if it were permitted to participate in a free election. But even if it tries to be an honest negotiator, Egypt can do nothing as long as the U.S. maintains its rejectionist stance, not only in words but by providing the decisive military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel’s systematic and of course criminal actions to take what it wants in the West Bank. And we should add “ideological support”, such as the absurd propaganda claims about who is blocking a two-state settlement, which are widely believed, thanks to U.S. power.

Evidently, the formulation of the U.S.’ West Asia policy is dependent on the pro-Israel lobby and their Zionist supporters within the government. The brutal military occupation within Palestine has evoked little concern or response from the U.S. government, and its silence, therefore, indicates its complicity with the pro-Israel lobby that controls the U.S. political agenda. Do you agree?

No, I don’t agree. I think that is a very serious misunderstanding of how policy is made. True, lobbies have influence. There are many dramatic cases. Take Cuba. A large majority of Americans have wanted to end the embargo and have normal relations for years, powerful business interests (energy, agribusiness, pharmaceutical, and others), but the political parties won’t touch it because of the Cuban-American vote in Florida and a few other States.

To be sure, there are state interests, and those probably dominate. But the lobby has had a powerful effect. Even a tiny lobby like the Armenian lobby came very close to severely harming U.S. relations with Turkey, a major ally, last year, by getting Congress to (almost) pass an Armenian genocide resolution.

In the case of Israel, it’s convenient for U.S. analysts to blame the Israel lobby for policies they don’t like. That leaves us “clean”, just misled by a lot of bad Jews. There’s some truth to it, as in the case of other lobbies. But it’s much exaggerated.

The debates over the influence of the lobby are typically quite abstract: they have to do with sorting out influences that mostly converge – strategic-economic, lobby. The test is when U.S. government policies and the lobby conflict, as often happens. In that case, invariably, the lobby disappears, knowing better than to confront real power. Just happened last summer, once again, in an important case: the lobby was intent on ramming through Congress a resolution calling for a virtual blockade of Iran, a very high priority for Israel. At first they rounded up congressional support, enough to pass it, until the White House hinted quietly that it was opposed, not wanting to be dragged into a war with Iran. The measure (HR 362) was dropped; the lobby was silent. Not uncommon.

The debates also are paralysing. They have no implications for activism, except one. If the claims are correct, then I’ve been wasting my time for years in talking, writing, organising, activism. I should instead put on a tie and jacket and go to the corporate headquarters of Intel, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, and a host of other major corporations investing in Israel, and should explain to them, politely, that they are harming their interests by doing so, and should use their political and economic power to put the lobby out of business, as they can do in five minutes. No one adopts that tactic. But why?

Why is Obama quiet? It suits him to speak on economic matters or Iraq, but on Israeli atrocities he has not made a single statement.

Obama made it clear long before that he is a passionate supporter of Israeli policies. In his campaign, he emphasised that he was a co-sponsor of a Senate resolution in 2006 barring any interference with Israel’s criminal aggression in Lebanon. He also called for Jerusalem to be the permanent and undivided capital of Israel, a position so outrageous that his campaign had to claim publicly that his words did not mean what he said. I wrote about this a year ago, in a book published before the elections, simply relying on his formal positions. For some reason, many people prefer illusions about him. But one cannot charge him with concealing his extremist positions.

Do you think Israel has crossed the line of humanity and legality in its recent onslaught on Gaza?

We should describe this as a U.S.-Israeli assault. It surely crosses both lines, but hardly for the first time.

Prof. Shelley Walia is a Fellow and Dean, International Students, at Panjab University, Chandigarh.
He teaches Literary and Cultural Theory at the Department of English.

Whoever said that democracy was the fairest way to rule a country i think has been proven wrong again and again and again so many times over that we really need re-look at the whole concept of it and see if we really have stumbled upon the best base for governance known by man.

First of all, look at all the corruption and failures that stem from democratic states. Look at all the people killed under the guises of various little conflicts here and there. Holocausts attract the most attention while other deaths that occur in the mere thousands go un-avenged.

