Sunday, February 22, 2009

OBAMA KEEPS AFGHANISTAN VERSION OF GUANTANAMO AT BAGRAM AIRBASE GOING

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

I am sorry to read of this.

But it is America that Obama leads, not Ronald Reagan's fantasy shining city on a hill.

America is an imperial power with a vast network of intelligence agencies, secret police, military officials, corporate war profiteers, and powerful, ruthless old families much resembling the Borgias of Italy centuries ago.

You cannot just reverse what these groups believe is in their interests. If you try, you put yourself at risk.

America's establishment can ruin you and even eliminate you.

There are the examples of Clinton who became the center of sleazy scandal, going down in history as a shabby failure, and Kennedy who died trying to fight some very powerful interests. His brother too.

I firmly believe Obama's basic instincts are not bent towards this sort of overseas criminal behavior - something not typically true of American presidents, men like Bush or Nixon or Johnson being quite comfortable with it - but he is not in a position to change America's excesses.

What we get with Obama is an intelligent and decent man who will make at least some decisions in light of broader interests. I'm afraid that is the most we can hope for.

Those who wished for more were hoping for what cannot be.




I AM AFRAID THIS IS AS CLOSE AS AMERICA GETS TO A SHINING CITY ON A HILL

MORE ANTI-MUSLIM GARBAGE IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DENIS MACEOIN IN THE TELEGRAPH

Denis MacEoin, this piece lacks any perspective, save that of uninformed, paranoid anti-Islamism.

It is just irresponsible to write such stuff, feeding prejudice with red meat.

We have many, many religious groups that do not mix with mainline society.

Mennonites in many parts of the world stay to themselves, living in segregated communities, and refuse even to drive cars. Traditionally, members who violate the rules face the devastating fate of being "shunned," ignored by everyone in the community.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews behave in even more extreme ways. They dress in similar 19th century costumes, live in segregated communities, and maintain elaborate, and even oppressive, rules for that must be followed. Women cannot even leave their husbands without the threat of losing their children while men may readily divorce a wife.

How about all the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians who still live in monasteries and abbeys?

How about Buddhist monks?

Extreme evangelical Christians tend to avoid much of normal everyday society, disapproving of many mainstream activities. They found their own schools and other institutions with this aim in mind.

Then there are all the non-religious groups that tend to behave in similar ways, everything from nudists to survivalists.

God, isn’t it time we stop publishing anti-Muslim garbage?




DO MENNONITES INTEGRATE? NO. ARE THEY GOOD AND VALUABLE CITIZENS? YES.

TONY BLAIR'S PEACE AWARD: WHAT IT IS REALLY ABOUT

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY ANDREW PIERCE IN THE TELEGRAPH

Andrew Pierce couldn't be more right in his main theme.

Blair is a ghoul, an ethical nullity, still collecting booty years after his crimes.

But the author does overlook the actual meaning of this award.

The award had nothing to do with peace as most understand that word.

It comes from Israel, and the blood-drenched policies of Bush and Blair served what Israel sees as its interests.

Why else is Bush so praised in Israel, the only country in the world, including his own, where the man is not despised?

Israelis have some very odd ideas of peace, after all.

They include never speaking to their opponents, assassinating their leaders, imprisoning others, and holding a vast population almost in bondage.

Attacking a refugee camp like Gaza with bombs and tanks – for that is what Gaza is, full of refugees from earlier horrors Israel inflicted on Palestinians – is about far from peace as you can get, but it served what Israeli leaders saw as their needs.

And it couldn’t have happened without the quiet approval of Blair’s comrade in war crimes, the wretched Bush.




PERHAPS ONLY IN ISRAEL WOULD PEOPLE THINK THIS WORTHY OF A PEACE PRIZE




BLAIR MIGHT ALSO HAVE GOT THIS AWARD, BUT NOT BEING AN AMERICAN CITIZEN DISQUALIFIED HIM

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

A FORMER GUARD WRITES OF GUANTANAMO BUT SADLY MAKES THE ERROR OF SAYING IT IS AGAINST WHAT AMERICA STANDS FOR

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY BRANDON NEELY IN THE INDEPENDENT

Thank you for this, Brandon Neely.

