The drumbeat of significant int'l news & events continues almost unabated. However, the rythm and melody line of much of the news from Russia, Europe, China, et.al. hasn't changed over the prior postings where we discussed them. This time you can add in some continuation of learnings in Afghanistan where the US is also adapting to the local tribal culture and re-learning how to do counter-insurgency. That needs to contrast with continued turmoil in Pakistan where we fail to learn parallel lessons along with the recent labor turmoil in the Gulf states and an upcoming multi-generational power transfer in Egypt. Over the last two+ months there have been three major developements we need to keep at the forefront of our minds: 1) the spectualar albeit fragile sucess of the new strategies in Iraq and, increasingly, in Afghanistan, 2) the jumpshift in Pakistani instability which threatens a more worisome outcome and, just recently, 3) the sudden reversal of the intelligence estimates on Iranian nuclear weapons programs.
This last is particularly worth thinking about because, rather like only moreso our earlier discussion regarding Iraq, it's clear they had a program, are continuing to pursue nuclear power, have a committment to nuclear weapons if not active pursuit and a demonstrated willingness to disrupt the societies and polities around them by exporting terror and religious dissent in pursuit of their own agenda. The bottom line here is that we need to find a workable approach for containing Iran while encouraging them to pay more attention to their internal problems and less to insurrection in pursuit of their ideologies. The problem is that Iran is faction ridden and ruled by a kleptocratic theocracy that demonstratbly puts its' own profits and welfare ahead of the good of the country as a whole. And is likely to sacrifice many lives and much treasure in support of those goals and maintaining power.
Meanwhile after a decade and a half of extremist politics in the US where both parties retreated to their own extremes and focused on winning elections by appeals to the base, only "giving" enough to get to a slim winning majority. The famous Rovian 51%. Well that appears to be changing as mounting troubles and voter dissatisfaction with purist positions is leading to the re-emergence of more centrist politics - a strategy which Rudy Giuliani is introducing and focusing on in contrast to warping himself to set the extremist base. We'll see that works out but let's hope....
Underlying much of these disparate events and threads is the sine qu non of social well-being, that without there is no other, the performance of the economy. As the economy slows and approaches a danger point it's becoming a central concern in the US elections yet, as Martin Feldstein points out, the dangers of a serious and disruptive recession are growing rapidly. Meanwhile the rapid decline in the dollar is devasting the African cotton growing states. Who said economics doesn't matter ?
Part of the problem, of course, is that most people basically ignore economics issues. Like the weather much talked about but little done, let alone thought about. Contrary to popular opinion there is a common core set of economic propositions that hold on both the macro- and micro-levels but the economists don't do much good communicating them. And because the simple rules result in complex feedbacks it makes people's heads hurt to think about. Almost an equal barrier is that most folks confuse economics with financial markets and/or business. While those are components economics is really about finding the best use for available resources - how to make choices to get the most efficient and effective tradeoffs between competing uses for always scarce resources.
Fortunately in a public policy sense we've come a long way since Winston Churchill returned England to a gold standard in the 1920s and triggerred it's own depression prior to the Great One. Unfortunately we've got a long way to go in terms of understanding, policy and public comprehension. However one of THE critical issues of the next century will be how to create socio-political regimes that encourage and support economic growth while mitigating it's worse features. The review below by Brad DeLong of a new book on Joseph Schumpeter is well worth your time as a start on these issues.
Special & General
Talkin' World War III Could we have a little talk about World War III? It's back again, that phrase, and it doesn't look like it's going to go away soon. This past month may be remembered as the one when World War III broke out. Not the thing itself, obviously, but the concept, the memory, the nightmare, which had been buried in the basement of our cultural consciousness since the end of the Cold War. The beast suddenly broke out of the basement and it's in our face again. The return of the repressed. There was George Bush's Oct. 17 warning that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III," you ought to worry about the prospect of Iranian nukes. Many found the phrase jolting, coming out of the blue. First, because it had not been in widespread use, certainly not from a White House podium, and second because "World War III" generally connotes a global nuclear war, while Bush was speaking about regional scenarios involving Iran and Israel. Why the sudden rhetorical escalation? Especially coming from the man who has the "nuclear football," the black briefcase with the Emergency War Orders, always by his side, and enough megatonnage at his disposal to threaten the existence of the entire human race. Then, a few days after Bush's Oct. 17 shocker, I came upon a less widely noticed, perhaps even more ominous quote, originally published two weeks earlier in London's usually reliable Spectator, in a story about the Sept. 6 Israeli raid on that alleged Syrian nuclear facility. A quote from a "very senior British ministerial source" contending, "[I]f people had known how close we came to world war three that day there'd have been mass panic." Here, it wasn't Bush theorizing about the future; it was a responsible official saying we'd already come close to Armageddon.
