1. In response to Gregor’s surprise over my lack of mention of the Dubai assassination – don’t think it’s important or that anything substantial will come out of it. Britain may make a media ruckus over the faking of their citizens’ passports, but in the end analysis, the UK is closely aligned with the US, and Israel is America’s bridgehead in the oil-rich Middle East. Nothing will change. Israel will be publicly rebuked and the whole affair quietly swept under the carpet.
It should be noted that political assassinations aren’t that rare. Apart from Mossad’s well-known activities, there immediately comes to mind 1) Iran’s large-scale campaign of assassinations in the 1980′s-90′s of emigre dissidents / separatists, 2) Russia’s war against the Chechen separatists (e.g. Yanderbiyev, killed in Dubai, 2004 by GRU operatives), and 3) the US war on terror, in which members of terrorist organizations vanish into “black holes” not to reemerge. No doubt many other, more circumspect nations can be added to this list.
The problem with assassination as a political or military tool is that it is rarely effective. Few organizations are so dominated by a single charismatic leader that his decapitation would deal it an irreperable blow. In practice, most successful organizations – be they political, military, terrorist, criminal, etc – have highly dispersed power structures, with strong horizontal layers ready to slide in to fill the gap should any single vertical be destroyed. This is particularly the case for clandestine groups, since some of their operatives are expected to get detected and killed.
In the media age, assassination has in many cases become decidedly counterproductive. Typically, the minimal gains in direct damage to the enemy are massively outbalanced by negative press coverage, diplomatic blowback, the uncovering of useful intelligence assets, etc. The only real benefit, such as it is, may be emotional. This is almost certainly the case here.
2. Speaking of terrorists, Osama bin Laden calls for an “economic jihad” versus the United States – on the basis that it is a major CO2 polluter! He goes on to say, “Talk of climate change isn’t extravagant speculation: it is a tangible fact which is not diminished by its being muddled by some greedy heads of major corporations. The effects of global warming have spread to all continents of the world”. The solution? Though the first and most important thing is of course to “dedicate worship to God and ask for forgiveness”, nonetheless being “economical in all of our affairs” and striving to “avoid luxury and wastefulness, especially in food, drink, clothing, housing and energy” is also very important.
Now Osama and S/O don’t normally see eye to eye, but in this case he does have a point. The threats posed by climate change are orders of magnitude bigger than the sum of all terrorism. However, Osama’s specific anti-US slant is unhelpful (“we should refuse to do business with the dollar and get rid of it as soon as possible”, since this is “an important way to liberate humanity from enslavement and servitude to America and its corporations”). In reality, in the post-Bush era, it is China that is now the biggest obstructionist to global commitments on CO2 emissions cuts. If he was really serious about curbing climate change, Osama would have called for a global embargo on the entire industrial System.
3. You think I’m being crazy (partially) siding with a terrorist on AGW? But really what else is one supposed to do when one stumbles across real life satire like South Dakota legislators’ call for ”balanced teaching of global warming in the public schools of South Dakota” (h/t Lou).
Instead of taking the time to understand the science, South Dakota legislators submit as proof against climate change this remarkable list: “[T]here are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological [sic], thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics…”
No, that isn’t a misprint. South Dakota legislators actually proposed astrology as evidence against climate change. Do they think glaciers melt slower when Virgo is ascending?
South Dakota legislators probably meant to say “astronomical,” but that also makes no sense. The astronomical influences on climate are well-understood by scientists. Recent climate changes are occurring independently of astronomical influences. …
Even more disturbing than these errors is the underlying premise of HCR 1009: the assumption that political bodies, rather than scientists, should have the final say over scientific issues. We have recently seen this kind of thinking in Louisiana, where a 2008 law opened the door to non-scientific attacks on evolution and climate change. Last year, theTexas State Board of Education rewrote science standards to remove the age of the universe, mandate “different views” on global warming, and include standard creationist talking points against evolution.