But your statement near the end that "it [Guantanamo] goes against everything the United States of America stands for" simply does not reflect historical facts.

Guantanamo, to paraphrase H. Rapp Brown, is as American as cherry pie.

America's is a bloody history, full of injustice. The only reason we don't speak of the growth of America as being like that of Imperial Germany is that America's victims were mostly weak and poorly organized, rather than established European states.

Of course, we all know how America first ethnically cleansed the East of Indians in the "Trail of Tears." Thousands died in this hideous operation. All their land and homes were stolen.

Years later, when it wanted the very land these people had ruthlessly been removed to, America pretty much tried to exterminate them in a long series of mass slaughters.

We all know about a couple of hundred years of slavery and then a hundred years of Jim Crow.

But many Europeans - and more than a few Americans - do not know of the shameful Mexican War.

Or the shameful Spanish-American War, started with a phony claim over a warship.

Or the U.S. efforts to put down rebellion against its rule in the Philippines, where torture was widely used. Water-boarding started there.

Many do not know the ugly story of the annexation of Hawaii. The entire population there signed a petition against the American take-over and sent a delegation to Washington to present it to Congress. No one would even talk to them.

Few in Europe know of the many mass murders of blacks during the 1920s. Whole small communities, hundreds at a time, were wiped out and their land was stolen. There bodies went to mass graves.

The homes and farms and other property stolen from Japanese Americans during WWII Internment was never returned. The later compensation was a pittance for many compared to what was stolen.

There are many other ugly stories over just two centuries, and it is simply incorrect to play the Ronald Reagan theme of the shining city on a hill. It just ain't true.




MASSACRE IN KOREA




WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE




MASSACRE AT MAI LAI VIETNAM




ONE OF THOUSANDS OF LYNCHINGS

ON ISRAEL AND GAZA AND THE TIRED CHARGE THAT CRITICISM OF ISRAEL IS ANTI-SEMITISM

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT

Howard Jacobson,

Yours is a shamefully dishonest article.

You are playing word games with mass murder, and truly, in the end, your circumlocutions restate the same disgusting tactic used by the defenders of Israel's bloody excesses: you are anti-Semitic if you criticize Israel.

Is Israel a country like any other or is it not? That truly is the heart of the matter.

If it is a country like any other, then its savage behavior in Lebanon and in Gaza and in the West Bank is completely unacceptable.

It has nothing to do with any "ism."

But if Israel is somehow to be considered by different standards than other countries, if it is to have special rules and allowances, then the real "ism" involved here is Israeli exceptionalism.

You cannot have it both ways, try as you might.

Israel does not talk to its opponents ever. It makes only public show of talking to a pathetic man like Abbas. The others it either assassinates - and there have been many bloody assassinations - or labels as "terrorists."

These are the techniques of tyrants, not states which respect human rights and democratic values.

Just because Israel is technically a democracy does not mean it cannot act as a tyrant.

A prejudiced majority can keep a technically democratic state behaving like a gang of thugs. We saw this in the American South. We saw this in apartheid South Africa. We saw this with France in Algeria. And we see this in Israel.

Even as Israel went about the business of killing, among others, 400 kids in Gaza, in the West Bank more of other people's land and homes was being seized.

How can anyone possibly regard this in a positive light?

If Israel would start treating its opponents with decency and respect and agree to return to its 1967 borders, we could have peace, genuine peace.

It is not Hamas that prevents this happening. Hamas has shown readiness to talk and reach a modus vivendi more than once. It kept the previous truce agreement scrupulously, which Israel broke.

The leaders of Hamas are intelligent, educated professionals, elected cleanly.

They represent for Palestinians the same yearning for clean government that Obamas does for America.

But Israel will not even talk. Ridiculous.




