Is Blogging a fad?
Via Rajesh Jain, an interview with Eric Schmidt of Google about the Blogger (Pyra Labs) acquisition
I believe that this notion of self-publishing, which is what Blogger and blogging are really about, is the next big wave of human communication. The last big wave was Web activity. Before that one it was e-mail. Instant messaging was an extension of e-mail, real-time e-mail.
A ticking time bomb - 1!
According to the The Wall Street Journal , Alan Greenspan expressed "concern that many investors perceive incorrectly that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are backed by the federal government. That misperception, he said, "undermines the effectiveness of market discipline" when it comes to the two companies, making it critical for regulators to determine whether the companies have appropriate amounts of capital.
But Mr. Greenspan went further, saying that any discussion of the companies' capital adequacy should include the risks of "funding liquidity and market liquidity." Although Mr. Greenspan didn't elaborate, investors assumed he was talking about the risks that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have trouble raising debt or finding enough risk-sharing counterparties in the event of a financial emergency.
About time too.
I've always wondered why most observers of Freddie & Fannie were so fixated on credit risk, while the actual WMD lie in the hedge-funds that both outfits run (aka the investment portfolio) -- an entire smogarsbord of risks (market, liquidity, funding, prepayment), all borne by the unknowing American taxpayer.
Full disclosure: I worked at Freddie Mac for a few years during the 1990s. I have no investments (long or short) in either Fannie or Freddie.
Advice for writers
Here's a useful post from Gene Healy
Healy was referring to bloggers, but I think some leading lights of the Indo-Anglian genre (among them the latter-day Salman Rushdie and Vikram Chandra ) as well as Steve Pinker could benefit from this advice.
My temptation is always to write too much. I keep it under control so as not to have to cut out crap and rewrite. Guys who think they are geniuses because they have never learned how to say no to a typewriter are a common phenomenon. All you have to do is get a phony style and you can write any amount of words.
--Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, 1940
Why does the US molly-coddle Saudi Arabia?
Fact: Saudi Arabia is a theocratic, oppressive monarchy, which treats women as chattel and all non-Muslims as third-class citizens. There is absolutely no freedom or tolerance for any religion other than a puritanical, fanatical version of Islam.
Fact: Saudi Arabia is the fountainhead of Islamic-fascism. The ideology, the money, the impetus � this wonderful country is the mother lode from whence it originates. If there were elections tomorrow, Islamists espousing Osama bin Laden-like views would sweep the election. While it�s been cited ad nauseam, it�s still no coincidence that 15 of the 19 Sep 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
I went to a discussion on US-Saudi relations today, led by Walter L. Cutler, a distinguished career diplomat who served in the US Foreign Service. Cutler was the ambassador to Saudi Arabia twice (among other things).
According to Ambassador Cutler the raison d�etre of the US-Saudi alliance was -- oil. No prizes for guessing that!
Ambassador Cutler cited two facts to justify the United States� alliance with Saudi Arabia.
Fact: The Saudis have the world�s largest reserves of oil (25% of the world�s known reserves)
Fact: The US needs oil. Even though it has only 4% of the world�s population, the United States consumes 25% of the world�s oil.
I�m not too sure, though!
Consider these additional facts:
a) Fact: Japan, Germany & India are far more dependent on imported oil than the United States.
Question: How come none of these countries are stationing troops in the Middle East?
b) Fact: There are more than a dozen major oil producers globally.
Fact: OPEC is a bumbling cartel, with limited price-setting power. There�s so many cheats (within OPEC) & non-OPEC oil producers that OPEC�s price-fixing power is fragile and not sustainable for too long.
Fact: Saudi Arabia�s economic affairs are in a poor way, and will soon be a shambles. Per capita income today is 40% of what it was two decades ago!
Question: Given all of the above, wouldn�t it be fair to say that Saudis need access to American markets as much, if not more so, than the Americans need Saudi oil. Saudi Arabia cannot afford to stop selling oil in the world markets for too long, or their economy would collapse. By the way, the US�s top suppliers are Venezuela, Mexico and only then Saudi Arabia.
c) Fact: Oil is an important cog in the US economy, and a major import item. But it�s not as critical to the economy as it was thirty years ago. And in today�s economy, other items are far more vital � for instance, semiconductors (as Cato pointed out some time ago).
