Why the world is not flat

As you may recall, Thomas Freedman informed us that The World is Flat. Finally, somebody has bothered to explain why the world is not flat. Edward Leamer, a prof at UCLA, writes:

Physically, culturally, and economically the world is not flat. Never has been, never will be. There may be vast flat plains inhabited by indistinguishable hoi polloi doing mundane tasks, but there will also be hills and mountains from which the favored will look down on the masses. Our most important gifts to our offspring are firm footholds on those hills and mountains, far from the flat part of the competitive landscape. Living in the United States helps a lot, and will continue to. But those footholds will increasingly require natural talent. As a byproduct of our search for personal pleasure, we provide our children highly loaded dice to roll at the genetic craps table. Beyond the all-important luck of the genetic draw, it takes the kind of education that releases rather than constrains their natural talent…*

* “A Flat World, A Level Playing Field, a Small World After All, or None of the Above?” from the March, 2007 edition of Journal of Economic Literature (via a short review by Fallows). Abstract here, & text here.

"We cannot win Iraq solely in Iraq."

Words spoken by General Petraeus to the US Congress yesterday. Is this kind of talk a prelude to a US attack on Iran? Perhaps it is, comments Sullivan.

The authority on any US invasion of Iran is journalist James Fallows. He says US Congressmen have their heads in the sand. Because such an attack could very well be launched in the next year or so, and, he blogs:

We can be sure that such a strike would a disaster — for America. (Reasons laid out in the Atlantic in 2004, 2006, and 2007.) We can speculate that many members of the military are so aware that it would be a disaster that they might at least think about the unthinkable: resigning or in some other way resisting the command. We can wonder why the Congress, now trapped by the logic of “we’re there now, so we can’t just cut and run” about Iraq is not taking clearer steps to rule out an attack on Iran while they still can.

Wise words. Is anybody listening?

Quite simply, particularly with this administration, the US poses as much a threat to itself as does any rouge state. Most of the world knows this, even if Americans have been slow to recognize it.

9/11 - Six Years On

I was there on 9/11. I saw what happened with my own eyes. By the grace of God I didn't lose my life, I only lost a bunch of personal belongings. The tangible sadness of the city on those first days in the aftermath of the attacks has not left me. Nor will the sense of hope we all experienced when the stars and stripes came out. I will never forget singing "America the Beautiful" on the sidewalk of Broadway. Hard as it is to believe, only six years ago, on the streets of New York, patriotism meant something magical and true, something beyond politics. But today I feel something other than sadness and nostalgia for a lost sense of community and purpose.

I have never felt so angry at the anniversary of anything before.

Tens of thousands of innocent civilians dead, hundreds of thousands of civilians injured, well over four thousand brave US, British and other US ally soldiers killed in action, tens of thousands of US and ally soldiers seriously injured, one war utterly lost, a second war in the process of being lost, upwards of half a trillion taxpayer dollars expended, vast quantities of property, infrastructure and cultural assets destroyed, your closest friends alienated, new enemies created, a whole world's sympathy squandered, all for. . . what?

Guantanamo. Extraterritorial rendition. Abu Graib. Water-boarding. Homeland Security. Patriot Act. These words and phrases only recently entered the universal lexicon of mankind, each syllable of which speak to an incalculable loss of US authority, prestige and honor among the nations. A legacy two centuries in the making, trampled for . . . what?

And to think! To know that the two most infamous terrorist leaders behind 9/11 -- the bloodiest, most depraved mass murderers in US history -- are still out there, recruiting more supporters with every passing day.

As to what purpose, we can say this much: this trail of moral, physical, and human carnage has made a certain constituency of naive, scared, and media-brainwashed US voters feel safer under the leadership of Bush. Meanwhile his domestic policies have greatly benefited the private interests of giant financial, pharmaceutical, defense, energy, and media corporations.