IT'S ANTI-SEMITIC TO BE REVULSED BY THIS?

ON AL JAZEERA'S EFFORT TO GET A LICENCE FOR THEIR NEWS SERVICE IN CANADA

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

I hope they get their licence.

I've followed Al Jazeera on the Internet, and they bend over backward to be fair and objective.

They do some good reporting.

During America's Terror in Iraq, Al Jazeera was the only source giving us objective reports of what was happening in places like Fallujah.

Their war correspondents were very brave, as they were again in the horrors of Israel's Gaza Assault.

There were definitely reports of American soldiers in Iraq targeting Al Jazeera reporters, a number being killed. Bush also, we know, wanted to bomb their broadcast building.

Folks like the Canadian Jewish Congress oppose Al Jazeera for two primary reasons.

One is the very honesty in reporting of events like Gaza that should be our main reason for wanting them here. Just as Americans in Iraq, they don't want outsiders to see the horrors they inflict.

The second reason is a dishonest argument about Al Jazeera being an outlet for terrorists and anti-Israeli radicals.

That is simply a false charge against their news service.

Al Jazeera does have another service in Arab lands on which speakers are free to voice their views, but this is kept entirely separate from the news service.

The truth is the news service is more honest and scrupulous than outfits like Fox or CNN. CNN has given utterly false reports from war zones several times. Fox is just an outlet for right-wing propaganda.


Monday, February 16, 2009

ON OBAMA'S EFFORT TO GOVERN BY CONSENSUS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

The political divide in America is more visceral than it is in many other places.

It always has been.

I believe it reflects not just differences of view or understanding but of basic genetic make-up.

The Puritan strain in America gives us not just a tribe of Right Wingers but a nasty contemptuous propensity found in many American political commentators and politicians.

I think it not without some truth that the good folks in America always ready to bomb some society with which they disagree and going back to supporters of the extirpation of America's First Nations and the supporters of all-out, unforgiving war in the American Civil War are of a piece with the kind of Right Wing politics we see so often in America

The Coulters, the Limbaughs, the Gingriches, the Gramms, the DeLays, etc, etc represent a genetic strain going back to the horrific diatribes of dark souls like John Knox. They were horrible people in the 16th century and their descendants still are.

In America they are sentimentalized as religious refugees in distinctive garb, munching on the first Thanksgiving dinner.

In fact, they were so obnoxious in their behavior in 16th century Europe that no one wanted them around. Many used to go to the church meetings of other groups and raise ugly disturbances, showing absolutely zero tolerance for the beliefs of others. It was mobs of Puritans who ran through the great cathedrals of England hacking up ancient sculptures, burning paintings and manuscripts, and even destroying the graves of historic figures.

Of course, the reality is that after the first Thanksgiving these charming folks busied themselves with destroying the natives who had helped them.

Nothing has changed. This curse remains unlifted.

Unfortunately, America received so many Puritans in its early days while Australia was lucky to get the criminals.




AMERICA'S VIEW OF THE PILGRIMS




WHAT THE PILGRIMS ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF AND STEPHEN HARPER ONE OF CANADA'S "MEMORABLE DUETS" ?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DAVID MITCHELL IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Yes, but they form an entirely new kind of "memorable duet."

A duet of grotesques.

Harper and Ignatieff are memorable only for both being repulsive politicians.

Both have ethical issues so large, many of good conscience simply cannot consider supporting either one of them.

Harper has demonstrated time and again his acts do not in any way resemble his words, as well as complete flexibility in his principles.

Ignatieff is a member of parliament, and now leader of the Liberals, owing only to his complete lack of respect for democratic values.

Harper and Ignatieff supported the horrors and crimes of Iraq, and had either of them been PM at the time, Canada would have participated in that criminal invasion.

Ignatieff has supported "mild" torture, and no matter what he says today, that utterly disqualifies him as a decent human being.

What a miserable period ahead in Canadian politics.

One can only hope the Liberals see the truth before their convention and select someone else as permanent leader.