Fact: Many of the world�s semi-conductor plants in the world are in Taiwan. If those plants were taken out by terrorists, then the United States would be in real trouble.
Question: How come the United States treats poor Taiwan, a democratic, capitalistic country that has always been an American supporter, so shabbily, but handles Saudi Arabia, a repressive, barbaric regime with velvet gloves?
Oh.. Sweet Nuthin..
Brian Eno once said that only a hundred people bought Velvet Underground records when they first came out, but those hundred people all went out and formed their own bands.
And a few went on to do just a tad more -- toppling communism, running countries and such like.
In a tribute to Havel, Reason writes
Havel told a startled Lou Reed when he met the Velvet Underground�s former frontman in 1990, "Did you know that I am president because of you?"
In 1968 a rare copy of the Velvet Underground�s first record somehow found its way to Prague. It became a sensation in music circles and beyond, eventually inspiring the Czech name for their bloodless 1989 overthrow of Communist rule, "the Velvet Revolution."
As someone once said of Loaded
"Say a word for the V.U.
When they were left with nothin' at all they left us this sweet nuthin'.
US airbases in India?
According to Rediff, the United States Department of Defense wants access to Indian bases and military infrastructure, with the United States Air Force specifically looking the establishment of airbases in India.
The report, prepared by Juli A MacDonald (an Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton) for the Department of Defense, is based on interviews of 42 key Americans, including 23 active military officers, 15 government officials and four others.
An American Colonel is reported as saying
"The US Navy wants a relatively neutral territory on the opposite side of the world that can provide ports and support for operations in the Middle East.
�For many, India is the most attractive alternative. For this reasons, several Americans underscored that eventual access to Indian military infrastructure represents a critical 'strategic hedge' against dramatic changes in traditional US relationships in Asia".
Rediff goes on to add
It is significant that during the 1991 Gulf War-I, India provided refuelling facility to US warplanes. And during Operation Enduring Freedom, several US warships used Indian facilities for rest and recuperation. As part of Operation Enduring Freedom, Indian naval ships provided escorts to merchant vessels from North Arabian Sea till Strait of Malacca in the most active cooperation with US navy in history
Caveat: I must confess that my knowledge of defense matters is very limited, and if someone can upgrade my knowledge base, I�d be very appreciative.
My initial takeaways:
1) Keeping in mind the aforementioned qualification, I�m not too sure this report is all that significant. I�m sure Ms MacDonald is very accomplished but from what I know, Associates at Booz are normally fresh MBAs/ post-graduates from other disciplines. So it�s not really a high-powered study � this isn�t Stephen Cohen or Tess Schaffer that we�re talking about.
2) In spite of takeaway # 1, I wouldn�t be too surprised if this report creates a (rather pointless) mini-storm in India [grin]
-- The leftists, pinkos and other assorted relics of the Nehru age will come up with the usual balderdash about American imperialism and how India is sacrificing its non-aligned position. The hard-line Swadeshi brigade will mouth dark and dire imprecations about the invasion of India by foreign forces.
If only a few representatives from either group would spend a few weeks in Washington,DC they would be in for a harsh awakening. Such reports, at least about India, aren�t really a big deal in the US of A. Not quite dime-a-dozen but not far from that. It�s time the Nehruvian dinosaurs and Swadeshi goons wake up and realize the truth: India is way, way down on the American radar. For instance, Clinton�s visit to India probably clocked a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of attention and hype in the Indian media, but only a 1 within the American media (as per the American reporters & editors covering this very trip).
Sidebar: Am I being too critical or is the Rediff article somewhat sloppily written? I read it five times, and I still couldn�t figure out what Joseph was saying. C�mon guys � we�re not expecting The New York Review of Books or Granta, but surely you guys can do better.
Lefties & peaceniks 1, Prashant Kothari 0?
