From the WaPo:
The Obama administration is legally defending a last-minute rule enacted by President George W. Bush that allows concealed firearms in national parks, even as it is internally reviewing whether the measure meets environmental muster.
In a response Friday to a lawsuit by gun-control and environmental groups, the Justice Department sought to block a preliminary injunction of the controversial rule. The regulation, which took effect Jan. 9, allows visitors [emph. mine] to bring concealed, loaded guns into national parks and wildlife refuges; for more than two decades they were allowed in such areas only if they were unloaded or stored and dismantled.
That is a bit misleading. It should say “visitors with concealed carry permits legally issued by the state in which the park is located”.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Strange Ad from Moveon.org
Just heard a weird ad from moveon.org blasting one my senators for supporting the TARP bill. It blasted him for the "Wall Street bailout." I'm no fan of the bill but that was months ago and I seem to recall the bill was pretty much suppported by both sides at the time. We had to DO SOMETHING. I know that call came from the White House but most went along.
The ad sounded like it was going to be political ad from a future Democrat opponent. At the end it had the "paid for by moveon.org" blurb.
It urged listeners to call him and tell him to get back to work "for the people."
The really strange part was that the ad ran on KLBJ, the local blowtorch here in Austin...during the Limbaugh program.
If I were a contributor to moveon.org, I might want to tell them the ad could be better placed. This is Austin but there must be a better audience to try to persuade.
The ad sounded like it was going to be political ad from a future Democrat opponent. At the end it had the "paid for by moveon.org" blurb.
It urged listeners to call him and tell him to get back to work "for the people."
The really strange part was that the ad ran on KLBJ, the local blowtorch here in Austin...during the Limbaugh program.
If I were a contributor to moveon.org, I might want to tell them the ad could be better placed. This is Austin but there must be a better audience to try to persuade.
Secretary Clinton's role as "image" manager
From Stratfor this week on President Obama's foreign policy:
Rodger Baker
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is making her first official overseas visit, with scheduled stops in Tokyo; Jakarta, Indonesia; Seoul, South Korea; and Beijing. The choice of Asia as her first destination is intended to signal a more global focus for U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, as opposed to the heavy emphasis on the Middle East and South Asia seen in the last years of the Bush administration. It also represents the kickoff of an ambitious travel plan that will see Clinton visiting numerous countries across the globe in a bid to project the image of a more cooperative U.S. administration.
Clinton’s Asian expedition is not the first overseas visit by a key member of the new administration. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Germany for the Munich Security Conference, where he faced the Russians. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell has finished his first trip to his area of responsibility, and is already planning a return visit to the Middle East. And Richard Holbrooke, special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has visited both South Asian countries in addition to making a “listening” stop in India.
The Emergence of a New Foreign Policy
As with any new U.S. presidency, there will be a period of reshaping policy, of setting priorities, and of balancing internal differences within the Obama administration. The various individuals and visits cataloged above in part reflect the Obama administration’s emerging foreign policy.
A two-pronged Obama foreign policy approach is unfolding. The first prong, relating to the general tenor of foreign relations, involves a modern application of the “speak softly and carry a big stick” approach. The second prong, relating to the distribution of power within the administration, involves a centralization of foreign policy centering on a stronger and expanded National Security Council (NSC) and relies on special envoys for crisis areas, leaving the secretary of state to shape foreign perceptions rather than policy.
The Obama administration faced mixed expectations as it came into office. Perhaps the most far-reaching expectation on the international front was the idea that the Obama administration would somehow be the antithesis of the previous Bush administration. Whereas Bush often was portrayed as a unilateralist “cowboy,” constantly confronting others and never listening to allies (much less competitors), it was thought that Obama somehow would remake America into a nation that withheld its military power and instead confronted international relations via consultations and cooperation. In essence, the Bush administration was seen as aggressive and unwilling to listen, while an Obama administration was expected to be more easily shaped and manipulated.
Anticipation of a weaker administration created a challenge for Obama from the start. While many of his supporters saw him as the anti-Bush, the new president had no intention of shifting America to a second-tier position or making the United States isolationist. Obama’s focus on reducing U.S. forces in Iraq and the discussions during Clinton’s confirmation hearing of reducing the military’s role in reconstruction operations did not reflect an anti-military bias or even new ideas, but something Defense Secretary Robert Gates had advocated for under former U.S. President George W. Bush. A reshaping of the U.S. military will in fact take place over the course of Obama’s term in office. But the decision to reduce the U.S. military presence in Iraq is not unique to this administration; it is merely a recognition of the reality of the limitations of military resources.
Diplomacy and Military Power
The new administration has applied this decision as the basis of a strategy to refocus the military on its core competencies and rebuild the military’s strength and readiness, using that as the strong and stable framework from which to pursue an apparently more cooperative foreign policy. U.S. diplomatic power needs a strong military, and operations in Iraq have drained U.S. military power — something highlighted by the U.S. inability to act on its policies when the Russians moved in on Georgia.
It is not only U.S. political power that is reinforced by military power, but U.S. economic strength as well. Control of the world’s sea-lanes — and increasingly, control of outer space — is what ensures the security of U.S. economic links abroad. In theory, the United States can thus interdict competitors’ supply lines and economic ties while protecting its own. Despite globalization and greater economic ties, physical power still remains the strongest backer to diplomacy.
Ideology alone will not change the world, much less the actions of so-called rogue states or even pirates along the Somali coast. The first principal of Obama’s foreign policy, then, will be making sure it has big stick to carry, one freed from long-term reconstruction commitments or seemingly intractable situations such as Iraq. Only with an available and effective military can one afford to speak softly without being trod upon.
Rebuilding U.S. military readiness and strength is not going to be easy. Iraq and Afghanistan remain to be taken care of, and there are years of heavy activity and at times declining recruitment to recover from. While there are substantial benefits to a battle-hardened military accustomed to a high deployment tempo, this also has its costs — reset costs will be high. A very real domestic military shake-up looms on the one- to two-year horizon in order to bring the Pentagon back into line with fiscal and procurement realities, coupled with concerns about midlevel officer retention. But the Pentagon’s thinking and strategic guidance already have moved toward cooperative security and toward working more closely with allies and partners to stabilize and manage the global security environment, with an emphasis on requiring foreign participation and burden-sharing.
A Greater Security Role for Allies and a Centralized Foreign Policy
Obama will also work on managing the U.S. image abroad. Opposition to Bush and opposition to the war in Iraq often became synonymous internationally, evolving intentionally or otherwise into broader anti-war and anti-military sentiments. Rebuilding the military’s image internationally will not happen overnight. Part of the process will involve using the sense of change inherent in any new U.S. administration to push allies and others to take on a greater role in global security.
In Asia, for example, Clinton will call on Tokyo and Seoul to step up operations in Afghanistan, particularly in reconstruction and development efforts. But Tokyo and Seoul also will be called on to take a greater role in regional security — Seoul on the Korean Peninsula and Tokyo as a more active military ally overall. The same message will be sent to Europe and elsewhere: If you want a multilateral United States, you will have to take up the slack and participate in multilateral operations. The multilateral mantra will not be one in which the United States does what others say, but rather one in which the United States holds others to the task. In the end, this will reduce U.S. commitments abroad, allowing the military to refocus on its core competencies and rebuild its strength.
A strong military thus forms the foundation of any foreign policy. Obama’s foreign policy approach is largely centralized in a bid for a wider approach. Taking China as an example, for the last half-dozen years, U.S. policy on China was based almost entirely on economics. The U.S. Treasury Department took the lead in China relations, while other issues — everything from Chinese military developments to Beijing’s growing presence in Africa and Latin America to human rights — took a back seat. While the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue (or something similar) will remain a major pillar of U.S.-China relations under Obama, equally important parallel tracks will focus on military and security issues, nontraditional threats, politics and human rights. This multifaceted approach will require close co operation among numerous departments and divisions to avoid the chaos seen in things like U.S. policy on North Korea.
This coordination will take place in an expanded NSC, one that brings in the economic elements on equal footing with security and political concerns. Combined with the appointment of special envoys for critical regions, this is intended to ensure a more unified and complete approach to foreign policy. This way, Obama retains oversight over policy, while his erstwhile rival Clinton is just one voice at the table. The State Department’s role thus becomes more about image management and development.
Accordingly, Clinton’s foreign travels are less about shaping foreign policy than shaping foreign images of the United States. She is demonstrating the new consultative nature of the administration by going everywhere and listening to everyone. Meanwhile, the hard-hitting foreign policy initiatives go to the special envoys, who can dedicate their time and energy to just one topic. Holbrooke got South Asia, Mitchell got the Middle East, and there are indications that managing overall China strategy will fall to Biden, at least in the near term.
Other special envoys and special representatives might emerge, some technically reporting through the State Department, others to other departments, but all effectively reporting back to the NSC and the president. In theory, this will mitigate the kind of bickering between the State Department and NSC that characterized Bush’s first term (a concern hardly limited to the most recent ex-president). And to keep it busy, the State Department has been tasked with rebuilding the U.S. Agency for International Development or an equivalent program for taking reconstruction and development programs, slowly freeing the military from the reconstruction business.
As Clinton heads to Asia, then, the expectations of Asian allies and China of a newfound American appreciation for the Far East might be a bit misplaced. Certainly, this is the first time in a long while that a secretary of state has visited Asia before Europe. But given the role of the vice president and the special envoys, the visit might not reflect policy priorities so much as a desire to ensure that all regions get visits. Clinton’s agenda in each country might not offer an entirely accurate reading of U.S. policy initiatives for the region, either, as much of the policy is still up for review, and her primary responsibility is to demonstrate a new and more interactive face of American foreign policy.
Clinton’s Asia visit is significant largely because it highlights a piece of the evolving Obama foreign policy — a policy that remains centralized under the president via the NSC, and that uses dedicated special envoys and representatives to focus on key trouble spots (and perhaps to avoid some of the interagency bickering that can limit the agencies’ freedom to maneuver). Most importantly, this policy at its core looks to rebuild the sense and reality of American military strength through disengaging from apparently intractable situations, focusing on core competencies rather than reconstruction or nation-building, and calling on allies to take up the slack in security responsibilities. This is what is shaping the first priority for the Obama administration: withdrawal from Iraq not just to demonstrate a different approach than the last president, but also to ensure that the military is ready for use elsewhere.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to http://www.stratfor.com/
Rodger Baker
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is making her first official overseas visit, with scheduled stops in Tokyo; Jakarta, Indonesia; Seoul, South Korea; and Beijing. The choice of Asia as her first destination is intended to signal a more global focus for U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, as opposed to the heavy emphasis on the Middle East and South Asia seen in the last years of the Bush administration. It also represents the kickoff of an ambitious travel plan that will see Clinton visiting numerous countries across the globe in a bid to project the image of a more cooperative U.S. administration.
Clinton’s Asian expedition is not the first overseas visit by a key member of the new administration. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Germany for the Munich Security Conference, where he faced the Russians. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell has finished his first trip to his area of responsibility, and is already planning a return visit to the Middle East. And Richard Holbrooke, special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has visited both South Asian countries in addition to making a “listening” stop in India.
The Emergence of a New Foreign Policy
As with any new U.S. presidency, there will be a period of reshaping policy, of setting priorities, and of balancing internal differences within the Obama administration. The various individuals and visits cataloged above in part reflect the Obama administration’s emerging foreign policy.
A two-pronged Obama foreign policy approach is unfolding. The first prong, relating to the general tenor of foreign relations, involves a modern application of the “speak softly and carry a big stick” approach. The second prong, relating to the distribution of power within the administration, involves a centralization of foreign policy centering on a stronger and expanded National Security Council (NSC) and relies on special envoys for crisis areas, leaving the secretary of state to shape foreign perceptions rather than policy.
The Obama administration faced mixed expectations as it came into office. Perhaps the most far-reaching expectation on the international front was the idea that the Obama administration would somehow be the antithesis of the previous Bush administration. Whereas Bush often was portrayed as a unilateralist “cowboy,” constantly confronting others and never listening to allies (much less competitors), it was thought that Obama somehow would remake America into a nation that withheld its military power and instead confronted international relations via consultations and cooperation. In essence, the Bush administration was seen as aggressive and unwilling to listen, while an Obama administration was expected to be more easily shaped and manipulated.
Anticipation of a weaker administration created a challenge for Obama from the start. While many of his supporters saw him as the anti-Bush, the new president had no intention of shifting America to a second-tier position or making the United States isolationist. Obama’s focus on reducing U.S. forces in Iraq and the discussions during Clinton’s confirmation hearing of reducing the military’s role in reconstruction operations did not reflect an anti-military bias or even new ideas, but something Defense Secretary Robert Gates had advocated for under former U.S. President George W. Bush. A reshaping of the U.S. military will in fact take place over the course of Obama’s term in office. But the decision to reduce the U.S. military presence in Iraq is not unique to this administration; it is merely a recognition of the reality of the limitations of military resources.
Diplomacy and Military Power
The new administration has applied this decision as the basis of a strategy to refocus the military on its core competencies and rebuild the military’s strength and readiness, using that as the strong and stable framework from which to pursue an apparently more cooperative foreign policy. U.S. diplomatic power needs a strong military, and operations in Iraq have drained U.S. military power — something highlighted by the U.S. inability to act on its policies when the Russians moved in on Georgia.