U.S. Response on Iran’s Nuclear Program Iran halted its nuclear-weapons development in 2003, U.S. officials now believe. Iran continues to enrich uranium, which means it could still develop a weapon by 2015, according to a new National Intelligence Estimate released today. The White House, in response,issued this statement by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley: Today’s National Intelligence Estimate offers some positive news. It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons. It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen. But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem. The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically — without the use of force — as the Administration has been trying to do. And it suggests that the President has the right strategy: intensified international pressure along with a willingness to negotiate a solution that serves Iranian interests while ensuring that the world will never have to face a nuclear armed Iran. The bottom line is this: for that strategy to succeed, the international community has to turn up the pressure on Iran — with diplomatic isolation, United Nations sanctions, and with other financial pressure — and Iran has to decide it wants to negotiate a solution.,
- A welcome new realism on Iran Iran should be offered security guarantees and economic ties that give it status and an interest in stability. In a remarkable about-turn, the collective brains of US intelligence have torn up their previous assertions about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Tehran, they now judge in a new National Intelligence Estimate released on Monday, halted its nuclear weapons programme in the autumn of 2003 and – to the best of their knowledge – has not restarted it. “World War Three” – a spectre so recently brandished by President George W. Bush – appears to have been postponed. The Iranian leadership, it would appear, has a much more rational sense of national self-interest than the messianic ravings of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad would suggest. The US government, even under the remnants of the team responsible for the Iraq disaster, possesses more sober judgment than the bellicosity of some of its leaders would suggest. Iran’s nuclear activities are still murky, its regional ambitions still a potential threat. But this is nevertheless an opportunity for a robust diplomatic offensive on Tehran. The six powers dealing with Iran — the US, UK, France, Germany, China and Russia – should ratchet up targeted sanctions through the United Nations. But the US needs to conquer its visceral hostility towards Tehran and come up with carrots. In exchange for coming clean on its nuclear programmes Iran should be offered security guarantees and economic ties that give it status and an interest in stability in the Middle East. This is a chance that must be seized. Iran relives the Shah era
Creative Destruction's Reconstruction: Joseph Schumpeter Revisited Over the previous two and a half centuries, three different economic worldviews, in succession, reigned. B ut there ought to have been a fourth reign, for there was a set of themes not sufficiently explored. That missing reign was Schumpeter's, for he had insights into the nature of markets and growth that escaped other observers. It is in that sense that the late 20th and early 21st centuries in economics ought to have been his: He asked the right questions for our era. Previous first-rank economists (with the partial exception of Marx) had concentrated on situations of equilibrium. In that model, development is a gradual process, in which competition keeps goods high-quality and affordable, and the abstemious owners of capital await the long-term rewards of deferred gratification. Schumpeter pointed out that that wasn't how market economies really worked. The essence of capitalist economies was, as Marx had recognized before him, the entrepreneur and the innovator: the risk taker who sets in motion new and more-efficient ways of making old or new products, and so produces an economy in constant change. Marx saw that the coming of capitalist economies destroyed all feudal, traditional, and patriarchal relationships and orders. Schumpeter saw farther: that market capitalism destroys its own earlier generations.
Values and Attitudes
In Praise of 'Thought Competition' The answer is simple, though twisted: Their schools -- while touting well-known athletic teams -- are offshoots of the "progressive education" movement and uphold a categorical belief that "thought competition" is treacherous. Administrators of these schools will not support their students in literary, science or math competitions, including the most prestigious creative writing event in the country: the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. So we at Writopia Lab help these kids to join the 10,000 young literati from across the country who are hurrying to meet the event's January deadline, as well as deadlines for other competitions. For decades now, psychology and pedagogy researchers have been debating the impact of competition on young people's self-esteem, with those wary of thought competition taking the lead. But what about Sam's sense of personal value? Aren't human beings fabulously varied in their gifts and sensibilities? Excellent teamwork can be important, but is it the only admirable achievement? Should any school in the United States prevent broader acknowledgment of a young, creative mathematician? What is most surprising about the brand of educational progressivism that denies creative and innovative teens the right to compete for public acknowledgment is the seeming lack of interest in distinguishing between positive or negative competitions. Positive competitions award a good number of entries with a range of awards, and, in some cases, send constructive comments back with the manuscripts. Negative competitions, on the other hand, may charge high fees to enter or award only the top three entries. But most importantly, the conversation turned to a defining aspect of an artist's world: the reign of arbitrary judgment. My students know that they don't each share the same response to their peers' work, and they proudly tout individually refined sensibilities. So the real questions they should be asking themselves are: Did they try their best? Have they learned in the process? Are they excited to try again? The goal of positive competitions is to help young people identify their strengths, overcome their limitations to the best of their ability, and process their disappointments. Luckily, there is an extraordinary range of projects -- both collaborative and competitive -- that inspire kids to produce their best work, bond with their peers and prepare fully for adulthood.
