Crazy Foreigners

Friday, November 14, 2003

“In My Country, Women Come Second”… “And Sometimes Not At All!”

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It seems the proposed Constitution of Afghanistan it does not live up to expectations. Our expectations that is, as liberators who respect the liberty of women and the right of free political organization.

On Reason’s weblog, Julian Sanchez links to this piece by someone who has actually read the proposed Constitution, and Tim Cavanaugh adds his thoughts.

And please excuse my Austin Powers reference. It’s Friday.

[wik] Edited Nov 14, 2 PM. 


Posted by Johno on 11/14/03 at 06:00 PM
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China’s dirty secret

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Kudos and all for China for getting a space program together, yeah ok, and I’ve congratulated them elsewhere for leaping forward to 1958.

But for all the spacefaring feats that nation may achieve, there’s still mindbendingly awful systemic problems in China, like this one. China has a horrid recent history of interior management-- stealing cookware to make home steel smelters, encouraging schoolchildren to kill their teachers, starving thousands if not millions in the name of so-called progress, etc., etc., and that legacy seriously undermines any claims to outer-space glory. Worse, the nation’s leaders seem not to have learned much from their past failures.

In the mid 1990’s the communist party authorities in Henan encouraged poor rural farmers to sell their blood.

Mobile collection units toured rural villages.  Millions of villagers took up the call.  But the blood collectors ignored even the most basic standards of hygiene.  Dirty equipment was used over and over. Donor blood was mixed together, the plasma removed, and then what remained pumped back into the donors blood streams.

HIV spread out of control through the whole blood collection system.

No-one for sure how many people were infected, at least 500,000, maybe more. . . . .

Having infected so many of its own people, China’s communist rulers are now doing everything they can to stop the outside world from finding out.


Posted by Johno on 11/14/03 at 02:18 PM
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Tuesday, November 04, 2003

On Reconstruction

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The Economist has an article (graciously reprinted online) on the reconstruction of Iraq.

They see the glass as half full-- many utilities have been restored to prewar levels, oil is flowing-- which is valid. But I don’t think that’s too great. While I get that it will take time, “prewar levels” just aren’t that great a benchmark. We can be doing better.

The entire article is worth a read, and the most interesting bit is at the end. It suggests that big oil companies aren’t biting at Iraqi oil contracts, because such interests “tend nowadays to look at the lifetime capacity of a field, not at the chance of a quick profit. ‘You’re talking about a horizon of 10-12 years, minimum,’ says a European businessman searching for deals. Despite the high technical calibre of Iraq’s oil ministry, outsiders are not yet confident that long-term contracts will be watertight.”

So, even if it was all about the oil (and yes, let’s not kid ourselves that the economics of oil aren’t a big piece of the Whole General Sort Of Mish-Mash), it’s not really about the oil now, for better or worse. Ironic.

Of course, until sabotage is minimized, infrastructure upgraded, pipelines re-established, and stable operations established, investing in Iraqi oil is a fool’s game suitable only for sinking giant sums of US government money. That’s ironic too, and unfortunate.


Posted by Johno on 11/04/03 at 03:24 PM
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Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Sacred Cowlike America

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A little fodder:

  • Private Health Care Through Your Employer.  There’s nuthin’ beddah.  God intended it to be this way.  Why, the personal care of unsurpassed excellence we all get is all that stands between us and hell.
  • Guns are Great.  If I can’t shoot it, I can’t control it. 
  • American Democracy Is The Only Real Democracy.  You can just shut the hell up if you think anything else! 
  • The Founding Fathers BLAH BLah Blah blah blah.  They knew everything.  They even know about the magazines in the back of your closet, they invented light bulbs and boxed lunches, and they don’t approve of what we’re doing.  No sir they don’t.  Follow the recipe.
  • Rich People Are Because They Are Just Plain Better People.  Luck, hereditary factors, hundreds of years of bia and bullshit, have nothing to do with it.  Please ignore the current round of cheatin’ and lyin’ on Wall Street.  Nothing to see here.  These are not the crooks you are looking for.  Move along.
  • Market Uber Alles!  All human function can be controlled by markets.  All human functions must be controlled by markets.  If all human bodily functions were controlled by markets, our toilets would be 3.7% more efficient.  This would lead to world peace. 