America just got a little more lenient on Cuba. They lifted a few travel restrictions and allowed Cuban - Americans to send more money home. This was opposed by two Cuban American Senators who later 'changed their votes after receiving assurances from the Obama administration that the changes did not amount to a major reversal of the 47-year-old US trade embargo on Cuba.' According to the BBC report

President Obama who is in support of the bill has however said 'that like previous American presidents, he will only consider a full lifting of the embargo once Cuba's communist government makes significant moves such as the holding (of) democratic elections.'

I mean isn't that just characteristic of the United States trying impose is beliefs and influence across the world? Cuba seems to have worked fine as a country so far. And the fact that they are not 'democratic' per se does not seem to have affected the quality of life in Cuba in a detrimental way.

As a matter of fact, the Cuban people as a whole are probably made much better off as a result of the Revolution and equality seems to have improved a great deal.

Anyway, democracy as we know it today is but a mere illusion. People think they have the 'right' and 'power' to vote in any one of their choice but what they do not realize is that that 'choice' is severely restricted and manipulated by huge infrastructures like party systems, rules and regulations for running for office, massive barriers to entry that prevent anyone from running for office etc.

For e.g. even over here in SL. you can’t really run for office unless you have some sort of power/influence etc. So an ordinary Joe or Siripala who wants to be heard and is genuinely convinced that he can help the country and make life better for people will never rise to power because the very people whose help he needs to even dream of an influential position in government will have conflicting interests to him and will want to preserve the status quo (which he may want to rearrange.)

So democracy is an illusion, it is just oppression with another name. And in this day and age, democracy does not really have to be what it is..We can use technology in so many other ways to make it better, if only a bit of interest was shown by those in power. But since obviously that will mean a push towards the decentralization of that same power, they obviously wouldn’t do it. But more on that later.

From Desperate Taxes For Desperate Times from the Democracy in America blog: THE states are facing their greatest revenue crunches since 1939, and they're run by legislators who—understandably—don't want to lose re-election by raising taxes on everyone. Thus, they're getting creative.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a freshman from San Francisco, made a proposal intended to increase revenue, and, no doubt, appetite: legalizing and taxing marijuana, a major—if technically illegal—crop in the state. "We’re all jonesing now for money," Mr Ammiano said. "And there’s this enormous industry out there."

In general, sin taxes are the most regressive—and popular—taxes that legislatures can enact. A marijuana tax would be less regressive than a cigarette tax, given the demographics of each drug's smokers. In some quarters it would be extremely popular. And the money it would cost to collect the tax would be a pittance compared to the money saved by police no longer making marijuana arrests. So is this enough of a crisis to give it a try?

***

Hmmm.. a commenter later goes to point out that in the longer term, health hazards of pot (yes it is almost as equally hazardous as cigarettes) will nullify any short term gain, especially given that this may boost consumption. Plus he raises a very interesting point that got me almost to laugh out loud, but wasn't really all that funny; Big Marijuana.

If weed is legalized, prety soon it will be capitalized, compartmentalized, segmented and marketed. All the fun will be lost and Runaway Jury 2 would be suing Big M.

How about it's effects in Sri Lanka then? obviously if it is capitalized worldwide we would be washed up in a wave of big companies if we legalized it over here, but what if it wasn't legalized in the US and we decided to do so as a measure to bring in some revenue to the government and make some people more happier than they already are? But it wont work;

First of all, pot smoking is frowned upon in Sri Lankan society rather more than in Western societies so support will not be there.

Also, a regime that focusses on 'mathata thitha' as one of its main marketing angles will never pass it through.

But what if we ignore these things and assumed it was passed it through anyway? would we reap any economic benefits?

Pot smoking will be legalized and massive corruption in the drug trade will stop

Local pot industry will boom due to lack of international entrants and small scale farmers will profit. Expertise will be home grown and we will be well poised to take advantage of a global pot industry, if it ever does materialize and we'd be able to add marijuana as a fourth major export crop.

Heavy taxes may be imposed to bring in additional revenue for 'nation building' without stunting industry growth

Tourism would benefit
Living conditions will improve and growth will increase.

People will chill out even more than they already do probably and perhaps this will have a detrimental effect on other industries, they don't call it a drug for nothing. Added to that the apparent health hazards. Although i think it's hardly got much on the hazards of Kassippu consumption.