It is not only U.S. political power that is reinforced by military power, but U.S. economic strength as well. Control of the world’s sea-lanes — and increasingly, control of outer space — is what ensures the security of U.S. economic links abroad. In theory, the United States can thus interdict competitors’ supply lines and economic ties while protecting its own. Despite globalization and greater economic ties, physical power still remains the strongest backer to diplomacy.
Ideology alone will not change the world, much less the actions of so-called rogue states or even pirates along the Somali coast. The first principal of Obama’s foreign policy, then, will be making sure it has big stick to carry, one freed from long-term reconstruction commitments or seemingly intractable situations such as Iraq. Only with an available and effective military can one afford to speak softly without being trod upon.
Rebuilding U.S. military readiness and strength is not going to be easy. Iraq and Afghanistan remain to be taken care of, and there are years of heavy activity and at times declining recruitment to recover from. While there are substantial benefits to a battle-hardened military accustomed to a high deployment tempo, this also has its costs — reset costs will be high. A very real domestic military shake-up looms on the one- to two-year horizon in order to bring the Pentagon back into line with fiscal and procurement realities, coupled with concerns about midlevel officer retention. But the Pentagon’s thinking and strategic guidance already have moved toward cooperative security and toward working more closely with allies and partners to stabilize and manage the global security environment, with an emphasis on requiring foreign participation and burden-sharing.
A Greater Security Role for Allies and a Centralized Foreign Policy
Obama will also work on managing the U.S. image abroad. Opposition to Bush and opposition to the war in Iraq often became synonymous internationally, evolving intentionally or otherwise into broader anti-war and anti-military sentiments. Rebuilding the military’s image internationally will not happen overnight. Part of the process will involve using the sense of change inherent in any new U.S. administration to push allies and others to take on a greater role in global security.
In Asia, for example, Clinton will call on Tokyo and Seoul to step up operations in Afghanistan, particularly in reconstruction and development efforts. But Tokyo and Seoul also will be called on to take a greater role in regional security — Seoul on the Korean Peninsula and Tokyo as a more active military ally overall. The same message will be sent to Europe and elsewhere: If you want a multilateral United States, you will have to take up the slack and participate in multilateral operations. The multilateral mantra will not be one in which the United States does what others say, but rather one in which the United States holds others to the task. In the end, this will reduce U.S. commitments abroad, allowing the military to refocus on its core competencies and rebuild its strength.
A strong military thus forms the foundation of any foreign policy. Obama’s foreign policy approach is largely centralized in a bid for a wider approach. Taking China as an example, for the last half-dozen years, U.S. policy on China was based almost entirely on economics. The U.S. Treasury Department took the lead in China relations, while other issues — everything from Chinese military developments to Beijing’s growing presence in Africa and Latin America to human rights — took a back seat. While the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue (or something similar) will remain a major pillar of U.S.-China relations under Obama, equally important parallel tracks will focus on military and security issues, nontraditional threats, politics and human rights. This multifaceted approach will require close co operation among numerous departments and divisions to avoid the chaos seen in things like U.S. policy on North Korea.
This coordination will take place in an expanded NSC, one that brings in the economic elements on equal footing with security and political concerns. Combined with the appointment of special envoys for critical regions, this is intended to ensure a more unified and complete approach to foreign policy. This way, Obama retains oversight over policy, while his erstwhile rival Clinton is just one voice at the table. The State Department’s role thus becomes more about image management and development.
Accordingly, Clinton’s foreign travels are less about shaping foreign policy than shaping foreign images of the United States. She is demonstrating the new consultative nature of the administration by going everywhere and listening to everyone. Meanwhile, the hard-hitting foreign policy initiatives go to the special envoys, who can dedicate their time and energy to just one topic. Holbrooke got South Asia, Mitchell got the Middle East, and there are indications that managing overall China strategy will fall to Biden, at least in the near term.
Other special envoys and special representatives might emerge, some technically reporting through the State Department, others to other departments, but all effectively reporting back to the NSC and the president. In theory, this will mitigate the kind of bickering between the State Department and NSC that characterized Bush’s first term (a concern hardly limited to the most recent ex-president). And to keep it busy, the State Department has been tasked with rebuilding the U.S. Agency for International Development or an equivalent program for taking reconstruction and development programs, slowly freeing the military from the reconstruction business.
As Clinton heads to Asia, then, the expectations of Asian allies and China of a newfound American appreciation for the Far East might be a bit misplaced. Certainly, this is the first time in a long while that a secretary of state has visited Asia before Europe. But given the role of the vice president and the special envoys, the visit might not reflect policy priorities so much as a desire to ensure that all regions get visits. Clinton’s agenda in each country might not offer an entirely accurate reading of U.S. policy initiatives for the region, either, as much of the policy is still up for review, and her primary responsibility is to demonstrate a new and more interactive face of American foreign policy.
Clinton’s Asia visit is significant largely because it highlights a piece of the evolving Obama foreign policy — a policy that remains centralized under the president via the NSC, and that uses dedicated special envoys and representatives to focus on key trouble spots (and perhaps to avoid some of the interagency bickering that can limit the agencies’ freedom to maneuver). Most importantly, this policy at its core looks to rebuild the sense and reality of American military strength through disengaging from apparently intractable situations, focusing on core competencies rather than reconstruction or nation-building, and calling on allies to take up the slack in security responsibilities. This is what is shaping the first priority for the Obama administration: withdrawal from Iraq not just to demonstrate a different approach than the last president, but also to ensure that the military is ready for use elsewhere.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to http://www.stratfor.com/
The Run Upon the Bankers
The Run Upon The Bankers, by Jonathan Swift (1720)
THE RUN UPON THE BANKERS[1]
The bold encroachers on the deep
Gain by degrees huge tracts of land,
Till Neptune, with one general sweep,
Turns all again to barren strand.
The multitude's capricious pranks
Are said to represent the seas,
Breaking the bankers and the banks,
Resume their own whene'er they please.
Money, the life-blood of the nation,
Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,
Unless a proper circulation
Its motion and its heat maintains.
Because 'tis lordly not to pay,
Quakers and aldermen in state,
Like peers, have levees every day
Of duns attending at their gate.
We want our money on the nail;
The banker's ruin'd if he pays:
They seem to act an ancient tale;
The birds are met to strip the jays.
"Riches," the wisest monarch sings,
"Make pinions for themselves to fly;"[2]
They fly like bats on parchment wings,
And geese their silver plumes supply.
No money left for squandering heirs!
Bills turn the lenders into debtors:
The wish of Nero[3] now is theirs,
"That they had never known their letters."
Conceive the works of midnight hags,
Tormenting fools behind their backs:
Thus bankers, o'er their bills and bags,
Sit squeezing images of wax.
Conceive the whole enchantment broke;
The witches left in open air,
With power no more than other folk,
Exposed with all their magic ware.
So powerful are a banker's bills,
Where creditors demand their due;
They break up counters, doors, and tills,
And leave the empty chests in view.
Thus when an earthquake lets in light
Upon the god of gold and hell,
Unable to endure the sight,
He hides within his darkest cell.
As when a conjurer takes a lease
From Satan for a term of years,
The tenant's in a dismal case,
Whene'er the bloody bond appears.
A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
'Tis like the writing on the wall.[4]
How will the caitiff wretch be scared,
When first he finds himself awake
At the last trumpet, unprepared,
And all his grand account to make!
For in that universal call,
Few bankers will to heaven be mounters;
They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall!
Conceal and cover us, ye counters!"
When other hands the scales shall hold,
And they, in men's and angels' sight
Produced with all their bills and gold,
"Weigh'd in the balance and found light!"
[Footnote 1: This poem was printed some years ago, and it should seem, by
the late failure of two bankers, to be somewhat prophetic. It was
therefore thought fit to be reprinted.--_Dublin Edition_, 1734.]
[Footnote 2: Solomon, Proverbs, ch. xxiii, v. 5.]
[Footnote 3: Who, in his early days of empire, having to sign the
sentence of a condemned criminal, exclaimed: "Quam vellem nescire
litteras!" Suetonius, 10; and Seneca, "De Clementia,", cited by
Montaigne, "De l'inconstance de nos actions."--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 4: Daniel, ch. v, verses 25, 26, 27, 28.--_W. E. B._]
THE RUN UPON THE BANKERS[1]
The bold encroachers on the deep
Gain by degrees huge tracts of land,
Till Neptune, with one general sweep,
Turns all again to barren strand.
The multitude's capricious pranks
Are said to represent the seas,
Breaking the bankers and the banks,
Resume their own whene'er they please.
Money, the life-blood of the nation,
Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,
Unless a proper circulation
Its motion and its heat maintains.
Because 'tis lordly not to pay,
Quakers and aldermen in state,
Like peers, have levees every day
Of duns attending at their gate.
We want our money on the nail;
The banker's ruin'd if he pays:
They seem to act an ancient tale;
The birds are met to strip the jays.
"Riches," the wisest monarch sings,
"Make pinions for themselves to fly;"[2]
They fly like bats on parchment wings,
And geese their silver plumes supply.
No money left for squandering heirs!
Bills turn the lenders into debtors:
The wish of Nero[3] now is theirs,
"That they had never known their letters."
Conceive the works of midnight hags,
Tormenting fools behind their backs:
Thus bankers, o'er their bills and bags,
Sit squeezing images of wax.
Conceive the whole enchantment broke;
The witches left in open air,
With power no more than other folk,
Exposed with all their magic ware.
So powerful are a banker's bills,
Where creditors demand their due;
They break up counters, doors, and tills,
And leave the empty chests in view.
Thus when an earthquake lets in light
Upon the god of gold and hell,
Unable to endure the sight,
He hides within his darkest cell.
As when a conjurer takes a lease
From Satan for a term of years,
The tenant's in a dismal case,
Whene'er the bloody bond appears.
A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
'Tis like the writing on the wall.[4]
How will the caitiff wretch be scared,
When first he finds himself awake
At the last trumpet, unprepared,
And all his grand account to make!
For in that universal call,
Few bankers will to heaven be mounters;
They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall!
Conceal and cover us, ye counters!"
When other hands the scales shall hold,
And they, in men's and angels' sight
Produced with all their bills and gold,
"Weigh'd in the balance and found light!"
[Footnote 1: This poem was printed some years ago, and it should seem, by
the late failure of two bankers, to be somewhat prophetic. It was
therefore thought fit to be reprinted.--_Dublin Edition_, 1734.]
[Footnote 2: Solomon, Proverbs, ch. xxiii, v. 5.]
[Footnote 3: Who, in his early days of empire, having to sign the
sentence of a condemned criminal, exclaimed: "Quam vellem nescire
litteras!" Suetonius, 10; and Seneca, "De Clementia,", cited by
Montaigne, "De l'inconstance de nos actions."--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 4: Daniel, ch. v, verses 25, 26, 27, 28.--_W. E. B._]
May have found my Kevin Bacon connection
One of the interesting experiences I'm having with Facebook is discovering who you're connected to with just a couple degrees of separation. One of my friends has daughters who are involved in serious ice skating; serious skating means working with the country's best coaches and that means rubbing shoulders with wildly wealthy parents of skaters. So my friend just got "friended" on Facebook by one of these wildly weathy people she's met at the rink. The WW person is Facebook friends with Leo di Caprio and Angelina Jolie and on and on. So it's likely that my closest route to Kevin Bacon is via my friend and then via the WW person. If the WW person isn't friends with Kevin Bacon herself, I'm sure one of her friends is.
Ezra and Mankiw
I've got to mention this post by Ezra Klein at Tapped/American Prospect since he's one of my favorites and because he quotes Greg Mankiw with regard to the bank bailout/nationalization. This bailout really has made the strangest bedfellows.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Ilk
One of my favorite words.
From Wiktionary:
(often derogatory or humorous) The kind or class of people that resemble, behave in a manner similar to, or are of the same social status as a certain person.
1906 — Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, Ch. 25
“Hinkydink” or “Bathhouse John,” or others of that ilk, were proprietors of the most notorious dives in Chicago...
From Wiktionary:
(often derogatory or humorous) The kind or class of people that resemble, behave in a manner similar to, or are of the same social status as a certain person.
1906 — Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, Ch. 25
“Hinkydink” or “Bathhouse John,” or others of that ilk, were proprietors of the most notorious dives in Chicago...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Framing the bank bailout debate
I'm not sure how often Scooter thinks Arianna Huffington is seeing things accurately, but I think she has framed the bank mess exactly right:
And Josh Marshall at TPM is featuring a guy (Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, former Chief Economist of the World Bank) saying the same thing here. Tapped/American Prospect similarly has posts/articles that are panning TARP II.
That's a survey of the typically-left-leaning blogs that I read on TARP II. If we don't want it and Scooter and his ilk don't want it, Obama will be spending huge political capital and good will to get it done.
What needs to be done is hard but straightforward. As Martin Wolf of the Financial Times sums it up: "Admit reality, restructure banks and, above all, slay zombie institutions at once."