Ah.  I feel so much better!  Why do I still like it here so much?  I don’t know!  Maybe it’s the women.  Maybe it’s the fact that with a little bending and twisting, this country could be so truly excellent.  I have a pipe wrench around here somewhere.


Posted by Ross on 10/29/03 at 03:04 AM
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US Whacks Off

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As resident contrarian, please allow me to differ.  Greatly. 

What dumb-ass playground do you think we are still all on?  Do you seriously believe that there are terrorists out there who give a crap about US strategy and actions?  They don’t.  They know that the consequences of their actions are visited upon others—the citizens of the countries we blow up, in the name of collective punishment.  It’s beautiful for them, really...they just have to sit back, drug up a 20 year old, shove him into a car, and tell him that 29 (or 63, or whatever the ‘magic’ number is) virgins are waiting for him on the other side of a 15mm red button.  We toss ten thousand bombs into their countries, maim children, and create a whole new generation of recruits.  “Wag the dog” usually refers to something else.

Do you think the rest of the world gives a shit about how the US looks when it mobs a country with its Army?  Here is the lesson any intelligent planner has learned from this:  No one country can stand against America, but America can easily bankrupt itself through the sheer idiocy of pursuing unbelievably expensive foreign policy.  A bankrupt America becomes a corrupt American, and this will lead to its decline in the shorter time, rather than the long wait history teaches us is the norm.

What kind of flypaper do we have in Iraq, exactly?  Is it the kind that attracts terrorists (you know, the really stupid ones)?  Or is it the kind that gets stuck to a world power, sapping resources that are needed elsewhere, compounding domestic problems, and potentially setting off a domino effect that results in a cultural decline?

It’s probably a bit of both.  Your “can of whup ass” mentality was all fine and fun in the Wild West, and probably worked great in the ‘hood.  This ain’t the hood.  We have a lot more to lose than the momentary satisfaction we gain by killing a few idiots, and deposing a few standard despots. 

The world isn’t going to run out of despots any time soon.  It also isn’t going to run out of smart terrorists, who are gaining converts, created by our actions, at ten times the rate they were before. And I refuse to back that up with anything other than a gut feeling.  You know it’s true too.

Do I advocate we do nothing?  Of course not.  That would be stupid.  WWF Smackdown Foreign Policy sounds kick-ass to the Nascar crowd.  Woohoo!  Now comes the hard part.  Put it back together again.  There are other ways. 

We could have cured AIDS and raised living standards by half in a dozen countries, earning respect worldwide, for less money than two months of this war has cost.  Politics and true leadership is about allocation of scarce resources, making hard choices, and going for the maximum effect.  It’s not about posturing, point-making, and throwing a $300 Billion Finger at the rest of the world, with a follow-on “fuck you if you don’t like it.  But will you please pay for it anyway?”

It’s not that the rest of the world is anti-American.  By and large it isn’t.  It just seems like such a huge waste of potential. So much human capital could have been created, for so much less.  With these kinds of expenditures there could have been a third way...a way where the US leads by example, by education, by being reasoned, and right.

Amen, Brothers.


Posted by Ross on 10/29/03 at 02:40 AM
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30 Years Since Egypt’s Victory Over Israel

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This exercise in fantasy from the state controlled Egyptian press goes a long way toward explaining a lot of the problems that they have.  Hat tip:
Daimnation! via Dodgeblogium.


Posted by Buckethead on 10/29/03 at 02:36 AM
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Monday, October 27, 2003

In Cuba - two paths

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This letter, from Cuban dissident Oscar Biscet Gonzalez, should be getting the same kind of attention that Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail got.  It is sad the Castro gets a free ride from so many. 

Read it.


Posted by Buckethead on 10/27/03 at 09:50 PM
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Thursday, October 23, 2003

Civil War in Canada, eh?