Ignatieff has blood on his hands: some successor to Pearson and Trudeau and Chretien.

___________

Harper and Ignatieff are both intelligent.

But the least knowledge of history will teach you that intelligence does not protect us from people who are also mad or evil or simply unethical.

Both these men feature strongly in the last category.






HARPER AND IGNATIEFF: THEY DESERVE EACH OTHER BUT WE DON'T

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

ISRAEL'S TRAGEDY IS ITS POLITICIANS: A FALSE THESIS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY LIAM FOX IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

This makes no sense.

In a democracy, in the final analysis, you must put responsibility with the people voting and supporting its institutions.

Otherwise, all the talk of the merits of democracy is rubbish.

The people pretty much get the goverment they deserve in any democratic state.

What people fail to realize is that democracies are not automatically decent forms of government. A majority with bad intentions can indefinitely impose its will.

Only a bill or charter of rights offers some protection against such majority abuse, but Israel does not have one, nor is it likely that it ever will with religious definitions governing many aspects of its society.

It truly does not matter much who is elected in Israel.

The choice of a woman who worked with Olmert is hardly promising. He is surely a war criminal by any reasonable, meaningful definition.

Olmert launched a savage bout of killing just so his party could have election bona fides.

As to Lieberman, he is quite rightly characterized as a fascist. Were this any place but Israel, the world's press would be saying just that.

Netanyahu has a long record of inflammatory statements and corrosively negative attitudes. He is a dark, unpleasant figure, altogether.

More than once, he has openly expressed contempt for Arabs.

It is generally put that Israel has moved to the right, but I rather think it is more accurate to say that Israel has moved into darkness.

I don't know how it could be more clear that Israelis do not want a just peace.

Oh, yes, if asked about peace in general in polls, they say yes, but peace in general is a meaningless abstraction. Genuine peace has to be qualified by all the small print.

I wonder how many readers are aware that while Olmert was killing maybe 400 children in Gaza, there was heavy activity in the West Bank seizing more of other people's land?

Recent revelations through Google maps demonstrate the intensity of Israel's continuing efforts to seize land through informal settlements.

Other revelations through government papers demonstrate clearly the government's quiet collusion in such illegal and unethical efforts.

We will have peace if Israel is prepared to return to its 1967 borders, but there is not the least indication that that is likely or even possible.

But peace isn’t just borders, it is treating your neighbors with respect and decency, but we see no sign of this from Israel, and it is Israel that holds all the cards.




SOME OF ISRAEL'S HANDIWORK IN GAZA

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

IRAN'S REVOLUTION: ITS VIOLENCE IS CHARACTERISTIC OF ALL TRUE REVOLUTIONS AND THE ROLE OF AMERICAN POLCY IN CREATING THIS ONE

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY ROBERT FISK IN THE INDEPENDENT

But this is the story of every genuine revolution.

By genuine I'm excluding events such as the American Revolution or Britain's Glorious Revolution, important and rather violent events but only rather loosely called revolutions.

True revolutions are always explosive, violent, life-changing events. That's why we can use the word for events like the Industrial Revolution, a world-changing set of events that hurt numberless people.

Indeed, when you are familiar with the history of such events, the word revolution takes on the kind of connotations of earthquake or natural disaster.

But most political revolutions are completely avoidable. They always come out of an environment of abuse and excessive privilege and trampling on others. The signs are always there to read too, requiring only changes in policy or reforms. This was absolutely true in such revolutions as the French and the Russian.

The policies of the United States, it should be remembered, bear a great responsibility for the extremes of Iran's Revolution. It overthrew the first democratic government in the Middle East to install the bloody Shah, and they supported that vampire for years in every way they could.

He was sold what then was an amazing pile of armaments, being equipped to serve as an American surrogate in the region.

Meanwhile Savak, his secret police, pulled out the finger nails of victims and murdered thousands.

The U.S. has never stopped playing such dirty games.

It supported Hussein in his horrible war against Iran, an 8-year long horror that in terms of the proportion of population killed or hurt compares to the Great War for major European countries.

