Well, most of my entries have been pretty serious with the occaisional foray into movies and vids but to make a similar point. In some senses we may be about to do it again but...what ho ?

Various community members in the YouTubeverse have been posting multiple sessions from Dylan's 30th Anniversery Concert in NYC in 1992. Now this may be my recent discovery but still let me share it, starting with this collective of the greats doing "My Back Pages". Including McGuinn if not McGuire, Clapton, Young, George, Bob himself of course, Johhny & June Cash, Kris Krisofferson, Mary Chapin/et.al. and on and on. Wonderful concert.

Of course Bob has been/was the poet laureate of the 60s and many of the after-rumblings so maybe we aren't all that far from my core here. Listening to this great music by these great musicians is wonderful. Takes you back. Maybe though it might even and eventually make one ask, "what happened ?" Or, "if only....(fill in the blank)". Meanwhile enjoy the music, please.

BtW - if you click thru on this one there's a whole bunch more equally worth listening to !

Posted by dblwyo at 07:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 While thinking about Iraq, the specific linkages to Iran and Iran's broader challenges as well as the broader situation in the Middle East the result was a preliminary "picture" of how all the pieces sorta inter-relate to one another. Call it a first pass conceptual diagram which tries to depict most of the critical linkages, players/entities and impressionistic magnitude of the problem. But before we get to that there's another rather startling piece of information which is worth your while.

Two very respected military analysts (Michael O'Hanlon of Brookings and Kenneth Pollack ex-intel analyst) published an editorial reporting on their assessments of a recent visit there. While they've been harsh critics of the war, especially the lack of adaptability of our leadership, this recent column is much more upbeat. I strongly urge you to read it for yourselfs (click on the URL) but here's an excerpt:

A War We Just Might Win VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place. Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. 

This picture and its' interpretation will keep getting worked on but let's take a first pass. To start with the major entities are shown sized with respect to their influence on the current situation and strategic outlook for Iraq - not evaluated against their own problems or other strategic concerns, e.g. the chances of Pakistani collapse and the release of nuclear weapons to terrorists. As I've been saying based on StrategyPage and O'Hanlon and Pollack confirm there's a great deal of complexity in the Iraqi situation but progress is being made on many fronts, though political dysfunction and corruption continue to be major challenges. Iran has a similarly complicated - or much more so - set of internal issues which the Economist just surveyed ( Bombs Away  - free).  Iran is a huge challenge and  reading this piece  will help but the key two problems are the split government and a declining (actually, failing) economy. Which are not seperte events. The theocrats actually control the gov't and are pusuring their own ideological/religious foreign policy designed to restore and enhance the spirt of the Revolution. As a result they are supporting Hamas, Hezzbollah, the Taliban, Shia militias in Iraq AND alQ/Sunni terrorists with arms, training, and money as well  as intelligence and people.It's fair to say that continued Iranian support for these folks is probably as big a problem as we face in Iraq and does not serve the interests of  Iraquis or Iranians, just the theocrats.

We'll build on the other components later but see what you think so far. 

Posted by dblwyo at 06:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Welcome to the Reader for Jul29. A survey of interesting sources in values & attitudes (philosophy ?), International Affairs (including Iraq), domestic Politics & Policies, and Science & Culture. A new book on the alternative forms of capitalism is the highlight – in a way – this week. On the other end played hooky and went to see the New Potter movie – wonderful, dark, difficult and uplifting. See it. Take a kid to protect you if you can.

Below is more on the byways of key events that often don’t make the front pages per se including the Vatican Diplomatic Corps, faltering trade talks, a historical plot to overthrow FDR that might have put a plutocratic Fascism in (who says FDR and Winston didn’t save Western Civilization ?). And my 3^rd favorite – a review of the history of the Arab Conquests which highlights the intelligence, adaptability and good government of the early Arab conquerors. Also interesting are the search for a God Particle (speaking of Religion), the growing realization that rapid withdrawal from Iraq ain’t easy and Barrack’s discovery that charm and style may only carry you so far.

(****) America still wears the crown

THE fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 may have proved once and for all that capitalism is better than communism, but it did nothing to settle the debate about which model of capitalism is the best. Or, to be precise, the debate about whether the American model will continue to outdo all comers, or instead be replaced at the top of the economic heap by a rival. In the late 1970s the threat was from the East, as described by Ezra Vogel, a Harvard professor, in his doom-mongering book, “Japan as Number One”. By the early 1990s, the continental European model seemed to be nipping at America's heels, at least according to “Head to Head” by Lester Thurow, a professor at MIT. “Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism” helpfully moves the debate on from competing national models to the underlying structures that shape the relative effectiveness of different sorts of capitalism. Written by three economists, including 85-year-old William Baumol, arguably the leading thinker about the economics of innovation since Joseph Schumpeter, it identifies four main varieties of capitalism.

First, state-guided capitalism, in which government tries to guide the market, typically by supporting certain industries that it expects to become “winners”. Second, oligarchic capitalism, in which the bulk of the power and wealth is held by a small group of individuals and families. Third, big-firm capitalism, in which the main economic activities are carried out by established giant enterprises. Fourth, entrepreneurial capitalism, in which a major role is played by small, innovative firms. The only thing that all four of these models of capitalism have in common is that they recognise the right of private property ownership. Nor is there any single country that has exactly any one of the models described; in most national economies there is some blend of at least two. Moreover, the blend changes over time, and with it, the performance of the economy. Less than two decades after the fall of communism, Russia is already moving rapidly from oligarchic capitalism to an authoritarian state-guided capitalism.

Values & Attitudes

Mind Games: Rather than continuing his wild style of play, Kasparov decided to make more cautious opening moves.  Once he took full account of Karpov's game strategy, he launched into a series of subtle but incisive moves, striking a balance between offense and defense. The new strategy produced 17 draws over three months. From those months of humiliation, exertion, and fleeting triumph, Kasparov emerged a new competitor and a new man.  That “long and grueling tutorial” nearly re-wired his brain and launched one of the most storied careers in the history of competition. Kasparov writes that the key to his success against Karpov—and the key to success in general—was to become “deeply in touch with [one's] own thought processes.”  Relying less on instinct, Kasparov for the first time appreciated the far-reaching consequences of every move. 

Can the U.S. Really Be That Stupid? : Americans aren’t as ignorant as portrayed in the host of polls showing many of them failing tests of general knowledge and history. The tests have been a media staple since 1943, writes Alexander Burns in National Journal, when the New York Times tested 7,000 college students and discovered “a striking ignorance of even the most elementary aspects of U.S. history.” In recent years, similar polls have reported shocking ignorance along the lines of 28% of respondents thinking that Andrew Jackson served as vice president or that 77% of people surveyed were able to name two of Snow White’s dwarfs but not two Supreme Court justices.

The Plot against FDR: An email brings a link to a radio program at the BBC on an attempted coup during the Roosevelt presidency:

The Whitehouse Coup, BBC: Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen  The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy. [Listen to this programme in full] [ View a picture gallery of images related to this edition.]

International Affairs

After Six Years, the Global Trade Talks Are Just That: Talk :Soon after Sept. 11, 2001, the United States helped start a round of global trade talks aimed at getting rich countries to lower trade barriers so that poor countries could prosper by exporting goods, not terrorism. But it was never that simple. Six years later, the trade talks are on life support, suffering from so many disputes that like the victim in Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” almost everyone could be guilty of killing them off. There are disputes pitting Europe against the United States, rich countries against poor countries, and farming countries against industrial countries. But a major new factor in the deadlock is a global economic realignment that has vaulted China, India and Brazil into the top tier of the world’s emerging markets, much to the concern of other developing countries like Mexico, Chile and Thailand. India and Brazil are refusing to lower their tariffs out of fear of export-driven economies like China’s. A second tier of developing countries that are trying to compete with India and Brazil are complaining that they are being shut out by India, Brazil and other rapidly developing countries. Meanwhile, the poorest of the poor countries in Africa and elsewhere charge that the richer emerging market economies, which portray themselves as champions of the poor, are actually ignoring their needs.

FBI Advertises For Chinese Informants: The FBI has been taking a more direct approach to dealing with increased Chinese espionage efforts. This has been in the form of ads run in Chinese language newspapers in San Francisco. The ads ask Chinese-Americans to provide more tips on the spying activities of Chinese diplomats, and members of Chinese state security. The official Chinese response to the ads was to condemn the FBI for trying to make China look like a threat, and reviving Cold War hysteria. There are a growing number of prosecutions, and convictions, of Chinese citizens, and Chinese-Americans caught up in what the Chinese call the "a thousand grains of sand" espionage system. Basically, China tries to get all Chinese going overseas, and those of Chinses ancestry living outside the motherland, to spy for China, if only a tiny bit. This approach to espionage is nothing new. Other nations have used similar systems for centuries. What is unusual is the scale of the Chinese effort. Backing it all up is a Chinese intelligence bureaucracy back home that is huge, with nearly 100,000 people working just to keep track of the many Chinese overseas, and what they could, or should, be to trying to grab for the motherland.

In Sicily, Farmland Seized From Mafia Is Hard to Cultivate

A decade ago, when anti-Mafia sentiment in Sicily was riding high, the Italian Parliament passed a law aimed at humiliating organized crime on its own turf.

Land seized from Mafiosi, such as "Boss of Bosses" Salvatore "Totò" Riina, would be handed to cooperatives made up of local unemployed workers who would put it to good use. Simply sticking shovels into the ground to cultivate fields, the idea went, would be a public expression of the state's triumph in its long-running battle with organized crime.

But the reality has been more troubled. One cooperative had its tractor stolen, its warehouse robbed and fields set ablaze. Farmers from another cooperative found a dead dog with a noose around its neck dumped on their land. Two weeks ago, their fields were torched, too.

God's ambassadors: The Vatican has one of the world's busiest but least-known diplomatic services. Does it deserve its special status? THE job of representing the pope in Burundi brings with it a fine colonial villa, but nobody would say Archbishop Paul Gallagher has an enviable post. In 2003 his predecessor, Archbishop Michael Courtney, died in a hail of bullets after mystery attackers ambushed his car. Whoever they were, the killers were clear about their target: the vehicle bore diplomatic plates and a Vatican flag, while the Irish cleric, in white cassock and purple skull cap, was known to all; so was his role in negotiating a peace accord, sealed a month earlier. The day of his death, December 29th, is now a fixture in Burundi's calendar. Thousands of miles away, on the frontier between Argentina and Chile, papal diplomacy is remembered in a different way. A mountain pass has been renamed after Cardinal Antonio Samorè, who before his death in 1983 helped settle a territorial dispute that could have led to war. In different ways, the Irish archbishop and the Italian cardinal represent the best of an ancient and often contentious quirk of the international scene: the fact that the Roman Catholic church, alone among faiths, is a diplomatic player. Napoleon told his man in Rome: “Deal with the pope as if he had 200,000 men at his command.” After some years in Rome, the envoy said 500,000 was nearer the mark.