Julian Sanchez reports how one of the bigger beneficiaries of the rebuilding Iraq project is the Bechtel Group. They have some history in that region, as Sanchez points out
In the 50s, they built a pipeline from Kirkuk in Iraq to Syria, and in the '80s they had plans to build a massive oil pipeline from Iraq to Jordan. And who was the point man in negotiations on that latter (unrealized) project? Why, a fellow by the name of Donald Rumsfeld.
He goes on to add that
�Negotiations are underway to resurrect a Mosul-Haifa pipeline that could provide Israel with oil. And in an unusually blunt bit of trade negotiation, it'll be a condition of removing sanctions on Iraq that Israel be provided with oil. It's nice to see that military actions undertaken for sound national security reason have so many coincidental side-benefits for the U.S. and its allies in the region.�
And here I was, until a few months ago, thinking the leftists & peaceniks had lost it (as usual), with their No-War-For-Oil chants. Surely the American administration wouldn't dare stoop to something so blatant, at least not while the whole world was watching them. With extremely skeptical eyes, at that.
What did I know? Looks as if I was overly naive. These �crony capitalists� are setting a new bar for brazenness (many thanks to Michael Jensen for forwarding me this last article).
Peter Fitzgerald to step down
Here's some relatively sad news (via Radley Balko)
Senator Peter G. Fitzgerald, the Illinois Republican has decided against seeking another term in 2004.
Fitzgerald, an independent man in many ways (wealth and principles) stood out for me in one instance post 9/11. He was the only Senator to vote against the well-meaning but hopelessly muddled airline bailout bill. If I recall the final vote was 97 to 1 (Fitzgerald, the lone dissenter) in favor of the bailout. Many of Fitzgerald's decisions were based on sound economics and principles. Unfortunately, expediency and pandering are more popular attributes in the political arena, and that may well have proved to be his undoing.
Radley Balko mourns his impending departure, as should any free thinker. However, our friends at the Washington Times are positively gleeful. But, of course.
Alas, poor Bagehot?
Brad DeLong complains about the slippage in The Economist's reporting, and goes on to say
When I get annoyed enough to get in the face of reporters (not, I hasten to say, from the Economist) who I think fail to carry their weight, and ask them why they do this--why they turn everything into a Point-Counterpoint bald recital of positions, rather than helping guide their readers to understand what is the better argument, or the near-consensus position, I tend to get one or both of two responses:
I can't do my job without White House cooperation: if I call them liars, they'll shut me out--then I won't be able to write any stories, and my editors will fire me. I have to keep my sources tamed.
Besides, there are clues scattered in the article that a careful reader can use to understand what is really going on.
I was an avid Economist reader for over ten years, and it's been a very positive experience -- tremendous influence on my writing skills, and more importantly in my journey from a muddled somewhat-left-of-center stance to the libertarian-in-training position I'm in today.
However, over the last few years, the magazine's been slipping: the writing quality, the analysis (their largely non-skeptical support of Bush on all matters, among many others) and some of their predictions (for instance, in the energy arena).
Question: Is there any serious contender? Slate is not international enough, and I can't think of any other general-purpose international news magazine. Ergo, we need to bring back the good old Economist.
Bollywood: where to now? - 1
Jaishree Mishra, a film and video classifier with the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), aka the censors, writes about her rediscovery of Bollywood
Like many others of my Anglophile generation growing up in urban India of the '60s and '70s, I had developed an early scorn for Hindi cinema, only bothering to take notice if the filmmaker was of Ray's or Benegal's ilk. By the time I was a teenager, I had come to regard Bollywood films rather like a loud, brassy, colourful aunt with whom I had a certain affectionate bond, but who annoyed me endlessly for being so crass and yet so undeniable a part of my life.
There's something about Bollywood that seems to be indubitably infecting me...dare I say it, but that annoying noisy, colourful relative is probably with me to stay. There�s a �growing taste for that genre I so thoughtlessly cocked a snook at in my childhood.�
She wonders Bollywood is finally hitting big time and comes to the conclusion, not yet.
Apart, of course, from the newly developing genre of crossover films like Monsoon Wedding, Bend it Like Beckham and The Guru, Indian films are still ghettoised, playing only in a handful of cinemas in far-flung Southall or Ilford. Even when distributors pull out all the plugs to achieve a Leicester Square release for Devdas, the audiences are predominantly South Asian, give or take the odd White, roped into a new experience by an Indian or Pakistani friend. Bollywood will have to bide its time for a Murdoch before it really hits big time.