Int’l Affairs
Growth Casts Indians in New Role Amid an explosion of economic growth, millions of Indians are embracing long-unthinkable ambitions: to lead a better life than their parents and create a better life for their children. Since it gained independence, India has been defined by socialism, poverty and a Hindu caste system that determined a person's place in society from birth. Now, amid an explosion of economic growth, millions of Indians are embracing long-unthinkable ambitions: to lead a better life than their parents and create a better life for their children. The new sense of possibility felt by Indians, many of them from the lower classes, is one of the most profound social consequences of the great economic reawakening of this nation of 1.1 billion. Economic growth has averaged about 8.6% a year for the past four years, a rate that, if sustained, would double average incomes in a decade. Indian companies are snapping up Western rivals. Droves of Indian professionals, meanwhile, are returning home from abroad, seeing a greater chance here of entrepreneurial success. Poorer Indians are flocking from villages to the cities in search of new jobs and a better lot in life. India's ability to give more of its citizens the prospect of material and social advancement will largely determine whether today's progress is viewed by history as a transformative period akin to the mass migration of U.S. blue-collar workers in the 1940s and 1950s into the middle class. It also will help narrow the many fault lines that crisscross this fractious and fragmented nation -- divisions between religions, between caste layers, between north and south, between urban and rural, between development and subsistence living. Indian Dream: See Economic Data
China's economic plan: Blame U.S. Beijing knows it needs to rein in runaway growth for the good of the nation's long-term health. And pinning economic problems on foreigners might actually make it politically palatable. Is China planning to use a slowdown in the U.S. economy as an excuse to slow its own economy in 2008? Sure looks like it: Nov. 15 gave investors the first clue of how China would justify the kind of economic pain it needs to inflict on its people in order to stop runaway inflation and financial speculation. The solution? Blame a U.S. economic slowdown for a plunge in Chinese export growth that will put an end to China's double-digit economic growth. Certainly, putting the blame overseas is a whole lot easier politically than taking the heat for deciding the economy has to slow in the short term for China's long-term health. In 2008, according to the World Bank, China's economy will grow by 10.8%. That's not significantly different from the 11.3% growth projected for 2007. China's official economic numbers are notoriously unreliable. Just this summer, for example, the Asian Development Bank reported that China's economy is a tad smaller than previously reported -- roughly 40% smaller. And that the number of Chinese living on less than $1 a day is about 300 million, roughly three times above previous estimates. The reason for the revisions? Chinese officials finally got around to providing accurate price data that the bank needed to calculate how big a boost lower prices in China have given to Chinese living standards. Thanks to inflation, the increase in purchasing power wasn't nearly as large as had been believed.
China's Advance, Mugabe Debate Will Dominate EU-Africa Summit in Portugal European leaders will seek closer economic ties with Africa at a weekend summit to counter China's growing influence on the continent, while grappling with discord caused by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's attendance. The heads of government, meeting in Lisbon Dec. 8-9, will discuss how to deepen cooperation with Africa in areas including peace and security, governance, human rights and poverty alleviation. It's part of a strategy adopted in December 2005 aimed at reasserting the European Union's influence on the continent and forming a ``strategic partnership.'' ``China's role in Africa is a wake-up call for the EU, which has for too long taken Africa and its relationship with the continent for granted,'' Christopher Alden of the London School of Economics and author of ``China in Africa'' said in a telephone interview. China has agreed to double aid to Africa by 2009 and provide $8 billion in loans and investment, eroding Europe's clout that dates back to the colonial era of the 19th century. President Hu Jintao's government, which needs to secure access to oil and other resources to fuel China's 11.5 percent growth rate, attaches no political demands to the aid and investment.
Sarkozy Is Aiming at Wrong Target in Union Battle France doesn't have a union problem. It has a government problem. And so far, there has been little sign Sarkozy realizes that, let alone has any intention of fixing it. In France, a real ``Thatcher moment'' would be to confront the nation's shortcomings. That still looks a long way off. France's real problem isn't the unions. It is the bloated state, a cosseted middle class, punitive taxes, and excessive regulation. While all that remains in place, making train drivers retire a couple of years later won't make any difference. As European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said this month, public spending in France as a percentage of gross domestic product is among the highest in Europe. It is nine points higher than in neighboring Germany. ``Our state stifles us in France, and our politicians are part of the culture of the state,'' said Laurence Parisot, the head of Mouvement des Entreprises de France, the employers federation, at a recent meeting with U.K. journalists. ``They think the state can control everything. Indeed, on some matters I find I am closer to the unions than I am to the government.'' That is closer to the crux of the matter. Even the bosses don't think the unions are a problem. It is the politicians.