The present situation of United States in the world is outrageous. And those leaders who -- whether through recklessness indifference or calculated self-interest -- brought America to this deplorable juncture in history must be held to account. And they surely will be. Because regardless of what the sanitized US news media says, I am certainly not the only one who feels this much anger and betrayal, on this, the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Grey

Want a good laugh? This video really cracked me up when I saw the creature. I don't want to give too much away. The producer, CanadianVandal, asks: "Could it be the spirit of a Grey?"

Australia as a Police State

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has instituted one short-sighted, divisive and counterproductive tactic in the fight against terror groups. You can't walk down a street in Melbourne or Syndey and miss the posters. You can't turn on the TV and miss the commercials. This video shows what I am talking about:



Austalia has something called a National Security Hotline, or anti-terrorism hotline. I shot this video both to illustrate this, and to make a point. Not only does the "National Security Hotline" concept embrace a totalitarian methodology -- encouraging neighbor to inform/spy on neighbor, it serves the aims of the terrorists by dividing Australians into two camps: us and them.

While I shot the video, a white male busker performed with a guitar nearby. After a song, I asked him what he thought of the poster. He replied,"Look the government has done a lot of fucked up things, but that" -- he pointed to the poster -- "that doesn't fucking concern me." He said "me" so loud that the word echoed up and down the tunnel.

Me. They (the word "they" jumps off the poster at you, it is so ubiquitous). Us and them. The anti-terrorism hotline risks alienating the very Australians whose cooperation is most critical in thwarting terror. David Wright-Neville made this critical observation at a conference in Madrid. Money quote:

I work quite closely with the state police in my own state in an attempt to try and overcome this. We have, for instance, in Australia whats called the terrorism hotline and if you see a terrorist, you phone the terrorism hotline. Forty thousand phone calls, no arrests. Most of those phone calls have been tied with a particular community. The police are obliged to follow up all of these phone calls. The police say that the fact that they are constantly called out to go visit Muslim households who are celebrating Eid il-Fitr [?] or some other feasts because of a bigoted neighbour is effectively undermining their relationship with the Islamic community. And so I see very real dangers even in my own society stemming from this tendency to politicize terrorism, the instinctive urge that some politicians have to turn it to their own electoral advantage.

Democracies have strong inherent advantages against terrorist networks. That's because a truly open society is super-networked, with all types of people sharing information freely. A terror network is extremely vulnerable operating in such a super-networked environment. But if anti-terrorism tactics alienate a vital social constituency, this natural advantage is lost. And so goes your open society.

Note: Apparently someone recently called the hotline to report that Bush was in Australia.

Police Brutality at APEC Summit in Sydney

Is this Burma? Mainland China? Last night, the news in Australia featured at video of a woman photographer being thrown to the pavement by half a dozen Sydney police (shown here). It looked like she may have been badly hurt. As the person who posted this other video of Sydney police activity noted:

what blows me away is how the media is reporting this as a peaceful protest. i guess its peaceful if you dont take in account the police actions.

According to the TV report, many police weren't wearing their name badges. Clearly, there needs to be an investigation not only into police conduct, but the instructions they had been given by the federal, state and city officials. The video clip showing the female photographer being ruthlessly thrown to the ground is grounds for a full scale independent inquiry.

A pattern of assaults by police emerges when you view the videos. Essentially, it's not a question as to whether police brutality occurred, but the extent of government complicity in the brutality. How did the police come to be instructed to employ thuggish violence? Had directives encouraging of such tactics been issued by the Prime Minister's office? Australians need to know.

John Edwards on the Iraq war

US presidential candidate John Edwards is interviewed about Iraq. Edwards displays intuition for the nuance and complexity of the situation in the Middle East -- this much comes across in the video. What a contrast Edwards makes to gut-instinct-driven, myopic and dead-certain President Bush!

Madeleine L’Engle

Children's writer Madeleine L’Engle has died at the age of 88 (NY Times & WaPo). I fondly remember her most famous book, A Wrinkle in Time.

