Very Timely
November 20th, 2009
From today’s Times:
Eleven ships and 262 crew members are believed to be detained by pirates right now.
That’s a lot of people. Blackbeard lives.
Archive
Archive for the ‘In the News’ Category
Disturbing new Somali piracy trend
November 2nd, 2009
I’m sure some of you have seen the news about the British couple that was taken hostage by Somali pirates in the Indian ocean. They were on their private yacht when they were taken. This presents some diffierences than if they were traveling on a commercial vessel. In those cases the company has an interest in having their people released and will often pay a ransom to make that happen. Because these are just two private people on their own boat they don’t have that going for them, and foreign governments are very reluctant to pay ransoms or give in to the demands of criminals and terrorists (at least publicy).
Further bad news has come in the form of the pirate demands, about which there have been conflicting reports. The NY Times reported yesterday that the pirates are demanding the release of their confederates being held by various governments. If true that will really complicate any potential release.
We can discuss in greater detail at the Junta, but the captives would be in much better shape if the pirates were only interested in money. It also sounds like there is some feuding among the pirates and what to do with the couple. The UK Mirror is reporting today that the pirates may substatially lower their ransom demands.
Iran vs Saudi Arabia
October 19th, 2009
China Economic Review highlights this WSJ story on American diplomatic efforts to get the Chinese to buy more oil from Saudi Arabia. The idea is that if China buys less oil from Iran, they will be more inclined to support the sanctions the Americans are proposing.
What about a converse situation? Instead of pressuring the Chinese to abandon their Iranian contracts, we could be lifting sanctions and doing more business with Iran. Didn’t someone once say that if goods don’t cross borders, armies will? We should be increasing ties to the Iranians – including business, academic and cultural connections – so as to decrease animosity.
Some will say that this would “reward” the Iranians for “bad behavior.” Nonsense. What have sanctions brought us, except more hostility? Even the Iranian protesters who were out on the streets demonstrating against Ahmedinejad do not favor sanctions against the regime they have far more reason to despise than we do.
If we really care about the brave Iranian souls who were out fighting for democracy this summer, we should reject sanctions and work toward the normalization of relations, which means doing business together.
Afghanistan
October 19th, 2009
Thinking a lot this weekend about Afghanistan. I just finished Dexter Filkin’s excellent book, “The Forever War“, and read the piece Filkin’s also had in this weekend’s NY Times Magazine on General Stanley McChrystal, who is in charge of the war in Afghanistan. He is requesting at least another 40,000 troops to win the war in Afghanistan. I have a hard time thinking about any compromise with the Taliban that puts them in charge and abandons the Afghan people to their brutal, primitive rule. But the US has been there for over 8 years now, and I doubt that we can (or should) build a modern state there, in particular with the corrupt Karzai government stealing elections and trafficking in narcotics. Obama has a tough call on his hands, but I think I’m against sending a large number of troops. I think the fight is in Pakistan and dealing with that country’s disfunction. I still feel that way, but reading Part I in journalist David Rhode’s kidnapping saga, I was struck by this section:
Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of “Al Qaeda lite,” a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.
Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.
I’m not so sure we can strike a balance in trying to limit an extremist sanctuary and not have a huge number of troops there. Either way we are confronted by a series of bad decisions, it’s just a question of which one is worse.
Rolling Back Anti-Pot Laws
October 19th, 2009
Obama’s DOJ just made it official: they will not go after people using medical marijuana under the protection of state law.
Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws.
The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.
Of course this provides no relief for our friend Dave, who is still caught up in the dragnet. But it is progress for legalization advocates, even if this sort of policy can just as quickly be rescinded by the next administration. If pot activists use the next few years to pass more state laws and open more dispensaries, however, it will be harder in the future to re-introduce full prohibition.
From Kyoto to Copenhagen
October 13th, 2009
I attended this conference this past weekend in Copenhagen put on by my ex-employer, Project Syndicate. Firstly, it was really great on a personal level to catch up with old colleagues and see how the association has continued to grow. When I left in early 2007 it was around 300 newspapers in around 100 countries; it is now 429 in 129. All of this goes back to 1998 when I joined up with them and it was roughly 20 in 12 countries, so pretty great to revisit that growth.
The conference itself was attended by some major figures like Kofi Annan, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Kenneth Rogoff, and George Soros, to name a few. The focus of the conference was on climate change, and speaking of Soros, perhaps the biggest news of the conference was when Soros announced at the Saturday dinner at the Copenhagen town hall that he will invest $1 billion in clean-energy technology and donate $100 million to an environmental advisory group to aid policymakers.
For me, one of the most interesting conversations was one I had with an editor from Israel, a former editor of the left-leaning newspaper Ha’aretz. He told me that while he is deeply cynical about the possiblity of a real peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, there is a lot of good happening right now. The lull in violence has created a space for the West Bank to prosper and he claims (haven’t checked on this) that the number of checkpoints in the West Bank are very few. Meanwhile, the economy in the West Bank has flourished and Israel has had a break from attacks from the West Bank. In fact, I was told that the security forces in the West Bank are hunting terrorists, and are very effective at that. Meanwhile, Gaza festers and fundamentalism is on the rise there. But generally, things could be a lot worse. Here is a good column reflecting on what’s going on with the Palestinians.