Putin, Poised for Electoral Landslide, Faces Decisions on How He'll Use It After transforming the State Duma into a rubber stamp during eight years as president, Putin is about to turn the tables by making his successor subservient to a legislature dominated by the United Russia party -- and controlled by none other than parliamentary candidate Vladimir Putin. That way, he can continue running the country after relinquishing the presidency in May, delighting Russians who are reveling in the ninth year of an economic boom. His continued sway, possibly as prime minister, will heighten Western concerns about the rollback of democratic freedoms in Russia as well as the government's opposition to U.S. missile-defense plans and new sanctions against Iran's nuclear program. Putin, 55, is much loved by investors and the Russian public. A Nov. 9 to Nov. 12 poll by the Levada Center, a Moscow research firm, showed 67 percent of Russians would like him to remain president, though he is constitutionally barred from a third consecutive four-year term. It's not hard to see why. When predecessor Boris Yeltsin resigned on Dec. 31, 1999, Putin inherited a government that had defaulted on $40 billion of debt and devalued the ruble, wiping out millions of people's savings and pushing Russia to the edge of bankruptcy. Since then, the economy has grown almost 7 percent a year on average, fueled by high oil prices. Inflation dropped from an annual rate of 127 percent in July 1999 to 9 percent last year.
· Putin, Poised for Electoral Landslide, Faces Decisions on How He'll Use It President Vladimir Putin is listening. He's launched a new program to make Russia a scientific and technological power -- in space and missile rocketry, where it excelled in Soviet times, and in a half dozen other areas. The effort is being managed by First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who, like his boss, is a former operative with the KGB intelligence service. Ivanov wants to spend at least $60 billion of the country's windfall oil and gas earnings over the next 10 years to make Russia a global tech titan. ``We are consolidating assets and focusing government attention on high-tech industries: nuclear energy, space, nanotechnology, aircraft and shipbuilding,'' Ivanov told reporters on Oct. 15 after attending a meeting on nuclear energy. The government has earmarked 674 billion rubles ($27.4 billion) for nuclear energy, 246 billion rubles for aerospace, 149.4 billion rubles for electronics and 130 billion rubles for nanotechnology, the manipulation of particles smaller than a billionth of a meter.
In Venezuela, Big Choice for Voters What's Happening: Venezuelans will vote Sunday on constitutional changes that would give President Hugo Chávez unprecedented powers. The Background: Mr. Chávez has appealed to the poor by spending billions of dollars of oil income on health and education programs since first being elected in 1998. Polls say the vote is close. What Comes Next: A win would set the legal framework allowing Mr. Chávez to turn Venezuela into a Cuban-style state. A loss would be a giant political defeat for Mr. Chávez, who has dominated Venezuelan politics for years. Chávez's Electoral Coup. Venezuelans Reject Chavez's Plans for Constitution, Chavez's Defeat Leaves Opposition Seeking More Common Ground
Water Threatens Asia's Urbanization, Prosperity The commodity that poses the biggest threat to long-term prosperity in Asia isn't oil, it's water. It isn't so much the likelihood of Asian cities running out of fresh water that should bother the region's policy makers as the bigger danger of being overwhelmed by waste water. The capability to treat discharged water before it is allowed to flow into lakes, rivers and oceans isn't growing quickly enough. Unless this crucial shortcoming is immediately tackled, it may end up being a deterrent to urbanization. The countries that rise to the challenge will create more livable cities for their people as well as exciting, new opportunities for investors; those who squander the initiative will pay a heavy price. The problem would have been easier to tackle had it been restricted to a few large cities. That, however, isn't the case. Between now and 2025, Asia's urban population will swell by 60 percent. A big chunk of this growth will take place in agglomerations of 500,000 people or less. The technology, financing, expertise and political support required to manage water resources prudently may be relatively easier to muster in Dhaka, Karachi, Mumbai and Jakarta than in the smaller urban areas that are growing four times faster than Asia's mega cities.
Dollar's Record Slide Threatens African Cotton Farmers, Splits Families The U.S. dollar's record plunge is adding to the hardships of African cotton growers like Farba Boiro, separating them from home and threatening their ability to continue farming in a region where a third of the population subsists on less than $1 a day. Cotton from companies like Burkina Faso's Sofitex and Cameroon's Sodecoton is bought and sold on the world market in U.S. dollars. Farmers are paid in CFA francs, the euro-pegged local currency of 14 western and central African countries. Compared with a year ago, the dollars their crops fetch in world markets buy about 9 percent fewer CFA francs for food and shelter. While cotton prices have risen about 13 percent this year, ``the appreciation of the CFA franc has offset the benefits,'' according to Stephane Alby, an economist at BNP Paribas SA, France's biggest bank. Most of the region's ``cotton producers are now on the verge of operating at a loss and sinking into debt,'' Alby wrote in the October issue of the Paris-based bank's Conjoncture publication. ``Meanwhile, the main ginning and marketing companies have chalked up heavy losses over the last two seasons, of which a large part has been supported by the government.'' Cotton accounts for 5 to 8 percent of gross domestic product across West Africa, according to the World Bank. Rural areas in the Sahel, the region that stretches across the continent from Senegal, Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, can be entirely dependent on it because few other crops grow there, says Terry Townsend, executive director of the International Cotton Advisory Committee, a Washington-based association of cotton-producing and consuming countries. The countries that link themselves to the euro in what is known as the franc zone are mostly former French colonies, including Senegal, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso, which were granted independence in 1960. Together, they are home to about 115 million people. Based on statistics for eight of the 14 countries compiled by Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund, at least 29 percent of the population existed on less than a dollar a day in the 1994-2004 period, the latest for which data were available.