Maps show global migration patterns

Three percent of humans alive today are migrants, living in a country that is not their native land. A series of interactive maps depicts world-wide patterns of immigration and emigration, including temporary resettlement of migrant workers. You can see the places people are escaping and the popular destinations.

Zen and the Meaning of Poor People's Debt in Thaksin's Thailand

It's one of the most important issues facing developing countries. And Thailand has served as a real-world laboratory. I'm talking about Thailand's vast experiment in giving large numbers of poor people greater access to credit. To no small extent, this approach defined the anti-poverty policies of Thaksin, the deposed prime minister of Thailand.

Some people believe that Thaksin's efforts to reduce poverty mainly encouraged low-income Thais to accumulate debt; they deride such measures as "inefficient." This portrayal of Thaksin-style populism is documented in the Asia Sentinel by Ten Kate: "Many critics of Thaksin’s policies feared they were creating a culture of dependency in which people would come to rely on cheap money from the state."

My own analysis of the economic trends uncovered something important. I found that poverty reduction during Thaksin's tenure was more remarkable than his critics -- and good reporters such as Ten Kate -- have indicated. I spell it out in a short post entitled Under Thaksin, Thailand's poverty fell at historic clip, despite relatively sluggish economy.

Yet a conundrum remained: how could one reconcile such downbeat assessments of Thaksin's lending programs with this new evidence? This perplexed me. Then I read a piece by Bangkok Pundit (BP) entitled Thaksin, Poverty and Household Debt. I recalled how previously in an email, BP had posited an intriguing idea, a possible solution to the conundrum: What if improving the ability of poor Thais to accumulate debt amounted to "welfare" by another name?

Supposing three criteria could be satisfied, a strong case could be made that liberalized access to debt served as a successful form of welfare in Thailand. First, if the decline in the rate of poverty under Thaksin really had been significant; second, if people had put easier-to-borrow money to good use; and third, if more open lending policies had not been ruinous to the economy of Thailand.

My finding strongly supports the first point. Addressing the second and third points, BP cited a 2004 paper according to which total household debt in Thailand was at relatively low levels when measured against other economies; the rate of non-performing loans was on the decline; outstanding credit debt stood at only 3%; there was "a gradual shift in household borrowing from informal to formal channels" (which mattered because "lack of access to formal credits may subject a sizable portion of households to exorbitantly high interest rates.") And home ownership in Thailand was on the rise, with mortgage loans accounting for the largest share -- over a third -- of total loans.

Poverty decreased. Money was put to good use. Loans did not wreck the Thai economy. Whatever you call them, Thaksin's anti-poverty measures transferred a lot of cash into the pockets of poor Thais. In the West we would call that social assistance. But for some reason, after this happened in Thailand -- after millions of poor people actually got their hands on some money -- it got derided as "bad policy."

Largely disparaging accounts of Thaksin's anti-poverty initiatives do not jive with my own analysis of the data. The fact is that Thaksin's tenure was marked by sweeping poverty reduction, despite a relatively modest increase in GDP. And if you couple this observation with the strong evidence that broader access to debt financing gave more people access to durable goods such as housing, amounting to welfare by another name -- Bangkok Pundit's insight, a far more favorable interpretation of the Thaksin experiment in poverty reduction emerges.

Is a nuclear cruise-missle laden US B-52 destined for Iran?

Update: Apparently the US military is now calling the flight of the nuke-armed B-52 "a mistake" (Military Times). I'm not sure what is scarier, this kind of "mistake," or the original speculation about the bomber's mission. As this blogger comments: "When I was in the Air Force, our nuclear devices had “No Lone Zones” and strict protocols for signing and transporting nuclear weapons. This is just crazy!"

Indeed, strict protocols concern the transfer of US nuclear weapons. So it is entirely plausible that the earlier speculation about the bomber's mission was, in fact, correct:

Original Post: Did the US military recently fly a nuclear cruise missile laden B-52 bomber to the Middle East? Larry Johnson has been looking into this report, and asks:

What the hell is going on? Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran?