Today it supports Israel's endless threats against Iran for the sin of entering the modern age with satellites and nuclear power stations. And it says nothing of Israel's horrible abuses and of its nuclear arsenal threatening everyone in the Middle East.





Sunday, February 08, 2009

ON CELEBRITY ACADEMIC, RICHARD FLORIDA, AND HIS REPORT FOR DALTON MCCGUINTY, CIRCUS RINGMASTER OF ONTARIO

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Already Richard Florida has become a kind of academic celebrity, and so far as I can perceive it is not owing to a wealth of original thought.

I am always keen to hear new ideas on favorite topics, but I honestly have to say I haven't heard or read one from Mr. Florida, despite a good deal of exposure.

Since coming to Toronto with fanfare, Mr. Florida has been interviewed many times of CBC Radio, sometimes at length, and he has contributed columns to the Globe.

After repeating many times why he came here, stuff about Canada's promise and opportunities - rather disingenuous, I think, since it was a plum academic appointment that brought him here - he talked at length about the late Jane Jacobs.

I was, along with so many, a great admirer of Jane Jacobs, and her classic book I devoured forty years ago. But her ideas are definitely not new and are widely known in Canada, and constantly associating yourself with her seems both a bit presumptuous and rather unpleasantly ingratiating.

One wanted to say, if you have something new to say, please, just get on with it.

Now he has written a much-advertised report for the Circus Ringmaster of Queen’s Park, Dalton the Magnificent, and I have heard him in several interviews discussing it, including one interview by the incisive Kathleen Petty with which he expressed great satisfaction.

God, I’m sorry, but he was vacuous. To make a point about today’s financial crisis and not dumping money into declining industries, he talked about people at an earlier period not stimulating agriculture but encouraging industry, the coming great sector.

Mr. Florida attributed the successful transition to the importance of the industrial sector in terms of employment in part to government’s not dumping money on an old sector.

Industry came to absorb the people leaving farms because of naturally occurring economic forces, including the industrialization of agriculture itself and increasing reductions in the demand for farm labor. The transition had nothing to do with government policies or the lack of policies. There were simply irresistible new forces at work owing to technological change.

Indeed, the fact is that today, although agriculture only now employs a small fraction of the labor force, government subsidies to agriculture remain one of the world’s great economic problems, the U.S. and the E.U. spending many tens of billions on this old sector every year.

Mr. Florida’s stuff about creativity in our economy is not new. Many names stand out from Schumpeter writing about creative destruction to Deming’s studies on continuous improvement.

Mr. Florida points to places like California and Massachusetts as centers of creative new industries, and indeed they are, but a government like Ontario’s cannot just make this happen. A major part of the reason these developments have occurred in those two places is that they each have constellations of great academic institutions attracting great minds from many places.

Boston, for example, has a half dozen major universities, at least two of which rate among the greatest in the world. You cannot just replicate that kind of intellectual infrastructure, at least not in anything less than decades of committing major resources.

And no one is going to prevent governments like Ontario’s from dumping billions in stimulus into declining industries: that is the stark reality of politics. Even a Northern Neocon like Harper has been boxed politically into spending tens of billions he did not want to spend.

Saying they shouldn’t isn’t wisdom so much as shouting against a hurricane.




RICHARD FLORIDA, SERIOUS ACADEMIC OR TENT-PREACHER PITCHMAN?

SCIENCE AS RELIGION?

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CHRISTOPHER BROOKER IN THE TELEGRAPH

A rubbishy playing with words, Mr. Booker.

Science cannot be a religion.

Science - true science, not the fraudsters on the edges - is a method.

It is a scrupulously defined method for establishing not truths - there are no "truths" in modern science - but as a way of understanding the way things work.

The method could take us anywhere, and the crucial characteristic of a scientific mind is that it is that it goes where the method leads.

Preconceptions have no role.

How can a method be a religion? Religion is nothing if it is not a set of tenets taken on faith as truth.

