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By zinya, on August 18th, 2007
A recent article in slate by Columbia economics professor Ray Fisman, drawing on a forthcoming paper in American Economic Review ["Diamonds Are Forever, Wars Are Not. Is Conflict Bad for Private Firms?"] by fellow economists Massimo Guidolin and Eliana La Ferrara, takes the answer to their question [i.e., no, not necessarily, and sometimes it is quite good for them] as a given and — in describing the relationship between the end of Angola’s civil war (1975-2002) and the fate of its diamond industry [no. 2 export after petroleum] — pushes the question one step further: “Why was war good for Angola’s big miners?” * The article’s concluding graphs are:
In the oil rush that has seized much of the African continent in recent years, we may be witnessing another instance of disconnect between economic prosperity and certain business profits. Western oil companies, whether inhibited by ethics or constrained by law, have shied away from working with unsavory and corrupt African dictators. But such qualms haven’t stopped the China National Petroleum Company from drilling in countries like Chad, as the New York Times reported earlier this week. As long as Chad’s government remains a global pariah, the Chinese will face little competition.
The situation means that CNPC, like Angola’s wartime diamond miners, has no incentive to work for peace. Quite the opposite. There is a tragic mismatch between the social imperative to end war and the business imperatives of incumbent firms to maintain their entry barriers. La Ferrara and Guidolin don’t have data about whether Angolan miners helped to prolong the conflict. But it appears it would have been in their shareholders’ interests to do so. The fear is that companies with a taste for operating in war zones, or collaborating with corrupt governments, may be willing to do what it takes to keep things as they are. Because that’s what’s good for profits.
This unproven but provocative and, alas, ‘logical’ hypothesis drawn by Fisman reverberates:
Continue reading An Angolan parallel in Iraq?
By zinya, on August 17th, 2007
Friday’s Wall Street Journal [sorry, can't link] reported on 34 foreclosures in New Orleans, foreclosures by subprime lending companies which, it turns out, were invested in by the hedge fund (Fortress), which in turn John Edwards has been invested in — and which has hired him as advisor — all fully disclosed, never hidden, but nevertheless subject to suspicion and attack by the likes of Ann Coulter [please tell me I don't need to link that].
In the immediate wake of this news, John Edwards made what is surely among the most timely [campaign-historically-speaking] of Presidential-nominee responses to personally-impacting revelations: he announced he would get rid of those assets. On the face of it, he’s thereby not only cutting his investment ties but, it would seem, “biting the hand that feeds him” [half a million in consulting fees from Fortress] so to speak, and for good cause. Be cynical if you like, but so it seems to me. Putting his considerable $$ where his mouth is. And, it would seem, suggesting that he can take a principled, moral stand against company practices even when he has a financial stake in them. He would seem to be doing in practice what Hillary recently (and rather jawdroppingly, disingenuously) stated in theory was her inability to be bought (in that case, in re lobbyists).
[Edwards' response, as a bit of an aside, leads to a question about all these guys (notably Romney, as I recall) who put their money in blind trusts even upon entering campaign -- which on the surface might seem laudable -- but doesn't such "blindness" serve also to spare them such moral decision-making dilemmas as Edwards faced here upon learning today that his own investment money was going toward lenders who were foreclosing on New Orleanians? Has this whole notion of 'blind trust' gone unexamined for its actual ramifications? And how many blind trustees have no clue anyway of what their funds might be invested in? Isn't one of the key upshots that they can claim innocence of any linkage and attempt to distance themselves from whatever scandal may arise? But in fact, isn't this a case where full disclosure itself would be the ideal? whereby candidates are tested on their mettle as Edwards was yesterday? Who else on this campaign trail, for example, is invested in these same subprime lenders but takes no stand and claims 'innocence' of any awareness of investment in same? Have we as voter-consumers really thought through the ramifications of this 'blind trust' business??]
Continue reading John Edwards, (his own) lenders, Lakoff, bumper stickers, & blind trust(s)
By Weldon Berger, on August 16th, 2007
Here’s a December 13, 2001, CNN headline: “Fierce Fighting Resumes in Tora Bora, Advances Made Quickly Against al Qaeda”. Here’s an August 16, 2007, Reuters headline: “Afghan and U.S. forces assault al Qaeda in Tora Bora”.