The story was leaked to the Military Times, so it is presumed that the source is credible. Meanwhile, today's Alama News (Iran) published a short report entitled "Iran has issued a firm warning to the US over the danger of launching a military attack against the country. " Yesterday, the Gulf Times published a story entitled "US is walking on war line with Iran":

Two weeks ago, US President George W. Bush set America inexorably on a path to the next war by declaring in his speech, "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust."

Bush's use of the term "nuclear holocaust" could be his way of preparing Americans, and the rest of the world, for an attack on Iran. Optimists are hoping his language is more of a warning to the Islamic Republic to try to push it to surrender its nuclear project than actual strategy. . . .

The question that is looming in the media is this: Is Bush set on a confrontation course with Iran that will culminate in a bombing campaign to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities? The answer is yes, according to Britain's Sunday Times which, in an article published on September 2, said: "The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days, according to a national security expert." Now, that is a very big clue that war is looming.

British newspapers have been publishing stories speculating that an attack on Iran is "presently" afoot for well over a year. But the B-52 flight story, if true, cannot be easily explained away. And I will say this: Bush had a really strange look on his face as he stepped off Air Force One in Sydney. He didn't look his normal self.

Melbourne protests Bush visit to Australia

I watched a particularly enthusiastic band of about 1,500 demonstrators -- some wielding skateboards -- take to the streets of Melbourne's central business district at lunch hour today. They were denouncing the visit of US President Bush to Sydney for the APEC summit, the war in Iraq, and the pro-nuclear agenda of Australian PM John Howard.

Under Thaksin, Thailand's poverty fell at historic clip, despite relatively sluggish economy

Partly in rebuttal to my previous post, "Was rising income equality to blame for the Thai coup?", people at various blogs (Hobby at BP, R&W) have noted that the decrease in poverty during the tenure of Thaksin (2001-2006) was not exceptional; they point to the fact that poverty has been declining in Thailand for some two decades. And Ten Kate made much the same point in the Asia Sentinel.

Having examined at the data, I believe one point has not been sufficiently emphasized in this debate: although economic growth during Thaksin's tenure was relatively modest, the rate of poverty abatement was not.

The Thai economy almost doubled between 1990 and 1995 (from 2.2 to 4.2 trillion baht.)* But from 2000 to 2005, the economy grew more slowly (from 4.9 to 6.9 trillion baht.) Effectively, Thai GDP grew by 91% during the earlier period, but only by 41% during a period largely coinciding with Thaksin's rule.

Here's where it gets interesting.

From 1990 to 1994, the percent of Thais living in poverty fell from 34% to 18%.** From 2000 to 2004 the percent in poverty fell from 21% to 11%. During both periods, the percentage of Thais classified as poor decreased by almost half, despite the slower economic growth of the second period.

This data leads me to conclude that poverty reduction under Thaksin was all the more impressive an achievement, given that the economy was not growing as fast during his tenure.

* Thai GDP data is from the IMF (via Wikipedia).
** Poverty rate data is from NESDB (via Bangkok Pundit).

Update: "Zen and the Meaning of Poor People's Debt in Thaksin's Thailand" follows up on this post.

Was Rising Income Equality to Blame for Thailand's Coup?

Note: this post now has updates (bottom).

Recently The Economist ran a story that looked at the growth in inequality in Asia. This chart caught my eye, because it showed that from the 1990s to the 2000s, Thailand bucked the trend: among the nations of Asia, Thailand had made great progress in reversing income inequality.

That this is one legacy of the policies of deposed Thai Prime Minister Thaksin, there can be little doubt.

I wonder whether the trend also might help to explain why certain segments of Thai society strongly supported the coup d'etat. I have long suspected this. Perhaps noticing that the poor were quickly "catching up," there was some level of resentment on the part of better educated, middle class Thais.

For example, it did not escape this foreigner's attention that the salary of a university-educated civil servant or teacher is not that much higher than that of an almost illiterate Bangkok taxi driver from the countryside.

