by John Q on August 21, 2004
General elections are probably[1] imminent in Australia. Both the campaign and the outcome will be tied more closely to events in the United States than is usual, for two reasons. First, the current Australian government has been easily the most reliable supporter of the Bush Administration anywhere in the developed world (and probably anywhere in the world), even if no-one much outside Australia has noticed. It’s one of the few governments not to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and John Howard was the first to answer Bush and Blair in the call for troops in Iraq. With election campaigns likely to run in parallel, what’s good (bad) for Bush is good (bad) for Howard, and, to a much lesser extent, vice versa. If Howard waits until November and Bush loses, his whole foreign policy will lose its rationale. If Howard were to lose office in October, the parallel with Spain would be obvious, and damaging for Bush, though no doubt it would be no more than one day’s bad headlines.
The other potentially big issue involving the US is the so-called Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the US.
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by John Q on August 20, 2004
Now that Brian has started the hare running on gender-neutral pronouns, I thought I’d weigh in on the old chestnut “When did the 21st century start?” (I saw this raised in a recent comments thread, but can’t locate it now). The commonsense view is that it began on 1 January 2000, and I think the commonsense view is right. Against this we get a bunch of pedants arguing, that, since there was no year zero, the 1st century (of the current era) began in 1CE, and therefore included 100CE. Granting this, the 21st century began on 1 January 2001.
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by John Q on August 19, 2004
The meeting of the Iraqi National Conference has wound up in Baghdad, leaving, from the limited reports available, a very mixed record. Given the series of disasters we’ve seen in the last eighteen months or so, a mixed record is certainly better than the par outcome of total failure.
It was certainly good that the gathering was held at all, and appears to have encompassed a much broader and more representative sample of Iraqi opinion than anything of the kind held since the overthrow of Saddam (or, of course, while Saddam and his Baathist predecessors were in power). This report on the televised proceedings,at Healing Iraq gives an idea of what it was like.
On the other hand, the supposed purpose of the Conference, to elect an advisory council of 100 members to oversee the Allawi government, degenerated into farce. It appears that the Conference was presented with a slate of 81 members agreed by the big parties and a US-imposed decision that 19 members of the old IGC (originally 20, but Chalabhi was excluded after falling from grace). In the absence of any alternative, this slate was accepted by default.
But the biggest success (still not a sure thing, but promising) was the intervention of the Conference in the Najaf crisis, demanding that the assault by the US and the interim government cease and that Sadr withdraw from Najaf, disband his militia and enter the political process. Clearly, if it were not for the Conference, there would have been little chance of a peaceful outcome here, and the potential consequences were disastrous. Sadr has stated acceptance of the Conference’s demands, though it remains to be seen what that means.
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by Chris Bertram on August 16, 2004
My post the other day about the Allawi government’s attack on press freedom attracted criticism from some pro-war bloggers. “From Stephen Farrell’s report in today’s London Times”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1217933,00.html :
bq. “YOU’VE got two hours to leave or we are going to open fire at you. It’s just our orders,” said a policeman guarding the headquarters of the Najaf Governor, Adnan al-Zurfi, when myself and other journalists arrived at his office yesterday.
bq. (…)
bq. Police threatened to arrest or shoot journalists if they did not leave the city and shots were fired into the hotel housing Western and Arab reporters, which lies within a government-controlled area. The threat came even as Mr Allawi spoke at the country’s long-awaited National Conference in Baghdad, calling it “the first step on the way to democracy”.
by Daniel on August 12, 2004
What the bloody hell is this all on about??? My Spanish is a bit ropey, but I have at least established to my own satisfaction that vheadline.com is correctly reporting a Venezuelan national press story, and VENPRES was reporting a story which El Mundo of Madrid did in fact carry (but isn’t available without paying). In this story, El Mundo is apparently reporting (and, btw, I’ve usually found the Spanish press pretty reliable on the few occasions I’ve had to rely on them) … the following assertions:
Update: thank heaven somebody bothered to check this one out
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by Chris Bertram on August 11, 2004
“A very odd column by Christopher Hitchens”:http://slate.msn.com/id/2105032/fr/rss/ about Ahmed Chalabi, the CIA, and so forth. It finishes by hinting at a more critical position toward the Allawi government than some of Hitchens’s admirers have hitherto managed:
bq. As I write, the Allawi government in Baghdad is trying, with American support, a version of an “iron fist” policy in the Shiite cities of the south. (“Like all weak governments,” as Disraeli once said in another connection, “it resorts to strong measures.”) Chalabi, who has spent much of this year in Najaf, thinks that this is extremely unwise. We shall be testing all these propositions, and more, as the months go by.