I suspect there are many others like Mishra, who are discovering a new-found love for Bollywood (or at least, some of it). More on this in upcoming posts.
A "public intellectual" from the 'desh'
Here�s a glowing bio of Fareed Zakaria, which is enough to give the average �desi� a major inferiority complex [grin].
Seriously though, it�s heartening to see that we�re moving beyond the likes of Dinesh D�Souza and Arundhati Roy hitherto the best known "public intellectuals" of Indian origin, at least here in the US. And both, if I may say so, rather sorry representatives (in their uniquely tendentious ways)
I haven�t read much by Zakaria apart from a couple of essays but his writing does appear to have substance and reason (unlike the other aforementioned �intellectuals�).
Zakaria became a conservative, he says, from observing the Indian state. �People often say, �How could you, living in India, end up a Reaganite?� Well, the answer is, live in India. There are two things that people don�t understand. One is the degree to which a highly regulated economy produces masses of corruption because it empowers bureaucrats. It just has to be seen to be believed.
�The second,� he continues, �is that you are very quickly inured to the charms of pre-industrial village life. Whenever someone says the word community, I want to reach for an oxygen mask.�
I consider myself a libertarian-in-training, rather than a Reaganite.
But as someone who also grew up in India, I understand perfectly what Zakaria is referring to.
A letter to The Economist's Editor
Natalie Knowlton, of Erie, Colorado writes in this letter to The Economist:
SIR � I disagree strongly that President George Bush's �dogged determination� is his biggest strength (Lexington, April 5th). In fact, his �stubbornness� is what has made the United States, a nation with much international sympathy and support after September 11th, into the most reviled and detested country on earth�not just in the Arab world. Mr Bush's dogged determination to invade Iraq in spite of almost universal opposition abroad and substantial opposition at home has squandered this country's international good will and led to an America divided as it has not been since the Vietnam era.
One result of our �victory� over Iraq will be to make the world a much more dangerous place for Americans to live, work, and travel, at home and abroad. Far from protecting my freedom and providing for my security, Mr Bush's stubbornness has jeopardised both.
I'm not sure if the United States is 'the most reviled & detested country on earth' (a bit over the top, there) but other than that, Ms Knowlton is right-on in her judgement.
America's military prowess: getting better all the time
Via Arnold Kling in Corante came across this article by Victor Davis Hanson about the brilliance of the American military. Truly awesome. And more, they're getting better all the time. All good stuff.
However, Hanson ends with a somewhat grating argument
There quite literally has never been a single nation that has exercised such colossal military force to change almost instantly the status quo, and used it under the auspices of a consensual government to free � Grenada, Panama, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq � rather than to enslave peoples.
Sophocles would warn us that hubris � not enemies in the here and now � is the only real danger to us on the horizon. But so far we have avoided the gods' nemeses precisely because our soldiers have put their power in the service of good by toppling odious despots � Noriega, Milosevic, Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein � and leaving the seeds of freedom in their wake.
In my opionion, Hanson�s self-laudatory tone is premature and at odds with public opinion in the rest of the world.
The vast majority of non-Americans regard it as The Arrogant and Hypocritical Empire. Check out the World Press Review or the media in almost any country, and you�ll see what I mean. My guess though is that Hanson (or the assorted cronies of Bush in the Administration) don't really care. In such solipsism lies the seeds of hubris...
You�ve gotta be kidding � 4! Meet our generation�s Atlas
Via Julian Sanchez comes the new king of pomposity, one Josh Chafetz.
I presume Chafetz's role model is none other than Atlas (from Greek mythology, not Charles Atlas the bodybuilder).
Check out some of his gems
In my name, the gates to a children's prison were thrown open..