No comment.
4. The Attack on Climate-Change Science Why It’s the O.J. Moment of the Twenty-First Century by Bill McKibben.
5. A wonderful site on Global Warming Art (h/t Lou again). In particular, I liked the following:
- Florida sea level rise
- Bangladesh sea level rise – this England-sized country has more people than Russia and is still growing rapidly… and much of it is just a meter or two above sea level.
- Antarctica without Ice – perhaps the Bangladeshis will be able to move here.
- Global Temperature Record 1880-2008 – no, the world isn’t “cooling”, much as the deniers might scream otherwise.
- Solar Cycle Variations – for those of you who point to fluctuations in solar irradiation as the cause of global warming, note that this measure has been falling since the early 2000′s.
- Electricity Use by US State – red states have been using more and more; meanwhile, California now actually uses less than in the late 1970′s.
6. In last week’s Sublime News #1, I covered Russia’s accelerating demographic turnaround. As of 2009, its birth rate was 12.4 / 1000 (2008 – 12.1) and its death rate was 14.2 / 1000 (2008 – 14.6). What about other related nations?
In Ukraine, the birth rate was 11.1 / 1000 (2008 – 11.0) and the death rate was 15.3 / 1000 (2008 – 16.3). However, overall it is closer to Russia than it appears, because Ukraine’s population is slightly older and so can be expected to have slightly more deaths and slightly fewer births per capita.
It is interesting to note that despite Ukraine’s massive, 15% drop in GDP (compared to Russia’s 7.9% drop), even fertility rates managed to eke out a tiny increase. This is not surprising by analogizing to Russia. During the turbulent transition era, many women postponed having children while the desired fertility rate and “average birth sequence” remained little changed from the late Soviet era, when the fertility rate was close to the population replacement level. As such, many women are now “catching up” and beginning to have the children they didn’t in 1992-2006. In Ukraine as in Russia, these dynamics mean that we can reasonably expect the TFR to hit a rate of about 1.7-1.8 within a few years and stabilizing.
In Belarus, the birth rate was 11.6 / 1000 (2008 – 11.1) and the death rate was 14.2 / 1000 (2008 – 13.8). Ironically, its death rate increased slightly despite its GDP growth for 2009 being ever so slightly positive at 0.2%. I mentioned Latvia‘s severe fall in fertility in #18 of the last issue.
For Russian speakers or Google Translate users, Не дадим себя похоронить (Иван Рубанов), a 2007 article arguing that Russia’s demographic fall is reversible. (I joined the party in 2008). Haven’t read it, yet, but you feel free to do so.
7. Collapse of Pax Americana watch: China PLA officers urge economic punch against US. The PLA colonels are none too happy with US military sales to Taiwan, and since China is now stronger than it was several years back, it feels it can now express its unhappiness in more overt ways. It is also accelerating its military spending increases and slowly growing more assertive on the world stage.
8. Karl Naylor, a Polish-residing British expat with Russophile tendencies, suspends his blog.
9. EIA International Total Primary Energy Consumption and Energy Intensity. Great stats database.
10. Visible Earth – super-high resolution photos of the Earth from NASA.
11. On Turkey: Between Russia and the West: Turkey as an Emerging Power and the Case of Abkhazia (Laurent Vinatier).
ABSTRACT. Turkey’s foreign policy finds itself in transition. Considering the new emerging context and the constraints that Turkey faces, it is essential to assess the real determinants which would transform Turkish foreign policy to encompass a more pro-active, independent, and regional strategy. Abkhazia, since its recognition by Russia on August 26, 2008, is examined here as a case study. South Caucasian issues in general and Abkhazia in particular may be essential bargaining chips for Turkey to substantially improve its stance from the Black to the Caspian Seas, assuming its new-found “emancipation” from U.S. influence and thus becoming a real regional power in the region. If all these successful challenges are met successfully, then Turkey will move to the gravity center of an EU-Russia-Iran triangle, where it will occupy a pivotal and geostrategic position.
