Tag Archives: Not Europe

Oh What A Tangled Web!

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Whilst noting that the EU Commission is trying to gently nudge Turkey on the criminalisation of adultery issue – European Commission spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori told a Brussels news conference that the proposed law “could trigger confusion and damage the perception in the European Union of Turkey’s reform efforts” – this post is not an attempt to re-open the useful and interesting exchange of views that took place around a previous post.

What I would like to do today is focus on another dimension of the same problem – the Turkish state’s relations with its own Kurdish minority – and how this relationship could become increasingly complicated depending on how the internal stability of Iraq evolves.
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09/11 Three Years On

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Homilies are not my strong point, so I will be brief.

Today is the third anniversary of a sequence of events which changed the course of contemporary world history, and lead to the loss of several thousand vibrant and innocent lives: we will remember them.

Those who died amidst the gnarled and twisted wreckage which remained following the devastation also left behind families, loved ones and friends whose lives have been equally gnarled and torn: we will remember them.

And as we look at the continuing destruction and horror which follows in the wake – whether this be in Madrid, Beslan or Jakarta: we will remember them.

“Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”
Laurence Binyon

Privatisation Run Riot

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I am normally a pretty staunch supporter of privatisation. I just provide the double pronged caveat: where it is well thought out, and where it makes sense. Juan Cole has a contract tender specification posted which for me defies all reasonable explanation. It is for a private contract force to protect the Green Zone, the headquarters of the American administration of Iraq in Baghdad. This seems beyond comprehension in its absurdity, but I am sure someone out there will be only too willing to try and put me straight.

The threats that the private security force will be asked to meet provide a summary of the dangers facing U.S. and coalition personnel 10 months after President Bush declared the main fighting over. The contractor, according to the bid proposal, must be prepared to deal with vehicles containing explosive devices, the improvised explosives planted on roads, “direct fire and ground assaults by upwards of 12 personnel with military rifles, machine guns and RPG [rocket-propelled grenade], indirect fire by mortars and rockets, individual suicide bombers, and employment of other weapons of mass destruction . . . in an unconventional warfare setting.” To meet that challenge, the bidders’ personnel must have prior military experience, and those involved directly in force protection must have “operated in U.S., North Atlantic Treaty Organization or other military organizations compatible with NATO standards.” ‘

Weber & Nader

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An unusual combination, but a persuasive argument. Over at Daily Kos.

Given that I was asked about Nader on German radio yesterday, it’s worth a look at this left-of-the-aisle site to see why he won’t have an impact on this year’s presidential election in the US. If Europe has to put up with a second Bush term, it won’t be Nader’s doing.

Where the River Bends

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I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the female Iraqui blogger River Bend, but my feeling is that those of you who aren’t would do well to make her acquaintance. Juan Cole describes her in his blogroll as an Iraqi nationalist, but reading the posts she doesn’t seem to be a nationalist in any stronger sense than say Blair and Bush are patriotic, or than Schroeder and Chirac are in the defence of their respective corners (of course this may well be problematic, but it is just to put things in perspective). Iraqi nationalism could also mean Baath, and this isn’t the case here. Indeed what she has to say about the Kurdish question is remarkably similar to what the Spanish PSOE seems to be proposing in connection with the Basque and Catalan ‘problems’ here in Spain. And this is not an idle comparison, since I think if you don’t get your mindset round what the ‘problem’ is in Spain, you are never going to begin to understand what it is in Iraq.

Reading one of her posts earlier this week, I couldn’t help been drawn towards an unfortunate parrallel: that between what is now taking place in Iraq and the topic of one of Scott Marten’s recent posts: the headscarf. Wouldn’t it indeed be ironic if we were about to witness a similar – if diametrically opposed error – being committed in two places at once? Whilst young French girls may be denied the right to religious expression at one end, young Iraqi ones may be denied the right to secularism. at the other And all in the name of democracy. Strange world.
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I just chided the others for making too many non-euro posts but whatever

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I want to make sure Edward doesn’t miss this.

Josh Marshall quotes from a Fortune interview with Peter Drucker:

“FORTUNE: You sound fairly sanguine about the state of the U.S. economy. Do you see any danger signs?
DRUCKER: Oh, yes. The biggest problem I see is our total dependence on foreign money to cover our government debt. Never before has a major debtor country owed its debt in its own currency. It is unprecedented in economic history. Japan, by contrast, owes all its foreign debt in dollars. Now if you devalue the dollar, the Japanese economy benefits, because their imports become much cheaper. And the value of their debt goes down also. The individual Japanese companies that invest in dollars would lose, but the overall Japanese economy gains. But we have no experience about what will happen here when we owe so much debt in our own currency and we’re forced to devalue the dollar. Sooner or later, we’re going to find out.

What’s more, there is an enormous amount of surplus capital in the world for which there is no productive investment. The supply greatly exceeds the demand. So there is a very jittery body of excess money that is desperately in need of returns, and it could become panic-prone. We have no economic theory or model for this.

FORTUNE: Does the U.S. still set the tone for the world economy?

DRUCKER: The dominance of the U.S. is already over. What is emerging is a world economy of blocs represented by NAFTA, the European Union, ASEAN. There’s no one center in this world economy. India is becoming a powerhouse very fast. The medical school in New Delhi is now perhaps the best in the world. And the technical graduates of the Institute of Technology in Bangalore are as good as any in the world. Also, India has 150 million people for whom English is their main language. So India is indeed becoming a knowledge center.

In contrast, the greatest weakness of China is its incredibly small proportion of educated people. China has only 1.5 million college students, out of a total population of over 1.3 billion. If they had the American proportion, they’d have 12 million or more in college. Those who are educated are well trained, but there are so few of them. And then there is the enormous undeveloped hinterland with excess rural population. Yes, that means there is enormous manufacturing potential. In China, however, the likelihood of the absorption of rural workers into the cities without upheaval seems very dubious. You don’t have that problem in India because they have already done an amazing job of absorbing excess rural population into the cities–its rural population has gone from 90% to 54% without any upheaval.

Everybody says China has 8% growth and India only 3%, but that is a total misconception. We don’t really know. I think India’s progress is far more impressive than China’s.”

Drucker makes two very interesting points that I haven’t seen disussed anywhere else

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