What’s wrong with this picture?
By Weldon Berger, on August 16th, 2007
Hardly a day goes by when we don’t hear that Iran is supplying sophisticated IEDs — improvised explosive devices — to Iraqi insurgents. No one doubts that the Iranian government is perfectly willing to do whatever they think will advance their interests, including arming and otherwise supporting their allies in Iraq, but the story has holes.
Most of the IEDs ascribed to Iran are deployed in areas controlled by their enemies, and while the primary targets are U.S. forces, many target Iraqi government forces as well, which is to say, Iran’s allies. That doesn’t make a great deal of sense in terms of Iranian self-interest. The ideal near term situation for Iran is probably one in which the Shiite-led Iraqi government consolidates power while insurgents continue to keep the U.S military, and U.S. officials, preoccupied to an extent that makes an attack on Iran even more stupid than it inherently is. Providing IEDs to Sunni and Baathist insurgents would do more harm than good, as would being definitively tied to attacks on U.S. troops.
More to the point, none of the sides in Iraq’s war need help from Iran on IEDs. Making the devices that U.S. officials insist must be coming from Iran requires a design, a machine shop and machinists, and some very widely available materials (copper, pvc piping, garage door openers, etc). All of these things, including the design expertise, can be found in Iraq. Why? Because the oil industry is a large, long-time consumer of shaped charges similar to those now being used as roadside bombs in Iraq.
Continue reading Iraqis don’t need IEDs from Iran, but Bush and Cheney do
By Weldon Berger, on August 13th, 2007
U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice appears to have reverted to her Cold War roots with her announcement last month, in tandem with fellow cold warrior and US defense secretary Robert Gates, that the US intends to sell some $20 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United . . . → Read More: Feeding the beast: US, UK flood the Middle East with arms
By zinya, on August 13th, 2007
I’m not quite sure what all to make of it [though i'm about to make a lot of it anyway], and maybe I’m the only one only now belatedly seeing this, but I just google-stumbled [googlumbled?] on a nationwide survey on childrearing practices taken in August 2005, where 600 adults (18 and over, half male, half female) in each of the 50 states (i.e., a total of 30,000 adults) were phoned, random sampling, by SurveyUSA of Verona NJ with the following 3 questions:
1. Do you think it is OK to wash a child’s mouth out with soap?
2. Do you think it is OK to spank a child?
3. Do you think it is OK for a school teacher to spank a student?
If this survey made the news back in 2005, I’ve forgotten, but you’d think it’s just the kind of thing that would garner a blip on the screen on CNN or Fox (unless – hm – what was Paris Hilton up to that day?). Since SurveyUSA uses media anchorpeople to pose their questions, one would think the results must have gotten at least televised airplay.*
What really caught my attention, given that they coded each state as “red state” or “blue state” on the 2004 Presidential results, was this surely-too-divisive-to-be-coincidental finding:
On question #3, with the highest statewide “Yes” response being 53% (Arkansas) and the lowest “Yes” response being 8% (New Hampshire), and the weighted average (factoring in population) for all 50 states was 23% saying “Yes,” here is the kicker:
When you rank the states by response to question #3, every single one of the “top” 25 states — half the nation — saying “Yes” to this question was a “red state.” Every one.
Continue reading Childrearing & Politics: Red State, Blue State, Purple Butts
By Montfort, on August 13th, 2007
Quiz: How many people have been killed and wounded in Iraq since Hillary Clinton said that an immediate full-scale withdrawal would be a “big mistake”?
Answer: She said that on Nov. 22, 2005. Not really that long ago, but since then 1,600 American soldiers have been killed and 11,000 wounded, and about 32,000 Iraqi civilians and security forces have been killed and untold numbers wounded. The numbers of dead and wounded are graphic illustrations of just how badly the situation there has deteriorated in the 20 months since that pronouncement.
Hillary Clinton wants to end the war and bring the troops home from Iraq. Last month she told Iowans that she wants to start “ending this war — not next year, not next month, but today,” and she told a labor gathering in June, “We need to bring our combat troops home from Iraq, starting right now.”