The man behind Turkey’s strategic depth (Caleb Lauer).
From his post as a professor of international relations, Davutoglu argued that Turkey, now freed from the East-West political geography of the Cold War and embedded in the new geography of globalization, should no longer be thought of as an appendage of the West, but rather as a country at the center. He elaborated this idea in his 2001 book Strategic Depth and the title has since become a shorthand description of Davutoglu’s “doctrine”. The basic idea is that Turkey, a central, pivotal country, must use its unique geography and history to its foreign policy advantage. …
If Turkey’s strategic advantage is, as Davutoglu says, in its geography and history, then this advantage is certainly deep. Located in both Asia and Europe, Turkey borders the Balkans, the Caucuses and the Middle East. Across the water from its Black Sea, Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, Turkey has 25 coastal neighbors. All traffic into and out of the Black Sea goes through the Turkish Straits. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers begin in Anatolia, and thus Turkey controls the freshwater of Syria and Iraq. At least 12 million Kurds live in Turkey and more than 5 million Kurds live over its border in northern Iraq. Turkic languages and cultures cover the ground between southeastern Europe and northwestern China. And Istanbul, once seat of the caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, ruled Jerusalem, Sarajevo, Mecca, Cairo, Belgrade, Damascus and Baghdad for generations.
Davutoglu has pushed Turkey to use this “strategic depth” to become a key global player and take stakes in the world’s, especially the West’s, most high-profile issue areas.With the largest NATO army besides America’s, Turkey wants to ensure stability in northern Iraq once the Americans are gone. Turkey is the centerpiece country of the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project, intended to free Europe from reliance on Russian gas. Turkey has sought a reputation for mediating tough disputes: in Bosnia; between Israel and Syria; and between its two friends, Iran and America. (One Turkish writer joked that Turkey should ask Turkey to help improve the currently strained relations between itself and Israel.) …
Though in the thick of major Western concerns – Iraq, Afghanistan, Israeli-Arab peace, energy, Islam, EU – the central goal of all this policy is business: increase trade, attract foreign investment and provide for Turkey’s economy. In AKP foreign policy speeches one regularly hears about Turkey’s “young and dynamic population” who will need jobs, and whose careers and businesses will have to grow. …
Some call Davutoglu’s foreign policy “neo-Ottomanism”. And to listen to one AKP member of parliament speak of his “pride” at seeing the Ottoman walls that enclose the old city of Jerusalem, and of the Bascarsi in Sarajevo, it is clear Ottoman nostalgia warms the foreign policy imaginations of at least some in the Turkish government. …
Critics also say Davutoglu and the AKP have “Islamified” Turkish foreign policy. Religion is part of the worldview of the AKP and affects the way it governs. But the accusation of “Islamification” is clearly designed to play on prejudices and scare Western and secular observers. Many liberals and progressives in Turkey dismiss – or willfully ignore – the accusation as a point of principle. These two poles of fear mongering and dismissal have kept much helpful debate from reaching foreign ears.
Ironically, given the accusations of “Islamification”, there’s no clear moral basis to Davutoglu’s foreign policy. This may not be missed by those who like their foreign policy analysis on ice. But treating all parties with “mutual respect” and on a principle of “equality”, as Davutoglu advocates, risks being blind to real differences between, for example, Greece and Iran, or Israel and Sudan. This is, at least partially, why many find it easy to wonder whether Turkey is “leaving” the West.
Again, this may not be a problem for those who think George W Bush discredited the whole notion of distinguishing dictators from democrats. The AKP stresses that engagement with its neighbors is not a luxury, and claim they do communicate misgivings privately. But the question remains: will the masses of Turkish voters who keep the AKP in power eventually demand to hear in which terms – ones nobler than economic self-interest – their government describes its goals abroad, and on what grounds it considers a friend to be a friend? After all, “democracy” and “democratization” are the AKP’s domestic policy mantras, and the AKP has been very happy to point out America’s and the EU’s various double standards.