In my name, statues of a tyrant have been cast down�
In my name, the al Qaeda-linked group Ansar al-Islam has been wiped from the face of the earth�
In my name, we have fought one of the most humane wars in history�
In my name, the oil wealth of Iraq has been saved for the Iraqi people�
In my name, humanitarian aid is already reaching some Iraqi civilians, and more is on the way�
But I must be honest: this war has costs, and those, too, must be borne in my name. Coalition soldiers have given their lives for their countries, and I deeply grieve their loss.. There is much work left to do, and there are dangerous days still ahead. That work, too, will be carried out in my name.
Yeah, right!
Julian nails Chafetz down well when he says
You'd think Chafetz had marched into Baghdad himself, rather than firing off chest-thumping, cheerleading salvos from his keyboard...
Five years from now, when we've got a little perspective on the fallout from your big happy statue-toppling party, let's see how eager you are to stick your name on this business. I promise I won't have forgotten. When an al-Qaeda reenergized by a flood of new recruits launches its next attack on Washington�and not, it's a safe bet, Oxford�I'll remember exactly whose name to tag it with.
Question: Did Sahhaf and Chafetz go the same writing school?
You've gotta be kidding - 3! Double standards from neo-cons and Republicans
Radley Balko skewers the National Review/ Weekly Standard neo-con crew over their reasoning that Tom Daschle can no longer call himself a Catholic because he takes "policy positions in direct opposition to the church (on abortion, for example)".
This is particularly laughable coming from the Weekly Standard. Should the Catholics at the Standard and National Review who cheerleaded -- in fact who some say actually persuaded the president's decision to go to war with Iraq -- should they be required to purge themselves of Catholicism, too?
Or does the "your politics must mirror your religion" creed only apply to Democrats?
Power Distributions, or How I learned to stop worrying and love diversity and freedom of choice
Clay Shirky explains why blogging (and many other social activities) are so top-heavy ie, a small subset of the whole get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome
For example, in a sample set of 433 listed blogs, the top two sites accounted for fully 5% of the inbound links between them. (They were InstaPundit and Andrew Sullivan, unsurprisingly.) The top dozen (less than 3% of the total) accounted for 20% of the inbound links, and the top 50 blogs (not quite 12%) accounted for 50% of such links.
Shirky points out that this is a natural phenomenon
Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality.
In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, the very act of choosing spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution.
The basic shape is simple - in any system sorted by rank, the value for the Nth position will be 1/N. For whatever is being ranked -- income, links, traffic -- the value of second place will be half that of first place, and tenth place will be one-tenth of first place.
We've seen this shape in many systems.
The economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that wealth follows a "predictable imbalance", with 20% of the population holding 80% of the wealth.
The linguist George Zipf observed that word frequency falls in a power law pattern, with a small number of high frequency words (I, of, the), a moderate number of common words (book, cat cup), and a huge number of low frequency words (peripatetic, hypognathous).
Predictions for blogging's future
Because it arises naturally, changing this distribution would mean forcing hundreds of thousands of bloggers to link to certain blogs and to de-link others, which would require both global oversight and the application of force. Reversing the star system would mean destroying the village in order to save it.
At some point (probably one we've already passed), weblog technology will be seen as a platform for so many forms of publishing, filtering, aggregation, and syndication that blogging will stop referring to any particularly coherent activity. This will happen when head and tail of the power law distribution become so different that we can't think of J. Random Blogger and Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit as doing the same thing.
At the head will be webloggers who join the mainstream media (a phrase which seems to mean "media we've gotten used to.") The transformation here is simple - as a blogger's audience grows large, more people read her work than she can possibly read, she can't link to everyone who wants her attention, and she can't answer all her incoming mail or follow up to the comments on her site. The result of these pressures is that she becomes a broadcast outlet, distributing material without participating in conversations about it.
Meanwhile, the long tail of weblogs with few readers will become conversational. In a world where most bloggers get below average traffic, audience size can't be the only metric for success. Publishing an essay and having 3 random people read it is a recipe for disappointment, but publishing an account of your Saturday night and having your 3 closest friends read it feels like a conversation, especially if they follow up with their own accounts.