(**) Paddy's passions: Few people are better qualified to write about muscular international intervention than muscular Paddy Ashdown. A former soldier, diplomat and party leader (who last week turned down Gordon Brown's offer of a cabinet seat), Lord Ashdown ruled Bosnia and its 3.9m people from 2002 to 2006 on behalf of the world. He took over a mess. Western military intervention had forced all parties to the negotiating table. Arm-twisting at Dayton had produced a deal that stopped the fighting. But Bosnia itself was barely functioning. It had post-communism's typical ills (corruption, incompetence, organised crime and over-mighty spooks) plus the vicious ethnic distrust and physical ruin caused by the war and the baroque bureaucracy imposed by the peace deal. Warmongers and peacemakers should read at least the pithy summaries at the end of each of Lord Ashdown's chapters before they start on their next adventure. Don't separate military strategy from plans for the aftermath. Conflicts don't end when the fighting finishes. The “golden hours” after a military victory are crucial. Keep order—by martial law if necessary—otherwise nothing will work. Then get the economy going. Accept that bad people will hold powerful positions for some time. Elections should come once everything is working. Held too early, they spell disaster.

Enduring on: China is indeed the fragile superpower of her book's subtitle. It is, she writes, big, ambitious and usually a good neighbour. But its rulers are frightened of disorder, and rightly so; on average, the country has 200 protests a day. Not all these protests are what they seem to be. As a Chinese general explained to Ms Shirk, urban demonstrations, such as the one against the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, were often also “the result of an accumulation of people's grievances against the Chinese government. Demonstrations on foreign policy actually reflect domestic politics.”

(**) For the glory of Allah

The early followers of the Prophet owed their astounding success in spreading the faith to intelligence and restraint as well as to zeal.  Hugh Kennedy sets out to explain an historical puzzle. How could Arab forces, relatively small in number and with no particular superiority in weaponry, have pulled off such an apparently impossible feat? In the century that followed the death of the Prophet in 632, they challenged two established empires (the Byzantine and Sasanian). They conquered Syria in eight years, Iraq in seven, Egypt in a mere two and Spain and Portugal in five. At the same time, they pushed deep into Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. How did they do it? Why did they not meet stronger and more sustained resistance? And, no less of a mystery, how did the empire they created endure?  By painstakingly reconstructing the series of Arab conquests, Mr Kennedy paints a picture strikingly at odds with the popular clichés. “The Muslim conquests”, he writes, “were far from being the outpouring of an unruly horde of nomads.” The Bedouin of Arabia were tough and highly mobile, fired by tribal honour and love of booty as well as by zeal for Islam. They were led by intelligent men from the Meccan elite who knew they had to channel the “frenetic military energies of the Bedouin” outwards, or else face a real risk of implosion.

These leaders also seem to have grasped that to have based their conquests on mass killings and conversion by the sword would have been a fatal mistake. There were massacres, but they were not the norm. If conquered peoples paid tribute and did not make trouble, they were largely left alone. Local people were incorporated into the new administrative class. Existing religions—Christianity in Syria and Egypt, Zoroastrianism in Persian-ruled areas, Hinduism and Buddhism farther east—were not persecuted. Large-scale conversions came much later; at the time there was little or no pressure on the conquered people to convert. As for the sack of the Alexandrian library, that, says Mr Kennedy, is a discredited myth. The Arabs were also lucky in their timing. Mr Kennedy speculates that, had they got going a generation earlier, success would probably have eluded them. As it was, disarray within the Byzantine and Sasanian empires helps to explain why the Arabs met little serious resistance there.

Why Warriors Make Lousy Terrorists: Al Qaeda has been on a downward spiral since September 11, 2001, and there's no general agreement on why this is. No attacks in North America, and the many thwarted plots there, revealed a lack of professionalism quite at odds which attacks in the 1990s, and up to September 11, 2001. The terrorist violence in Iraq, often attributed to al Qaeda, is largely the work of Saddams rather efficient security organizations. Those lads were not much good at fighting the U.S. armed forces, but they have, over three decades, become quite good at killing Iraqis, and terrorism in general.

Possible Eruption of Violent Crisis in Lebanon After July 15: In the past few days, Arab and Iranian media reports have pointed to the possibility that Lebanon's current political crisis may become a violent conflict after July 15, 2007. It should be noted that certain international events concerning Lebanon and Syria are expected in mid-July, specifically:

Something Is About To Happen :  Starvation deaths in North Korea have returned to 1990s levels. That means over a thousand people a week dying from lack of food. Over a million people died during the 1990s food shortages. This time around, the shortages are caused by government refusal to allow in food that must have its distribution monitored (making it difficult for the government to divert the food to the army or private sale). The government also took its time with the current round of nuclear disarmament talks, delaying shipments of food from South Korea. These have just arrived and are being distributed. Meanwhile, North Korea is full of rumors that leader Kim Jong Il is very sick, and has just had surgery. Kim Jong Il has not been seen much for months, but that is not unusual. But rumors about his health have been circulating, on and off, for over a year. North Korean negotiators, as is their custom, are now demanding more. They want light water nuclear electric power reactors, and assurances from the U.S. that there will be no attack on North Korea. South Korea is so confident that North Korea is no longer a military threat (because of the economic crises up there) that they are speeding up the downsizing of the South Korean army.

Iraq

Exit Strategies
If U.S. combat forces withdraw from Iraq in the near future, three developments would be likely to unfold. Majority Shiites would drive Sunnis out of ethnically mixed areas west to Anbar province. Southern Iraq would erupt in civil war between Shiite groups. And the Kurdish north would solidify its borders and invite a U.S. troop presence there. In short, Iraq would effectively become three separate nations. That was the conclusion reached in recent "war games" exercises conducted for the U.S. military by retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson. "I honestly don't think it will be apocalyptic," said Anderson, who has served in Iraq and now works for a major defense contractor. But "it will be ugly."

Iraqi Withdrawal: Seven Scenarios : What happens if the United States and coalition forces withdraw rapidly from Iraq? The U.S. and the Iraqi governments have their own scenarios. Iran, al-Qaida, Syria and Turkey have also analyzed potential outcomes. Business and government make plans. Every plan anticipates a future outcome. Since the future can't be predicted, the best plans acknowledge uncertainty. Acknowledging uncertainty means accepting risk -- the risk of being wrong. The art of leadership is being "less wrong."  Here are seven "scenarios" sketching "potential outcomes" of a quick withdrawal from Iraq. These scenarios are not mutually exclusive. You will find bits and pieces in all seven:

·         Why Iraq Can Weather a U.S. Troop Withdrawal: The U.S. could withdraw the bulk of its forces from Iraq without facing the dire consequences predicted by some of the war’s defenders, says former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith. In the war’s first few years, backers of the U.S. invasion talked about the advantages of victory. Now, says Mr. Galbraith, the U.S. presence in Iraq is largely defended with the warning that if the U.S. leaves, violence in Iraq would intensify, destabilizing the region and exacerbating the terrorist threat to the U.S.

·         What If...'  Given the problems and US casualties in Iraq, polls show a large majority of the American people believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Yet, if we imagine what the world would look like today if Saddam Hussein had not been deposed, it seems clear that almost no outcome in Iraq would be as adverse to the interests of the United States as today's world with Saddam still in power. It is important to recall that Saddam had thrown the UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq in 1998, and only allowed them to return in 2002 because of the credible threat of a US attack. In addition, the sanctions regime was collapsing—Saddam had learned how to extract billions of dollars for weapons out of the humanitarian exceptions to those sanctions--and our European friends, and perhaps UN officials themselves, were complicit in this. Under these circumstances, Saddam could not have been "contained" or rendered harmless, and Iraq could not have been indefinitely subject to UN inspections. At some point, Saddam would have been able to throw out the inspectors again, with no further action by the UN. It was clear that the UN itself would do nothing to enforce its own resolutions.

(****)The Real War and Why It's Ignored: There are several large scale counter-terror operations going on. Each one has five to ten thousand troops (usually about a third of them Iraqi) sweeping through an area long used by terrorists for bases.) One such operation, "Marne Torch" reports that, after six weeks, 1,152 buildings were searched, 83 terrorists killed, 278 arrested or captured (depends on if they were armed and shooting when caught), 51 weapons caches found, 51 terrorist boats (used to move men and weapons via water) destroyed and 872 suspects entered into the electronic database. That last item, the database, is proving more valuable as time goes by. With nearly half a million people entered in it so far, more of the usual suspects are being identified and eventually arrested. But the war is still not the major problem. Corruption and  incompetent  government are.  Corruption is pervasive throughout the Middle East, and so common that it is simply accepted by most locals and foreign visitors. But the inability to create a civil society leads to widespread incompetence in government. Then there's the Sunni Arab intransigence. Most of the violence initially came from Sunni Arabs, led by military officers and secret police officials who wanted their jobs, and privileges, back. The Sunni Arabs have a high opinion of themselves, which is somewhat justified by their high educational and skill levels. For most of the last year, the U.S.  response to the corruption, incompetence and intransigence has been to attack it  head on. This is how things are done in the Middle East. Except for Israel and Turkey, there are no working democracies in the region. It's all bullies and police state politics. The locals understand a good hit up side the head.

Politics and Policies

Biz Ed: Two titans of the new economy—founders of Apple and Dell—clashed at an education conference earlier this year in Texas. Steve Jobs and Michael Dell were discussing technology and school reform when Jobs disturbed the usual pallid comity of these sorts of events. “What is wrong with our schools in this nation,” he said, “is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K–12 teachers [are] off-the-charts crazy.”  My purpose here is not to celebrate Jobs’s courage. After all, Dell was partly right, and teachers’ unions have sometimes served as a convenient scapegoat for reformers reluctant to tackle the broader dysfunction of kindergarten-through-12th-grade (K–12) education in America. But America’s education failures, which go much deeper than recalcitrant unions, require the same sharp-edged common sense that Steve Jobs offered that day in Texas. 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce put it well earlier this year: “It has been nearly a quarter century since the seminal report A Nation at Risk was issued in 1983. Since that time, a knowledge-based economy has emerged, the Internet has reshaped commerce and communication, exemplars of creative commerce like Microsoft, eBay, and Southwest Airlines have revolutionized the way we live, and the global economy has undergone wrenching change. Throughout that period, education spending has steadily increased and rafts of well-intentioned school reforms have come and gone. But student achievement has remained stagnant, and our K–12 schools have stayed remarkably unchanged—preserving, as if in amber, the routines, culture, and operations of an obsolete 1930s manufacturing plant.” 