This tough love for bankers is being promoted by everyone from Nouriel Roubini, Paul Krugman, and Ann Pettifor to Niall Ferguson, the Wall Street Journal, and Milton Friedman's old partner, Anna Schwartz, the co-author of his seminal work, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. "They should not be recapitalizing firms that should be shut down," says Schwartz. "Firms that made wrong decisions should fail."
The plan laid out -- or, more accurately, sketched out -- this week by Tim Geithner makes it very clear that he is on the wrong side of the issue, more worried about the banking industry than the American people. ...
The big problem is Geithner is acting as if the crisis we are facing is a crisis of liquidity when, in fact, it's a crisis of insolvency. As Ann Pettifor puts it on HuffPost: "Much of Wall Street is effectively insolvent. It's not that these banks lack cash or capital -- it's just that they're never going to meet all their financial liabilities -- i.e. repay their debts. Ever."
And Josh Marshall at TPM is featuring a guy (Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, former Chief Economist of the World Bank) saying the same thing here. Tapped/American Prospect similarly has posts/articles that are panning TARP II.
That's a survey of the typically-left-leaning blogs that I read on TARP II. If we don't want it and Scooter and his ilk don't want it, Obama will be spending huge political capital and good will to get it done.
Fayetteville Shale
Anybody know what mineral owners are getting for natural gas in the Fayetteville Shale?
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Hezbollah's Revenge
Stratfor's Security Report:
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to http://www.stratfor.com/
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Feb. 12 will mark the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Imad Mughniyah, one of Hezbollah’s top military commanders. The anniversary certainly will be met with rejoicing in Tel Aviv and Washington — in addition to all the Israelis he killed, Mughniyah also had a significant amount of American blood on his hands. But the date will be met with anger and renewed cries for revenge from Hezbollah’s militants, many of whom were recruited, trained or inspired by Mughniyah.
Because of Hezbollah’s history of conducting retaliatory attacks after the assassination of its leaders, and the frequent and very vocal calls for retribution for the Mughniyah assassination, many observers (including Stratfor) have been waiting for Hezbollah to exact its revenge. While the attack has not yet happened, threats continue. For example, in a Jan. 29 news conference, Hezbollah General Secretary Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah left no doubt about the group’s intention. “The Israelis live in fear of our revenge,” he said. “The decision to respond to the killing is still on. We decide the time and the place.”
Initially, given the force of the anger and outcry over the assassination, we anticipated that the strike would come soon after the 30-day mourning period for Mughniyah had passed. Clearly, that did not happen. Now a year has passed since the killing, but the anger and outcry have not died down. Indeed, as reflected by Nasrallah’s recent statement, the leadership of Hezbollah remains under a considerable amount of internal pressure to retaliate. Because any retaliation would likely be tempered by concerns over provoking a full-on Israeli attack against Hezbollah infrastructure (similar to the attack in the summer of 2006), any Hezbollah strike would be conducted in a manner that could provide some degree of plausible deniability.
It is important to remember that Hezbollah retains a considerable capacity to conduct terrorist attacks abroad should it choose to do so. In fact, we believe that, due to its high degree of training, vast experience and close ties to the Iranian government, Hezbollah retains a more proficient and dangerous terrorism capability than al Qaeda.
Repeated calls for revenge and Hezbollah’s capabilities have combined to ensure that the Israeli government maintains a high state of awareness. Even though a year has passed, Israelis, too, are waiting for the other shoe to drop. On Feb. 1, Elkana Harnof of the Counterterrorism Bureau in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office told The Jerusalem Post that, “Based on our information, we believe the organization is planning one large revenge attack close to the anniversary of [Mughniyah’s] death.” Harnof added, “All we can say publicly is that [Hezbollah] has gone to enormous effort to prepare various kinds of terror attacks, and the big one is likely going to take place soon.” Like Stratfor, the Israelis also believe that the attack will be directed against Israeli or Jewish targets outside of Israel.
Busy Bodies
There are a number of indications that Hezbollah has not been idle in the year since Mughniyah’s death. First, there has been a good deal of preoperational activity by Hezbollah militants in several countries, including the United States. This activity has included surveillance and other intelligence-gathering for targeting purposes. At one point last fall, the activity was so intense inside the United States that law enforcement officials believed a strike was imminent — but it never came. Additionally, there are credible reports that Hezbollah plots to strike Israeli targets in Azerbaijan and the Netherlands have been thwarted. (Although, from information we have received, it does not appear that either of these plots was at an advanced stage of the attack cycle.)
We have no reason to doubt the reports of Hezbollah preoperational activity. It is simply what they do and what they are. Even though the group has not conducted a successful attack overseas since 1994, it does maintain a robust network of operatives who stay busily engaged in operational activities. While many of these operatives are involved primarily in financial and logistical activities, we believe it is worth noting that Hezbollah has never conducted or attempted an attack in a country where it did not have such a support network in place. They use these networks to assist their militant activities in a number of ways, but perhaps the most significant way is in the conduct of preoperational surveillance.
Hezbollah, a creature of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, also has a long history of receiving aid from Iranian embassies in its overseas operations, including its terrorist strikes. Almost inevitably, Hezbollah’s overseas attack plans are found to have murky links of some sort to the Iranian embassy in the country where the attack was to occur, and to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers stationed there.
Hezbollah utilizes an “off the shelf” method of planning its terrorist attacks. This is very similar to the way major national military commands operate, where they make contingency war plans against potential adversaries in advance and then work to keep those plans updated. This style of sophisticated, advance planning provides Hezbollah’s senior decision makers with a wide array of tactical options, and allows them to assess a number of attack plans in various parts of the world and quickly select and update a particular attack plan when they make the decision to launch it. When they do decide to pull the trigger, they can strike hard and fast.
This type of planning requires a great deal of intelligence-gathering, not only to produce the initial plans but also to keep them updated. Because it requires a lot of collection activity, this effort likely accounts for much of the operational activity that has been observed over the past year in the United States and elsewhere. These ongoing surveillance operations are not just useful for planning purposes, but they are also good for sowing confusion, creating distractions and causing complacency. If Hezbollah operatives have been seen periodically conducting surveillance around a facility and no attack has followed that activity, over time it becomes very easy for security personnel to write off all such activity as harmless — even when it might not be this time.
Not Crying Wolf
There are some who argue that the lack of an attack by Hezbollah since the Mughniyah assassination, combined with the fact that the group has not used its terrorist capability to conduct an attack for many years, signifies that Hezbollah has abandoned its terrorist ways and instead focused on developing its conventional warfare capability.
We do not buy this argument. First, it ignores the existence and purpose of Hezbollah’s Unit 1800, which, among other things, recruits Palestinians for anti-Israeli terror operations inside Israel and the occupied territories. Second, if Hezbollah had abandoned its terrorist arm, there would be no need for the preoperational planning activity noted previously, and in our opinion, reports of such surveillance activity are too frequent and too widespread to be discounted as false sightings. Granted, such activities do cause jitters and have some effectiveness as a psychological warfare tool, but we do not believe that those limited benefits justify the time and effort being put into Hezbollah’s intelligence-collection program. There is also that pesky problem of explaining the thwarted attack plots in Azerbaijan and the Netherlands. Because of this, we do not believe that the U.S. and Israeli governments (among others) are crying wolf when they provide warnings of pe nding Hezbollah attacks.
We continue to believe that if there is an attack by Hezbollah, it will likely come in a country where there is an existing Hezbollah support apparatus and an Iranian embassy. (Although, in a confined geographic area, operations could be supported in a third country that lacked one or both of those elements.) We also believe that such an attack is more likely in a country where there is ready access to weapons or explosives, and where there are poor law enforcement and intelligence capabilities. We wrote an analysis discussing this in some detail during the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. In that piece, we provided a matrix of the places we believed were most likely to be the site of a Hezbollah attack against Israeli targets, and one of the important criteria we considered was the presence of both an Iranian embassy and a local Hezbolla h support network. When we discuss these two elements, it is important to note that in past attacks, the attackers were brought in from the outside in order to provide plausible deniability — but they did receive important support and guidance from the network and embassy.
Since we wrote that analysis in July 2006, there has been a significant increase in Iranian influence in parts of Latin America, including Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, and Hezbollah has not been far behind. In addition to claims by the U.S. Treasury Department that Venezuelan nationals and organizations are supporting Hezbollah financially, there have been persistent rumors of Hezbollah militants and IRGC officers conducting training at camps in the Venezuelan jungles.
These reports are especially noteworthy when combined with a recent rise in anti-Semitism in Venezuela and an outright hostility toward Jews demonstrated by pro-Chavez militia groups. A pro-Chavez militia is believed to have been involved in the vandalism of the main synagogue in Caracas on the night of Jan. 30-31, 2008. We are among many who don’t buy the government’s official explanation that the vandalism was motivated by robbery. To us, the fact that the intruders remained in the building for several hours, made the effort to scrawl anti-Israeli graffiti inside the building and stole databases containing personal information on congregational members seems very unusual for a simple burglary. Our suspicion is magnified by the extensive anti-Semitic statements made on the Web sites of some of the pro-Chavez militia l eaders. All of this raises serious concerns that the Venezuelan government could turn a blind eye to Hezbollah efforts to conduct an attack on Israeli or Jewish interests in that country.
There are many who believe that the anti-Semitic attitudes of the Argentine government in the early 1990s helped embolden Mughniyah and his followers to attack Israeli and Jewish targets there. The anti-Semitic environment in Venezuela today is even more overt and hostile than it was in Argentina.
In keeping with Hezbollah’s history, if an attack is launched, we anticipate that it will have to be fairly spectacular, given the fact that Mughniyah was very important to Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors — although the attack must not be so spectacular as to cause a full-on Israeli attack in Lebanon. Hezbollah can weather a few airstrikes, but it does not want to provoke an extended conflict — especially as Hezbollah’s political leadership is extremely focused on doing well in the upcoming elections in Lebanon.
Given Hezbollah’s proclivity toward using a hidden hand, we suspect the attack will be conducted by a stealthy and ambiguous cell or cells that will likely have no direct connection to the organization. For example, in July 1994, the group used Palestinian operatives to conduct attacks against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish nongovernmental organization office in London. Also, as we have seen in prior attacks, if a hardened target such as an Israeli embassy or VIP is not vulnerable, a secondary soft target might be selected. The July 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in Buenos Aires is a prime example of this type of attack. It should serve as a warning to Jewish community centers and other non-Israeli government targets everywhere that even non-Israeli Jewish targets are considered fair game.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to http://www.stratfor.com/
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to http://www.stratfor.com/
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Feb. 12 will mark the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Imad Mughniyah, one of Hezbollah’s top military commanders. The anniversary certainly will be met with rejoicing in Tel Aviv and Washington — in addition to all the Israelis he killed, Mughniyah also had a significant amount of American blood on his hands. But the date will be met with anger and renewed cries for revenge from Hezbollah’s militants, many of whom were recruited, trained or inspired by Mughniyah.
Because of Hezbollah’s history of conducting retaliatory attacks after the assassination of its leaders, and the frequent and very vocal calls for retribution for the Mughniyah assassination, many observers (including Stratfor) have been waiting for Hezbollah to exact its revenge. While the attack has not yet happened, threats continue. For example, in a Jan. 29 news conference, Hezbollah General Secretary Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah left no doubt about the group’s intention. “The Israelis live in fear of our revenge,” he said. “The decision to respond to the killing is still on. We decide the time and the place.”
Initially, given the force of the anger and outcry over the assassination, we anticipated that the strike would come soon after the 30-day mourning period for Mughniyah had passed. Clearly, that did not happen. Now a year has passed since the killing, but the anger and outcry have not died down. Indeed, as reflected by Nasrallah’s recent statement, the leadership of Hezbollah remains under a considerable amount of internal pressure to retaliate. Because any retaliation would likely be tempered by concerns over provoking a full-on Israeli attack against Hezbollah infrastructure (similar to the attack in the summer of 2006), any Hezbollah strike would be conducted in a manner that could provide some degree of plausible deniability.
It is important to remember that Hezbollah retains a considerable capacity to conduct terrorist attacks abroad should it choose to do so. In fact, we believe that, due to its high degree of training, vast experience and close ties to the Iranian government, Hezbollah retains a more proficient and dangerous terrorism capability than al Qaeda.
Repeated calls for revenge and Hezbollah’s capabilities have combined to ensure that the Israeli government maintains a high state of awareness. Even though a year has passed, Israelis, too, are waiting for the other shoe to drop. On Feb. 1, Elkana Harnof of the Counterterrorism Bureau in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office told The Jerusalem Post that, “Based on our information, we believe the organization is planning one large revenge attack close to the anniversary of [Mughniyah’s] death.” Harnof added, “All we can say publicly is that [Hezbollah] has gone to enormous effort to prepare various kinds of terror attacks, and the big one is likely going to take place soon.” Like Stratfor, the Israelis also believe that the attack will be directed against Israeli or Jewish targets outside of Israel.