In between blogs-as-mainstream-media and blogs-as-dinner-conversation will be Blogging Classic, blogs published by one or a few people, for a moderately-sized audience, with whom the authors have a relatively engaged relationship. Because of the continuing growth of the weblog world, more blogs in the future will follow this pattern than today. However, these blogs will be in the minority for both traffic (dwarfed by the mainstream media blogs) and overall number of blogs (outnumbered by the conversational blogs.)
My takeaways
Looks as if Finding My Voice fits in the Blogging Classic category ie, a small audience with whom I�ll have a relatively engaged relationship.
Question: What implications does this have for the debate about �inequalities of income� especially in a country like India?
A) My initial priors:
The problem in India is not so much inequality of income as the fact that the bottom quartile does not make even a bare subsistence income. And unfortunately, it does not have opportunities to move up or out. By itself, inequality of income seems inevitable. But as long as it�s fair, and as long as people at the bottom have opportunities to move up, there may not be major issues.
The United States has a fair amount of inequality. But very few people in the US have the same problems with subsistence as the bottom 25% of India's populace, and even more importantly, the income mobility in the US is tremendous. This of course is one of the primary reasons this nation has always been a magnet for the best and the brightest.
Via Arnold Kling here�s a factoid:
W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, who wrote Myths of Rich and Poor argue that the incidence of poverty is overstated, in part because the income distribution in the United States is highly fluid e.g., only 5 percent of those in the bottom fifth in 1975 were still there in 1991.
Sidebar: Kalyan Gupta, a researcher at the Naval Labs has also done research on this very topic, and led a bunch of us at RoundTable DC through a stimulating discussion on this same topic ie, power distributions and how they spring up in unexpected areas.
Adding ArgMax to my list of links
I'm adding a link to ArgMax, an economics blog maintained by John Irons, who is currently an economics professor at Amherst College (on sabbatical leave for 2002-2003).
ArgMax was ranked the #2 economics blog by Forbes (#1 of course being Arnold Kling's EconLog)
SIMPLIFIED SCREENPLAY FOR LORD OF THE RINGS II
From Dave Barry
(Scene 1)
FRODO: Darn! I still have this darned ring that I got in the first movie!
SAMWISE: The ring with the terrible power that causes everyone who comes near it to over-act?
FRODO: Yes! And to destroy it, we must walk, slowly, in real time, all the way across New Zealand!
SAMWISE: But who will guide us?
FRODO: How about a reptilian computer-generated creature with a bad comb-over?
SAMWISE: Dick Cheney's in this movie?
GOLLUM: Very funny, Hobbitt-breath.
Al-Sahhaf: suicide?
According to the Guardian
It may well be the ultimate in spin from the Iraqi minister of information, but this afternoon there are reports circulating that Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf has committed suicide.
If true, this would be an immense tragedy.
As I've said earlier, Sahhaf missed his calling because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As per Radley Balko, Sahhaf has this to say:
"I am not dead, merely napping, dreaming of the inevitable conquest of the noble Iraqi superstrong championship army over the softshoe American Nancy-soldiers who are easily bruised. When I wake, I will punch George Bush in the face with my weaker fist, and he will cry. Also, his grammar stinks."
Are we serious about stomping out terrorism?
I'm beginning to have second thoughts.
The United States seems to be doing its darndest to keep the breeding grounds of terrorism alive, by injecting funds into the very same madrassas that have spawned the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other such terrorist outfits.
Check out this article sent in by my friend, Rangarajan Sundaram
In a major injection of new aid, the United States is donating $US100million ($165 million) over five years to Pakistan's troubled education system, including its religious schools or madrassas, even though they stand accused of being breeding grounds for Islamic extremism.
Samina Ahmed, the International Crisis Group's project director in Islamabad, said: "There have been no steps taken to reform the madrassas because of the relationship between the mullahs and the military�.
Sundaram is outraged by this article because:
a) we are funding the organizations that have already caused us so much grief, and
b) this is an egregious violation of the separation of church and state mandated by the US constitution.
Do as we say, not as we do -- so sayeth America
As a wannabe libertarian, a hawk, and an ardent fan of America, the last few months have been extremely difficult.
American foreign policy has made what may well be this country's biggest mistake for a long, long time. I only hope and pray that I'm wrong.