Colour bind: Barack Obama's performance in the Democrats' debate was competent, but not inspiring. With six months to go before the primaries, the pressure is particularly on Mr Obama to perform. The senator from Illinois has star power, but accusations that he lacks substance are beginning to bite. In one Democratic constituency he should be doing much better.

Science and Culture

Water, Water Everywhere
By comparing observed rainfall during the 20th century with the predictions of 14 climate models, Canadian researchers say they have shown that greenhouse-gas emissions have contributed to wetter weather in the Northern Hemisphere. Writing in Nature, the researchers estimate that 50% to 85% of the increase in rain between 1925 and 1999 can be attributed to human activity. As it happens, their study appears at a time of serious flooding in Texas, western England and central China. Heavy rains have caused the worst flooding in that region of China in half a century, affecting more than 100 million people, as the Los Angeles Times reports. On the other side of the Northern Hemisphere, the worst floods in modern history have hit Western England with what the Telegraph describes as a humanitarian crisis. "This weather is different from anything that has gone before," the Independent declares. "The floods it has caused, which have left more than a third of a million people without drinking water, nearly 50,000 people without power, thousands more people homeless and caused more than [$4.12 billion] worth of damage -- and are still not over -- have no precedent in modern British history." The British Environment Agency said the flooding has surpassed the damage done by spring floods of 1947, which were then considered the worst floods in 200 years. With echoes of the political fallout from Hurricane Katrina, the Guardian reports the U.K. government is being accused of failing to follow its own advice from 2004 and 2005 about improving British flood defenses and drainage systems.

At Fermilab, the Race Is on for the ‘God Particle’ Earlier this summer, the physics world was jolted by a rumor that a team of scientists from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, in Batavia, Ill., had found a bump in their data that might be a legendary particle that has haunted physicists for a generation. It is known colloquially as the Higgs boson and sometimes grandly as the “God particle.” According to the Standard Model that has ruled physics for 30 years, the Higgs endows elementary particles in the universe with mass. The history of physics is full of bumps that could have been revolutionary but have disappeared like ghosts in the night, and this rumor of a possible Higgs sighting was not even the first this year. Most physicists who have heard this rumor think that this bump is likely to be another of those disappearing anomalies, like the trimuons that frustrated Dr. Weinberg. But then these same physicists point out that you never know.

Using the ‘Beauties of Physics’ to Conquer Science Illiteracy — In the halls of academia, it is the rare senior professor who volunteers to teach basic science courses to undergraduates. But Eric Mazur, the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard, is driven by a passion. He wants to end science illiteracy among the nation’s college students; specifically, he strives to open them to the “great beauties of physics.” “It’s important to mentally engage students in what you’re teaching,” he explains. “We’re way too focused on facts and rote memorization and not on learning the process of doing science.”

Q. Why do you willingly teach an introductory physics course?

First, it’s part of my job description. Professors are supposed to teach. The problem is how we teach, particularly how we teach science to undergraduates. From what I’ve seen, students in science classrooms throughout the country depend on the rote memorization of facts. I want to change this. The students who score high do so because they’ve learned how to regurgitate information on tests. On the whole, they haven’t understood the basic concepts behind the facts, which means they can’t apply them in the laboratory. Or in life. On a physics exam, the student will see a diagram and they’ll classify it. Then, it’s simply a matter of putting the right numbers in the right slots and, sort of, turning a crank. But this is algebra. It is not physics. When you test the students later on the concept, they can’t explain what they’ve just done. This saddens me. In my laboratory, we’ve made some important discoveries. Several were accidental — serendipitous. If we’d only functioned on the standard knowledge, we wouldn’t have recognized what was before us.

Music, Movies, etc.

(****)'Order of the Phoenix': Dread Again, and Fabulously. July 11, 2007 · Fresh Air's critic says the fifth Harry Potter film trades the last glimmers of childish wonder for a brooding, paranoid darkness, a grainy palette and a series of horrific montages — and it's the best Potter film yet.

·         I played a little hooky one afternoon this week and went to see the new Harry movie. Highly recommended – perhaps the best so far though both the darkest and least cheerful. But Harry is having to wrestle at all too early an age with huge, “real” challenges. And the answers he finds may both surprise you and be affirming – and the thing that makes the movie is that they’re not easy, throw-away answers.

Posted by dblwyo at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

George Forman of  StratFor (often  called the private person's  CIA)  lays out a  comprehensive ,  astute and insightful  assessment of  the  Iraq  situation, Iran's  strategic  policies and actions the likely impacts on  the success of US  policy  and strategy.  Well  worth your time. While it dates from Jan07  it still provides a  well-grounded baseline for  evaluating the current talks underway between the US and Iraq.

BtW - while you're reading this, or before even, may I suggest reviewing the strategic chessboard of consequences laid out in an earlier post: Big Question #1: What Happens if We Leave. If you'll pardon me, perhaps strongly recommend. So far none of the recent commentators, e.g. on Charlie Rose, have ticked thru the entire list laid out hear. That's the bad news. The good news is that the first few questions are NOW on the table for more public discussion.

 The Iraq war has turned into a duel between the United States and Iran. For the United States, the goal has been the creation of a generally pro-American coalition government in Baghdad -- representing Iraq's three major ethnic communities. For Iran, the goal has been the creation of either a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad or, alternatively, the division of Iraq into three regions, with Iran dominating the Shiite south.

The United States has encountered serious problems in creating the coalition government. The Iranians have been primarily responsible for that. With the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June, when it appeared that the Sunnis would enter the political process fully, the Iranians used their influence with various Iraqi Shiite factions to disrupt that process by launching attacks on Sunnis and generally destabilizing the situation. Certainly, Sunnis contributed to this, but for much of the past year, it has been the Shia, supported by Iran, that have been the primary destabilizing force.

So long as the Iranians continue to follow this policy, the U.S. strategy cannot succeed. The difficulty of the American plan is that it requires the political participation of three main ethnic groups that are themselves politically fragmented. Virtually any substantial group can block the success of the strategy by undermining the political process. The Iranians, however, appear to be in a more powerful position than the Americans. So long as they continue to support Shiite groups within Iraq, they will be able to block the U.S. plan. Over time, the theory goes, the Americans will recognize the hopelessness of the undertaking and withdraw, leaving Iran to pick up the pieces. In the meantime, the Iranians will increasingly be able to dominate the Shiite community and consolidate their hold over southern Iraq. The game appears to go to Iran.

Americans are extremely sensitive to the difficulties the United States faces in Iraq. Every nation-state has a defining characteristic, and that of the United States is manic-depression, cycling between insanely optimistic plans and total despair. This national characteristic tends to blind Americans to the situation on the other side of the hill. Certainly, the Bush administration vastly underestimated the difficulties of occupying Iraq -- that was the manic phase. But at this point, it could be argued that the administration again is not looking over the other side of the hill at the difficulties the Iranians might be having. And it is useful to consider the world from the Iranian point of view.

The Foundation of Foreign Policy

It is important to distinguish between the rhetoric and the reality of Iranian foreign policy. As a general principle, this should be done with all countries. As in business, rhetoric is used to shape perceptions and attempt to control the behavior of others. It does not necessarily reveal one's true intentions or, more important, one's capabilities. In the classic case of U.S. foreign policy, Franklin Roosevelt publicly insisted that the United States did not intend to get into World War II while U.S. and British officials were planning to do just that. On the other side of the equation, the United States, during the 1950s, kept asserting that its goal was to liberate Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union, when in fact it had no plans, capabilities or expectations of doing so. This does not mean the claims were made frivolously -- both Roosevelt and John Foster Dulles had good reasons for posturing as they did -- but it does mean that rhetoric is not a reliable indicator of actions. Thus, the purple prose of the Iranian leadership cannot be taken at face value.

To get past the rhetoric, let's begin by considering Iran's objective geopolitical position.

Historically, Iran has faced three enemies. Its oldest enemy was to the west: the Arab/Sunni threat, against which it has struggled for millennia. Russia, to the north, emerged as a threat in the late 19th century, occupying northern Iran during and after World War II. The third enemy has worn different faces but has been a recurring threat since the time of Alexander the Great: a distant power that has intruded into Persian affairs. This distant foreign power -- which has at times been embodied by both the British and the Americans -- has posed the greatest threat to Iran. And when the element of a distant power is combined with one of the other two traditional enemies, the result is a great global or regional power whose orbit or influence Iran cannot escape. To put that into real terms, Iran can manage, for example, the chaos called Afghanistan, but it cannot manage a global power that is active in Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously.

For the moment, Russia is contained. There is a buffer zone of states between Iran and Russia that, at present, prevents Russian probes. But what Iran fears is a united Iraq under the influence or control of a global power like the United States. In 1980, the long western border of Iran was attacked by Iraq, with only marginal support from other states, and the effect on Iran was devastating. Iran harbors a rational fear of attack from that direction, which -- if coupled with American power -- could threaten Iranian survival.

Therefore, Iran sees the American plan to create a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad as a direct threat to its national interests. Now, the Iranians supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003; they wanted to see their archenemy, former President Saddam Hussein, deposed. But they did not want to see him replaced by a pro-American regime. Rather, the Iranians wanted one of two outcomes: the creation of a pro-Iranian government dominated by Iraqi Shia (under Iran's control), or the fragmentation of Iraq. A fragmented Iraq would have two virtues. It would prove no danger to Iran, and Iran likely would control or heavily influence southern Iraq, thus projecting its power from there throughout the Persian Gulf.