12. Common sense from George Hewitt – Georgia’s new plans to reintegrate Abkhazia and South Ossetia ignore a fundamental problem: their people aren’t interested.
13. Lost eXile, – good expose of the eXholes, the people behind the world’s best magazine (now sadly dead). Their reaction to the article here.
14. Speaking of silly antics, UKIP demagogue blasts the EU President and Belgium. Funny stuff.
15. Energy Follows Its Bliss - A good summary of EROIE, emergy, & energy concentrations from collapse theorist John Michael Greer
16. From CEPR, US military spending now accounts for 5.6% of GDP.
Defense spending continues to be an important factor pushing the economy as it has grown rapidly even as the economy has shrunk. Defense spending now accounts for 5.6 percent of GDP, the largest share since the first quarter of 1993. By comparison, it peaked at 7.6 percent in the 3rd quarter of 1986, at the height of the Reagan build-up. In its last pre-September 11th projections, the Congressional Budget Office projected defense spending for 2009 as 2.4 percent of GDP.
Note: As a rule, almost all official figures for military spending are systemically biased to the low side.
17. The Chemist’s War: The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences (Deborah Blum).
18. Berezovsky is none too happy with Yanukovych’s victory in Ukraine’s presidential elections (not surprisingly since he was one of the people bankrolling the Orange Revolution).
Editor’s note: This address by Russian millionaire Boris Berezovsky, who is living in exile in London after becoming an enemy of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, was written in an emotional and aggressive style, using prison slang and other expressions that may be offensive. The translation only gives a vague idea of what he meant to say.
Quite amazing.
- Another translation by Leoš Tomíček.
- Original Russian version.
19. Russian Growth Forecast Raised to 6.2% at Citigroup (Update1) – Stronger than expected recovery.
20. The world economy has no easy way out of the mire by Martin Wolf.
Anybody who looks carefully at the world economy will recognise that a degree of monetary and fiscal stimulus unprecedented in peacetime is all that is prodding it along, not only in high-income countries, but also in big emerging ones. The conventional wisdom is that it will also be possible to manage a smooth exit. Nothing seems less likely. So let us consider the endgame, instead.
We must start from the reverse side of the stimulus coin: the private sector is now spending far less than its aggregate income. Forecasts in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s latest Economic Outlook imply that in six of its members (the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, the UK and Ireland) the private sector will run a surplus of income over spending greater than 10 per cent of gross domestic product this year. Another 13 will have private surpluses between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of GDP. The latter includes the US, with 7.3 per cent. The eurozone private surplus will be 6.7 per cent of GDP and that of the OECD as a whole 7.4 per cent.
Moreover, the shift in the private sector balance between 2007 and 2010 is forecast to exceed 10 per cent of GDP in no fewer than eight OECD member countries (see chart). It is also forecast to exceed 5 per cent of GDP in another eight. In the US, it is forecast to be 9.6 per cent of GDP. In the eurozone, it is forecast at 5.5 per cent of GDP and in the OECD at 7.3 per cent. Depression threatened. …
At the 75th birthday conference of the Reserve Bank of India this month, Mr White gave a lucid version of his critique. With inflation kept down by supply shocks, inflation-targeting central banks kept interest rates too low too long. The result, he argued, was a series of imbalances, not dissimilar to those in the US in the 1920s and Japan in the 1980s. In particular, with the real interest rate well below the rate of growth of economies, the expansion of credit was effectively unconstrained. Debt duly exploded upwards.