But – and this is a big fat but – she also wants to keep some there. Not permanently; just, you know, to train Iraqis on how to be non-partisan security forces rather than promoters of sectarian murder; to keep an eye on the Kurds so they don’t get any ideas about independence, which Turkey wouldn’t appreciate; to prevent Iran from making Iraq into a client state; and to pursue terrorists (that would be the ones we created).
Continue reading Democratic candidates’ plan to end the war is a plan for failure
By Montfort, on August 10th, 2007
Conservatives are already giving up the good fight. They’re going to have to do what liberals have been doing for decades now: vote for the least of the evils. A column in today’s Los Angeles Times lays it all out:
Sen. Clinton is rapidly becoming not merely acceptable to many right-wingers but possibly even their candidate of choice.
Holy mackerel! That’s none other than Bruce Bartlett talking there. Now Bruce has got some seriously impeccable credentials of the conservative kind: supply-sider (he even wrote a book called Reaganomics:Supply-Side Economics in Action, currently ranked #1,101,268 on Amazon), adviser to St. Ronald, Poppa Bush treasury guy, once employed by now-Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Continue reading And the vast right-wing conspiracy casts its vote for…Hillary!
By Montfort, on August 8th, 2007
It’s not just Iraqis, or even Muslims. Christian militarism has been getting along just fine for centuries now, even turning on each other when there was no non-Christian enemy to bring to Jesus at the point of a sword. When it comes to war, Christian militarists – I also like the term Christian fascists, and just invented (I think) Xianmilitarists © – can quote Jesus as readily as Islamists can quote Mohammed.
I have come to cast fire upon the earth…
…I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
…whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one.”
The ellipses show there’s context that Xianmilitarists prefer to elide. Context goes by the board, too, when they sing (disclaimer: I used to sing this, too – one of my faves):
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!
And lest we forget:
II Timothy 2:3: “Thou shalt endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”
Clearly, this kind of Christian follows in a time-honored tradition of belief in which “turn the other cheek” gets only lip service. Thus you get generals like Jerry Boykin. He rose to be Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, but is best known for what he said in reply to a Somali warlord he was trying to hunt down, who had claimed Allah would protect him.
Well, you know what? I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”
Sounds to me like Boykin and the warlord deserve each other. Continue reading Onward Christian soldiers!
By Weldon Berger, on August 8th, 2007
What could possibly go wrong with a scheme to introduce tens of thousands of young, stressed out soldiers fighting a guerrilla war in a Muslim country to a particularly bloody-minded brand of aggressively evangelical apocalyptic Christianity? As Max Blumenthal reports in The Nation, the Pentagon is on a quest — one might say a crusade — to find out.
As an official arm of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program, [Operation Straight Up] plans to mail copies of the controversial apocalyptic video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces to soldiers serving in Iraq. OSU is also scheduled to embark on a “Military Crusade in Iraq” in the near future. “We feel the forces of heaven have encouraged us to perform multiple crusades that will sweep through this war torn region,” OSU declares on its website about its planned trip to Iraq. “We’ll hold the only religious crusade of its size in the dangerous land of Iraq.”
Well, it’s just a harmless video game and a traveling ministry, right? A bit of entertainment and spiritual solace?
Continue reading Pentagon promotes militant Christianity to US troops in Iraq
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Word of the Decade Ignoranus: An ignorant asshole.
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An Angolan parallel in Iraq?
A recent article in slate by Columbia economics professor Ray Fisman, drawing on a forthcoming paper in American Economic Review ["Diamonds Are Forever, Wars Are Not. Is Conflict Bad for Private Firms?"] by fellow economists Massimo Guidolin and Eliana La Ferrara, takes the answer to their question [i.e., no, not necessarily, and sometimes it is quite good for them] as a given and — in describing the relationship between the end of Angola’s civil war (1975-2002) and the fate of its diamond industry [no. 2 export after petroleum] — pushes the question one step further: “Why was war good for Angola’s big miners?” * The article’s concluding graphs are:
This unproven but provocative and, alas, ‘logical’ hypothesis drawn by Fisman reverberates:
Continue reading An Angolan parallel in Iraq?