Viewed this way, Iran's behavior in Iraq is understandable. A stable Iraq under U.S. influence represents a direct threat to Iran, while a fragmented or pro-Iranian Iraq does not. Therefore, the Iranians will do whatever they can to undermine U.S. attempts to create a government in Baghdad. Tehran can use its influence to block a government, but it cannot -- on its own -- create a pro-Iranian one. Therefore, Iran's strategy is to play spoiler and wait for the United States to tire of the unending conflict. Once the Americans leave, the Iranians can pick up the chips on the table. Whether it takes 10 years or 30, the Iranians assume that, in the end, they will win. None of the Arab countries in the region has the power to withstand Iran, and the Turks are unlikely to get into the game.

The Unknown Variables

Logic would seem to favor the Iranians. But in the past, the Iranians have tried to be clever with great powers and, rather than trapping them, have wound up being trapped themselves. Sometimes they have simply missed other dimensions of the situation. For example, when the revolutionaries overthrew the Shah and created the Islamic Republic, the Iranians focused on the threat from the Americans, and another threat from the Soviets and their covert allies in Iran. But they took their eyes off Iraq -- and that miscalculation not only cost them huge casualties and a decade of economic decay, but broke the self-confidence of the Iranian regime.

The Iranians also have miscalculated on the United States. When the Islamic Revolution occurred, the governing assumption -- not only in Iran but also in many parts of the world, including the United States -- was that the United States was a declining power. It had, after all, been defeated in Vietnam and was experiencing declining U.S. military power and severe economic problems. But the Iranians massively miscalculated with regard to the U.S. position: In the end, the United States surged and it was the Soviets who collapsed.

The Iranians do not have a sterling record in managing great powers, and especially in predicting the behavior of the United States. In large and small ways, they have miscalculated on what the United States would do and how it would do it. Therefore, like the Americans, the Iranians are deeply divided. There are those who regard the United States as a bumbling fool, all set to fail in Iraq. There are others who remember equally confident forecasts about other American disasters, and who see the United States as ruthless, cunning and utterly dangerous.

These sentiments, then, divide into two policy factions. On the one side, there are those who see Bush's surge strategy as an empty bluff. They point out that there is no surge, only a gradual buildup of troops, and that the number of troops being added is insignificant. They point to political divisions in Washington and argue that the time is ripe for Iran to go for it all. They want to force a civil war in Iraq, to at least dominate the southern region and take advantage of American weakness to project power in the Persian Gulf.

The other side wonders whether the Americans are as weak as they appear, and also argues that exploiting a success in Iraq would be more dangerous and difficult than it appears. The United States has substantial forces in Iraq, and the response to Shiite uprisings along the western shore of the Persian Gulf would be difficult to predict. The response to any probe into Saudi Arabia certainly would be violent.

We are not referring here to ideological factions, nor to radicals and moderates. Rather, these are two competing visions of the United States. One side wants to exploit American weakness; the other side argues that experience shows that American weakness can reverse itself unexpectedly and trap Iran in a difficult and painful position. It is not a debate about ends or internal dissatisfaction with the regime. Rather, it is a contest between audacity and caution.

The Historical View

Over time -- and this is not apparent from Iranian rhetoric -- caution has tended to prevail. Except during the 1980s, when they supported an aggressive Hezbollah, the Iranians have been quite measured in their international actions. Following the war with Iraq, they avoided overt moves -- and they even were circumspect after the fall of the Soviet Union, when opportunities presented themselves to Iran's north. After 9/11, the Iranians were careful not to provoke the United States: They offered landing rights for damaged U.S. aircraft and helped recruit Shiite tribes for the American effort against the Taliban. The rhetoric alternated between intense and vitriolic; the actions were more cautious. Even with the Iranian nuclear project, the rhetoric has been far more intense than the level of development seems to warrant.

Rhetoric influences perceptions, and perceptions can drive responses. Therefore, the rhetoric should not be discounted as a driving factor in the geopolitical system. But the real debate in Iran is over what to do about Iraq. No one in Iran wants a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad, and blocking the emergence of such a government has a general consensus. But how far to go in trying to divide Iraq, creating a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad and projecting power in the region is a matter of intense debate. In fact, cautious behavior combined with extreme rhetoric still appears to be the default position in Tehran, with more adventurous arguments struggling to gain acceptance.

The United States, for its part, is divided between the desire to try one more turn at the table to win it all and the fear that it is becoming hopelessly trapped. Iran is divided between a belief that the time to strike is now and a fear that counting the United States out is always premature. This is an engine that can, in due course, drive negotiations. Iran might be "evil" and the United States might be "Satan," but at the end of the day, international affairs involving major powers are governed not by rhetoric but by national interest. The common ground between the United States and Iran is that neither is certain it can achieve its real strategic interests. The Americans doubt they can create a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad, and Iran is not certain the United States is as weak as it appears to be.

Fear and uncertainty are the foundations of international agreement, while hope and confidence fuel war. In the end, a fractured Iraq -- an entity incapable of harming Iran, but still providing an effective buffer between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula -- is emerging as the most viable available option.

Neighbourly mumblings

May 17th 2007 | CAIRO
From The Economist print edition

Will the United States and Iran really start talking, if only about Iraq?

Get article background

IT SEEMS increasingly likely, after 28 years of formal silence (with just the occasional back-channel mutterings and whispers), that American and Iranian officials will sit down together, if only to talk about Iraq. The two sides are expected to meet, perhaps only at ambassadorial level to begin with, on May 28th in Baghdad. However big the caveats, it will be a breakthrough. Each side is keen to assert it has not flip-flopped. Neither side is sure where such talks might lead.

In fact, the Americans have been saying for some time they would talk to Iran—but only about Iraq, not about the Islamic Republic's nuclear plans, so long as the Iranians refuse to suspend their enrichment of uranium. The rulers in Tehran have also occasionally expressed a readiness to engage in such talks. But whenever the prospect has loomed large they have backed off. Now, it seems, the Iranians—at least, some parts of its fractious establishment—are becoming keener. Some members of Iran's parliament have even begun collecting signatures to form an Iranian-American friendship committee.

The American establishment has been fractious too. The vice-president, Dick Cheney, sounded as tough towards Iran as ever during a trip to the Gulf states last week. But the State Department, under Condoleezza Rice, is plainly becoming more flexible. Robert Gates, the newish secretary of defence, seems to have swung the Pentagon's weight behind Ms Rice.

The latest diplomatic surge gained momentum earlier this month at an international conference on Iraq in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The Egyptian hosts seated Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, opposite Ms Rice, at a dinner, in the hope that the pair might exchange a word or two. But the Iranian walked out in a huff, complaining later that the event failed to meet “Islamic standards”, an apparent reference to a female Ukrainian violinist who was wearing a supposedly immodest scarlet dress. Other diplomats present thought he may have disliked being bounced unceremoniously into a high-level summit.

But this week things moved on. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said his government was “prepared and ready” to talk to America, while insisting that their troops should “pack their bags” and leave Iraq and the Gulf region forthwith.

It will still be hard to agree, beforehand, on the agenda, even with nuclear issues kept off it. The Iranians would be loth to discuss an issue that particularly grates with the Americans: the help Iran apparently gives to Iraqi Shia militias who plant roadside bombs that kill American troops.

And it will be hard to detach the question of Iraq completely from the Iranian nuclear one. Iran keeps its links with Iraq's Shia militias so that, if America were to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran would be able to make things even nastier for America in Iraq. It is highly unlikely that America would be able to persuade Iran to break those links altogether.

Iran does have pressing if lesser grievances that could be more easily dealt with if the two sides did meet. One concerns five Iranians in Iraq who the Iranian government insists are diplomats but whom the Americans accuse of helping to arm Iraqi militants—and therefore arrested, in the Kurdish capital, Arbil.

Iran has also long wanted the Americans to acknowledge that it has its own legitimate security interests in the region, some of them in Iraq. And if Iran and America were ever to come to a “grand bargain” that did include the nuclear issue, Iran would also expect America to disavow any intention of promoting regime change in Tehran and to stop helping opposition groups. That prospect is far off.

Meanwhile, the Americans are still struggling to enlist the help of other nearby countries to stabilise Iraq, where the war is as bloody as ever. At Sharm el-Sheikh, they had hoped to get firmer promises from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to forgive the $50 billion or so of debt that Iraq estimates it owes; only vague noises were forthcoming. The Saudis say that, before they start being generous, the Iraqi government should try harder to accommodate Iraq's Sunni Arabs. And Russia first wants Iraq to recognise a Saddam-era oil contract.

Yet the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting was a bit more fruitful than other attempts to get the outside world to help Iraq. The Saudis, for example, have more or less admitted that the new political order, led by Iraq's Shias, is there to stay. And American diplomats say they had a useful talk with the Syrians. As Syria seems to be edging out of its isolation in the region, it may—to please the Americans—be prepared to do more to stem the flow of people and munitions across the border to insurgents in Iraq.

A new factor is that Iraq's neighbours guess that America is increasingly likely to leave Iraq within the next two years, especially if a Democratic president takes office. That prospect is beginning to concentrate Arab minds. Some fear that Iraq's sectarian mayhem could spread dangerously beyond its borders. Most of Iraq's nervous Arab neighbours do not want a bloody American-Iranian bust-up.

Posted by dblwyo at 07:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s probably about time and then some to update and reflect on what’s been going on in Iraq, from the last posts that laid out the approach and status. The biggest problems seem to be that there are three clocks running on separate timescales: US/Iraq Security Forces, Iraqi domestic government and US domestic politics. In particular while the Iraqis continue to make progress on putting together the right institutional foundations a lot of internal squabbling and back-stabbing politics is making progress difficult. Also, corruption continues to be a major…major problem. But let’s start by updating our little evaluation matrix, provide a brief summary of some recent interesting materials and point you to some stuff you ought to check out for yourselves.

First, let’s take another look at and do a little updating of the evaluation matrix from the last #3 examination.

Again, for the record, this are my best impressions and judgments derived therein based on reading and some poking around. Unfortunately there continues to be an apparent shortage of publicly accessible resources that provides information across these ranges of issues. Let’s hope the policy-makers have more comprehensive resources and much more thoughtful ones.

Not a lot of change in the North – things continue to move ahead well though problems with Turkey are growing because of the continuing use of northern Iraq as a Kurdish refuge for guerillas inside Turkey. Most of the changes are positive with the exception of Security in southern Iraq as Shia internecine conflicts begin to escalate between pro- and anti-Iranian groups. BtW – no matter how many “alleged”  you hear the Iranians have been providing extensive support for the Shia militias for years. As well as, it now appears, money and munitions to the Sunni/alQ types in Western Iraq. On the other hand there’s been a major breakthrough in Anbar province with many of the Sunni tribes throwing in their lot with the US after revulsion over excessive alQ violence which has led to a major improvement in security (D to C/C- being an optimist). The surge has finally reached targeted troops levels with the last month though some significant progress was visible in Baghdad prior to that so S&S improves significantly there. As it IS early days yet we’ll keep the national average the same.