Fact: Over 60,000 Indians (of whom 75% were innocent civilians) have died in Kashmir over the last 15 years at the hands of militants.
Fact: Pakistan calls these killers �freedom fighters�.
Question: The suicide bombers killing Israeli civilians are labeled terrorists. If so, what makes these killers in Kashmir any different?
Mr. Colin Powell, in a stunning piece of hypocrisy, �dismissed Indian remarks likening Pakistan to Iraq, and urged the two neighbours to resolve their differences peacefully.�
And in a classic case of Orwellian double-speak, here�s State Department spokeswoman Joanne Prokopowicz:
�Any attempts to draw parallels between the Iraq and Kashmir situations are wrong and are overwhelmed by the differences between them. The U.S. recognizes the very serious nature of the situation in Kashmir. Our joint statement last week with the United Kingdom made clear our repugnance of the killings of innocents that have been taking place in Kashmir with alarming frequency."
Takeaways
1) The United States "recognizes" the situation. What does that mean? [grin]
2) Why couldn�t the United States resolve its differences with Iraq peacefully? After all, how many civilian Americans have been killed by Iraq?
3) One of the saddest fallouts of America�s colossal mistakes and double-speak over the last few months has been the vindication given to the leftists and other anti-American forces (among them the self-righteous Arundhati Roy and the insufferable French). It's a tad galling, to say the least, for a staunchly pro-American libertarian like me to see Ms Roy all-so-smug, feeling vindicated in her pronouncements about America�s arrogance, hypocrisy and imperialistic tendencies. And here I was, hoping that sooner or later Arundhati Roy would run out of causes to pontificate about. Unfortunately, this doesn�t look too likely right now [sigh]
4) Another cause for worry over the last few months is the sight of even intelligent, well-read Americans oblivious to what the rest of the world thinks. An American friend of mine, an economist with impeccable credentials (among them, a PhD from MIT) had this zinger �It�s OK if America is not liked as long as it�s respected� (sic). I almost fell off my chair when I heard that. Respect? America has absolutely no respect left, certainly not in India or South-East Asia, based on my recent travels there.
Iraqi invasion fallout - 7: Edward Said's comments
I�m not an expert on West Asian matters (or on any other matter, now that I come to think of it [grin])
I�ve only read a handful of pieces by Edward Said, the essayist and author and have mixed opinions about his analyses.
However, here�s a piece where Said has some insightful comments, especially when he complains about the blather and misinformation in the US media (the TV networks). I haven�t had a chance to see the Arab channels, but I was in India for a good deal of March, when I did get a chance to see the Indian channels as well as BBC. Compared to these outfits, I'm amazed at what passes for reporting on the US TV networks.
I must confess that as a libertarian-in-training, I�m baffled by the media coverage: the private TV networks in the US are stunningly one-dimensional while the public sector BBC is relatively more balanced. What gives?
Check out the World Press Review or this page in the Wall Street Journal to figure out what the rest of the world is saying about America -- it's not flattering, to say the least. And this is not just the French or Arab media -- almost NO ONE has anything positive to say about the United States.
Said hits the nail on the head when he says
In the first place, no one has satisfactorily proved that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction that furnish an imminent threat to the United States. Iraq is a hugely weakened and ineffective Third World state ruled by a hated despotic regime: there is no disagreement about that anywhere, least of all in the Arab and Islamic world.
But that after 12 years of sanctions it is a threat of any kind to any other state is a laughable notion, and not a single journalist of the overpaid legions who swarm around the Pentagon, State Department and White House has ever bothered to investigate it.
One can't fault (the American policy-makers) for wanting to rid the world of Saddam Hussein: we'd all be better off without him. The problem has been the falsifying of reality and the creation of scenarios for unchecked American policy planners to foist on a fundamentalist President and a largely misinformed public. In all this, Iraq might as well have been the moon and the Pentagon and White House Swift's Academy of Lagado.
As a big believer in the fourth estate's role, the reporting and analysis (or lack, thereof) by American media sources worries me. Were they leaned on? Or did they just all succumb, lemming-like to the conventional view?
Unfortunately enough, Said�s cogent analysis is marred by his later comments, which reek of Arundhati Roy-style hyperbole and generalization, a rather unflattering analogy.