Busy Bodies
There are a number of indications that Hezbollah has not been idle in the year since Mughniyah’s death. First, there has been a good deal of preoperational activity by Hezbollah militants in several countries, including the United States. This activity has included surveillance and other intelligence-gathering for targeting purposes. At one point last fall, the activity was so intense inside the United States that law enforcement officials believed a strike was imminent — but it never came. Additionally, there are credible reports that Hezbollah plots to strike Israeli targets in Azerbaijan and the Netherlands have been thwarted. (Although, from information we have received, it does not appear that either of these plots was at an advanced stage of the attack cycle.)
We have no reason to doubt the reports of Hezbollah preoperational activity. It is simply what they do and what they are. Even though the group has not conducted a successful attack overseas since 1994, it does maintain a robust network of operatives who stay busily engaged in operational activities. While many of these operatives are involved primarily in financial and logistical activities, we believe it is worth noting that Hezbollah has never conducted or attempted an attack in a country where it did not have such a support network in place. They use these networks to assist their militant activities in a number of ways, but perhaps the most significant way is in the conduct of preoperational surveillance.
Hezbollah, a creature of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, also has a long history of receiving aid from Iranian embassies in its overseas operations, including its terrorist strikes. Almost inevitably, Hezbollah’s overseas attack plans are found to have murky links of some sort to the Iranian embassy in the country where the attack was to occur, and to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers stationed there.
Hezbollah utilizes an “off the shelf” method of planning its terrorist attacks. This is very similar to the way major national military commands operate, where they make contingency war plans against potential adversaries in advance and then work to keep those plans updated. This style of sophisticated, advance planning provides Hezbollah’s senior decision makers with a wide array of tactical options, and allows them to assess a number of attack plans in various parts of the world and quickly select and update a particular attack plan when they make the decision to launch it. When they do decide to pull the trigger, they can strike hard and fast.
This type of planning requires a great deal of intelligence-gathering, not only to produce the initial plans but also to keep them updated. Because it requires a lot of collection activity, this effort likely accounts for much of the operational activity that has been observed over the past year in the United States and elsewhere. These ongoing surveillance operations are not just useful for planning purposes, but they are also good for sowing confusion, creating distractions and causing complacency. If Hezbollah operatives have been seen periodically conducting surveillance around a facility and no attack has followed that activity, over time it becomes very easy for security personnel to write off all such activity as harmless — even when it might not be this time.
Not Crying Wolf
There are some who argue that the lack of an attack by Hezbollah since the Mughniyah assassination, combined with the fact that the group has not used its terrorist capability to conduct an attack for many years, signifies that Hezbollah has abandoned its terrorist ways and instead focused on developing its conventional warfare capability.
We do not buy this argument. First, it ignores the existence and purpose of Hezbollah’s Unit 1800, which, among other things, recruits Palestinians for anti-Israeli terror operations inside Israel and the occupied territories. Second, if Hezbollah had abandoned its terrorist arm, there would be no need for the preoperational planning activity noted previously, and in our opinion, reports of such surveillance activity are too frequent and too widespread to be discounted as false sightings. Granted, such activities do cause jitters and have some effectiveness as a psychological warfare tool, but we do not believe that those limited benefits justify the time and effort being put into Hezbollah’s intelligence-collection program. There is also that pesky problem of explaining the thwarted attack plots in Azerbaijan and the Netherlands. Because of this, we do not believe that the U.S. and Israeli governments (among others) are crying wolf when they provide warnings of pe nding Hezbollah attacks.
We continue to believe that if there is an attack by Hezbollah, it will likely come in a country where there is an existing Hezbollah support apparatus and an Iranian embassy. (Although, in a confined geographic area, operations could be supported in a third country that lacked one or both of those elements.) We also believe that such an attack is more likely in a country where there is ready access to weapons or explosives, and where there are poor law enforcement and intelligence capabilities. We wrote an analysis discussing this in some detail during the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. In that piece, we provided a matrix of the places we believed were most likely to be the site of a Hezbollah attack against Israeli targets, and one of the important criteria we considered was the presence of both an Iranian embassy and a local Hezbolla h support network. When we discuss these two elements, it is important to note that in past attacks, the attackers were brought in from the outside in order to provide plausible deniability — but they did receive important support and guidance from the network and embassy.
Since we wrote that analysis in July 2006, there has been a significant increase in Iranian influence in parts of Latin America, including Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, and Hezbollah has not been far behind. In addition to claims by the U.S. Treasury Department that Venezuelan nationals and organizations are supporting Hezbollah financially, there have been persistent rumors of Hezbollah militants and IRGC officers conducting training at camps in the Venezuelan jungles.
These reports are especially noteworthy when combined with a recent rise in anti-Semitism in Venezuela and an outright hostility toward Jews demonstrated by pro-Chavez militia groups. A pro-Chavez militia is believed to have been involved in the vandalism of the main synagogue in Caracas on the night of Jan. 30-31, 2008. We are among many who don’t buy the government’s official explanation that the vandalism was motivated by robbery. To us, the fact that the intruders remained in the building for several hours, made the effort to scrawl anti-Israeli graffiti inside the building and stole databases containing personal information on congregational members seems very unusual for a simple burglary. Our suspicion is magnified by the extensive anti-Semitic statements made on the Web sites of some of the pro-Chavez militia l eaders. All of this raises serious concerns that the Venezuelan government could turn a blind eye to Hezbollah efforts to conduct an attack on Israeli or Jewish interests in that country.
There are many who believe that the anti-Semitic attitudes of the Argentine government in the early 1990s helped embolden Mughniyah and his followers to attack Israeli and Jewish targets there. The anti-Semitic environment in Venezuela today is even more overt and hostile than it was in Argentina.
In keeping with Hezbollah’s history, if an attack is launched, we anticipate that it will have to be fairly spectacular, given the fact that Mughniyah was very important to Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors — although the attack must not be so spectacular as to cause a full-on Israeli attack in Lebanon. Hezbollah can weather a few airstrikes, but it does not want to provoke an extended conflict — especially as Hezbollah’s political leadership is extremely focused on doing well in the upcoming elections in Lebanon.
Given Hezbollah’s proclivity toward using a hidden hand, we suspect the attack will be conducted by a stealthy and ambiguous cell or cells that will likely have no direct connection to the organization. For example, in July 1994, the group used Palestinian operatives to conduct attacks against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish nongovernmental organization office in London. Also, as we have seen in prior attacks, if a hardened target such as an Israeli embassy or VIP is not vulnerable, a secondary soft target might be selected. The July 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in Buenos Aires is a prime example of this type of attack. It should serve as a warning to Jewish community centers and other non-Israeli government targets everywhere that even non-Israeli Jewish targets are considered fair game.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to http://www.stratfor.com/
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Bank bailout
I'm probably just naive and dangerously uninformed, but I can't help wishing we'd stop TARP II in its tracks and let all the banks fail who are at risk.
I'm bolstered by this WaPo story that describes a little bank that did things right, missed out on big returns on risky investments, and now is not in need of bailing out (but does see a way to make good use of bailout money):
I'm bolstered by this WaPo story that describes a little bank that did things right, missed out on big returns on risky investments, and now is not in need of bailing out (but does see a way to make good use of bailout money):
Citizens [a bank] is among the stronger and more conservative banks in the Charlotte market. Despite setting aside $3.2 million last year for expected loan losses, the bank managed to post a profit of $3.1 million, down from $5.7 million the year before. Citizens never got into subprime lending or 100 percent loans, and for its caution lost a lot of business during the go-go years. Now, however, its reward is that its nonperforming loans are less than half of 1 percent of all its loans.
Fitzgerald may be asked to stay on
MSNBC is reporting that it's looking likely that Patrick Fitzgerald will be asked to stay on as a U.S. attorney. The story is pretty speculative, so it's too soon to give the Obama administration credit for keeping Fitzgerald. But it's worth keeping an eye on it, if for no other reason than to follow-up on the story that Michael posted regarding Fitzgerald heading up a RICO investigation of ACORN and Obama.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Another unemployment chart
Dshort.com has this graph showing unemployment percentage along with the S&P through history:
It's harder to compare different periods since they're not stacked on top of each other as they are in graphs we've posted today. But it provides a good sense of perspective.
It's harder to compare different periods since they're not stacked on top of each other as they are in graphs we've posted today. But it provides a good sense of perspective.
7B? That is 23 per person
Per the Orlando Sentinel:
American gun owners buy about 7 billion rounds of ammunition yearly, according to the National Rifle Association.
It boggles.
American gun owners buy about 7 billion rounds of ammunition yearly, according to the National Rifle Association.
It boggles.
Job loss chart
This chart is everywhere lately:
I'd love to see this same graph normalized for total employment (i.e. so we'd see a percentage of jobs lost instead of numbers of jobs lost); that should make the drop look a little less severe. Also, I'd like to see job losses from earlier recessions/depressions on the same chart.
I'd love to see this same graph normalized for total employment (i.e. so we'd see a percentage of jobs lost instead of numbers of jobs lost); that should make the drop look a little less severe. Also, I'd like to see job losses from earlier recessions/depressions on the same chart.
Stratfor on Munich
By George Friedman (Stratfor link at bottom of post)
While the Munich Security Conference brought together senior leaders from most major countries and many minor ones last weekend, none was more significant than U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. This is because Biden provided the first glimpse of U.S. foreign policy under President Barack Obama. Most conference attendees were looking forward to a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration. What was interesting about Biden’s speech was how little change there has been in the U.S. position and how much the attendees and the media were cheered by it.
After Biden’s speech, there was much talk about a change in the tone of U.S. policy. But it is not clear to us whether this was because the tone has changed, or because the attendees’ hearing has. They seemed delighted to be addressed by Biden rather than by former Vice President Dick Cheney — delighted to the extent that this itself represented a change in policy. Thus, in everything Biden said, the conference attendees saw rays of a new policy.
Policy Continuity: Iran and Russia
Consider Iran. The Obama administration’s position, as staked out by Biden, is that the United States is prepared to speak directly to Iran provided that the Iranians do two things. First, Tehran must end its nuclear weapons program. Second, Tehran must stop supporting terrorists, by which Biden meant Hamas and Hezbollah. Once the Iranians do that, the Americans will talk to them. The Bush administration was equally prepared to talk to Iran given those preconditions. The Iranians make the point that such concessions come after talks, not before, and that the United States must change its attitude toward Iran before there can be talks, something Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani emphasized after the meeting. Apart from the emphasis on a willingness to talk, the terms Biden laid out for such talks are identical to the terms under the Bush administration.
Now consider Russia. Officially, the Russians were delighted to hear that the United States was prepared to hit the “reset button” on U.S.-Russian relations. But Moscow cannot have been pleased when it turned out that hitting the reset button did not involve ruling out NATO expansion, ending American missile defense system efforts in Central Europe or publicly acknowledging the existence of a Russian sphere of influence. Biden said, “It will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances.” In translation, this means the United States has the right to enter any relationship it wants with independent states, and that independent states have the right to enter any relationship they want. In other words, the Bush administratio n’s commitment to the principle of NATO expansion has not changed.
Nor could the Russians have been pleased with the announcement just prior to the conference that the United States would continue developing a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The BMD program has been an issue of tremendous importance for Russians, and it is something Obama indicated he would end, or change in some way that might please the Russians. But not only was there no commitment to end the program, there also was no backing away from long-standing U.S. interest in it, or even any indication of the terms under which it might end.
Given that the United States has asked Russia for a supply route through the former Soviet Union to Afghanistan, and that the Russians have agreed to this in principle, it would seem that that there might be an opening for a deal with the Russians. But just before the Munich conference opened, Kyrgyzstan announced that Manas Air Base, the last air base open to the United States in Central Asia, would no longer be available to American aircraft. This was a tidy little victory for the Russians, who had used political and financial levers to pressure Kyrgyzstan to eject the Americans. The Russians, of course, deny that any such pressure was ever brought to be ar, and that the closure of the base one day before Munich could have been anything more than coincidence.
But the message to the United States was clear: While Russia agrees in principle to the U.S. supply line, the Americans will have to pay a price for it. In case Washington was under the impression it could get other countries in the former Soviet Union to provide passage, the Russians let the Americans know how much leverage Moscow has in these situations. The U.S. assertion of a right to bilateral relations won’t happen in Russia’s near abroad without Russian help, and that help won’t come without strategic concessions from the United States. In short, the American position on Russia hasn’t changed, and neither has the Russian position.
The Europeans
The most interesting — and for us, the most anticipated — part of Biden’s speech had to do with the Europeans, of whom the French and Germans were the most enthusiastic about Bush’s departure and Obama’s arrival. Biden’s speech addressed the core question of the U.S.-European relationship.
If the Europeans were not prepared to increase their participation in American foreign policy initiatives during the Bush administration, it was assumed that they would be during the Obama administration. The first issue on the table under the new U.S. administration is the plan to increase forces in Afghanistan. Biden called for more NATO involvement in that conflict, which would mean an increase in European forces deployed to Afghanistan. Some countries, along with the head of NATO, support this. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel made it clear that Germany is not prepared to send more troops.