Those S&S improvements led to some short-term gains in governance though we’ll have to see how they hold up. However the overall ranking remains the same despite significant progress in drafting a new oil law there’s been a lot of sectarian battles. Early indictors are that some progress is being made in reconstruction in the West and Baghdad but it’s too early to tell so it’ll stay the same for now.

Let me point you at some recent major interviews on Charlie Rose which are readily viewable and highly recommended.

A conversation about Iraq with Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post discussing recent assessments of withdrawal scenarios and wargame results. A conversation about Iraq with John Burns of The New York Times discussing Iraqi politicians attitudes and understandings. I was extremely glad to see both of these because taken together they indicate that an understanding of the regional problems that are in view, the level of catastrophic sectarian violence that might ensue with an abrupt withdrawal happens and the growing awareness of the Iraqi politicians that the clocks are indeed running at different timescales. It’s not clear they’re prepared to start acting in the broader interests instead of spoiled children but the possibility is opening up.

So let me try and summarize some of the recent changes as I see them:

1. Significant progress on security – not least because the American military has undergone a major shift in adapting it’s doctrines to new circumstances. Sadly it’s taken a long…long time to re-discover what we learned in ‘Nam or what the Marines wrote up in the Small Wars Manual in the 1930s.
2. Significant progress on the civil front with the drafting of the Oil Law.
3. Clocks are ticking at very different speeds with US domestic politics moving rapidly ahead on a withdrawal of some sort because of domestic political difficulties. Agree or disagree this is strategic reality and must be treated accordingly.
• Iraq’s clock is ticking much more slowly partly because this takes time (consider how long we were nurturing Germany, Japan, Taiwan or South Korea). And partly because the politicians continue to pursue narrow, partisan interests at the expense of the greater good. Which leads to toleration, indeed business-as-usual, for extensive and endemic corruption.
4. There continues to be, the underlying cause, as it were a pronounced lack of trust in general government and more reliance on either old tribal structures or traditional baksheesh and personal networks. Under the circumstances and given centuries or more of history, not all surprising.
5. Plan B, wargaming withdrawals and the resultant characteristics of various alternative split up states assessments have been going on and are accelerating.
6. Regional problems in multiple flavors are escalating:
• Iran continues to provide heavy support for the Shia militias including sophisticated explosives, training and funding. On a larger scale they themselves face a growing set of problems that threatened their socio-economic stability.
• The Israel-Palestine-Lebanon Triangle is going thru increasingly difficult times
• Pakistan is being strained to it’s limits by the conflicts between the military which is the only competent social institution,  democracy advocates who have a long…long history of corruption, bad government and predatory behaviors, and the Islamic fundamentalists. Things don’t look particularly good there.

Posted by dblwyo at 05:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well we'll see if any cosmetic progress has been made. But meanwhile here's a selected sampling of some key articles, columns and posts from this week as well as an eclectic set of movies and music. Bon Appetit' !

Values & Attitudes

Why are Americans down on the economy? - The Dow pops into uncharted 14,000-point territory. An economy pummeled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks has grown for 22 quarters straight. Unemployment stands at 4.5 percent - lower than any average decade from the 1960s through the 1990s. And Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson declares: "This is far and away the strongest global economy I've seen in my business lifetime." So why do six out of ten Americans think that the economy was better five years ago and fear that worse economic times are on the horizon, according to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll? …. And when all those explanations are exhausted, pundits like to blame Americans themselves - for being spoiled and soft and wanting too much.

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake took a stab at it with a series of surveys that found only 18 percent of Americans believed they have obtained the "American dream." In a presentation last week at the Brookings Institution, she blamed concern over "the basics - health care, retirement, personal debt, paying the bills." She added: "People believe that corporations and wealthy interests have too much power and that they are putting up barriers...to working people achieving the American dream." As Third Way documents in its reports, the American middle class isn't really shrinking, so much as it is anxious. The median household income for workers aged 25 to 60 is nearly $62,000. The same Third Way report noted: "The bottom line is that the middle class is shrinking not because the bottom is dropping out; it is because more people are better off."

So why the jitters? Lake hit on it, I believe, with this comment: "There have been times in our history when the American dream was rooted in opportunity, and there have been times in our history where the dream was rooted in security. This is a time, and has been for a couple for years now, where the dream is rooted in security." There's not a lot of security in a fast-paced global economy where workers get ahead by chasing opportunities (not obediently following office rules), by constantly reinventing their careers (not relying on seniority), by self-investing their savings (not counting on company pensions).

The Entitlement Epidemic: Who's Really to Blame?
Why do so many young people today have an inflated sense of entitlement? And who's to blame?

The list of suspects is long, and includes the state of California, Burger King, FedEx, MTV -- and parents, especially parents. I compiled the list this month, after more than 1,000 psychologists, educators and observant readers contacted me in response to my recent column headlined "Blame It on Mr. Rogers." That column included a premise some found too provocative: Did TV icon Fred Rogers contribute to our entitlement epidemic by telling children they were "special"?

International Affairs

**  Alliances Shift as Turks Weigh a Political Turn:  For 84 years, modern Turkey has been defined by a holy trinity — the army, the republic and its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Each was linked inextricably to the others and all were beyond reproach. But a deep transformation is under way in this nation of 73 million, and elections this Sunday may prove a watershed: liberal Turks, once supporters of the ruling secular elite and its main backer, the military, are turning their backs on them and pledging votes to religious politicians as well as a new array of independents. They say that the rigid rules of the last century, which prohibit women from wearing Muslim head scarves in public buildings and forbid ethnic minorities to express their identities, need to be left behind. He and others say the rules served a purpose when Turkey was forging a national identity out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire. But now Turkey has outgrown them.

Now, as the elections approach, pitting the nation’s secular elite against a group of religious politicians who draw their support from the lower and middle classes, educated liberals may just tip the balance.

The current shift has its roots in the dual nature of Turkish democracy. From its beginnings in the 1940s, a powerful chain of bureaucrats, judges and army generals from the secular upper classes has controlled the most important Turkish affairs, while the elected government, currently the Justice and Development Party of Mr. Erdogan, manages more mundane aspects, much like a municipality. But Turkish society has significantly changed in recent decades, with religious Turks gaining wealth and status and moving into public view. Women in head scarves — precisely those whom early Turkish legislation singled out — are in shopping malls, on motor scooters and behind the wheels of cars, and rules against them seem woefully outdated.

Dysfunctional Defense: Last week a detachment of sophisticated Indian Air Force Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter planes, having flown halfway around the world, conducted joint exercises at a British airbase with the Royal Air Force -- a multimillion-dollar, cutting-edge preparation for a battle that may never come. Meanwhile, every day half a million Indian soldiers and paramilitary troopers across the country face off against terrorists who are better armed and equipped than the soldiers are. This contrast -- between the wars for which India is planning and the wars it is actually fighting -- is a serious national security problem that will only get worse the longer it persists.

Like the pre-Iraq Pentagon and Whitehall, India's establishment still believes that if the military has credible state-versus-state war-fighting capability, everything else will follow. Most weapons purchases in the pipeline are platforms needed for all-out war: an aircraft carrier, a submarine line, amphibious assault ships and heavy battleships for the navy; multi-role combat aircraft, mid-air refuellers and airborne cruise missiles for the air force; and tanks, air defense guns, medium artillery and intermediate range strategic missiles for the army. You'd think that India's last two decades of counterterrorism operations have been a brief interregnum before the military gets on with its primary task of invading a medium-sized country.

Secrets To Die For: July 11, 2007:  The former director of Chinas Food and Drug Regulatory Agency was executed for corruption. The official had taken nearly a million dollars in bribes to allow manufacture and distribution of untested new drugs. People died as a result.  China rarely executes officials this senior. But the rule is that, if a corrupt officials gets enough bad press for himself, and the government, he will be punished more severely.

July 2, 2007:  Recent revelations of widespread corruption in the food processing and pharmaceutical industries has led China to drop its long time rule that only Communist Party members can be appointed to senior government jobs. Now, the best qualified, and least likely to be corrupted, officials are being given jobs regulating the food processing and pharmaceutical industries. At least one of these officials is not a Party member. 

June 28, 2007: There are several hundred violent demonstrations and clashes with the police each day in China, the result of growing anger and frustration at the corruption of government officials. Most of the culprits are identified as members of the Communist Party, although many joined simply to get ahead in their government career. The unrest is increasing, and senior officials are getting nervous about their inability to reverse the trends (unrest and corruption.)

Chinese Teacher Veers Away From the Material World:  I'm going to need a new Chinese teacher in the fall, which will be a big change in my life. My "laoshi" Yechen has been a major part of my daily life almost since arriving in China. Now he is leaving Beijing to become a monk, likely in a distant mountain Buddhist or Taoist monastery. The news was initially shocking but once it sunk in, I actually wasn't too surprised. One of the things I most enjoyed about studying with Yechen was his thorough grounding in classical Chinese philosophy, culture and religion. He animated his conversation with references to ancient parables, guided his decision-making by looking to historical precedence and was obviously slightly out of step with contemporary Beijing's go-go aesthetic. I found all of this entirely endearing. More Chinese now seem to be becoming enraptured by Buddhism after decades of the religion being discouraged and even oppressed, with temples damaged or destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Anecdotally, at least, there is a small but significant movement of upwardly mobile young Chinese becoming monks. Several people I have told about Yechen's decision have had their own tales of friends making the same life-altering decision, turned off by an increasingly materialistic culture.

A Cynical Saudi Solution: While Saudi Arabia is not happy with how Shia Arabs have taken control of Iraq, and appear able to hold on to it, they are pleased with how the fighting in Iraq has greatly depleted the number of al Qaeda backers inside Saudi Arabia. Over 5,000 Saudi Islamic radicals are believed to have died in Iraq so far. For the last four years, up to half the suicide bombers have been Saudis, and about half the 135 foreigners currently held in U.S. military prisons over there, are Saudis. Currently, American intelligence believes about 45 percent of the foreign fighters (less than ten percent of all terrorists there) are Saudis. The next largest group is Syrians and Lebanese (15 percent), followed by North Africans (10 percent). The other 30 percent are from all over, including Europe.