by Henry Farrell on August 10, 2004
Both “Dan”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002305.html and “Matt Yglesias”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_08/004483.php provide us with empirical evidence that the number of insurgents in Iraq is snowballing. It’s a far cry from the ridiculous predictions of “Andrew Sullivan”:http://www.andrewsullivan.com/main_article.php?artnum=20030906 and “Glenn Reynolds”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/010642.php that jihadists from across the Arab world would get sucked into Iraq, leaving the US safer. Indeed, if the “Brookings people”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/opinion/10ohanlon.html?ex=1249876800&en=b821751f89ac4b78&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland are right, the number of foreign insurgents has grown only slightly since December, while the number of domestic insurgents has grown fourfold. Flypaper, my ass. This whole nonsensical theory was never more than _ex post_ wishful thinking masquerading as foreign policy analysis – as I “argued”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000463.html last year, it seemed to be based on the fallacious notion that there was a limited “lump of terrorism” floating around in the international system that could be absorbed by a conflict in Iraq. Instead, entirely predictably, we’re seeing what seems to be an enormous increase in recruitment to anti-American forces – an eightfold increase over the last fifteen months. The dynamic effects are swamping the constant ones. I don’t see how this can be anything but bad news.
Update: I’d forgotten that “Ted too”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000517.html posted on this eleven months ago.
bq. I’m going to make a prediction that I feel pretty good about: a year from now, no one will be very proud of the flypaper theory.
And I reckon that Robert Schwartz owes him $100 …
by Chris Bertram on August 9, 2004
I assume that everyone reads “Juan Cole”:http://www.juancole.com/ , but if not, they should. Belle linked the other day to his coverage of the burned double agent story. But, of course, he is best know for his continuing coverage of Iraq. One popular narrative has the current Iraqi government as the harbingers of peace and democracy, impeded in their efforts by ex-Baathists, Al Qaida, the Mehdi Army, the Iranians, etc, and therefore fully justified in using all the force at their disposal to establish order. If I read Cole correctly there is another, competing story, the credibility of which is bolstered by the arrest warrants against the Chalabis (including the one in charge of Saddam’s trial). Namely that Allawi and his allies are using their position, and their access to US and allied firepower, to crush their competitors for political power. The distinction between these narratives is somewhat blurred, of course, by the fact that the current objects of repressive or judicial action are or include very many people who are indeed rogues, gangsters, fanatics, etc. Still, I wouldn’t bet my house on the first version, in which Allawi and co will turn out to have been the good guys, there will be genuinely competitive elections, the righteous will flourish and the unjust will be punished, and so on.
by Chris Bertram on August 8, 2004
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” So said George Orwell, in a quote adopted by British blog “Harry’s Place”:http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/ . It is a quote worth recalling in “the light of the decision of the Iraqi government”:http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9C888134-9481-485A-A675-DD3C50DA224D.htm “to close”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3545514.stm down “Al Jazeera’s”:http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage Baghdad offices for a month. The new “Iraqi foreign minister justified the closure”:http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A3BF4F15-97CC-4B0B-BAFE-55A1CB3D859F.htm in these terms:
bq. Hoshyar Zibari accused Aljazeera, along with other Arabic language satellite channels, of “incitement” and hiding behind media freedoms.
bq. Zibari said the channel’s coverage of Iraq was “one-sided” and “distorted”.
bq. He made the comments in an interview with an Aljazeera correspondent during an offcial visit to Moscow on Sunday.
bq. “They [Aljazeera and other Arabic channels] have all become incitement channels which are against the interests of security, the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people,” Zibari said.
bq. He added “the new Iraqi government will not tolerate these kinds of intentional breaches and violations”.
Looks like the new Iraqi government doesn’t think people should have the right to tell them what they don’t want to hear.
UPDATE: “This piece”:http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=549052 on Al-Jazeera by David Usborne in the Independent is worth reading.