Whereas the situation of poor Thais generally improved, the relative income level of educated, middle-class appeared not to have increased to the same extent (particularly after the economic crash of 1997). From the perspective of the better educated, this situation did not seem fair.

The coup of September 19, 2006 appeared to have had the overwhelming support of middle-class Thais. The nature of Thailand's growing economic equality might go a long way toward explaining the strength of that support. Namely, the -- largely unspoken -- perception that the poor were doing better at the expense of "their betters."

Update #1: Bangkok Pundit (BP) has posted a response to the controversy this post seems to have generated in the discussion section of his blog about whether inequality actually decreased that much under Thaksin. One of his readers, R&W, wrote:

I think the idea that "income gaps" were closing is grade A BS. It's another fabrication by apologists for the crook [Thaksin].

Among other illuminating charts and tables, Pundit presents a chart from the World Bank that looks at inequality within Thailand by region. After I have had a chance to look over this data more closely, I intend to write a follow-up post on this issue.

Update #2: Blogger R&W takes issue with points raised in this post. He questions whether Thaksin should be given much of the credit for reducing poverty, pointing to a World Bank report. BP responds to R&W here. (One of R&W's arguments is that the Thaksin-era data could be bogus.* I find BP's response to this concern most persuasive: "If Thaksin manipulated the figures, why doesn't the current government tell us the real figures, they have now had 11 months.")

* R&W disputes how I characterize his argument here, responding on the comments page of BP's blog:"I wanted to say that I didn't suggest the data was "bogus" as in totally fake, as quoted by you in your blog. I suggested it could be highly inaccurate and that Thaksin or other figures would be very liberal with such data." For the record, R&W wrote: "Did Thaksin or other governments perform their own research? If so, can we accept they [. . .] may have been liberal with their data collation?"

Update #3: My new post points to an overlooked piece of strong evidence that the poverty reduction during Thaksin's tenure was more remarkable than his critics suggest. See Under Thaksin, Thailand's poverty fell at historic clip, despite relatively sluggish economy. Also, check out what BP has to say about Thaksin, Poverty and Household Debt. His post raises an interesting question: Was improving the ability of poor Thais to accumulate debt "poverty alleviation" by another name?

Update #4: I just posted "Zen and the meaning of poor people's debt in Thaksin's Thailand" which ties together the ideas and content mentioned in Update #3.

CNN Bias

Yet another Republican is involved in scandal and CNN tries to make it sound like scandal plagues both major US political parties. TPM has a video clip documenting just how egregiously CNN doctors the "scandal balance."

CNN like Fox News, consistently exhibits a pro-Republican, pro-Bush bias. On CNN, the bias is not so explicit, but pertains to how headlines are written and stories structured.

The most likely explanation for CNN's bias is that Time Warner, the owner of CNN, has significant business interests that Republican politicians are far more likely to support. The same goes for Fox News, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's Media Corp. Only the tactics differ. Both news networks could be viewed as corporate propaganda machines: their primary purpose is to serve the business interests of the parent company.

The Economist: Thailand's Prospects Look Bleak

An editorial in this week's Economist says the new Thai constitution is designed to make it hard for larger parties to get a majority of seats in Thailand's parliament. (The old 1997 constitution, by contrast, had been designed to allow large parties to attain majorities so that Thailand could have strong elected governments). Of the new order, The Economist editors write:

This would suit the military-royalist elite. They could go back to running the country from behind the scenes. But there is a risk of stagnation. Thailand's economy is already growing slower than its neighours' in part because of the continuing political uncertainty. . .

The army may have doomed Thailand to further cycles of constitution, crisis, and coup. . . . The next flashpoint may not be far off. Hundreds of Mr. Thaksin's former MPs have regrouped under the banner of the People's Power Party (PPP). . . . But the generals will surely do their damnedest to thwart a Thakinite restoration.