Over the past year or so, Germany has become somewhat estranged from the United States. Dependent on Russian energy, Germany has been unwilling to confront Russia on issues of concern to Washington. Merkel has made it particularly clear that while she does not oppose NATO expansion in principle, she certainly opposes expansion to states that Russian considers deeply within its sphere of influence (primarily Georgia and Ukraine). The Germans have made it abundantly clear that they do not want to see European-Russian relations deteriorate under U.S. prodding. Moreover, Germany has no appetite for continuing its presence in Afghanistan, let alone increasing it.
NATO faces a substantial split, conditioned partly by Germany’s dependence on Russian energy, but also by deep German unease about any possible resumption of a Cold War with Russia, however mild. The foundation of NATO during the Cold War was the U.S.-German-British relationship. With the Germans unwilling to align with the United States and other NATO members over Russia or Afghanistan, it is unclear whether NATO can continue to function. (Certainly, Merkel cannot be pleased that the United States has not laid the BMD issue in Poland and the Czech Republic to rest.)
The More Things Change …
Most interesting here is the continuity between the Bush and Obama administrations in regard to foreign policy. It is certainly reasonable to argue that after only three weeks in office, no major initiatives should be expected of the new president. But major initiatives were implied — such as ending the BMD deployment to Poland and the Czech Republic — and declaring the intention to withdraw BMD would not have required much preparation. But Biden offered no new initiatives beyond expressing a willingness to talk, without indicating any policy shifts regarding the things that have blocked talks. Willingness to talk with the Iranians, the Russians, the Europeans and others shifts the atmospherics — allowing the listener to think things have changed — but does not address the question of what is to be discussed and what is to be offered and accepted.
Ultimately, the issues dividing the world are not, in our view, subject to personalities, nor does goodwill (or bad will, for that matter) address the fundamental questions. Iran has strategic and ideological reasons for behaving the way it does. So does Russia. So does Germany, and so on. The tensions that exist between those countries and the United States might be mildly exacerbated by personalities, but nations are driven by interest, not personality.
Biden’s position did not materially shift the Obama administration away from Bush’s foreign policy, because Bush was the prisoner of that policy, not its creator. The Iranians will not make concessions on nuclear weapons prior to holding talks, and they do not regard their support for Hamas or Hezbollah as aiding terrorism. Being willing to talk to the Iranians provided they abandon these things is the same as being unwilling to talk to them.
There has been no misunderstanding between the United States and Russia that more open dialogue will cure. The Russians see no reason for NATO expansion unless NATO is planning to encircle Russia. It is possible for the West to have relations with Ukraine and Georgia without expanding NATO; Moscow sees the insistence on expansion as implying sinister motives. For its part, the United States refuses to concede that Russia has any interest in the decisions of the former Soviet Union states, something Biden reiterated. Therefore, either the Russians must accept NATO expansion, or the Americans must accept that Russia has an overriding interest in limiting American relations in the former Soviet Union. This is a fundamental issue that any U.S. administration would have to deal with — particularly an administr ation seeking Russian cooperation in Afghanistan.
As for Germany, NATO was an instrument of rehabilitation and stability after World War II. But Germany now has a complex relationship with Russia, as well as internal issues. It does not want NATO drawing it into adventures that are not in Germany’s primary interest, much less into a confrontation with Russia. No amount of charm, openness or dialogue is going to change this fundamental reality.
Dialogue does offer certain possibilities. The United States could choose to talk to Iran without preconditions. It could abandon NATO expansion and quietly reduce its influence in the former Soviet Union, or perhaps convince the Russians that they could benefit from this influence. The United States could abandon the BMD system (though this has been complicated by Iran’s recent successful satellite launch), or perhaps get the Russians to participate in the program. The United States could certainly get the Germans to send a small force to Afghanistan above and beyond the present German contingent. All of this is possible.
What can’t be achieved is a fundamental transformation of the geopolitical realities of the world. No matter how Obama campaigned, it is clear he knows that. Apart from his preoccupation with economic matters, Obama understands that foreign policy is governed by impersonal forces and is not amenable to rhetoric, although rhetoric might make things somewhat easier. No nation gives up its fundamental interests because someone is willing to talk.
Willingness to talk is important, but what is said is much more important. Obama’s first foray into foreign policy via Biden indicates that, generally speaking, he understands the constraints and pressures that drive American foreign policy, and he understands the limits of presidential power. Atmospherics aside, Biden’s positions — as opposed to his rhetoric — were strikingly similar to Cheney’s foreign policy positions.
We argued long ago that presidents don’t make history, but that history makes presidents. We see Biden’s speech as a classic example of this principle.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com
While the Munich Security Conference brought together senior leaders from most major countries and many minor ones last weekend, none was more significant than U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. This is because Biden provided the first glimpse of U.S. foreign policy under President Barack Obama. Most conference attendees were looking forward to a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration. What was interesting about Biden’s speech was how little change there has been in the U.S. position and how much the attendees and the media were cheered by it.
After Biden’s speech, there was much talk about a change in the tone of U.S. policy. But it is not clear to us whether this was because the tone has changed, or because the attendees’ hearing has. They seemed delighted to be addressed by Biden rather than by former Vice President Dick Cheney — delighted to the extent that this itself represented a change in policy. Thus, in everything Biden said, the conference attendees saw rays of a new policy.
Policy Continuity: Iran and Russia
Consider Iran. The Obama administration’s position, as staked out by Biden, is that the United States is prepared to speak directly to Iran provided that the Iranians do two things. First, Tehran must end its nuclear weapons program. Second, Tehran must stop supporting terrorists, by which Biden meant Hamas and Hezbollah. Once the Iranians do that, the Americans will talk to them. The Bush administration was equally prepared to talk to Iran given those preconditions. The Iranians make the point that such concessions come after talks, not before, and that the United States must change its attitude toward Iran before there can be talks, something Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani emphasized after the meeting. Apart from the emphasis on a willingness to talk, the terms Biden laid out for such talks are identical to the terms under the Bush administration.
Now consider Russia. Officially, the Russians were delighted to hear that the United States was prepared to hit the “reset button” on U.S.-Russian relations. But Moscow cannot have been pleased when it turned out that hitting the reset button did not involve ruling out NATO expansion, ending American missile defense system efforts in Central Europe or publicly acknowledging the existence of a Russian sphere of influence. Biden said, “It will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances.” In translation, this means the United States has the right to enter any relationship it wants with independent states, and that independent states have the right to enter any relationship they want. In other words, the Bush administratio n’s commitment to the principle of NATO expansion has not changed.
Nor could the Russians have been pleased with the announcement just prior to the conference that the United States would continue developing a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The BMD program has been an issue of tremendous importance for Russians, and it is something Obama indicated he would end, or change in some way that might please the Russians. But not only was there no commitment to end the program, there also was no backing away from long-standing U.S. interest in it, or even any indication of the terms under which it might end.
Given that the United States has asked Russia for a supply route through the former Soviet Union to Afghanistan, and that the Russians have agreed to this in principle, it would seem that that there might be an opening for a deal with the Russians. But just before the Munich conference opened, Kyrgyzstan announced that Manas Air Base, the last air base open to the United States in Central Asia, would no longer be available to American aircraft. This was a tidy little victory for the Russians, who had used political and financial levers to pressure Kyrgyzstan to eject the Americans. The Russians, of course, deny that any such pressure was ever brought to be ar, and that the closure of the base one day before Munich could have been anything more than coincidence.
But the message to the United States was clear: While Russia agrees in principle to the U.S. supply line, the Americans will have to pay a price for it. In case Washington was under the impression it could get other countries in the former Soviet Union to provide passage, the Russians let the Americans know how much leverage Moscow has in these situations. The U.S. assertion of a right to bilateral relations won’t happen in Russia’s near abroad without Russian help, and that help won’t come without strategic concessions from the United States. In short, the American position on Russia hasn’t changed, and neither has the Russian position.
The Europeans
The most interesting — and for us, the most anticipated — part of Biden’s speech had to do with the Europeans, of whom the French and Germans were the most enthusiastic about Bush’s departure and Obama’s arrival. Biden’s speech addressed the core question of the U.S.-European relationship.
If the Europeans were not prepared to increase their participation in American foreign policy initiatives during the Bush administration, it was assumed that they would be during the Obama administration. The first issue on the table under the new U.S. administration is the plan to increase forces in Afghanistan. Biden called for more NATO involvement in that conflict, which would mean an increase in European forces deployed to Afghanistan. Some countries, along with the head of NATO, support this. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel made it clear that Germany is not prepared to send more troops.
Over the past year or so, Germany has become somewhat estranged from the United States. Dependent on Russian energy, Germany has been unwilling to confront Russia on issues of concern to Washington. Merkel has made it particularly clear that while she does not oppose NATO expansion in principle, she certainly opposes expansion to states that Russian considers deeply within its sphere of influence (primarily Georgia and Ukraine). The Germans have made it abundantly clear that they do not want to see European-Russian relations deteriorate under U.S. prodding. Moreover, Germany has no appetite for continuing its presence in Afghanistan, let alone increasing it.
NATO faces a substantial split, conditioned partly by Germany’s dependence on Russian energy, but also by deep German unease about any possible resumption of a Cold War with Russia, however mild. The foundation of NATO during the Cold War was the U.S.-German-British relationship. With the Germans unwilling to align with the United States and other NATO members over Russia or Afghanistan, it is unclear whether NATO can continue to function. (Certainly, Merkel cannot be pleased that the United States has not laid the BMD issue in Poland and the Czech Republic to rest.)
The More Things Change …
Most interesting here is the continuity between the Bush and Obama administrations in regard to foreign policy. It is certainly reasonable to argue that after only three weeks in office, no major initiatives should be expected of the new president. But major initiatives were implied — such as ending the BMD deployment to Poland and the Czech Republic — and declaring the intention to withdraw BMD would not have required much preparation. But Biden offered no new initiatives beyond expressing a willingness to talk, without indicating any policy shifts regarding the things that have blocked talks. Willingness to talk with the Iranians, the Russians, the Europeans and others shifts the atmospherics — allowing the listener to think things have changed — but does not address the question of what is to be discussed and what is to be offered and accepted.
Ultimately, the issues dividing the world are not, in our view, subject to personalities, nor does goodwill (or bad will, for that matter) address the fundamental questions. Iran has strategic and ideological reasons for behaving the way it does. So does Russia. So does Germany, and so on. The tensions that exist between those countries and the United States might be mildly exacerbated by personalities, but nations are driven by interest, not personality.
Biden’s position did not materially shift the Obama administration away from Bush’s foreign policy, because Bush was the prisoner of that policy, not its creator. The Iranians will not make concessions on nuclear weapons prior to holding talks, and they do not regard their support for Hamas or Hezbollah as aiding terrorism. Being willing to talk to the Iranians provided they abandon these things is the same as being unwilling to talk to them.
There has been no misunderstanding between the United States and Russia that more open dialogue will cure. The Russians see no reason for NATO expansion unless NATO is planning to encircle Russia. It is possible for the West to have relations with Ukraine and Georgia without expanding NATO; Moscow sees the insistence on expansion as implying sinister motives. For its part, the United States refuses to concede that Russia has any interest in the decisions of the former Soviet Union states, something Biden reiterated. Therefore, either the Russians must accept NATO expansion, or the Americans must accept that Russia has an overriding interest in limiting American relations in the former Soviet Union. This is a fundamental issue that any U.S. administration would have to deal with — particularly an administr ation seeking Russian cooperation in Afghanistan.
As for Germany, NATO was an instrument of rehabilitation and stability after World War II. But Germany now has a complex relationship with Russia, as well as internal issues. It does not want NATO drawing it into adventures that are not in Germany’s primary interest, much less into a confrontation with Russia. No amount of charm, openness or dialogue is going to change this fundamental reality.
Dialogue does offer certain possibilities. The United States could choose to talk to Iran without preconditions. It could abandon NATO expansion and quietly reduce its influence in the former Soviet Union, or perhaps convince the Russians that they could benefit from this influence. The United States could abandon the BMD system (though this has been complicated by Iran’s recent successful satellite launch), or perhaps get the Russians to participate in the program. The United States could certainly get the Germans to send a small force to Afghanistan above and beyond the present German contingent. All of this is possible.
What can’t be achieved is a fundamental transformation of the geopolitical realities of the world. No matter how Obama campaigned, it is clear he knows that. Apart from his preoccupation with economic matters, Obama understands that foreign policy is governed by impersonal forces and is not amenable to rhetoric, although rhetoric might make things somewhat easier. No nation gives up its fundamental interests because someone is willing to talk.
Willingness to talk is important, but what is said is much more important. Obama’s first foray into foreign policy via Biden indicates that, generally speaking, he understands the constraints and pressures that drive American foreign policy, and he understands the limits of presidential power. Atmospherics aside, Biden’s positions — as opposed to his rhetoric — were strikingly similar to Cheney’s foreign policy positions.
We argued long ago that presidents don’t make history, but that history makes presidents. We see Biden’s speech as a classic example of this principle.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com
Monday, February 09, 2009
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Shakespeare, the Bard, on the owl
Here's a blog post by someone who has compiled a bunch of references Shakespeare made to owls.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Shakespeare, the Barred Owl
Here is Shakespeare, the resident barred owl at the Minnehaha dog park. He looks small in this picture, but he's not. I find it really interesting that all dog park people who know about the owl, know that his name is Shakespeare. No one has ever said to me, "Say, there's Bob the owl." Wouldn't you think there'd be some folks who would give him their own name, or be mistaken about the name, or have misheard the name or mis-remembered the name?