Mr White pointed to four imbalances: asset price bubbles, notably of stocks in the 1990s and houses in the 2000s; the explosion of the balance sheet of the financial sector and increase in its exposure to risk; what “Austrian school” economists dub “malinvestment” – soaring consumption of durables in high-income countries and booming construction of housing and shopping malls in countries such as the US, and of export-oriented factories in China; and, finally, trade imbalances, with capital pouring into the US and other high-spending countries. …
Unhappily, the result of what I call success would probably be a still bigger financial crisis in future, while the results of what I call failure would be that the fiscal rope would run out, even though reaching the end might take longer than worrywarts fear. Yet the big point is that either outcome ultimately leads us to a sovereign debt crisis. This, in turn, would surely result in defaults, probably via inflation. In essence, stretched balance sheets threaten mass private sector bankruptcy and a depression, or sovereign bankruptcy and inflation, or some combination of the two. …
… The essential ingredient of a successful exit is, instead, to use the huge surpluses of the private sector to fund higher investment, both public and private, across the world. China alone needs higher consumption.
21. I acquired an iSimulate @ World Bank account and look forwards to playing with their economic models.
Related posts:
Oh god I can’t stand Nigel Farage. He is a disgrace to the any rational British person, yet sums up what many people here actually believe. Anti EU discourse here is so unintellectual.
8. What has happened to Karl Naylor.He had two blogs, first his eastern European watch. He took that down in January. The second was about protecting Krakow’s architecture from developers. That one was up until a week or so ago.
Other than that, everything is interesting to read
@Anatoly
I don’t disagree about your analysis of the short term political impacts. Even when Britain was spoiling for a confrontation over Litvinenko, the most they could do was expel a few diplomats.
However, if it turns out to have been Mossad, then I think it was a gross miscalculation on their part. Firstly, as you say, assassination probably doesn’t even work very well. It seems every other week we hear that no. 2/3/4/ in Al Quaeda/ Taliban has been killed/captured/wounded.
Secondly, it would be based on the impression that Brits are the least patriotic people on the planet. Our flag is generally the reserve of nutters, we’ve been pursuing a ridiculous ‘war on terror’ that can’t possibly be to our interest and our papers are full of reports on what an abysmal country we live in, so that might seem an easy guess.
However, I do think that there is a British patriotism that is understated, and I think the Brits are losing patience with the ‘War on Terror’ and the trans-Atlantic alliance. The meltdown of the Brit print media is I think a sign of this as is (in a far more complex way) David Cameron’s opinion poll meltdown*.
I think that this really could nudge public opinion that extra yard away from the neo-conservative/ neo-liberal policies of our government.
Incidentally, you describe Karl Naylor as having Russophile tendencies. I’m not certain that is actually the case (though maybe it is) but I think it is more that his blog demonstrates the anger that Brits feel at neo-liberal imperialism carried out in their name.
*Yes, I know, new labour led the War on Terror, but they were supported by the Tories. If New Labour wins the next election or there is a hung parliament I think we’ll see the end of the FPTP system that led to the WOT.
This is my first visit to the site. I am in admiration of the tone and substance of the effort. It is easy to be impressed by viewpoints one agrees with, but this site is erudite while unaffected, and represents a significant contribution to public debate.
Just to mention, Karl Naylor’s blog is still there, not the Eastern Europe watch, but the Krakow heritage blog, which he must have renamed. http://krakowconservationwatch.blogspot.com/
The idea of Turkey developing an interest in Abkhazian independence is provocative, although for the time being the certainty of the continued existence of a strongly pro-Turkish Georgia and the relative improbability of normalized Turkish-Armenian relations seem to outweigh the possibility of the emergence of Turkish recognition of an independent Abkhazia that might be open to Turkish as well as Russian influence.
If, however, the descendants of Caucasian refugees in Turkey end up forming a powerful self-actualized lobby, there could well be spinoffs beyond Abkhazia. What would happen if Turkey developed more of an interest in the North Caucasus (and no, I’m not talking about irredentism)?
In that case there will be a clash with Russia, but since both Turkey and Russia are both (re)-rising powers I view that as pretty much inevitable. The Russian and Ottoman Empires were in an almost uninterrupted struggle with each other.