Iraq

Commanders and U.S. Envoy Seek More Time for Iraq :The top commanders in Iraq and the American ambassador to Baghdad used video links with Washington on Thursday to appeal for more time, both to allow for success on the ground, and to more fully assess if the new strategy is making gains.

But their appeals, in a trio of video sessions to Capitol Hill and the Pentagon, were met with stern rebukes from lawmakers from both parties. Senior Republicans and Democrats told the generals and the ambassador that time is running out, both for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to reach accommodation with warring religious factions inside the country and for what remains of Congressional support for the heightened troop levels that President Bush ordered in January.

Bush, Iraq Critics Both Duck Debate on Impact of Their Policies: President George W. Bush and his critics, locked in an argument over what happens next in Iraq, have side-stepped the vital issue of what happens later. As a result, the Senate debate on Iraq this week focused entirely on near-term questions such as whether security is improving on Baghdad streets or if Iraqi politicians will act by September to unify their country. What is absent, according to national security experts, is any discussion of the long-range implications of these clashing visions for Iraq: the probability that a pullout would precipitate a huge spike in violence while a sustained commitment would keep troops on the ground for years to come.

Politics and Policies

Where Are the Innovators in Health Care? No sector of our economy is more in need of innovation than health care, yet its many regulations handcuff entrepreneurs. A consumer-driven health-care system will unlock these shackles to bring about a much-needed entrepreneurial revolution. Health care's $2.2 trillion of costs (17% of GDP), breaks the backs of U.S. firms that compete with companies in countries spending, at most, 12% of GDP on health care. Yet, despite this torrent of cash, more than 40 million Americans lack health insurance, mostly because they cannot afford it.

In almost every sector of our economy, brilliant, effective innovators have forced sluggish U.S. industries to become more productive. But can you name any innovators in our bloated, inefficient health-care system? While there is innovation in the medical technology and health-insurance sectors, when it comes to health services, the 800-pound gorilla of our system, entrepreneurs are nowhere to be found. And their absence has enabled the status quo providers to get fat and sloppy. One analysis showed that hospital activities accounted for $400 billion of the excessive costs of U.S. health care while all too many quality measures have worsened.

Entrepreneurs avoid health-care delivery because status quo providers, abetted by legislators and insurance companies, have made it virtually impossible for them to succeed. Unlike any other U.S. industry, consumers do not set prices, yet they provide all the money through taxes for government programs and foregone salaries for employer-provided benefits. A third party -- a government or an insurance company -- not only sets the prices but goes so far as to specify procedures and even the kinds of patients to be covered.

Science and Culture

Nature? Nurture? What makes us human?
That old chestnut - what defines human nature? Genes or experience? Are we free agents or genetically determined souls? These questions have fuelled a fierce fight - polarizing a battleground of social scientists, biologists, parents and politicians. World renowned science writer Matt Ridley is calling a truce, and arguing the case for Nature via Nurture. Genes aren't Gods, he argues, they're cogs. As agents of nurture, genes get switched on and off by our experiences. Join Natasha Mitchell with Matt and special guests to debate the implications. Part of the 2007 Alfred Deakin Innovation Lecture series.

In defense of dangerous ideas

In every age, taboo questions raise our blood pressure and threaten moral panic. But we cannot be afraid to answer them.
...By "dangerous ideas" I don't have in mind harmful technologies, like those behind weapons of mass destruction, or evil ideologies, like those of racist, fascist or other fanatical cults. I have in mind statements of fact or policy that are defended with evidence and argument by serious scientists and thinkers but which are felt to challenge the collective decency of an age. The ideas listed above, and the moral panic that each one of them has incited during the past quarter century, are examples. Writers who have raised ideas like these have been vilified, censored, fired, threatened and in some cases physically assaulted. ...

Dinosaurs' Rise to Dominance Was Gradual

Music, Movies, etc.

Anne-Sophie Mutter's Journey to Mozart

Brad Paisley Shifts Into Witty '5th Gear'

In a Paris Kitchen, a Comedy that Genuinely Cooks ( a great movie – loved it. And it’s more than a romp but you’ll have to decide…hint)

'Once' With Feeling: Small Musical Has a Big Heart (just marvelous….highest recommendation)

Posted by dblwyo at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's this week readfest with interesting new stuff on culture battles, leadership, culture and American's insular lack of undersanding of other persepctives. Followed by sources in int'l affairs, politics & policy, and culture & science.

Values & Attitudes

Nihilism vs Optimism

I have been thinking a lot about the culture battles that are raging around the world.  The recent failed car bomb attacks in the UK are but the latest reminder that we are truly in a global conflict with a variety of enemies spread around the world, who are organized into small groups and integrated into the civilian populations of their countries.  It is hard to comprehend why anyone would use tactics designed to inflict as much damage as possible to innocent civilians, whether in London, Baghdad or Tel-Aviv, unless one appreciates that what these terrorists - criminals - truly want is to destroy the way of life of those they are attacking in order to impose their own.

What Drives Our Greatest Leaders

After reading countless books on leadership, writing or co-editing 22 of them, and reviewing profiles for desired leadership behavior in more than 100 corporations, I think there is one critical question that repeatedly gets left out when assessing the potential of our future leaders: How much do you love leading people?

I have had the privilege of working with many wonderful leaders. Upon reflection, the best of the best had one quality in common. They loved leading people!

Peter Drucker often noted that Frances Hesselbein (the former chief executive officer of the Girl Scouts and now chairman of the Leader to Leader Institute) was the greatest leader he had ever met. I have to agree with Peter’s assessment. I originally worked with Frances as a volunteer consultant to the Girl Scouts. Over the past 25 years we have worked together on myriad projects. She is now one of my best friends.

When Frances discusses her work as a leader, her eyes sparkle and her face glows. No matter what personal or professional challenges she is facing, she is always up, positive, and inspirational. Frances defines leadership as "circular," with the leader reaching across the organization to colleagues, not down to subordinates. Her motivation has never come from the outside, meaning from money or status. Instead, it has always come from the inside, from her love of service and what she does.

Anthropology unites humankind rather than dividing it

In claiming that Bob Geldof's upcoming "anthropological" TV series on humanity risks "drawing unnecessary attention to what divides members of the human race" (Comment, April 20), Simon Jenkins does a disservice both to anthropology and to Geldof. His claim that anthropology "buries itself in rainforests and deserts" in search of "lost tribes" is a dinner-party caricature that ignores generations of anthropological research that has gone into showing interconnections between peoples wherever they may live. A brief glance at the PhDs in this department over the last 75 years reveals Culture Contact in South-East Africa (1932); Mexican Immigrant Settlement in Dallas (1949); and Bangladeshi Family Life in Bethnal Green (2002).

Study: Americans Don't Understand Others

LiveScience.com

Rugged American individualism could hinder our ability to understand other peoples' point of view, a new study suggests.

And in contrast, the researchers found that Chinese are more skilled at understanding other people's perspectives, possibly because they live in a more "collectivist" society. The study, though oversimplified compared to real life, was instructive.

"That strong, egocentric communication of Westerners was nonexistent when we looked at Chinese," Keysar said. "The Chinese were very much able to put themselves in the shoes of another when they were communicating."

The results are detailed in the July issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Collectivist societies, such as the Chinese, place more value on the needs of the group and less on the autonomy of the individual. In these societies, understanding other peoples' experiences is a more critical social skill than it is among typically more individualist Americans.

International Affairs

SURFACE TENSIONS As China Grows, So Does Its Long-Neglected Navy

Many believe China's growing ties to the world economy and its dependence on imported oil and raw materials will ensure China's "peaceful rise," as Beijing's leaders have pledged. But these same commercial interests -- and the need to defend them -- are also driving China to pursue military might.

"The oceans are our lifelines. If commerce were cut off, the economy would plummet," says Ni Lexiong, a fellow at the Shanghai National Defense Institute and an outspoken proponent of Chinese sea power. "We need a strong navy."

For Chinese strategists, the country's rapid economic growth -- which underpins the Communist Party's continued hold on political power -- and its military advancement are now inextricably linked. "Security issues related to energy, resources, finance, information and international shipping routes are mounting," says a government white paper published last December that lays out China's defense policy.

Broken China

Beijing can't clean up the environment, rein in stock speculation, or police its companies. Why the mainland's problems could keep it from becoming the next superpower

When the bureaucratic machinery of China rolls into action, it is a sight to behold. A mayor announces a plan to reclaim hundreds of acres from the sea and build a massive industrial complex. A few years later, busy factories and roads stretch as far as the eye can see, families are living in thousands of new apartments, and 10,000 workers have launched Phase Two. ...This is the side of China that awes the outside world. The mainland's extraordinary ability to mobilize people and capital to accomplish daunting feats in record time is the reason it has averaged annual growth of 9.5% for three decades. ...Why, then, is it so hard for this same government to crack down on exporters of dangerously tainted seafood, toothpaste, and medicine, despite years of warnings by local and foreign experts? The relentless headlines about unsafe products from China reveal a scary truth: Probe even a little into the Chinese economic miracle and glaring administrative failures abound. Product safety is just one aspect of Beijing's inability to enforce needed regulation in everything from manufacturing and the environment to copyrights and the capital markets.

The Final Curtain for Palestine

July 15, 2007: The Arab League is having a lively debate over whether to send a delegation to Israel. That would be a first, the result of  many Arab countries no longer considering Israel a "problem," but rather more of an asset. Islamic radicalism is generally accepted to be a problem, even though, or perhaps because, it is so popular with many Arabs. There are problems in the Middle East, and many Arabs now recognize that the cause is not Israel. The Arab Reform Movement is pretty blunt about blaming Arabs for the lack of good government, or economic and scientific progress in the region. Many Arabs note that over half of Israel's population is "Arab" (either Israeli Arab or Israelis of Middle Eastern origin), and that has not prevented Israel from building a working democracy and thriving economy. An increasing number of Arabs ask, "why not us?" The Palestinians are increasingly seen as a bunch of self-destructive screw-ups who can't do anything right. Arab support for Palestinians is increasingly just for show, and the show is coming to an end. 

Global Fishing Trade Depletes African Waters

African waters have been losing fish stock rapidly as a result of global trade in fishing rights between rich countries and poor. The competition is hurting small-scale domestic fisherman, and concern is growing about overfishing.