Uighurs
July 7th, 2009
Good Junta last night, I’ll leave it to Rindy to post some of the highlights, but for me that was what the Junta was all about: a bunch of dudes sitting around drinking and having good, engaged conversation about real topics.
Relevant to last night, and other Junta topics, is the continued rioting in Xinjiang. I’ve enjoyed reading about how the tone-deaf Chinese government tried to set up a PR tour through Urumqi. Apparently they didn’t learn anything from when they tried to usher journalists around Tibet when there was rioting there. Hahaha, I like the opening paragraph from the Gawker story below about this:
http://gawker.com/5309212/china-learns-the-yin-and-yang-of-pr
Anyway, I am following this story with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I love seeing the Chinese government, and generally the Han Chinese, getting their comeuppance. What they are doing in Xinjiang, just as in Tibet, is cultural genocide. The government provides incentives for Han Chinese to move to these frontier states, which have historically been independent as much as they have been a part of China, overtly favors the Han with jobs at the cost of the locals, and doesn’t provide anywhere near the proper safeguards to protect local culture. The clear goal is to change the fundamental character of these places. This is just a more patient, and very Chinese, form of ethnic cleansing and I really feel sympathy for the Uighurs and the Tibetans.
On the other hand, China is not Serbia or Kosovo. It is the only major economy that is growing and it’s stability and continued growth is absolutely essential to any sort of incipient recovery to the global economy.
So, I’m hoping that the rioters get their message out, possibly affect a change of policy, and that China loses huge face. But I also hope that it doesn’t get too bad. Maybe that can work out?
Democracy
July 1st, 2009
Just wanted to post something brief ahead of the next Junta. Like all of you I’m sure I’ve been following the events in Iran closely. I keep hearing the words Velvet Revolution thrown out in terms of the Iranian government’s fears that they will be pushed aside in a wave of liberal protests. But I wonder when a revolution loses its “velvet” character? Some might say that as long as it is a popular uprising and not an insurgent-led effort to topple a government, if the crowd has broadly humanist, universal values at the center of its demands than it can be called that. But does one death change that velvet tag? 10 deaths? 100? I had a hard time squaring the term Velvet Revolution with what was going in Iran after I saw the image of Neda dying on screen from a sniper bullet to the heart. The Czech’s revolution may have had a bit of violence in the early stages as protesters confronted security forces, but the state largerly crumbled as resolute protesters stood their ground. Not so in Iran which has showed a Chinese-like willingness to attack it’s own people. For those of you who haven’t seen the video, here it is:
http://www.inquisitr.com/26835/video-neda-iran-one-life-lost-for-a-greater-cause/
I hope Roger Cohen wins a Pulitzer for his reporting out of Tehran, which has been essential, here is a particularly good piece, which references the Velvet Revolution:
The next Junta will be timely with all this in mind. I keep thinking about how the Chinese are reacting to these events, apparently (no surprise) very cautiously, with chary coverage in the Chinese press. In recent years visiting places like Singapore versus the Philippines, watching elections in the Middle East that produce governments led by hateful Islamists, and generally feeling frustrated with the class of politicians (see Governor Sanford for the latest) that we have leading us, I have felt interested in societies like Singapore and China that function with general freedom but limited public space for political expression. I don’t want to live there, but am fascinated by their success and the bargains that are made between people and government (prosperity in exchange for giving up political participation). But the events in Iran remind us that these things can be overturned quickly and people do not want to be kept in a box. And if democracy has taken some lumps with the rise of China, the snail’s pace of reform in Europe, and the 2000 election in the US, we now have a president in the US that we can be proud of, one who got it totally right when he quoted Martin Luther King to describe how the unrest in Iran has an uncertain outcome but that ” the moral arch of the universe is long but it bends towards justice”.
Blaming the Jews
June 29th, 2009
From the July Harper’s:
Chance that an American thinks “the Jews” were moderately or very much to blame for the financial crisis: 1 in 4
Chance he or she thinks they were “a little” to blame: 1 in 7
I thought this was interesting in light of our recent Junta on discrimination.
Waiting for What We Want
May 14th, 2009
Great article in this week’s New Yorker about the science and psychology behind delayed gratification (something we in this country have not cherished in a generation or two).
Scientist gives a 4-yr-old kid 2 choices – eat this marshmallow right now, or wait while I run out for an errand, and when I come back, you can have 2 marshmallows. If while you’re waiting you decide you want to just eat the one, ring this bell and I’ll come back and you can eat the marshmallow.
Average waiting time was about 2.5 minutes. Something like 70% of kids can’t wait 15 minutes even though 100% of them want 2 marshmallows instead of one.
The best part: 20 years later, the kids who waited it out for the bigger reward all had higher SATs, higher salaries, more money saved, higher levels of happiness, lower levels of drug/vandalism crime etc etc etc…
Bonus: what is the trick? Not innate personality. Kids who could wait used tactics to distract themselves from the marshmallow so they wouldn’t give in. In a subsequent experiment, they taught kids these tactics (sing a song, cover their eyes, whatevs). All of the sudden, a kid who couldn’t wait one minute before could now wait 18 minutes and get his dos marshmallows…