It cannot.


Thursday, February 05, 2009

JEFFERSON AND THE CATO INSTITUTE

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

The Cato Institute is an American think-tank, which is the same thing as saying a well-financed propaganda mill posing as something of an academic institution.

The distinguishing fact comes down to purpose: outfits like Cato - whose biggest financial backer in the past was Koch Oil - have an agenda; academic institutions do not.

So I take every publication from these people with a grain of salt, something experience warrants.

"Whereas Jefferson trusted decentralization and wanted diffuse communities making political decisions, Hamilton looked to a strong central authority to guide the nation."

This misrepresents and even distorts the differences between Hamilton and Jefferson. It is the kind of common view often found in local newspapers, but scholars should do better than that.

Jefferson definitely had a dark side, and there are views of his which border on what we might expect from Pol Pot.

He did not believe in industry. He believed in the sturdy yeoman farmer.

He of course spoke of liberty, but as the great Dr. Johnson pointed out it was outrageous for the "drivers of negroes" to speak of liberty.

Johnson also had Jefferson in mind when he called patriotism the last refuge of scoundrels.

Jefferson owned about two hundred slaves to his dying day, and never even wavered in embracing the institution. It was the way he had the leisure to follow his interests. He still managed to die a bankrupt, his tastes so outran his ability to earn.

Jefferson wrote bluntly in his Notes on Virginia about black inferiority, and he never recanted those views.

Indeed, when the slaves of Haiti rebelled against the French, Jefferson supported the French, and strongly. He assisted Napoleon in his efforts to re-conquer the poor slaves.

Jefferson was totally inconsistent on liberty versus centralism also. He put in place an embargo against Britain that bankrupted hundreds of small businesses and merchants in New England. He used very heavy-handed measures. There was an atmosphere for a while that smelled of Stalinism.

And there was the bitter irony that in an earlier embargo when he was not in office and building Monticello, he bought British-made custom windows for his dream house, deliberately breaking the embargo. The legitimacy of rules for Jefferson very much depended upon whether they hurt his interests or the interests of others.

Jefferson also exceeded his then-understood Constitutional authority by purchasing the Louisiana territory from his friend Napoleon. He knew this himself, but never hesitated because it was what he wanted.

The dark and anti-liberty side of Jefferson’s character is displayed in his vicious vendetta against Aaron Burr, a man he hated because he almost won the presidency instead of Jefferson, the inadequate election rules of the time making it possible for a man who ran nominally for vice-president to be elected as president.

Jefferson was a vicious dirty fighter too. His hiring – while working in the cabinet of George Washington – of two attack writers, Freneau and Callendar (on the government payroll), to make ugly attacks against Washington’s government showed a very dark side of his character.

He ended falling out with both of these men. One of them then proceeded to uncover the story of Jefferson’s use of his slave, Sally Hemmings, as mistress. The girl would have been about thirteen-years old when Jefferson first hit on her. The writer ended up dead in very questionable circumstances.

Jefferson, despite his pretenses to modernity was actually in many ways backward. Hamilton was not only his intellectual superior but was a man of such modern temperament that had he been permitted to time-travel to the present, he would have fairly quickly taken in what had happened and he would devour the details. Jefferson would have been in a state of shock and indeed would be repelled by much of contemporary society: it goes almost entirely against his honest-yeoman fantasy.

Hamilton contributed more to the early United States than perhaps any other figure. From central-banking concepts to decimal coinage and a whole lot more. He was urban and progressive and open to new things, and he had been Washington’s indispensable man, writing most of his speeches, suggesting strategies.

Again, a dark episode of Jefferson’s career includes having one of his associates visit Hamilton in private at the time Hamilton was involved in an affair with a scheming woman to threaten him with exposure if the Jeffersonians did not get their way on a certain issue. Quite contemptible actually.


Wednesday, February 04, 2009

THE EXTREME DANGER OF AMERICAN PROTECTIONISM TODAY

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

This is just fundamental economics.