In Africa, Mortgages Boost An Emerging Middle Class

LUSAKA, Zambia -- Herrick Mpuku has spent a decade building his family a house, and it's still not done. There are no kitchen cabinets, and the concrete-block walls haven't been plastered smooth. But now the 45-year-old economist is having a new home built -- one he expects to go from groundbreaking to the final coat of paint within six months.

Economists see aid to poor nations as ineffective
 Aid to poor countries has little effect on economic growth, and policies that rely on such claims should be reexamined, two former International Monetary Fund economists wrote in a paper released this month.

·         "We find little evidence of a robust positive correlation between aid and growth," wrote Raghuram Rajan, who stepped down as IMF chief economist at the end of 2006, and Arvind Subramanian, who left the IMF this year, said.

·         "We find little evidence that aid works better in better policy or institutional environments, or that certain kinds of aid work better than others," they added.

·         "Our findings suggest that for aid to be effective in the future, the aid apparatus will have to be rethought."

·         "There is a moral imperative to this question: it is a travesty for so many countries to remain poor if a relatively small transfer of resources from rich countries could set them on the path to growth."

But if there is no clear evidence that aid boosts growth, then handing out more money makes little sense, they said.

North Korea Offers to Meet U.S. Demands

North Korea has offered to fully declare all nuclear-weapons programs and disable them by the end of the year, meeting U.S. hopes for quick moves following the shutdown of Pyongyang's sole operating reactor, South Korea's envoy said Wednesday.

"North Korea expressed its intention to declare and disable [all its nuclear facilities] within the shortest possible period, even within five or six months, or by the end of the year," Chun Yung-woo said. He said that North Korean negotiator Kim Kye Gwan also told South Korea that his nation is "willing to declare all its nuclear programs without omitting a single one."

The pledge for total disclosure is key because it implies the North will also include a mention of the uranium-enrichment program that it has never publicly acknowledged. The North's publicly known reactor at Yongbyon that produces plutonium had previously been shuttered under a 1994 disarmament deal with the U.S., but never disabled. "Uranium enrichment is an ongoing issue and, believe me, we are working on it," U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said.

U.S. Sounds Alarm on al Qaeda Moves

Pressure Intensifies on Bush To Eradicate Pakistani Haven; Unrest Surrounds Musharraf

New terrorism-threat alarms from Washington are being sounded in large measure because of what intelligence reports say are signs that al Qaeda has rebuilt a base in Pakistan that could be a launching pad for attacks in the West.

U.S. policy makers, under pressure to eradicate this haven with or without the cooperation of Islamabad, describe a vexing dilemma. Any major unilateral effort by the Pentagon inside Pakistan, say U.S. officials, could spark a local backlash strong enough to topple President Pervez Musharraf, a leader President Bush has called Washington's strongest ally in the fight against al Qaeda.

FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE In Pakistan, Two Sisters Turn Up Heat on Musharraf

Amid Rising Violence, Opponents of Islamists Protest Military Control

LAHORE, Pakistan -- Sisters Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani have been gadflies for three decades of Pakistani governments. In the 1970s, they sprung their father from jail in a landmark case against military detentions. In the 1980s, they helped launch human-rights groups that challenged harsh Islamic laws. Along the way, they've been audited, arrested and shot at.

Now, the two lawyers are front and center in a democratic movement that is creating major political headaches for Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally. Many moderates in Pakistan feel Mr. Musharraf's military government has divided the country, failing to stem the rise of Islamic extremism that is an increasing threat to the nation's security. (See related article.) The sisters argue that government crackdowns -- including secret arrests and allegations of torture -- are adding fuel to the fire.

Plan to Boost West Bank Economy Could Further Alienate Some Palestinians

JERUSALEM -- President Bush believes he finally may have a solid foundation upon which to try to build a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Developments on the ground suggest his optimism -- as laid out yesterday in a White House speech -- may prove fleeting.

The Effort: President Bush is promising to restart Middle East peace efforts and provide backing for his largely secular ally, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Challenge: Mr. Abbas is expected to reach lofty goals at a time when his political movement is weak following last month's takeover of the Gaza Strip by the Islamist group Hamas.

The Bottom Line: Progress may be impossible without dialogue between Mr. Abbas and Hamas, but the U.S. opposes it.

The Blair Option in Palestine

Four basic facts govern Blair’s role:

• No peace is possible unless the Palestinian government becomes master in its own house;

• Nothing is possible if Gaza remains a virtual charnel house;

• Abbas cannot succeed and Hamas cannot be politically weakened unless there is massive external economic assistance;

• It is imperative to limit the damage caused by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to everything else that has to be done in the Middle East.

The Other Iran Crisis

While the world focuses on Iran's centrifuges, the regime in Tehran appears to be in the midst of one of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in years. The government has focused on labor leaders, universities, the press, women's rights advocates, a former nuclear negotiator, Iranian-Americans, even civil servants who demanded higher salaries. Iran's cruel treatment of its own citizens is yet another sign that it can't be trusted with the welfare of other nations.

The crackdown has two causes. First, the hard-line administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces rising popular pressure for failing to deliver on promises of greater prosperity from soaring oil revenue. Iran's economy is so stressed right now that, although Iran is the world's second-largest oil exporter, it recently began rationing gasoline. At the same time, the nuclear standoff with the West threatens to bring new economic sanctions. Hence, Tehran is using American support for a change in government and the possibility of a military attack as a pretext to further liquidate its opposition.

Innovate for India's Poor

BANGALORE -- When the Korean steelmaker Posco decided to invest $11 billion in the bleak hinterland of eastern India, it might have expected to be greeted with flowers. Instead, two Posco executives were recently kidnapped, but later released unharmed, in a protest over government policies to transfer land from struggling farmers to the mega-corporations driving India's modernization.

It is only the latest evidence of gathering rage among the hundreds of millions who remain mute spectators to the Indian economic miracle. In recent months, peasant revolts have been flaring up across the country, protesting against industrialization and the land grabs that accompany it. Harnessing the anger of rural poor, Maoist-inspired insurgents roam freely across much of central India, causing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to call them the largest threat to India's security.

WTO Requires U.S. Concessions

GENEVA -- The U.S. must reduce its trade-distorting farm subsidies to a level between $13 billion and $16.4 billion as part of a new global commerce pact, according to initial estimates of a WTO proposal released Tuesday.

Major developing countries such as Brazil, China and India will also have to offer greater market opportunities for industrial exports, according to the draft agreements unveiled by the World Trade Organization's chief agriculture and manufacturing mediators. The European Union appears to have largely satisfied the trade body's demands for liberalizing its farm markets.

Iraq

The Lie Mutually Agreed Upon

Yet another Marine has won a court victory in the investigation of the battle at Haditha – adding more doubts to the claims of a massacre. In this case, the officer conducting an Article 32 hearing (equivalent to a grand jury hearing in civilian courts) has ruled that charges should be dropped. In essence, the claims of a massacre at Haditha are now looking false. That said, al Qaeda, through some adept media manipulation, has still won a victory.

Why I Declined To Serve

What I found in discussions with current and former members of this administration is that there is no agreed-upon strategic view of the Iraq problem or the region. In my view, there are essentially three strategies in play simultaneously.

The first I call "the Woody Hayes basic ground attack," which is basically gaining one yard -- or one city block -- at a time. Given unconstrained time and resources, one could control the outcome in Iraq and provide the necessary security to move on to the next stage of development.

The second strategy starts with security but adds benchmarks for both the U.S. and Iraqi participants and applies time constraints that should guide them toward a desired outcome. The value of this strategy is that everyone knows the quantifiable and measurable objectives that fit within an overall strategic framework.

The third strategy takes a larger view of the region and the desired end state. Simply put, where does Iraq fit in a larger regional context? The United States has and will continue to have strategic interests in the greater Middle East well after the Iraq crisis is resolved and, as a matter of national interest, will maintain forces in the region in some form.

Of the three strategies in play, the third is the most important but, unfortunately, is the least developed and articulated by this administration.

Politics and Affairs

New Populism Is Spurring Democrats on the Economy

WASHINGTON, July 15 — On Capitol Hill and on the presidential campaign trail, Democrats are increasingly moving toward a full-throated populist critique of the current economy.

Clearly influenced by some of their most successful candidates in last year’s Congressional elections, Democrats are talking more and more about the anemic growth in American wages and the negative effects of trade and a globalized economy on American jobs and communities. They deplore what they call a growing gap between the middle class, which is struggling to adjust to a changing job market, and the affluent elites who have prospered in the new economy. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, calls it “trickle-down economics without the trickle.”

No Hesitations

A child of violence and poverty, ROLAND FRYER of Harvard goes where other economists fear to tread.

Black children do worse in school than white children. It’s a phenomenon economists have been trying to understand for decades, and they have blamed it on everything from upbringing to racial bias in testing. Only a few have dared to consider genetics as a factor. Among them is Roland Fryer, an assistant professor of economics at Harvard and a fellow at the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research. Fryer is himself an African American.

Myths and Realities of the George Bush Presidency

Near the end of his shows, humorist Mort Sahl used to ask, "Is there anyone I haven't offended yet?" These days, I find myself asking the same question about President Bush. Economic libertarians gripe about high government spending. The "base" was offended by his handling of the immigration issue. The left is offended by every step he takes and every move he makes. As I listen to people discuss the Presidency of George Bush, I find myself hearing the same things over and over. He has been too ideological, too closed-minded, too partisan, and too incompetent, resulting in a disastrous Presidency. I am not sure that this analysis will survive a more sober, detached perspective. Later in this essay, I will spell out what I see as the myths embedded in the conventional wisdom.

Note to Medicaid Patients: The Doctor Won't See You

Medicaid provides health-care coverage for millions of Americans -- but a growing number of doctors won't accept it….But when Medicaid patients seek care, they often find themselves locked out of the medical system. In a 2006 report from the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonprofit research group based in Washington, nearly half of all doctors polled said they had stopped accepting or limited the number of new Medicaid patients. …That's because many Medicaid programs, straining under surging costs, are balancing their budgets by freezing or reducing payments to doctors. That in turn is driving many doctors, particularly specialists, out of the program. …The dwindling number of doctors who accept Medicaid is a large, little-discussed hurdle to some ambitious efforts to broaden health-care coverage. Expanding Medicaid eligibility or using the private Medicaid HMOs is a linchpin in universal-coverage initiatives in Massachusetts and other states -- as well as some 2008 presidential candidates' platforms.