by Chris Bertram on August 2, 2004
There’s “an article in today’s Guardian by John Laughland”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1273982,00.html , warning us that the Tony Blair’s humanitarian concern about Darfur is just a cloak to mask his desire to launch another oil-resource grabbing war. Of course, the facts should speak for themselves, but I’m not above a bit of _ad hominem_ , especially when it comes to wondering where the Guardian gets its op-ed contributors from these days. Thanks to Google, it is possible to read “an earlier Guardian article denouncing the Spectator as bonkers”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,711616,00.html , partly on the grounds of a John Laughland interview with Jean-Marie Le Pen, that same, “highly sympathetic interview”:http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/laughland1.html , a “review by the Virtual Stoa’s Chris Brooke of a book by Laughland”:http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/show_article.php?aid=134 (“read the whole thing”), and Laughland’s views on “Zimbabwe”:http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/3-18-2002-14883.asp , “Slobodan Milosevic”:http://www.icdsm.org/more/Laughland1007.htm (one representative piece, google for more if you like), “John Kerry”:http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,9328751,00.html (more of a warmonger than Bush), “Blair and the Euro”:http://www.antiwar.com/orig/laughland16.html , and “Cyprus”:http://www.bhhrg.org/pressDetails.asp?ArticleID=13 . Readers may find that Laughland’s views on this issue or that coincide with their own, but, taken in the round, a certain picture emerges. (UPDATE: “This Laughland article”:http://www.bhhrg.org/pressDetails.asp?ArticleID=19 , about recent events in Georgia, is a particularly fine example of his work. Scroll down for his speculations about why Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić remain at liberty!)
by John Q on July 23, 2004
Reading the discussion of earlier posts about the efficient markets hypothesis, it seems that the significance of the issue is still under-appreciated. In this post, Daniel pointed out the importance of EMH as a source of pressure on less-developed countries to liberalise capital flows, which contributed to a series of crises from the mid-1990s onwards, with huge human costs. This is also an issue for developed countries, as I’ll observe, though the consequences are nowhere near as severe. The discussion also raised the California energy farce, which, as I’ll argue is also largely attributable to excessive faith in EMH. Finally, and coming a bit closer to the stock market, I’ll look at the equity premium puzzle and its implications for the mixed economy.
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by John Q on July 22, 2004
As far as I can see, the Right seems to be winning the scandal wars just at the moment. I didn’t follow the Plame-Wilson scandal the first time around, so I can’t really tell how damaging or otherwise the latest claims from US and British intelligence may be to Wilson’s credibility. Similarly, although it seems clear that Sandy Berger has made a fool of himself , I have no idea what this means for anything that might possibly matter. Finally, it appears that last Thanksgiving in Iraq, Bush posed not with a fake turkey, but with a display turkey, never intended for carving but to adorn the buffet line. I’m glad that’s been cleared up.
All this confirms me in the view that the kind of “smoking gun” or “what did X know and when did s/he know it” scandal that has dominated politics since Watergate is a waste of everybody’s time. The real scandals are those that are, for the most part, on the public record.
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by John Q on July 20, 2004
In the most recent London Review of Books, Hugh Pennington has a generally excellent article on measles and erroneous (to put it charitably) research linking the combined MMR vaccine to autism. It’s a pity therefore that, on a peripheral issue, he perpetuates an equally glaring error, saying
‘Most people have an intuitive appreciation that the best vaccine programme, from an individual’s point of view, is one where almost everyone else is vaccinated while they are not, so that they are indirectly protected without incurring any of the risks or inconvenience associated with direct protection.’ If too many people act in this way, the infection becomes commoner in the population as a whole, and returns as a real and significant threat to the unimmunised. This is a modern version of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ described by Garrett Hardin in his influential 1968 essay: 16th-century English peasants had free grazing on commons; their need to supplement food supplies and income was very great; the resulting overgrazing wrecked the commons for everyone.
As
I’ve pointed out previously Hardin’s story was, in historical terms, a load of tripe.
It’s interesting to note that, in repeating Hardin’s story, Pennington adds the spurious specificity of “16th century England”, whereas Hardin’s account was not specific regarding dates and places, and therefore harder to refute. This is characteristic of the way in which factoids are propagated.
by Daniel on July 20, 2004
Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow will all shortly be going on trial for their liberty over the Enron bankruptcy fiasco. I have to say that it seems to me that it would be a little bit unfair if any of them were to go to jail in the current political climate.
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by John Q on July 19, 2004
There’s a cottage industry within economics involving the production of historical arguments giving rational[1] explanations of seemingly irrational historical episodes, of which the most famous is probably the Dutch tulip boom/mania. This Slate article refers to the most recent example, a complex argument regarding changes in contract rules which seems plausible, but directly contradicts other explanations I’ve seen.
Once opened, questions like this are rarely closed. Still, articles of this kind seem a lot less interesting in 2004 than they did in, say, 1994. In 1994, the efficient markets hypothesis (the belief that asset markets invariably produce the best possible estimate of asset value based on all available information) was an open question, and the standard account of the Dutch tulip mania was evidence against it. In 2004, the falsity of the efficient markets hypothesis is clear to anyone open to being convinced by empirical evidence.
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