The problem in these matters is the divergence between individual and community interests, a divergence many people seem almost incapable of appreciating.

The illusion here is that you can protect your own prosperity while leaving others to look after themselves, but trade does not work that way.

And trade, even that which is not offshore but with our own neighbors, is the entire basis of a modern economy. The primitive villages of third-world countries – many of which do not even use money – are examples of societies without trade.

Let's take a real example.

Wal-Mart could not exist today were it not for China. Once Wal-Mart blubbered about America and “made in America,” but it is in no position to do that.

Or in the few instances that it still does do that, it is creating a patriotic smokescreen, a form of emotionally-charged and dishonest marketing, for the overwhelming offshore nature of its orders. It is China's biggest retail customer.

It is easy for someone thinking like "J" (above) to point to the infinite number of products in a Wal-Mart store made in China and declare we could or should produce them ourselves to create jobs.

But they could not be produced at the same cost, and millions of Americans now enjoying an immense economic advantage of less costly goods would lose it.

Americans would actually end up poorer on average were people like "J" able to have their way.

The "on average" is very important with trade, because from the point of view of a "J" working at a new, higher cost plant, things appear better.

But for the entire American society, things will be unambiguously worse. Hundreds of millions will lose their cheaper goods so that "J" can work at a new plant.

And they will buy fewer goods owing to their higher cost.

But there will still be more effects. China too will become unambiguously poorer. And China and others would respond from the same impulses motivating “J,” generating a downward spiral in total consumption and increasing costs.

This example, in one way or another, describes each and every example of "buy American" you can come up with.

American protectionism - through a stupid set of import tax laws called Smoot-Hawley - helped deepen the Great Depression in just this way. There are many forms protectionism can take, but they all boil down to the same results.

Let's hope America - whose irresponsible policies at home and abroad are directly the cause of our current mess - at least shoulders some responsibility and avoids further irresponsible policies.

But I'm not overly hopeful: there are a lot of "J"s out there.





SEEKING EXCUSES FOR BUSH'S AND BLAIR'S WAR CRIMES

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

I can't agree, Daniel.

Tony Blair is the perfect example of a politician lacking real ethics, not ready to stand up for anything in the face of a challenge.

He knew Bush was lying. He knew Bush was forging evidence. He knew Bush was a man incapable of reliable and logical thinking.

But he went along anyway because that was the easy thing to do.

America can bring - and does in such cases - immense behind-the-scenes pressure on a government to go its way, through finances, trade, diplomacy, and favored status.

And the opposite is true too: there are personal rewards for going along. Blair's entire set of sinecures in retirement are examples of this.

Many, like Canada's Chretien, were able to resist joining in this vast war crime - for that is what the Iraq invasion is, a war crime.

But Blair was not, and I'm afraid you are weaving a fantasy explanation of his shameful behavior.

America and Britain have killed more Iraqis and destroyed the lives of more who lived than Hussein ever dreamed of doing.

Iraq, an advanced Arab state, would have naturally moved towards a more democratic future with the passing of Hussein. That's the experience of the entire Western, advanced world.

________________________

John Swaine,

You do appear to know too little history to engage in a debate like this.

The cases are countless of offspring who do not manage to do what their dictator fathers did.

We see this phenomenon, too, in wealthy families. Often the second or third generation loses the family fortune or sinks into a humdrum existence.

But most important is you also do not understand the way in which democracy evolved in Europe.

Once a large middle class is established in a country through sustained economic growth - something that took a few centuries in Europe - there are many people with influence who no longer see their interests being represented by an autocrat.

And Iraq was prosperous and growing. A flourishing middle class was in the making. Now many have been killed, others deprived of employment, and many, many have left the country. It is an economic disaster.

And please try to avoid unwarranted characterizations like "studiously ignores." They only make you seem small.

_________________________

Craig,

You really should know the words to the song before you get up to sing.

There have been several reliable studies done of excess Iraqi mortality. Two of these were done by highly qualified people, and they were published in peer-reviewed journals. One found 650,000 deaths owing to the war; the other found 400,000.