S&P History
Doug at dshort.com has posted another cool graph:
This graph reveals a couple interesting things: 1) the change in the frequency of recessions, as is pointed out in dshort's post; and 2) it looks like if you added a trend line from 1870 to 1950 it would be very nearly flat, but the trend line from 1950 and after is much more sharply upward. I'm wondering (and I expect that Scooter knows) what happened circa 1950 to put this upward trend in motion? And what is the explanation for the dramatic decrease in the frequency of recession after 1933?
This graph reveals a couple interesting things: 1) the change in the frequency of recessions, as is pointed out in dshort's post; and 2) it looks like if you added a trend line from 1870 to 1950 it would be very nearly flat, but the trend line from 1950 and after is much more sharply upward. I'm wondering (and I expect that Scooter knows) what happened circa 1950 to put this upward trend in motion? And what is the explanation for the dramatic decrease in the frequency of recession after 1933?
Friday, February 06, 2009
Schedules of elected officials
Politico is publishing Obama's daily schedule, to the extent they can. I think the daily schedules of every elected official should be published, including names of people they meet with and the agendas for such meetings. Why wouldn't we voters/taxpayers be entitled to this information? Sure, occasionally there's something that needs to be secret for national security purposes, but other than that, we should know how and with whom every official spends their work day.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Cable down at home...
The Time Warner representative asked, "Can you stay home all day Friday and one of our technicians can come by between 7:00 and 7:00?"
"Uh, no," I replied.
"How about between 7:00 and 10:00 Saturday morning? We'll call first."
I sighed, "Better."
"Uh, no," I replied.
"How about between 7:00 and 10:00 Saturday morning? We'll call first."
I sighed, "Better."
Gregg at Commerce
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("the PTO") reports to the Secretary of Commerce, so patent practitioners are wondering what attitudes Sen. Judd Gregg might have towards patents. Patently O reports on Senator Gregg's past activities in the field:
We patent attorneys have been through a lot the past few years. Under Commissioner Jon Dudas, the PTO sought to radically, wildly change patent rules ostensibly to make the Patent Office more efficient. The new rules were complicated to the nth degree; every patent attorney spent countless hours trying to understand them, attending meetings to learn about them, revamping docketing systems, or paying for revamped docketing systems, to accommodate them. The new rules made no sense. The Patent Office did road shows around the country to explain the new rules, only to demonstrate during the Q&A that they had no answers for all kinds of common real-world scenarios. We railed against them and got organized in ways our professional has never done. We believed the PTO exceeded its authority in enacting these rules, which robbed patent applicants of statutorily-specified opportunities for protecting their inventions. The new rules were in effect for a matter of hours when a suit was brought to enjoin their enforcement and a district court granted the injunction. The new rules were kaput. Here's hoping the new patent commissioner, who will be appointed by the Commerce Secretary, has a deep understanding of the patent system and we don't have to go through anything like this again.
As it turns out, one of Senator Gregg's more controversial actions involves patent issues. In 2000, Gregg's alma mater Columbia University convinced Greg to insert a patent extension provision into an ag spending bill. If it had passed, the extension would have given new life to Columbia's about-to-expire patents that were earning $100 million annually through licensing agreements. [NYTimes][Quinn].Apparently, he's all in favor or special patent rules for some. Blech. Watch to see if anyone questions him about these positions during his confirmation hearings.
In the past, Senator Gregg has sponsored legislation for rapid approval of generic biosimilars after expiration of the original patents and legislation to extend patents that help support the war on terror. For years, Senator Gregg has also been deeply involved in appropriations.
We patent attorneys have been through a lot the past few years. Under Commissioner Jon Dudas, the PTO sought to radically, wildly change patent rules ostensibly to make the Patent Office more efficient. The new rules were complicated to the nth degree; every patent attorney spent countless hours trying to understand them, attending meetings to learn about them, revamping docketing systems, or paying for revamped docketing systems, to accommodate them. The new rules made no sense. The Patent Office did road shows around the country to explain the new rules, only to demonstrate during the Q&A that they had no answers for all kinds of common real-world scenarios. We railed against them and got organized in ways our professional has never done. We believed the PTO exceeded its authority in enacting these rules, which robbed patent applicants of statutorily-specified opportunities for protecting their inventions. The new rules were in effect for a matter of hours when a suit was brought to enjoin their enforcement and a district court granted the injunction. The new rules were kaput. Here's hoping the new patent commissioner, who will be appointed by the Commerce Secretary, has a deep understanding of the patent system and we don't have to go through anything like this again.
Go Amy
I think you'll be hearing alot from Amy Kobuchar, Minnesota's junior (or maybe now senior) Senator in the coming years and decades. She's smart. She's energetic. I think she's got a chance to be our president 16-20 years from now. Today is a good day to start paying attention to her since she's in the news for being funny:
"No one will beat Rahm," they said, but they turned out to be wrong.Jump
"They" being the folks gathered tonight at the ballroom of the Ritz Carlton for the Washington Press Club Foundation's dinner that marks the beginning of the political prom season, when Hill seniors and freshmen alike get dressed and dolled up to toast, and roast, each other. The bar is pretty low for "entertainment" at these affairs, as it's tough to take good, hard shots at people you have to work with the next day. And there's a big difference, of course, between off-the-record funny and reporters-in-the-room funny. Last year, then-congressman Rahm Emanuel was as a guest speaker — and really nailed it.
But it turns out Sen. Amy Klobuchar is funny. Very funny. Bring-down-the-house funny.
"I'd like to make this as short as Bill Richardson's tenure as Commerce Secretary," she opened. "I raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends — true story! I know that is the record in the Senate, but in the house it's held by Barney Frank." Roars of laughter, even from Frank.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Nutrition charts: Nutritiondata.com
I do so enjoy charts and graphs. Here's a site that generates nifty charts and graphics reflecting the nutritional content of what you eat, like this:
You can generate these charts for a single food or for a meal or for a day. It's become a game for me to try to fill in all the purple and white wedges on the Nutrient Balance Score chart. It turns meal planning into a whole different activity than answering the question "What would be fabulously delicious to eat"; instead I think "What would have a lot of Vitamin D". That's got to be good, right?
You can generate these charts for a single food or for a meal or for a day. It's become a game for me to try to fill in all the purple and white wedges on the Nutrient Balance Score chart. It turns meal planning into a whole different activity than answering the question "What would be fabulously delicious to eat"; instead I think "What would have a lot of Vitamin D". That's got to be good, right?
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Nostalgia in my closet
We must get a flyer on our door and/or a phone call once a week from some agency asking for old and used clothes. When we do have stuff for them, not much of it is mine. I keep telling myself that I'll wear that shirt again, or I'll fit into those pants (that used to be my favorite pair) again when I lose some weight, or I can't get rid of that T-shirt because of...whatever.
Well, I've recently accepted the fact that I won't wear certain shirts again, that some of those t-shirts have stains or holes or look like crap and while I might have at one time loved those jeans, getting into them again just ain't gonna happen. So I'm going to do a thorough cleansing of my closet. I'm going to be honest with myself while doing it and truly let go of a lot of stuff.
That being said, some things I won't get rid of. I was looking for a t-shirt to wear today for my daily 2 mile walk. As I was looking for one, I ran across a "Houston Rockets" t-shirt. Next to it was a "Houston Astros" t-shirt. And I reflected back on where they came from.....
When Exxon and Mobil merged back in 2000, I decided to move with my job from Houston to Dallas. It wasn't an easy decision for me, since I had basically lived in Houston my whole life and all my friends were there. And not just friends, but close friends. Really close friends. A few days before I left, they had a party for me. Not a big deal, just this small group of people that were like my family. Like the brothers and sisters that I never had. But more than just semi-siblings. My going away gifts were t-shirts from all of the Houston sports teams - Rockets, Aeros, Astros, Texans and even the Comets. At the time, I don't think I realised or expressed how perfect a gift that was. How touched I was, how much it meant to me to have a connection to "my" hometown teams. I still wear the Texans and Aeros shirts all the time. The Astros and Rockets not as much. And I'll admit now that I never wore the Comets one - I gave it to C.
I don't know whose idea it was - Scott's or Michael's or C's or T's. Maybe all of them. But to whomever came up with the idea and to them all, I don't think I ever told anyone how much those shirts meant to me. How much they still do. How much they always will.
They will be staying in my closet.
Well, I've recently accepted the fact that I won't wear certain shirts again, that some of those t-shirts have stains or holes or look like crap and while I might have at one time loved those jeans, getting into them again just ain't gonna happen. So I'm going to do a thorough cleansing of my closet. I'm going to be honest with myself while doing it and truly let go of a lot of stuff.
That being said, some things I won't get rid of. I was looking for a t-shirt to wear today for my daily 2 mile walk. As I was looking for one, I ran across a "Houston Rockets" t-shirt. Next to it was a "Houston Astros" t-shirt. And I reflected back on where they came from.....
When Exxon and Mobil merged back in 2000, I decided to move with my job from Houston to Dallas. It wasn't an easy decision for me, since I had basically lived in Houston my whole life and all my friends were there. And not just friends, but close friends. Really close friends. A few days before I left, they had a party for me. Not a big deal, just this small group of people that were like my family. Like the brothers and sisters that I never had. But more than just semi-siblings. My going away gifts were t-shirts from all of the Houston sports teams - Rockets, Aeros, Astros, Texans and even the Comets. At the time, I don't think I realised or expressed how perfect a gift that was. How touched I was, how much it meant to me to have a connection to "my" hometown teams. I still wear the Texans and Aeros shirts all the time. The Astros and Rockets not as much. And I'll admit now that I never wore the Comets one - I gave it to C.
I don't know whose idea it was - Scott's or Michael's or C's or T's. Maybe all of them. But to whomever came up with the idea and to them all, I don't think I ever told anyone how much those shirts meant to me. How much they still do. How much they always will.
They will be staying in my closet.
Hoping this wasn't a mistake...
by President Obama's vetting team. According to the Weekly Standard, Gregg voted to abolish Commerce in 1995:
President Obama’s new candidate to run the Commerce Department voted in favor of abolishing the agency as a member of the Budget Committee and on the Senate floor in 1995.
I'm hoping that maybe this is part of the President's promise to do away those programs that work not. Bennett couldn't do it under Reagan; maybe Gregg can get it done as a bipartisan effort.
President Obama’s new candidate to run the Commerce Department voted in favor of abolishing the agency as a member of the Budget Committee and on the Senate floor in 1995.
I'm hoping that maybe this is part of the President's promise to do away those programs that work not. Bennett couldn't do it under Reagan; maybe Gregg can get it done as a bipartisan effort.
The Sopranos - Season 5
Finished the last episode this afternoon and I have to say that I think this season has been my favorite so far. Not so much because of any particular episode(s), but with the sum of them. And the story-lines were interesting (not just related to Tony's "business"), but in relation to his marriage and his with his two cousins. Since I didn't follow the series as it happened, I have no idea who or when or how many Emmy awards The Sopranos received, but I thought Edie Falco (Carmela), Michael Imperioli (Chrisopher) and Drea de Matteo (Adriana) were really, really good. The questioning of faith, of family, of marriage, of her acceptance of her lifestyle were all a part of the journey Carmela took during the season. And in the end, she went back to Tony - for a large sum of money and with the pledge that his "indiscretions" would not come into their home. Not that he wouldn't stop, but that Carmela wouldn't find out. She had to choose what type of life she wanted and she did.
As I've stated before, I get so much more insight as to why this series is so highly praised from the commentaries. And from those, and especially from the ones in this season, I think I've somewhat figured out the hype. And interestingly (at least to me), it wasn't from a write or director or the creator, but from an actor, Drea de Matteo. She did the commentary on the episode in which she is killed and in between her thoughts about leaving and working on the show, she had some great insights. She talked about how different this series was from a normal tv series. From the music, to the scores (or lack thereof), to the writing, to the acting. She saw each episode not as a part of a series, but each as an independent film. That in most tv series, you can interchange lines between characters and it wouldn't make much of a difference - but with The Sopranos, each character was so well defined and so unique, you couldn't do that. And it's true. They do seem like films, they look like films - they don't look or feel or sound like television.
The other aspect she touched on, which to be honest had been mentioned by others in their commentaries, was how brilliant all the subtle elements are woven together. The subtle humor, the subtle looks or expressions, the subtle way the writers make fun of tv or pop culture, making the characters try to use words or phrases that they mess up or use in the wrong context. In some of these instances, I missed them completely during the initial watching of an episode. Only after watching again, or hearing it brought up, did I catch some.
Drea mentioned, as did David Chase on an earlier commentary, how shocking fans of the show found her death. I didn't - I felt it was a logical conclusion to her storyline. And I didn't find the manner of how she was killed that graphic or sadistic. She did mention that Steven Van Zandt ( whose character kills her) had problems doing the scenes - that he was extremely upset while filming them. I'm not sure why, unless it was more his personal feelings towards Drea the actress and friend.