•  The Situation: The number of doctors who will accept Medicaid patients is dwindling.

•  The Background: Straining under higher costs, Medicaid has been freezing or slashing fees to doctors.

•  What's at Stake: The issue could be a hurdle to some states' efforts to broaden health-care coverage by expanding Medicaid eligibility.

Science and Culture

Posted by dblwyo at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some years ago I had the pleasure of seeing the "adventure" movie, "The Wild Geese" about a mercenary force recuited by a London merchant banker to rescue a deposed African leader so as to restore decent government to his country and, oh by-the-way, give the banker's companies access to the vast copper and other mineral desposits. Any resemblance to the real world is entirely coincidental and the fact that a mysterious plane landed with a few remaing mercs and a dead African rumored to be Moise Tshombe is entirely besides the point. Nor that the history of the Congo (Zaire, Central African Republic, whatever) closely resembles the highlights of the fictional homeland. And strictly a technical matter is that Michael "Mad Mike" Hoare, commander of the white mercs during the early Congo troubles is the movie's technical adviser. As another sidepoint may I recommend W.E.B. Griffin's "Special Ops" - historical fiction about Communist insurrection in the Congo and the role of the Green Berets in dealing with same. The fact that it's highly entertaining, a fun read and embeds quite a lot of technical knowledge and historical information that's accurate as far as we can tell is also beside the point.

More recently a friend, who normally doesn't recommend adventure movies, suggested I see "Tears of the Sun" about an American SEAL team sent into a cauldron of civil war and a collapsed state in Central Africa to rescue a politicaly connected American medical missionary. Who of course refuses to leave and abandon her patients so the the Team Leader surrendars all normal discipline and shephards her and her charges thru miles of jungle to get across a border. Now the action is better, the special effects spectactularly and clearly they had better technical support becasue the tactics and weapons appear like they could have been used as a training film.

Watch both and compare and contrast. Because, you see there's another and deeper - more profound difference - difference that points to the failures of the last 50 years of policy and nation-building. In the Wild Geese Pieter Coetzee, the South African farmer carries Julius Limbani on his back because he must, all the while calling him kaffir. Limbani objects and tells him that they need to forgive each other and build a future together because otherwise African will become nothing but a cauldron of war, insurrection and violence. In Tears the team is just focused on the rescue and there's no bones made that it's a failed state and not going to change. A 1978 movie about mid-60s events and a 2003 movie that could have been made anytime in the last 10 (20 ?) years, or perhaps the next 10 (or 20 ?). If you can keep a dry eye more power to you. How did we come from the painful hope of the first to the heroic fatalism of the second ? And is that a true path ? Or do we need to suck it up and learn from our mistakes rather than continue to look for simple formulas ? It's one thing to have physical courage, another to have the moral courage to lead and a whole different thing to admit your wrong and find a new path. (An insight I owe to James Stockdale talking about the civilian leadership of the Vietnam War btw).

There are 980 million people in Africa and most of them are in deep trouble. Victims of Cold War machinations, neglect and the failures of their own societies. Good government matters - in fact on 911 we learned two things. It matters a whole heck of a lot, more than we ever acknowledged, and - ethics and morals aside - doing good is in our self-interest 'cause if these folks have no hope and no voice what do they care what happens to the rest of us ? So in the name of enlightened self-interest let me finally recommend a new book on institutions and development policy.

The Least Among Us

Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.

 Neill Fergurson gives it a sound and glowing review and compares & contrasts it to the two polar opposites of Jeffrey Sachs (more money, more money) and William Easterly (this may not work):

 

There are, he suggests, four traps into which really poor countries tend to fall. The first is civil war. Nearly three-quarters of the people in the bottom billion, Collier points out, have recently been through, or are still in the midst of, a civil war. Such wars usually drag on for years and have economically disastrous consequences. Congo (formerly Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo) would need 50 years of peace at its present growth rate to get back to the income level it had in 1960. Unfortunately, there is a vicious circle, because the poorer a country becomes, the more likely it is to succumb to civil war (“halve the ... income of the country and you double the risk of civil war” is a characteristic Collier formulation). And once you’ve had one civil war, you’re likely to have more: “Half of all civil wars are postconflict relapses.”

Why, aside from their poverty, have so many sub-Saharan countries become mired in internal conflict? Collier has spent years trying to answer this question, and his conclusions are central to this book. Civil war, it turns out, has nothing much to do with the legacy of colonialism, or income inequality, or the political repression of minorities. Three things turn out to increase the risk of conflict: a relatively high proportion of young, uneducated men; an imbalance between ethnic groups, with one tending to outnumber the rest; and a supply of natural resources like diamonds or oil, which simultaneously encourages and helps to finance rebellion.

It was in fact Collier who first came up with the line “diamonds are a guerrilla’s best friend,” and a substantial part of this book concerns itself with what economists like to call the “resource curse,” his No. 2 trap. As he sees it, the real problem about being a poor country with mineral wealth, like Nigeria, is that “resource rents make democracy malfunction”; they give rise to “a new law of the jungle of electoral competition ... the survival of the fattest.” Resource-rich countries don’t need to levy taxes, so there is little pressure for government accountability, and hence fewer checks and balances.

Countries don’t get to choose their resource endowment, of course; nor do they get to choose their location. Trap No. 3 is that landlocked countries are economically handicapped, because they are dependent on their neighbors’ transportation systems if they want to trade. Yet this is a minor handicap compared with Trap No. 4: bad governance. Collier has no time for those who still seek to blame Africa’s problems on European imperialists. As he puts it bluntly: “President Robert Mugabe must take responsibility for the economic collapse in Zimbabwe since 1998, culminating in inflation of over 1,000 percent a year.”

If these four things are the main causes of extreme poverty in Africa and elsewhere, what can the rich countries do? Clearly we can’t relocate Chad or rid Nigeria of its oil fields. Nor, Collier argues, can we rely on our standard remedies of aid or trade, without significant modifications. As a general rule, aid tends to retard the growth of the labor-intensive export industries that are a poor country’s most effective engine of growth. And much aid gets diverted into military spending. As for emergency relief, all too often it arrives in the wrong quantity at the wrong time, flooding into postconflict zones when no adequate channels exist to allocate it.

Trade, too, is not a sufficient answer. The problem is that Asia has eaten Africa’s lunch when it comes to exploiting low wage costs. Once manufacturing activity started to relocate to Asia, African economies simply got left behind. Now, to stand any chance of survival, African manufacturers need some temporary protection from Asian competition. So long as rich countries retain tariffs to shelter their own manufacturers from cut-price Asian imports, they should exempt products from bottom billion countries.

This, however, is not the most heretical of Collier’s prescriptions. Reflecting on the tendency of postconflict countries to lapse back into civil war, he argues trenchantly for occasional foreign interventions in failed states. What postconflict countries need, he says, is 10 years of peace enforced by an external military force. If that means infringing national sovereignty, so be it.

At a time when the idea of humanitarian intervention is selling at a considerable discount, this is a vital insight. (One recent finding by Collier and his associates, not reproduced here, is that until recently, former French colonies in Africa were less likely than other comparably poor countries to experience civil war. That was because the French effectively gave informal security guarantees to postindependence governments.) Collier concedes that his argument is bound to elicit accusations of neocolonialism from the usual suspects (not least Mugabe). Yet the case he makes for more rather than less intervention in chronically misgoverned poor countries is a powerful one. It is easy to forget, amid the ruins of Operation Iraqi Freedom, that effective intervention ended Sierra Leone’s civil war, while nonintervention condemned Rwanda to genocide.

Still, it would be wrong to portray Collier as a proponent of gunboat development. In the end, he pins more hope on the growth of international law than on global policing. Perhaps the best help we can offer the bottom billion, he suggests, comes in the form of laws and charters: laws requiring Western banks to report deposits by kleptocrats, for example, or charters to regulate the exploitation of natural resources, to uphold media freedom and to prevent fiscal fraud. We may not be able to force corrupt governments to sign such conventions. But simply by creating them we give reformers in Africa some extra leverage.

Or as Mr. R.A. Heinlein put it one time, "good intentions are no substitute for knowing how a buzz saw works". To which I'll add if we need to build a house we'd better figure out how to get the timber out and learn how to work the buzz saw. Otherwise we'll keep stacking up the thumbs, innocent and guilty alike.

Posted by dblwyo at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A second set of selected readings that struck me as interesting.Forgive the odd formatting as it reflects the cut & paste thru various media from multiple sources 

When the "Bleed-Out" Begins

Perhaps we will never have to confront the question, you say. Perhaps our good luck will hold, or our intelligence will detect all the plots and plotters, or the terrorists will conclude that America is so divided anyway, why do anything that might unite the country? Maybe things will turn out that way, but a prudent person wouldn't bet on it.

 The Quagmire of Inequality

You Get What (and Who) You Vote For

Posted by dblwyo at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

'Little Heathens' ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/books/review/Gilbert-t.html?ref=books )

By MILDRED ARMSTRONG KALISH
Reviewed by ELIZABETH GILBERT

Rural, Methodist Iowans during the Great Depression were not a soft lot, but Mildred Armstrong Kalish absolutely loved her childhood.

'The Bottom Billion' ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/books/review/Ferguson-t.html?ref=books )

By PAUL COLLIER
Reviewed by NIALL FERGUSON

The economist Paul Collier has some ideas about how to improve the lot of the world’s poorest countries.

Wrapped in the Star-Spangled Toga  (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/weekinreview/01goodheart.html?ref=weekinreview)

By ADAM GOODHEART

 

Michael Bierut

Recently, it has seemed that ancient Rome is everywhere — especially in comparisons to modern America.

On Forgetting the Obvious  ( http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=289&MId=14 )

by robert d. kaplan 

A society that believes in nothing will fight for nothing.

 It is obvious that a military can only fight well on behalf of a society in which it believes. But a society which believes that little is worth fighting for cannot, in the end, field an effective military. Obvious as this is, we seem to have forgotten it.

Can a Law Change a Society? ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/weekinreview/01rosen.html?ref=weekinreview )

By JEFFREY ROSEN

Last week’s Supreme Court decision declared that public schools can’t take explicit account of race to achieve integration, but will a colorblindness mandate succeed?

'A Russian Diary'  ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/books/review/Meier-t.html?ref=books )

By ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA

Reviewed by ANDREW MEIER

The journalist Anna Politkovskaya defended Russia’s victims — until she became one.

Posted by dblwyo at 01:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)