Kalmykia Update

It's time for a Kalmykia update. Jotman previously reported on Kalmykian involvement in oil and gas exploration in Myanmar. Recently, Britain's Independent newspaper probed the personality of Kalmykia's leader:

Mr Ilyumzhinov's office set three interview dates but cancelled them all at the last minute. As a substitute, it provided a copy of his 1998 autobiography,The President's Crown of Thorns, a strange mix of cod philosophy and stream-of-consciousness reminiscences. One chapter is entitled "Without me, the people are incomplete". Another is charmingly headed "It only takes two weeks to have a man killed".

Among the stranger claims of Mr Ilyumzhinov is his insistence that he was abducted by aliens in September 1997. "I was taken from my apartment in Moscow to this spaceship," he said in a recent television interview. "We went to some star. After that I said, 'Please bring me back' because the next day I had to go to Kalmykia and then to Ukraine, and they said 'No problem, Kirsan, you have time'." He rejects the idea that these claims make him appear to be a few pieces short of a full chess set. "I'm not a crazy man. From the United States every year more than 4,000 people are contacted in such a way. It's an official statistic."

Thailand Rumor

A rumor seems to be going around Thailand. Apparently related to this rumor, some blogs are apparently being blocked. Speculation about the nature of the rumor and the question of blog censorship posted here and here.

The Case for John Edwards

Re. the US presidential race: I can't help but like what I hear coming from John Edwards, who is running in third place for the Democratic Party nomination behind Hillary Clinton and Obama. He talks about the need to take on media consolidation and the pharmaceutical firms. He has named two of the most powerful forces that continue to undermine American democracy. From a recent speech:

It's not just that the answers of the past aren't up to the job today, it's that the system that produced them was corrupt -- and still is. It's controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it's perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. . . .

For more than 20 years, Democrats have talked about universal health care. And for more than 20 years, we've gotten nowhere, because lobbyists for the big insurance companies, drug companies and HMOs spent millions to block real reform. Instead, they've grudgingly allowed incremental measures that do nothing but tinker around the edges -- or worse, they've hijacked reform to improve their own bottom line.

Frankly, Democrats are not going to rescue American from its current trajectory unless they take on Big Media. But if you resolve -- like Edwards has -- to take on the media during your election campaign, will they not sabotage your election bid? I'm not impressed that Hillary Clinton accepted a campaign contribution from Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch. Here's another paragraph from the recent speech:

It’s time to end the game. It’s time to tell the big corporations and the lobbyists who have been running things for too long that their time is over. It’s time to challenge politicians to put the American people’s interests ahead of their own calculated political interests, to look the lobbyists in the eye and just say no.

It's a strong message, one that will could score points with the public in a debate: Imagine Edwards looking sternly at Hillary (or the Republican nominee) and asking, "Why couldn't you just have said no?"

Why does Bottom Trawling Continue? Blame Canada (seriously)

Are you against whaling? So am I. But there are worse activities than whaling. Top of my list would be "bottom trawling."

The world came very close to banning "bottom trawling" in the fall of 2006. Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and the United States tried hard to get the UN General Assembly to ban this destructive fishing practice.

How destructive? It's unbelievable, you can read about it here.

Only eleven nations have high-seas bottom trawling fleets -- Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia and Spain.

But thanks in large measure to the efforts of the Canadian government, we are back to the status quo:

Supporters of the ban said Canada's stance compromised prospects for stronger UN protections. . . . Canada has a fleet of bottom trawlers operating within Canadian waters. Its concern has been that a moratorium on the high seas could later be expanded to cover areas within national jurisdiction.

Basically, Canada worked hard to get a compromise proposal that ruined the chance of securing a world-wide ban on this destructive fishing practice. As this Greenpeace report indicates, Spain was also an major obstacle, but Canada -- because they did not even have a deep sea bottom trawling industry to defend --bears the fullest moral burden for having allowed this barbaric practice to continue.

This video was made prior to the vote last November at the UN. In case you missed it, it's hilarious.
A vote and an opportunity may have been lost -- thanks largely to Canada -- but the issue needs to go straight to top of the global agenda. The first time round, this urgent issue never received a fraction of the publicity it deserved.