One more season to go....
As I've stated before, I get so much more insight as to why this series is so highly praised from the commentaries. And from those, and especially from the ones in this season, I think I've somewhat figured out the hype. And interestingly (at least to me), it wasn't from a write or director or the creator, but from an actor, Drea de Matteo. She did the commentary on the episode in which she is killed and in between her thoughts about leaving and working on the show, she had some great insights. She talked about how different this series was from a normal tv series. From the music, to the scores (or lack thereof), to the writing, to the acting. She saw each episode not as a part of a series, but each as an independent film. That in most tv series, you can interchange lines between characters and it wouldn't make much of a difference - but with The Sopranos, each character was so well defined and so unique, you couldn't do that. And it's true. They do seem like films, they look like films - they don't look or feel or sound like television.
The other aspect she touched on, which to be honest had been mentioned by others in their commentaries, was how brilliant all the subtle elements are woven together. The subtle humor, the subtle looks or expressions, the subtle way the writers make fun of tv or pop culture, making the characters try to use words or phrases that they mess up or use in the wrong context. In some of these instances, I missed them completely during the initial watching of an episode. Only after watching again, or hearing it brought up, did I catch some.
Drea mentioned, as did David Chase on an earlier commentary, how shocking fans of the show found her death. I didn't - I felt it was a logical conclusion to her storyline. And I didn't find the manner of how she was killed that graphic or sadistic. She did mention that Steven Van Zandt ( whose character kills her) had problems doing the scenes - that he was extremely upset while filming them. I'm not sure why, unless it was more his personal feelings towards Drea the actress and friend.
One more season to go....
Presidential approval ratings since Truman
I love this chart published in the Wall Street Journal for the perspective that it gives of presidential approval ratings over the decades.
The blog Villainous Company has posted at least a couple interesting entries on these graphs: here and here.
VC is politically slanted to the right, so it does its best to put a positive or inevitable spin on Bush II's bad ratings and to not give Clinton credit for a rating that was higher when he left office than when he started which was a singular achievement. Still, I like what he/they did in the second entry, setting wartime presidents apart from peacetime presidents. Apparently we prefer peace.
The blog Villainous Company has posted at least a couple interesting entries on these graphs: here and here.
VC is politically slanted to the right, so it does its best to put a positive or inevitable spin on Bush II's bad ratings and to not give Clinton credit for a rating that was higher when he left office than when he started which was a singular achievement. Still, I like what he/they did in the second entry, setting wartime presidents apart from peacetime presidents. Apparently we prefer peace.
Holder Confirmation
Iranian satellite
This can't be good:
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran said on Tuesday it has launched its first home-built satellite into orbit, raising fresh concerns among world powers already at odds with Tehran over its nuclear drive.
"Dear Iranians, your children have put the first indigenous satellite into orbit," a jubilant President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on state television after a launch coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
"With this launch the Islamic Republic of Iran has officially achieved a presence in space," he said.
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran said on Tuesday it has launched its first home-built satellite into orbit, raising fresh concerns among world powers already at odds with Tehran over its nuclear drive.
"Dear Iranians, your children have put the first indigenous satellite into orbit," a jubilant President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on state television after a launch coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
"With this launch the Islamic Republic of Iran has officially achieved a presence in space," he said.
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century...
is on my list right now. It's written by George Friedman, founder of Stratfor. I've been posting Stratfor's weekly briefs of late. One of his "predictions" in the book is the likelihood of the rise of Turkey in the coming years as the only non-basket case Muslim nation in the region. I think it has about the 17th largest economy in the world now (confirmed below). I also think that one of the major gun manufacturers/retailers in the US now has a factory there.
Here's Mr. Friedman this week on Turkey:
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan exploded during a public discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week. Erdogan did not blow up at Peres, but rather at the moderator, Washington Post columnist and associate editor David Ignatius, whom Erdogan accused of giving more time to Peres. Afterward, Erdogan said, “I did not target at all in any way the Israeli people, President Peres or the Jewish people. I am a prime minister, a leader who has expressly stated that anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity.”
Nevertheless, the international press focused not on the finer points of Erdogan’s reasoning, but rather on his attacks on Israeli policy in Gaza and his angry exit, which many thought were directed at Peres and Israel. The confusion, we suspect, suited Erdogan quite well. Turkey is effectively an ally of Israel. Given this alliance, the recent events in Gaza put Erdogan in a difficult position. The Turkish prime minister needed to show his opposition to Israel’s policies to his followers in Turkey’s moderate Islamist community without alarming Turkey’s military that he was moving to rupture relations with Israel. Whether calculated or not, Erdogan’s explosion in Davos allowed him to appear to demonstrate vocal opposition to Israel — directly to Israel’s president, no less — without actually threatening ties with Israel.
It is important to understand the complexity of Erdogan’s political position. Ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Turkey has had a secular government. The secularism of the government was guaranteed constitutionally by the military, whose role it was to protect the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — the founder of modern, secular Turkey, who used the army as an instrument of nation-building. The Turkish public, in contrast, runs the gamut from ultrasecularists to radical Islamists.
Erdogan is an elected moderate Islamist. As such, he is held in suspicion by the army and severely circumscribed in how far he can go on religious matters. To his right politically are more hard-line Islamist parties, which are making inroads into Turkish public opinion. Erdogan must balance between these forces, avoiding the two extreme outcomes of military intervention and Islamist terrorism.
Meanwhile, from a geopolitical perspective, Turkey is always in an uncomfortable place. Asia Minor is the pivot of Eurasia. It is the land bridge between Asia and Europe, the northern frontier of the Arab world and the southern frontier of the Caucasus. Its influence spreads outward toward the Balkans, Russia, Central Asia, the Arab world and Iran. Alternatively, Turkey is the target of forces emanating from all of these directions. Add to this its control of the Bosporus, which makes Turkey the interface between the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and the complexity of Turkey’s position becomes clear: Turkey is always either under pressure from its neighbors or pressuring its neighbors. It is perpetually being drawn outward in multiple directions, even into the eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey has two different paths for dealing with its geopolitical challenge.
Secular Isolationism
From the army’s point of view, the Ottoman Empire was a disaster that entangled Turkey into the catastrophe of Word War I. One of Ataturk’s solutions involved not only contracting Turkey after the war, but containing it in such a way that it could not be drawn into the extreme risk of imperial adventure.
In World War II, both Axis and Allies wooed and subverted Turkey. But the country managed — with difficulty — to maintain neutrality, thereby avoiding another national catastrophe.
During the Cold War, Turkey’s position was equally difficult. Facing Soviet pressure from the north, the Turks had to ally themselves with the United States and NATO. Turkey possessed something the Soviets desperately wanted: the Bosporus, which would have given the Soviet navy unimpeded access to the Mediterranean. Naturally, the Turks could not do anything about their geography, nor could they cede the Bosporus to the Soviets without sacrificing their independence. But neither could they protect it by themselves. Thus, left with only the choice of NATO membership, the Turks joined the Western alliance.
There was a high degree of national unity on this subject. Whatever the ideologies involved, the Soviets were viewed as a direct threat to Turkey. Therefore, using NATO and the United States to help guarantee Turkish territorial integrity was ultimately something around which a consensus could form. NATO membership, of course, led to complications, as these things always do.
To counter the American relationship with Turkey (and with Iran, which also blocked Soviet southward movement), the Soviets developed a strategy of alliances — and subversion — of Arab countries. First Egypt, then Syria, Iraq and other countries came under Soviet influence between the 1950s and 1970s. Turkey found itself in a vise between the Soviets and Iraq and Syria. And with Egypt — with its Soviet weapons and advisers — also in the Soviet orbit, Turkey’s southern frontier was seriously threatened.
Turkey had two possible responses to this situation. One was to build up its military and economy to take advantage of its mountainous geography and deter attack. For this, Turkey needed the United States. The second option was to create cooperative relations with other countries in the region that were hostile to both the Soviets and the left-wing Arab regimes. The two countries that fit this bill were Israel and pre-1979 Iran under the shah. Iran tied down Iraq. Israel tied down Syria and Egypt. In effect, these two countries neutralized the threat of Soviet pressure from the south.
Thus was born the Turkish relationship with Israel. Both countries belonged to the American anti-Soviet alliance system and therefore had a general common interest in conditions in the eastern Mediterranean. Both countries also had a common interest in containing Syria. From the standpoint of the Turkish army, and therefore the Turkish government, a close collaboration with Israel made perfect sense.
Islamist Internationalism
There is a second vision of Turkey, however: that of Turkey as a Muslim power with responsibilities beyond guaranteeing its own national security. This viewpoint would of course break the country’s relationship with Israel and the United States. In some sense, this is a minor consideration now. Israel is no longer indispensable for Turkish national security, and Turkey has outgrown outright dependence on the United States. (These days, the United States needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the United States.)
(click image to enlarge)
Under this second vision, Turkey would extend its power outward in support of Muslims. This vision, if pursued to the full, would involve Turkey in the Balkans in support of Albanians and Bosnians, for example. It would also see Turkey extend its influence southward to help shape Arab regimes. And it would cause Turkey to become deeply involved in Central Asia, where it has natural ties and influence. Ultimately, this vision also would return Turkey to maritime power status, influencing events in North Africa. It is at its heart a very expansionist vision, and one that would require the active support of a military that, at present, is somewhat squeamish about leaving home.
Along with Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt, Turkey is one of only five major powers in the Islamic world with enough economic and military potential to affect anything beyond their immediate neighbors. Indonesia and Pakistan are internally fragmented and struggling to hold together; their potential is largely bottled up. Iran is in a long-term confrontation with the United States and must use all of its strength in dealing with that relationship, limiting its options for expansion. Egypt is internally crippled by its regime and economy, and without significant internal evolutions it cannot project power.
Turkey, on the other hand, is now the world’s 17th-largest economy. It boasts a gross domestic product (GDP) that is larger than that of every other Muslim country, including Saudi Arabia; larger than that of every EU country other than Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands; and nearly five times larger than that of Israel. In per capita GDP, Turkey ranks much lower on the global scale, but national power — the total weight a country can bring to bear on the international system — frequently depends more on the total size of the economy than on per capita income. (Consider China, which has a per capita income less than half that of Turkey’s.) Turkey is surrounded by instability in the Arab world, in the Caucasus and in the Balkans. But it is the most stable and dynamic economy in its region and, after Israel, has the most effective armed forces.
On occasion, Turkey goes beyond its borders. It has, for example, moved into Iraq in a combined air-ground operation to attack units of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish separatist group. But it is Turkey’s policy to avoid deep entanglements. From the Turkish Islamist point of view, however, a power of this magnitude under the control of an Islamist regime would be in a position to spread its influence dramatically. As mentioned, this is not what the army or the secularists want: They remember how the Ottoman Empire sapped Turkish strength, and they do not want a repeat.
Erdogan’s Challenge and Turkey’s Future
It is not fair to say that Turkey is a deeply divided society. Instead, Turkey has learned to blend discord. At the moment, Erdogan probably represents the center of the Turkish political spectrum. But he is stuck trying to balance three competing forces. The first is an economy that remains robust and is likely to grow further despite suffering setbacks (along with the rest of the world). The second is a capable military that does not want excessive foreign entanglements, and certainly not for religious reasons. And the third is an Islamist movement that wants to see Turkey as part of the Islamic world — and perhaps even the leader of that world.
Erdogan does not want to weaken the Turkish economy, and he sees radical Islamist ideas as endangering Turkey’s middle class. He wants to placate the army and keep it from acting politically. He also wants to placate the radical Islamists, who could draw the army out of the barracks, or worse, weaken the economy. Erdogan thus wants to keep business, the military and the religious sector happy simultaneously.
This is no easy task, and Erdogan was clearly furious at Israel for attacking Gaza and making that task harder. Turkey was crucial in developing the Israeli-Syrian dialogue. This means the wider world now views Turkey’s leadership as regionally engaged, something its risk-averse military is more than a little touchy about. Erdogan therefore saw Israel as endangering Turkey’s military-civilian power balance and squandering its tentative steps into the regional spotlight for what he considered a pointless operation in Gaza.
Still, Erdogan did not want to break with Israel. So he became furious with the moderator. Whether this was calculated or simply reflected his response to the situation he finds himself in is immaterial. The outburst allowed him to appear to break with Israel decisively without actually creating such a rupture. He thus deftly continued to walk his fine line.
The question is how long Erdogan can maintain the balance. The more chaotic the region around Turkey becomes and the stronger Turkey gets, the more irresistible will be the sheer geopolitical pressure on Turkey to fill the vacuum. Add to that an expansionist ideology — a Turkish Islamism — and a potent new force in the region could quickly emerge. The one thing that can restrain this process is Russia. If Moscow forces Georgia to submit and brings its forces back to the Turkish border in Armenia, the Turks will have to reorient their policy back to one of blocking the Russians. But regardless of what level Russian power returns to over the next few years, the longer-term growth of Turkish power is inevitable — and something that must be considered carefully.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to http://www.stratfor.com/
Here's Mr. Friedman this week on Turkey:
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan exploded during a public discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week. Erdogan did not blow up at Peres, but rather at the moderator, Washington Post columnist and associate editor David Ignatius, whom Erdogan accused of giving more time to Peres. Afterward, Erdogan said, “I did not target at all in any way the Israeli people, President Peres or the Jewish people. I am a prime minister, a leader who has expressly stated that anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity.”