So now the hullaballoo has died, the issue of Tibet has slipped down the list of international hot spots for the worlds attention to be drawn to. I had many friends on Facebook who even dedicated their status messages to it; talking about Tianamen square branded defiance and the like. The Olympics at one point looked to be slowed to a crawl when protests broke out all over the world against Chinese oppression in Tibet.

The Economist runs a story on Tibet, on how the attention of the world has slipped away from it. On how the Chinese are super miffed that the British have somwhat carelessly (?) accepeted Chinese sovereignity over the region. The Chinese however are still strongly focussed on the region. Security is intense, foreigners are not allowed in, and they still refuse to talk to the Dalai Lama.

And meanwhile, "Hillary Clinton recently stopped in Beijing to beseech China’s co-operation in fixing the world economy and stopping the planet from frying. In the apparent belief that China, oddly, will not pursue such aims out of its own self-interest, she forbore from harping on issues such as human rights and Tibet". In other words, the world's (read; the US) got more important things to worry about, like the economy and the damage to trade, rather than worry about an opressed people right now. Tibet may emerge again whenever any political leverage is needed though. At least its nice to see that Global Warming made the cut.

The Economist story links back to a story published in 1959 when the Dalai Lama (then 15 years old i believe) escaped military China to Indian territory. A myth emerged then that the Lama had conjured up a cloud to hide himself and his supporters from the Chinese air force. The Economist had its own ideas as to what that cloud really was though, and I'm inclined to agree with them.

I came across this interesting debate on the economist. Carried out between Mr. Mark Medish (MM) proposing the notion that American shine is still intact and Prof. Kishore Mahbubani (KM) opposing the notion. There were many interesting points raised with a LOT of interventions by readers which contributed to a very diverse flavor of a discussion.

When it comes to America, i have often been jokingly accused by friends to be anti-American. Which im obviously not. But what i am is an anti-corporate-greed, anti-inequality, anti-suppression and anti-war crime type of bugger. And sadly, during my formative years, America has seemed to me to be a country that leans toward exemplifying most of which i morally stand against.

But first, what is Brand America? MM argues that there are two Americas, not one. One is America the country, the other is America the Idea. The American idea is an idea of freedom, equality, justice and leadership. Which are extremely noble sentiments IMO.

This 'leadership' role though, also in my opinion, seems to have been confused to a certain degree with 'dominance' by the many participants in the debate. Like America needs to be in the forefront of everything in order to preserve its 'brand value'. Which i think is wrong. You don’t have to squash everybody else to be a leader. Taking the lead means guiding everybody else when they cant see. Not hoping that they cant see so that they can be guided. IMO again.

Moving on from that, what was noticeable was the strong rhetoric coming from the proposing side and the equally strong facts coming in from the opposing side. One may thing that facts trump rhetoric any day. But we are talking brand and perception here. People are not only influenced by facts, they are also influenced by sights, sounds, the look of the thing and how they perceive things. Most of which are non-quantifiable.

Also, the Brand that is America, a political/ economic superpower, seems more shaken than ever. And that’s it. It is America's super power status that is in danger here. And I say what the hell? just because you're not a superpower does not mean that you still cant be a great nation right?

On devolution of power (which seems inevitable) a fact also brought up by KM dealt specifically with the 'historical aberration' of 200 years of European domination followed by American domination before which (from year 1 to 1820) the biggest economies in the world were India and China alternatively. And he says that it is only a matter of time before they 'resume their natural place'.

The superiority of America as a 'democracy' seems unanimously agreed upon but its economic superiority? not so much.

It is my opinion that every empire collapses eventually. From the Egyptians to the Romans to the Brits and now, to the Americans. It's like the countries of the world take turns to dominate each other, the decider being nothing other than who comes off on top after the inevitable conflicts/ war.

Check out the debate. I'd love to hear your views.

Former Gitmo Guard Tells All—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine): Army Private Brandon Neely served as a prison guard at Guantánamo.... Neely decided to step forward and tell his story. “The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong,” he told the Associated Press. Neely describes the arrival of detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb, he details their sexual abuse by medical personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution, the first hunger strike and its causes, torturous shackling, positional torture, interference with religious practices and beliefs, verbal abuse, restriction of recreation, the behavior of mentally ill detainees, an isolation regime that was put in place for child-detainees, and his conversations with prisoners David Hicks and Rhuhel Ahmed. It makes for fascinating reading....