Then there were the thousands maimed, the hundreds of thousands who lost their employment, and the two million who emigrated.

And don't forget the ghastly destruction of some of the world's most precious ancient artifacts.

The United States has always kept its own estimates quiet so as not to disturb complacent people who don't seek information, just as it did in the first Gulf War when it slaughtered tens of thousands of Iraqi conscripts by carpet-bombing their pitiful sand redoubts in the desert. It then bull-dozed over the mass graves.

Then there were the tens of thousands of Iraqi children who perished in a long, brutal embargo.

Today the poisonous dust from depleted uranium shells is all over Iraq, and it will kill for generations to come.

America's treatment of Iraq is a total and unqualified disaster.





Monday, February 02, 2009

THE IDEA THAT OBAMA'S ELECTION SHOULD HELP RAISE GRADES

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

It would be nice to think this idea had some validity, but I fear it is just one more illusory notion from American social science.

We get, at least, an average of one of these notions a month from the United States' vast body of second-rate academics in soft subjects.

Many of these notions become widely accepted, especially in American primary education, before there is any real authority in their testing.

Another example of this sort of thing is the notion of multiple intelligences, seven different ones. There are printed posters in many American grade schools and an entire literature promoting this concept as though it were a proven fact.

This notion discussed by Daniel is comparable to the American experiments of the efficacy of prayer in healing. Then again there's the boosterism, widely practiced in American ghetto schools, with banners and literature and songs about how you can be anything.

Well, America is given to these enthusiasms. The history of the Great Awakenings – great national waves of wildly enthusiastic Christian revivalism which occurred several times - and the popularity of tent revival meetings are really other aspects of the same phenomenon.

Americans, many of them, are always ready to believe in some form of redemption or in some desperate quest to find it. Moby Dick, America’s first great novel, remains a true story of the national character.


THE INFLUENCE OF PARENTS IN CHILDREN'S DRINKING

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

Yes, indeed, peer influence on young people has been demonstrated again and again as far more weighty than the influence of parents.

And unfortunately, the Chief Medical Officer quoted commits the fundamental fallacy in logic and in statistics of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

It is well known to good doctors that genes play a crucial role in alcoholism. It really is a form of depression and self-medication.

Of course, then, the parents who drink heavily will often have children who do the same, example having nothing to do with it.


JOHN UPDIKE

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JENNY MCCARTHY IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

Updike was an elegant writer of the second rate, a sophisticated entertainer.

In that he reminds me - although entirely different in tone and subject matter - of someone like Somerset Maugham.

Many of Updike's ideas and attitudes were remarkably parochial. He was a great booster of the ridiculous politicians' slogan, the American Dream.

I don't believe he contributed anything of lasting importance to understanding the human condition.





THE LATE JOHN UPDIKE

WHEN IS CANADA'S OBAMA MOMENT?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Sorry, Jeff Roberts, this is not very insightful writing.

First, already it is becoming tiresome to read or hear about Canada and Obama.

Nothing of consequence has happened yet - for America or Canada -except the experience of an exciting election and inauguration.

That excitement has mostly to do with the uncommon mix of talents and intelligence and energy President Obama possesses, and it is made more intense after the results of eight years of Bush's foul government.

Canada sometimes has bad government, but it does not have, and has not had, the true horrors of Bush: war crimes, torture, economic disaster, and a lot of nasty, underhanded stuff.

Were an aboriginal or other minority politician of Obama's grace and intelligence to appear, I think we would gladly embrace him or her, Harper and Ignatieff both being poor leaders with poor ethics.

But where is he/she?

Such people are rare anywhere, even in a country with ten times our population.

I should add, how can people not be "marginalized" when they insist on living in remote settlements, too small to provide adequate facilities of any kind, from education to work opportunities?

At the same time, the population of these poor places is growing fairly rapidly, making any facilities even less adequate in future.

It is, quite simply, a formula for guaranteed disaster.