Nevertheless, the international press focused not on the finer points of Erdogan’s reasoning, but rather on his attacks on Israeli policy in Gaza and his angry exit, which many thought were directed at Peres and Israel. The confusion, we suspect, suited Erdogan quite well. Turkey is effectively an ally of Israel. Given this alliance, the recent events in Gaza put Erdogan in a difficult position. The Turkish prime minister needed to show his opposition to Israel’s policies to his followers in Turkey’s moderate Islamist community without alarming Turkey’s military that he was moving to rupture relations with Israel. Whether calculated or not, Erdogan’s explosion in Davos allowed him to appear to demonstrate vocal opposition to Israel — directly to Israel’s president, no less — without actually threatening ties with Israel.
It is important to understand the complexity of Erdogan’s political position. Ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Turkey has had a secular government. The secularism of the government was guaranteed constitutionally by the military, whose role it was to protect the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — the founder of modern, secular Turkey, who used the army as an instrument of nation-building. The Turkish public, in contrast, runs the gamut from ultrasecularists to radical Islamists.
Erdogan is an elected moderate Islamist. As such, he is held in suspicion by the army and severely circumscribed in how far he can go on religious matters. To his right politically are more hard-line Islamist parties, which are making inroads into Turkish public opinion. Erdogan must balance between these forces, avoiding the two extreme outcomes of military intervention and Islamist terrorism.
Meanwhile, from a geopolitical perspective, Turkey is always in an uncomfortable place. Asia Minor is the pivot of Eurasia. It is the land bridge between Asia and Europe, the northern frontier of the Arab world and the southern frontier of the Caucasus. Its influence spreads outward toward the Balkans, Russia, Central Asia, the Arab world and Iran. Alternatively, Turkey is the target of forces emanating from all of these directions. Add to this its control of the Bosporus, which makes Turkey the interface between the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and the complexity of Turkey’s position becomes clear: Turkey is always either under pressure from its neighbors or pressuring its neighbors. It is perpetually being drawn outward in multiple directions, even into the eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey has two different paths for dealing with its geopolitical challenge.
Secular Isolationism
From the army’s point of view, the Ottoman Empire was a disaster that entangled Turkey into the catastrophe of Word War I. One of Ataturk’s solutions involved not only contracting Turkey after the war, but containing it in such a way that it could not be drawn into the extreme risk of imperial adventure.
In World War II, both Axis and Allies wooed and subverted Turkey. But the country managed — with difficulty — to maintain neutrality, thereby avoiding another national catastrophe.
During the Cold War, Turkey’s position was equally difficult. Facing Soviet pressure from the north, the Turks had to ally themselves with the United States and NATO. Turkey possessed something the Soviets desperately wanted: the Bosporus, which would have given the Soviet navy unimpeded access to the Mediterranean. Naturally, the Turks could not do anything about their geography, nor could they cede the Bosporus to the Soviets without sacrificing their independence. But neither could they protect it by themselves. Thus, left with only the choice of NATO membership, the Turks joined the Western alliance.
There was a high degree of national unity on this subject. Whatever the ideologies involved, the Soviets were viewed as a direct threat to Turkey. Therefore, using NATO and the United States to help guarantee Turkish territorial integrity was ultimately something around which a consensus could form. NATO membership, of course, led to complications, as these things always do.
To counter the American relationship with Turkey (and with Iran, which also blocked Soviet southward movement), the Soviets developed a strategy of alliances — and subversion — of Arab countries. First Egypt, then Syria, Iraq and other countries came under Soviet influence between the 1950s and 1970s. Turkey found itself in a vise between the Soviets and Iraq and Syria. And with Egypt — with its Soviet weapons and advisers — also in the Soviet orbit, Turkey’s southern frontier was seriously threatened.
Turkey had two possible responses to this situation. One was to build up its military and economy to take advantage of its mountainous geography and deter attack. For this, Turkey needed the United States. The second option was to create cooperative relations with other countries in the region that were hostile to both the Soviets and the left-wing Arab regimes. The two countries that fit this bill were Israel and pre-1979 Iran under the shah. Iran tied down Iraq. Israel tied down Syria and Egypt. In effect, these two countries neutralized the threat of Soviet pressure from the south.
Thus was born the Turkish relationship with Israel. Both countries belonged to the American anti-Soviet alliance system and therefore had a general common interest in conditions in the eastern Mediterranean. Both countries also had a common interest in containing Syria. From the standpoint of the Turkish army, and therefore the Turkish government, a close collaboration with Israel made perfect sense.
Islamist Internationalism
There is a second vision of Turkey, however: that of Turkey as a Muslim power with responsibilities beyond guaranteeing its own national security. This viewpoint would of course break the country’s relationship with Israel and the United States. In some sense, this is a minor consideration now. Israel is no longer indispensable for Turkish national security, and Turkey has outgrown outright dependence on the United States. (These days, the United States needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the United States.)
(click image to enlarge)
Under this second vision, Turkey would extend its power outward in support of Muslims. This vision, if pursued to the full, would involve Turkey in the Balkans in support of Albanians and Bosnians, for example. It would also see Turkey extend its influence southward to help shape Arab regimes. And it would cause Turkey to become deeply involved in Central Asia, where it has natural ties and influence. Ultimately, this vision also would return Turkey to maritime power status, influencing events in North Africa. It is at its heart a very expansionist vision, and one that would require the active support of a military that, at present, is somewhat squeamish about leaving home.
Along with Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt, Turkey is one of only five major powers in the Islamic world with enough economic and military potential to affect anything beyond their immediate neighbors. Indonesia and Pakistan are internally fragmented and struggling to hold together; their potential is largely bottled up. Iran is in a long-term confrontation with the United States and must use all of its strength in dealing with that relationship, limiting its options for expansion. Egypt is internally crippled by its regime and economy, and without significant internal evolutions it cannot project power.
Turkey, on the other hand, is now the world’s 17th-largest economy. It boasts a gross domestic product (GDP) that is larger than that of every other Muslim country, including Saudi Arabia; larger than that of every EU country other than Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands; and nearly five times larger than that of Israel. In per capita GDP, Turkey ranks much lower on the global scale, but national power — the total weight a country can bring to bear on the international system — frequently depends more on the total size of the economy than on per capita income. (Consider China, which has a per capita income less than half that of Turkey’s.) Turkey is surrounded by instability in the Arab world, in the Caucasus and in the Balkans. But it is the most stable and dynamic economy in its region and, after Israel, has the most effective armed forces.
On occasion, Turkey goes beyond its borders. It has, for example, moved into Iraq in a combined air-ground operation to attack units of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish separatist group. But it is Turkey’s policy to avoid deep entanglements. From the Turkish Islamist point of view, however, a power of this magnitude under the control of an Islamist regime would be in a position to spread its influence dramatically. As mentioned, this is not what the army or the secularists want: They remember how the Ottoman Empire sapped Turkish strength, and they do not want a repeat.
Erdogan’s Challenge and Turkey’s Future
It is not fair to say that Turkey is a deeply divided society. Instead, Turkey has learned to blend discord. At the moment, Erdogan probably represents the center of the Turkish political spectrum. But he is stuck trying to balance three competing forces. The first is an economy that remains robust and is likely to grow further despite suffering setbacks (along with the rest of the world). The second is a capable military that does not want excessive foreign entanglements, and certainly not for religious reasons. And the third is an Islamist movement that wants to see Turkey as part of the Islamic world — and perhaps even the leader of that world.
Erdogan does not want to weaken the Turkish economy, and he sees radical Islamist ideas as endangering Turkey’s middle class. He wants to placate the army and keep it from acting politically. He also wants to placate the radical Islamists, who could draw the army out of the barracks, or worse, weaken the economy. Erdogan thus wants to keep business, the military and the religious sector happy simultaneously.
This is no easy task, and Erdogan was clearly furious at Israel for attacking Gaza and making that task harder. Turkey was crucial in developing the Israeli-Syrian dialogue. This means the wider world now views Turkey’s leadership as regionally engaged, something its risk-averse military is more than a little touchy about. Erdogan therefore saw Israel as endangering Turkey’s military-civilian power balance and squandering its tentative steps into the regional spotlight for what he considered a pointless operation in Gaza.
Still, Erdogan did not want to break with Israel. So he became furious with the moderator. Whether this was calculated or simply reflected his response to the situation he finds himself in is immaterial. The outburst allowed him to appear to break with Israel decisively without actually creating such a rupture. He thus deftly continued to walk his fine line.
The question is how long Erdogan can maintain the balance. The more chaotic the region around Turkey becomes and the stronger Turkey gets, the more irresistible will be the sheer geopolitical pressure on Turkey to fill the vacuum. Add to that an expansionist ideology — a Turkish Islamism — and a potent new force in the region could quickly emerge. The one thing that can restrain this process is Russia. If Moscow forces Georgia to submit and brings its forces back to the Turkish border in Armenia, the Turks will have to reorient their policy back to one of blocking the Russians. But regardless of what level Russian power returns to over the next few years, the longer-term growth of Turkish power is inevitable — and something that must be considered carefully.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to http://www.stratfor.com/
Monday, February 02, 2009
Bart Whitaker...
...is still the most popular search for this site. I vote we delete all references. Why is this guy so search worthy?
I hated to put that name in the Title but had to make my preference known.
I hated to put that name in the Title but had to make my preference known.
Constitutional Conservatism
From Andy McCarthy at The Corner, a link to a lengthy article from Peter Berkowitz at the Hoover Institution about the way back for conservatives.
It really is long and I don't recommend for Stephanie or LJ, but if one is looking to see what I feel are the current concerns of the movement, I do so recommend. My main thought of late is that I'm not certain if we still have the wherewithal to moderate liberty.
It really is long and I don't recommend for Stephanie or LJ, but if one is looking to see what I feel are the current concerns of the movement, I do so recommend. My main thought of late is that I'm not certain if we still have the wherewithal to moderate liberty.
Re: Republicans in the Cabinet
From the LA Times:
When Obama's interest in Gregg became known Thursday, it created some Republican angst because Democrats are tantalizingly close to a filibuster-proof majority. They hold 56 seats, and the Senate's two independents caucus with them. Democrat Al Franken holds a slim lead in Minnesota's disputed election, and if it stands, he would become the 59th Democratic vote. Under Senate rules, 60 votes are required to limit debate and hold off a filibuster.
New Hampshire's governor, a Democrat, holds the power to appoint a replacement for Gregg.
Gregg has said he won't take the position unless assured the balance won't change. Even with an assurance from the Governor, I don't know when Gregg's seat is up. [Update: I should have known: 2010.] I'm not sure I like the idea of an appointee rather than an elected incumbent running at at that time.
When Obama's interest in Gregg became known Thursday, it created some Republican angst because Democrats are tantalizingly close to a filibuster-proof majority. They hold 56 seats, and the Senate's two independents caucus with them. Democrat Al Franken holds a slim lead in Minnesota's disputed election, and if it stands, he would become the 59th Democratic vote. Under Senate rules, 60 votes are required to limit debate and hold off a filibuster.
New Hampshire's governor, a Democrat, holds the power to appoint a replacement for Gregg.
Gregg has said he won't take the position unless assured the balance won't change. Even with an assurance from the Governor, I don't know when Gregg's seat is up. [Update: I should have known: 2010.] I'm not sure I like the idea of an appointee rather than an elected incumbent running at at that time.
Republicans in the Cabinet
Several weeks ago, SSJ had a poll to identify the number of Republicans Obama would nominate for his cabinet. I was the only vote that said Obama would have two (that was the highest option in the poll). All other poll-takers voted for zero, if I remember correctly. Obama is about to name Republican Judd Gregg to be Commerce Secretary. Gregg will be the third Republican nominated by Obama. Robert Gates (for Defense Secretary) and Ray LaHood (for Transportation Secretary) were previously announced as Obama's nominees.
Bear markets and dshort.com
Dshort.com has generated a couple of interesting graphs regarding bear markets. This one shows market decline (as a percent from the peak it has just passed) over the course of months:
A second is this one:
This one plots market movement since the 1950s. Click on the blue bands (labeled with year ranges) to see detailed info about each bear market. (The good news here, though not really news, is that the performance of the market over time follows an exponential regression line.)
The site doesn't try to predict what's next for our markets, but it certainly provides some perspective.
[Update: Here is a better post on dshort.com explaining the second graph.]
A second is this one:
This one plots market movement since the 1950s. Click on the blue bands (labeled with year ranges) to see detailed info about each bear market. (The good news here, though not really news, is that the performance of the market over time follows an exponential regression line.)The site doesn't try to predict what's next for our markets, but it certainly provides some perspective.
[Update: Here is a better post on dshort.com explaining the second graph.]
Groundhog Day
Here's something I wonder about every year. If the groudhog sees his shadow it means there'll be six more weeks of winter. If, however, he does not see his shadow, what does that mean? More than six weeks or less than six weeks?
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