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In a newly released bio of Canadian PM Jean Chretien, it is revealed that the Canadian gov’t was prepared to take a much harder line than it ever admitted if Quebec sovereignists had achieved a referendum victory in 1995.  In an interesting quote, we hear the opinions of the Canadian Defense Minister at the time, David Collanette:

Earlier in the chapter, Martin suggests Collenette was also prepared to come to the aid of federalists still in Quebec.

“ ‘My view,’ Collenette would explain in a later interview, ‘was that these guys aren’t going to get away with this. This is my country. I don’t care what the numbers are. It’s one thing to say you want to separate. But now we start playing hardball. Because we’re not going to abandon all those people who want to stay in Canada.’ “

“...A negation of the verdict in front of tens of thousands of celebrating Quebecers would have risked a bloody backlash. But in fact that is what Chrétien planned to do,”

Considering how opinion in Quebec was running, a repudiation of the referendum would have caused some havoc.  The government felt that the constitution had no provision for leaving, and that therefore the referendum was merely a “consultative exercise.” In an interview for the book, Chrétien admitted he would not have recognized a close vote.

“You know, at 50 (per cent) plus one, I was not about to let go the country. You don’t break your country because one guy forgets his glasses at home.”

Jacques Parizeau, then the premier of Quebec, revealed in his book Pour un Québec Souverain that he was prepared to declare unilateral separation if Ottawa refused to accept the referendum result. Throw in Chrétien’s stance and Collenette’s willingness to call in the troops, Martin speculates, and you have the elements for a possible civil war.

It has always been my belief that we have let far too much time pass since the last invasion of Canada.  Almost two centuries, in fact.  The thought that Canada might spare us the trouble by conveniently dissolving itself is, well, delicious.  We could easily absorb the good parts, and then seal the borders around Quebec, and give laser weapons to the Indians.  Sorry, First Nations.

On a disturbing note, the article closed with this quote: 

Frulla and other Italian Canadians in her riding were being warned they would “have to go back to your own country,” when the sovereignist side won.


Posted by Buckethead on 10/23/03 at 07:06 PM
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EU elite are filthy pigs

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No this isn’t from some Buchananite wacko.  It’s from Italy’s reform minister, Umberto Bossi. 

Mr Bossi, leader of the Northern League, said Brussels was “transforming vices into virtues” and “advancing the cause of atheism every day”. He denounced the European arrest warrant as a step towards “dictatorship, deportation, and terror, instilling fear in the people, a crime in itself”. It would lead to a Stalinist regime “multiplied by 25”.

One day Italian citizens would be locked up on the orders of Turkish judges, he told Il Giornale newspaper, which is owned by the family of the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. He added that the euro was a “total flop”, its inflationary effects costing ordinary people “a fortune” in lost purchasing power.

I don’t know if I agree completely, but I have my suspicions - on bad days, I agree with Rachel Lucas, and wish that the EU would just declare itself a fascist dictatorship so we could go over and kick their ass and get it over with.

The new draft EU constitution contains none of the protections for individual liberty that we enjoy here.  The tendency of EU bureaucrats to take action without consulting the public - or even thinking about consulting the public, is worrisome as well.  The unelected officials who form the nascent European federal government are completely removed from any kind of accountablility to the citizens of the several European nations. 

It might be a good thing if some Europeans got together with a copy of the Federalist Papers, the Notes from the Constitutional Convention, and a lot of red pens.

It is surprising to me that the drafters of the new European constitution have paid so little attention to the lessons of our constitution - given that there are so many parallels.  In both cases, there are a number of different soveriegn states, varying in size, population and wealth.  There are issues of free trade and common currency.  There are debates about the optimal miz of central and state power.

Of course, they may have paid attention, and decided that a representative democracy that devolved power to the masses and allowed maximal freedom for the individual; and enshrined notions of limited government inviolable rights is not what they wanted.


Posted by Buckethead on 10/23/03 at 06:41 PM
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Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Won’t somebody think of the (Bolivian) children!

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Jesse Walker has a short piece at Reason about the clusterfark that is “market reform” in Bolivia. The 800-lb gorilla in the room is (of course) the single biggest market in Bolivia, coca. Check it out. Walker reveals a tragic and misguided series of events, and offers this analysis: “ the war on drugs has undermined not just peasant property rights but the rule of law.”