ME
INDIA-PAKISTAN: The Four Wars of the Apocalypse There are four different wars going on in Pakistan. In the streets of the capital, thousands of political party members demonstrate for their disgraced (for corruption and incompetence) leaders. The political parties are based on giving out jobs and other goodies to the activists who bring in the votes. The major parties are the creations of politicians from the handful of families that control much of the national wealth. The way it works in Pakistan, 5-10 years of bad government brings about a military takeover, and more virtuous (although not always more competent) rule when a general rules. People get tired of that after a while (the current general, Musharraf has been in power eight years) and demand their elected politicians back. In this case, the two leading contenders, Bhutto and Sharif, are rejects from the past who still maintain popularity with the party activists. Musharraf has been under pressure to give up his post as commander of the army. That job is not being done well, as so much time must be spent dealing with presidential affairs, and the pressure from the political parties. And if Musharraf does turn over command of the army, he is at greater risk of another army coup. What Musharraf hopes to do is hold new parliamentary elections in a few months, win them, and beat the political parties at their own game. Musharraf has been much less corrupt than his predecessors, and his rule has brought much prosperity. He's under attack, but he's not a lost cause.
AFGHANISTAN: Make Sense Out Of That A poll conducted by foreign news organizations found that 72 percent of Afghans approve presence of 55,000 U.S. and NATO troops. But only 68 percent believed the foreign troops were doing a good job. Not surprisingly, 92 percent of the population opposed the Taliban. Foreign terrorists are opposed by 83 percent of Afghans. About twenty percent of the population is believed to be very conservative, especially in terms of religion. The majority of the population is socially and religiously conservative by Western standards. These is a sharp divide between urban and rural Afghans, and most of the population is still rural. The Taliban take heart from the growing reluctance of NATO countries to remain in Afghanistan, partly because of the number of their soldiers killed. To the Taliban, it is a source of pride that, although they lose over ten men for every NATO soldier killed, it is the NATO countries that are likely to falter and flee the battlefield first. The Taliban believe they are carrying out God's Will, while the NATO nations are a bunch of weak unbelievers. Although most Afghans oppose the government, these Afghans are perplexed at NATO fears and anxieties. Afghan security forces suffered seven dead per thousand troops this year, versus four per thousand for NATO troops, The Taliban suffered over 100 dead per thousand. What's the problem? Afghans believe that the Taliban are on a losing trajectory. They have seen this sort of tribal war before. It can go on for years, but anyone losing as heavily as the Taliban, eventually suffer less and less tribal support. Even the drug gangs want to bring the death rate down, as it's bad for business (disruptive and makes it harder to recruit). As poor as the Afghans are, suicide for money is not a popular concept.
- Afghan Tradition Masks Political Ambush The fate of Afghan tribal elder Haji Taday shows how the struggle against the Taliban has turned politics into warfare by other means. In Afghanistan's insurgency, politics is warfare by other means. U.S. officers knew that if they wanted to take down Mr. Taday -- both a major figure in the local Taliban and chief of Zerok's council of elders -- they would have to avoid cultural missteps that could hand propaganda victories to their enemies. So for the next hour, U.S. and Afghan officials used the shura, a traditional Pashtun gathering of respected senior villagers, to discredit Mr. Taday before his peers and engineer his downfall. They succeeded, but not in the way they expected. The next day, Lt. Col. Fenzel got word that other shura members -- who U.S. officers say had long remained quiet for fear of Commander Sangeen -- now planned to depose him. At the same time, the colonel began working to secure orders from the provincial governor, Akram Khapalwak, to have the police arrest Mr. Taday. They never got the chance. Three days later, Mr. Taday, his son and three bodyguards traveled from Zerok to a nearby town where he met with the local head of the Afghan intelligence service, according to a U.S. intelligence report. Another son told a local official later that his father also met with American intelligence agents that day. On the way home, as the sun went down, Taliban insurgents ambushed Mr. Taday's vehicle, blasting it with rocket-propelled grenades and killing all five men inside.