Neely and other guards had been trained to the U.S. military’s traditional application of the Geneva Convention rules. They were put under great pressure to get rough with the prisoners and to violate the standards they learned.... Neely discusses at some length the notion of IRF (initial reaction force), a technique devised to brutalize or physically beat a detainee under the pretense that he required being physically subdued.... Neely’s testimony makes clear that IRF was understood by everyone, including the prison guards who applied it, as a subterfuge for beating and mistreating prisoners—and that it had nothing to do with the need to preserve discipline and order in the prison.

Second, there is a good deal of discussion of displays of contempt for Islam by the camp authorities.... Third, the Nelly account shows that health professionals are right in the thick of the torture and abuse of the prisoners—suggesting a systematic collapse of professional ethics driven by the Pentagon itself. He describes body searches undertaken for no legitimate security purpose, simply to sexually invade and humiliate the prisoners. This was a standardized Bush Administration tactic–the importance of which became apparent to me when I participated in some Capitol Hill negotiations with White House representatives relating to legislation creating criminal law accountability for contractors. The Bush White House vehemently objected to provisions of the law dealing with rape by instrumentality. When House negotiators pressed to know why, they were met first with silence and then an embarrassed acknowledgement that a key part of the Bush program included invasion of the bodies of prisoners in a way that might be deemed rape by instrumentality under existing federal and state criminal statutes. While these techniques have long been known, the role of health care professionals in implementing them is shocking.

Neely’s account demonstrates once more how much the Bush team kept secret and how little we still know about their comprehensive program of official cruelty and torture.

But who really gives a fuck anymore?

Socialism is dead. It is so dead that even the Russians dont practice it anymore. Its strange to see posters about it on Sri Lankan walls though..

19th - Martin Luther King day. He had a dream! of a free country. Of equality, of black people living in a united America.

20th - First black president comes to power. In the United States! A free and equal America is finally realized and undeniably proven to the rest of the word

21th - Death of Lenin, a kick in the face of the last big 'enemy' of the 'free world'

You are dead. We are alive and stonger than EVER! look out Iran and Islamic Fundamentalism.

Am I too conspiratorial or was it all just a calenderial coincidence?

Face it. 2008 was a culmination in a cyclical period of right royal self screw-age that the American business world just went through. Fortune lists the 21 dumbest moments in business in 2008.

Among the dumb stuff highlighted was the Paulson plan, Henry Paulson, Henry Paulson and Henry Paulson. The big 3 'big' automaker's CEOs, jet flights, hybrids also made the list.

The housing bubble, voluntary homeowner rescue plans that called for banks to run a loss (like they weren’t running enough already) to save the housing market kind of made it to the list as well along with

the people who 'displaced' blame at 'speculators' for artificially increasing the price of oil and followed up with blaming 'collapsing demand' for its sudden drop. But i suppose no one really knows wtf happened in the oil markets, really.

The whole Steve Ballmer (Microsoft) and Jerry Yang(Yahoo) thingummy figured heavy on the dumb list. Stevie for escaping by the skin of his nose by overvaluing yahoo and Jerry for missing out on pay day numero uno.

If you've not heard of Bernard L. Madoff then you should be ashamed of calling yourself a part of the great nation that spawned the likes of Sakvithi, cos this guy carried out one of the biggest scams in history. and he did it for decades too. His simple model for tricking the likes of Greenspan? The returns for your older investors are the new investments that come in. Rotation baby, it’s the new twist.

Something that i thought was not dumb at all was the Apple i-phone application. Here you had developers making millions by devising little games and selling em for $10 each to i phone users and one smart sonofagun thinks up a screensaver that is just a giant red ruby swirling on screen, calls it 'I Am Rich' and retails it for $999.99. How smart is that? eight people actually bought it (the i-phone retails for just $200) before Aple pulled it out. But i say why pull it out? i mean what brilliance! If you're rich, own an i-phone and want people to know. This app is for you! Niche marketing much?

Anyways I couldn’t resist giving a coupla slight spoilers but there are more good ones in here. With special appearances by everybody’s favorite two presidential candidates

Go check it out.