Posted by Johno on 10/21/03 at 04:00 PM
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Monday, October 06, 2003

Playing with the Big Boys

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The ever-useful space.com is reporting that the consensus among those who watch these things is that the Chinese will launch their first manned space mission sometime in the next couple weeks.  The article is well worth the read, as it examines some of the political and strategic considerations that many be prompted by a successful Chinese mission.

Many observers feel that the space flight program is merely a cloak for Chinese military development.  Others feel that the mission is a prestige building exercise designed to reinforce the legitimacy of the Communist goeverment.  Personally, I think it is both. 

China is in many respects like Columbus, Ohio.  Columbus is a decent sized city in a populous state.  But it is alway overshadowed by Cleveland and Cincinnati.  When I lived in Columbus in the nineties, there was constant talk of becoming a “major league” city.  Much of this centered around efforts to acquire by any means necessary a pro baseball or football team.  Of course, lying halfway between the Reds and the Bengals on one side, and the Indians and Browns on the other made this unlikely in the extreme.  So, they got a Hockey team.  But there were other efforts as well - all aimed at putting Columbus “on the map.” When the number of people inside the Columbus city limits surpassed for the first time the number in Cleveland, Columbus cried, “We’re the biggest city in Ohio!” Of course this completely ignored the fact that the Cleveland metro population is four times larger, and also that Cleveland has been less, well, assiduous in annexing neighboring communities.

China is convinced that does not get the respect that it deserves.  So, this space mission is in some sense like Columbus’ NHL team.  But unlike Columbus, the Chinese have been making a strenuous effort over the last decade plus to modernize their armed forces.  This space mission has obvious relevance to that effort.  That China feels the need to pursue both of these ideas could be taken to indicate that China envisions for itself a grander role on the world stage.

And just remember the last time somebody had that set of ideas.


Posted by Buckethead on 10/06/03 at 04:58 PM
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Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Afghanistan to Unveil Draft Constitution

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Fox News is reporting that Afghanistan is on the verge of unveiling its new draft constitution.  For most of the last year, the constitutional commission has been working to write the constitution, but this bit was heartwarming:

The commission sent 460,000 questionnaires out to the public this year and held meetings in villages across the country seeking public input.

“So many people replied, including women who said they wanted more rights and good education,” Constitutional Review Commission spokesman Abdul Ghafoor Lewal said. “The illiterate sent cassette tapes and we got tens of thousands of letters.”

When the elections are held next June, we can hope that it will be the beginning of a prosperous and peaceful future.  If that many people participated (however indirectly) in creating their future, I think they might even have a good shot at it.


Posted by Buckethead on 09/30/03 at 05:33 PM
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Friday, September 26, 2003

Anglosphere v. Frankenreich

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From the comment thread on my recent France post, Johno said about the Anglosphere concept and the split in the west:

Buckethead, I think that may be true only insofar as it’s always been true.

When the GI’s went into France back in Dubya Dubya Two, there was considerable culture shock on both sides. Although the US and Western Europe have grown familiar with each other on a day-to-day basis, there are both systemic and current reasons why they won’t necessarily see eye to eye. You know that as well as I do.

I wouldn’t make too much of this grade-school crap. The US and France have been at odds before, and will again and again. At least we’re both Constitutional Republics.

It wasn’t the deck of cards exactly that prompted the anglosphere comment, but rather the trends we see in Europe that are most visible in the growth of the EU bureacracy, and in the language of the proposed EU constitution.  England was always distinct from the general political climate on the continent.  The United States, and to a lesser extent Canada and Australia, have focused on the very things that made England different, and are thus more different.  The unparalleled success of the United States in, well, damn near everything is dragging the other English speaking nations in its wake, while the continent is pursuing its dream of a thousand year socialist Frankenreich.  The two political natures of the west, once more or less evenly distributed seem to be settling into a kind of geographic division.  This might actually drive further separation in the core of the west.

Others, such as Huntington, have already suggested that the West has already split twice - that Russia and Latin America are already distinct, though related civilizations.  Is it that farfetched to imagine that a similar process could be dividing the west again?


Posted by Buckethead on 09/26/03 at 06:06 PM
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