- In Counterinsurgency Class, Soldiers Think Like Taliban Six years into the Afghan war, the Army has decided its troops on the ground still don't understand well enough how to battle the Taliban insurgency. So since the spring, groups of 60 people have been attending intensive, five-day sessions in plywood classrooms in the corner of a U.S. base here, where they learn to think like a Taliban and counterpunch like a politician. The academy's principal message: The war that began to oust a regime has evolved into a popularity contest where insurgents and counterinsurgents vie for public support and the right to rule. The implicit critique: Many U.S. and allied soldiers still arrive in the country well-trained to kill, but not to persuade.
Dubai Migrants in Sewage Earn $245/Month to Build $2,455/Night Hotel Rooms Such living conditions, a falling currency and 9 percent inflation have triggered an exodus of laborers from Dubai and strikes by more than 22,000 workers. The protests threaten $430 billion of offices, hotels and homes as the second-largest member of the United Arab Emirates seeks to build a global finance and tourism center with cheap, imported labor. As many as 286,000 illegal immigrants, or 7 percent of U.A.E. residents, left the country under an amnesty that expired Nov. 3, according to the Labor Ministry. The U.A.E., whose biggest member is Abu Dhabi, had 700,000 migrant construction workers last year, many from India. Last month, about 4,000 workers were arrested after four days of strikes during which 14 buses were smashed, police said. A strike by 18,000 employees of Dubai-based Arabtec Holding PJSC ended Nov. 10, the company said in a statement. CEO Riad Kamal declined to comment further.
Mubarak Curbs Dissent, Paves Way for Next President Mubarak, 79, is entering what is probably the twilight of his reign determined to ensure an orderly transition of power with little scrutiny or dissent. By clamping down on opponents, the media and rights groups, he's reversing a move toward increased freedom undertaken in 2004, after President George W. Bush predicted that Egypt would ``set the standard'' for Middle Eastern democracy. As Egypt prepares for its next presidential election -- in 2011, unless Mubarak departs earlier -- the reports about his son now seem prophetic. The president's National Democratic Party on Nov. 4 named Gamal Mubarak, 44, to its Supreme Council. Only council members can run for president, making it a stepping stone for Gamal, the party's assistant secretary general. While Egypt allows elections, it is hardly democratic. President Mubarak has ruled since 1981 under emergency laws imposed after the assassination of his predecessor, Anwar Sadat. They still ban public gatherings of more than five people and prescribe jail for besmirching Egypt's image. For much of Mubarak's rule, there were no independent newspapers, and opponents routinely were jailed, many without charge.
Politics and Policies
Giuliani Sparks Republican Debate by Abandoning Reagan's Election Playbook Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is emphasizing his national-security credentials and fiscal discipline while sidestepping so-called values issues where he has been criticized for supporting abortion and gay rights. He also is targeting traditional Democratic strongholds such as New Jersey and California, arguably at the expense of some of the more socially conservative Sunbelt states that have gone Republican in presidential races. Giuliani's Republican detractors say he is abandoning a model created by Ronald Reagan that helped the party win five of the past seven presidential elections, take control of the Senate for the first time in more than a quarter century in 1980 and capture the House for the first time in 40 years in 1994.
Universally Flawed Which Democrat's health plan really covers more people? While the leading Democratic presidential candidates agree on most policy issues, a sharp dispute has emerged: Who would do more to provide health coverage for the uninsured? Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been engaged in a bitter back-and-forth over whose health plan covers more people. Former Sen. John Edwards has jumped in, saying his plan is the best of all. The argument concerns whether the government should require all Americans to get insurance. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards would require people to get insurance, either through work, a government program or new health marketplaces that all three candidates promise to set up. Mr. Obama would only require that children be insured. Other elements of their plans are similar, including subsidies to help lower-income and even middle-income families pay premiums, and various proposals to cut the cost of health care. The candidates say they would pay for their plans by rolling back President Bush's tax cuts for upper-income earners and by savings in health spending through various measures.
The Bottom Line: Mandates may be needed to get everyone insured, but it's unclear if these plans provide enough subsidies to make the mandates affordable.
Medical professionals calling for Medicare-style plan While health-care reform may play second fiddle to the war in Iraq among voters this election season, it appears that the domestic issue is taking on new life thanks to medical-industry professionals. Welcome to the 2008 elections, where medical professionals are turning up the heat in favor of a universal, single-payer system that represents a radical departure from what most of the major presidential candidates are proposing. They know that such a system is a long shot at this point, but the numbers in their camp are growing. Other medical professional organizations are calling for similar measures to be enacted, or at least discussed. The American Nurses Association, which represents 2.9 million nurses, is pressing for a national plan, as is a group of 14,000 doctors called the Physicians for a National Health Program. The doctors and nurses who propose a single-payer plan say that it will cut red tape, eliminate haggling with insurers over what procedures are necessary and allow them to deliver unfettered health care. Whether this kind of approach will resonate with voters is unclear, but staffers in Cheney's office, at least, seem to have little patience for the nurses' advertising strategy.
Economy the pivotal issue Economic anxieties are giving Democrats an edge as the squeeze on the middle class looms as the key issue in the battle for the White House and Congress.Presidential elections often become a referendum on the economy, with the party of the White House incumbent assigned the credit or the blame for whatever happens in the economy. A bigger problem for the Republicans is that voters aren't hopeful about the economy, and weren't even during the best days of expansion in 2004 and 2005. "Confidence and attitudes about the economy are deeply pessimistic," said Scott Rasmussen, president of polling firm Rasmussen Reports. "It's part of a larger sense of discouragement about the direction of the country." Voters tell pollsters that they want the next president and Congress to fix the war and the economy. Economic issues, such as the costs of health-care, energy and immigration, have risen to the top of their agenda, elbowing out such issues as terrorism, crime and education.
How to Avert Recession The American economy is now very weak and could get substantially weaker. Current economic conditions call for lowering interest rates and for enacting a tax cut now that is conditioned on economic developments in 2008. More generally, fiscal policy should be considered in the future whenever there is a risk that an excessively easy monetary policy could cause an asset-price bubble. After a surge of above-trend growth in the summer, there is likely to be virtually no rise in real GDP in the current quarter. Almost every economic indicator -- including credit conditions, housing and consumer sentiment -- has deteriorated significantly since the Federal Reserve's October meeting. In my judgment, the probability of a recession in 2008 has now reached 50%. If it occurs, it could be deeper and longer than the recessions of the recent past. Further interest-rate cuts can reduce the risk of recession and increase output and employment in 2008 and 2009. The current 4.5% fed-funds rate is essentially neutral -- not low enough to stimulate growth and not high enough to reduce inflation. Although there are risks that the rise in oil prices and the falling dollar will raise the inflation rate, the greater potential damage of an economic downturn calls for a more stimulative policy.
Americans are becoming less likely than Europeans to favor free trade, foreign investment and immigration, a new survey finds. The results reflect growing unease in the U.S. as the economy falters. Americans are becoming less likely than Europeans to favor free trade, foreign investment or immigration, according to a survey of opinion on both sides of the Atlantic, a break with stereotype that reflects growing unease and isolationism in the U.S. as the economy falters. The survey, commissioned by the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., a think tank, and released today found that a growing number of people in the U.S. -- 57%, up from 51% in 2005 -- believe free trade costs more jobs than it creates. Europeans, meanwhile, have become less suspicious of trade's effects. Forty-six percent of Europeans surveyed said trade costs jobs, down from 50% in 2005, the survey said. (See the survey's findings.) Similarly, fewer Americans said they favored freer trade. While 60% of Americans said they thought trade should be more free, that compared with 69% in Europe. Americans also showed the strongest aversion to foreign companies investing in their economy, with 40% saying they opposed it, compared with 30% for Europe as a whole. U.S. support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, has also declined somewhat, to 60% from 64% last year. Overall, a majority of Americans still support the principles of free trade and globalization, but that support is waning, according to the survey.
Mr. Thompson would cut benefits for future retirees from the unsustainable amount currently promised; he would combine that move with voluntary private accounts sweetened with a generous match from the federal government. Mr. Thompson points out, correctly, that by 2041, Social Security will be able to pay only about three-fourths of promised benefits, but he assumes -- as do his fellow Republicans -- that the burden of solving the problem should fall exclusively on the benefit side. This thinking is as faulty as that of Democrats who assert that all promised benefits are sacrosanct. Mr. Thompson proposes to change the way initial Social Security benefits are calculated by linking them to the increase in the cost of living, rather than the growth in wages, over the course of a worker's career. Because wages tend to grow faster than prices, under current law each generation is promised more generous benefits than its predecessor. There is logic to changing the system so that workers across different generations receive the same benefit in dollar terms. But such a change means that benefits over time would replace an increasingly smaller share of workers' pre-retirement income; it would be better to do that in a more progressive fashion that preserves a decent standard of living for workers at the bottom. That is where the sweetener comes in. Rather than private accounts financed by diverting payroll taxes from the existing program, Mr. Thompson would offer add-on private accounts. Unless workers opted out, 2 percent of the wages they earn that are subject to Social Security tax (up to $97,500 this year) would be deposited into private accounts. The lure of the accounts is that the government would match, on a 2 1/2 to 1 basis, contributions from the first $1,000 of wages each month; for contributions from wages above that amount, the government would match 50 cents for every dollar contributed. For those who chose to participate in the accounts, however, their guaranteed benefits would be further reduced -- about 30 percent over the course of a career -- or they would have to work an additional five years beyond the current retirement age (now 67) to receive full benefits. Over time, Mr. Thompson argues, this is a good bargain: Workers would probably accumulate significant nest eggs, more than offsetting the reduction in benefits.
The War on Drugs: What Has Worked, What Hasn’t If there is one lesson learned from the three-decades-long war on drugs, it is that efforts to reduce drugs’ harm by cutting them off at the source are bound to fail, writes Ben Wallace-Wells in Rolling Stone. Since the 1970s, the U.S. has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to fight drug dealers in the Caribbean, then Colombia and now in Mexico. Despite some tactical successes over individual drug lords, demand has always drawn drugs into the U.S. from a new source. Apparent victories, like the pacification of Colombia’s Medellin have been pyrrhic, as drug production moves to neighboring regions. Similarly, a program to eradicate corrupt cops from the Mexican police force has driven them, and their expertise, into the arms of Mexico’s drug lords. Even within the U.S., a law that made it hard for domestic labs to manufacture methamphetamine out of over-the-counter cold medication simply shifted production abroad. Mr. Wallace-Wells talks to veterans of the drugs wars on both the enforcement and the policy side who say that progress against illegal drugs will only be made by reducing demand in the U.S. Of all the approaches that have been tried, only treatment programs for nonviolent drug offenders have been consistently effective, he says. He also praises programs in San Francisco and North Carolina adopted by local police, many of them inspired by Harvard University criminologist David Kennedy, that successfully pressured drug dealers to drop their violent tactics and to deal their drugs away from community centers.
Science and Culture
Where Wonders Await Us Yet even in the twentieth century scientists continued to imagine that life at great depth was insubstantial, or somehow inconsequential. The eternal dark, the almost inconceivable pressure, and the extreme cold that exist below one thousand meters were, they thought, so forbidding as to have all but extinguished life. The reverse is in fact true: the most common backboned creature on our planet is a fish known as the benttooth bristlemouth, and it is only found in the deep sea. Yet who has ever heard of it? Only the uppermost part of the oceans—the top two hundred meters—bears any resemblance to the sunlit waters we are familiar with, yet below that zone lies the largest habitat on Earth. Ninety percent of all the ocean's water lies below two hundred meters, and its volume is eleven times greater than that of all of the land above the sea. This great realm is divided into a twilight zone—between two hundred and one thousand meters deep—and a zone of total darkness, which is itself varyingly subdivided. Below six thousand meters lies a region known as the hadal zone (a term coined only in 1959 from the French Hadès); in the Marianas Trench off the Philippines it is 11,000 meters deep. Ships plying the waters over the trench glide as far above Earth's surface as do jet aircraft crossing the face of America. The hadal zone with its freezing water, heavy pressure, and darkness is seemingly harsh, but some of the imagined hardships are illusory. The freezing water, for example—which comes from the Antarctic seas—carries oxygen necessary for life. Were it much warmer the oxygen content would be insufficient to support fish and giant squid. And while the pressure is extreme (at just four thousand meters deep it is equivalent to that of a cow standing on your thumbnail) the creatures of the hadal zone don't feel it, because the pressure inside their bodies matches that without. And while there is no sunlight, light from luminescent creatures abounds.
As J.K. Rowling Ousts Tolstoy, Russia Needs This Book Prize: This week finds me in Moscow for the award of the Russian Booker Prize for Fiction on Wednesday evening. Not too many people are aware that the British Booker Prize spun off a thriving Russian version after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. I know because I am its chairman. As Soviet communism crumbled, Russian writers suddenly found themselves at liberty to say what they thought. They had plenty to get off their chests. But Russian literature has often been replete with social and political messages, and some found their new freedoms a challenge. In the first days of the prize, many of the books submitted looked back to World War II, squared accounts with the Communist Party, or told mournful tales of the gulag. Now, no subject is beyond reach. Among the writers made internationally famous through the award is Victor Pelevin, a dark surrealist in the mode of 1920s author Mikhail Bulgakov. More recently, there was ``White on Black'' by Ruben Gallego, the 2003 winner. Born with cerebral palsy, his is a powerful -- and often humorous -- account of growing up in Soviet homes for the severely disabled. He used one of the two fingers he could manipulate to type this, his first book. ``I am a hero,'' it opens. ``Being a hero is easy. If you have no arms or legs you are either a hero, or you die.'' The book has been translated into 20 languages. Russians are passionate about writing, so things can get personal when it comes to literary prizes. Not long ago, the head of the judging panel, author Vasily Aksenov, refused to announce the winner because he disagreed with his jury's choice. Sitting beside the bemused victor at a news conference, Aksenov said he didn't even understand the book's title.
persuade others that the path they want to walk is the right one. In fact the best leadership is that which helps the group (the society) find and express that path and commit to it with energy. Yet at the same time helps to shape it, stimulates the emergence of the best and guides its' development.
It is one thing to read about the horrors of a stupid war and lament the wastages and might-have-beens. It is almost entirely another thing to grasp the emotional impacts and consequences. What it did to the survivors and what it meant for their societies and civilizations. The first time that truly began to sink in for me was R.F. Delderfield's great novel (