So fearful has everyone been of the charge of anti-semitism that the stranglehold of the neo-conservative cum Christian Right cum Pentagon civilian hawks on American policy is now a reality which forces the entire country into an attitude of undifferentiated bellicosity.
This is the most reckless war in modern times. It is all about imperial arrogance unschooled in worldliness, unfettered either by competence or experience, undeterred by history or human complexity, unrepentant in its violence and the cruelty of its technology. What winning, or for that matter losing, such a war will ultimately entail is unthinkable. But pity the Iraqi civilians who must still suffer a great deal more before they are finally 'liberated'.
Bloggingnetwork.com: a workable business model?
I�ve had some questions about a suitable business model for bloggers, because as I said in an earlier post, it takes a decent amount of time and effort to bring out a good blog regularly. Most blogs could do with significant editorial and proofreading makeovers. In the absence of any monetary remuneration, I�m not sure how many people will continue to invest the time and energy required to bring out a quality blog.
Here�s a site that my friend Lily Whiteman forwarded � the Blogging Network
This is a closed network, where all the writers and readers (beyond the headlines & initial paragraphs) HAVE to be members ie, subscribe to Blogging Network at $2.99 per month.
What do members of Blogging Network get?
As per the BloggingNetwork web site,
Readers:
You get unlimited access to all the writing on Blogging Network. Half of your payment is divided between the writers you actually read. The rest is used by Blogging Network to support the web site, marketing, customer service, and payment processing.
Writers:
Once you're subscribed, you can start writing immediately. Whenever someone reads your writing, you get paid! The Network pays all of your web site hosting, disk space and bandwidth costs.
Payment Distribution :
Every month, Blogging Network keeps track of the number of times you read each writer. At the end of the month, Blogging Network divides your writer payment between all of the writers, based on how often you read each one.
As a simple example, say you only read Jack during the month. At the end of the month, Blogging Network will send your entire writer payment to Jack.
Let's say you now start reading Jill half of the time, while still reading Jack the rest of the time. In that case, Blogging Network will send half your writer payment to Jill and the other half to Jack.
It's that easy. Since Blogging Network automatically does the math for you, you can be sure each writer is receiving a fair share.
Takeaways :
(+) A captive, self-selected audience
(+) An attempt at �monetizing� (a chestnut from the dotcom era!) your blogging posts for writers
(-) Audience is restricted to members of BloggingNetwork, which does not appear too large (yet). Even worse, links to my post can only be made by aforementioned BloggingNetwork subscribers, which sort of defeats the whole premise of blogging. At least, in my opinion. A big NO-NO.
(-) How much money can you earn? A hundred readers per month work out to 100 X $1.50 = $150 per month, assuming these readers read only your blog and no one else. For instance, as per their home page, they had 12,349 posts and all bloggers had earned $4,558.12
(-) I was rather underwhelmed by the few blogs that I read. For instance, here�s a post from one of the most popular blogs on the network (as per their ranking), called "Blogging is for idiots only
To be an idiot or not... [from Solomon the wise blogger]
"My school principal was an idiot. My college professor was an idiot. All of my supervisors have been idiots. I guess the key to success, is to just be an idiot."
Further material was only available to subscribers to BloggingNetwork but this sample wasn�t exactly enticing, to say the least.
Update: A friend of mine, a well-regarded blogger and Internet maven says that BloggingNetwork is not a sustainable business model. In his words
"It's a pyramid scheme. As soon as they stop getting new members, it will collapse"
Et tu, Brink?
My guess is that Brink Lindsey and I would be in agreement 95% of the time (as you can tell from the very first post on my blog)
However, on this Iraq invasion issue, especially the manner in which America has gone about it, I beg to differ.
In his blog, Brink writes glowingly about America the Liberator
A year and a half ago, monsters murdered 3,000 Americans. America's response, thus far: to liberate 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq from two of the most hideous tyrannies on earth.
Instead of revenge, beneficence. What a truly wonderful country we live in.
I�m all for freeing people from tyrannies, and Saddam and the Taliban were two extremely nasty regimes.
No denying that.
In addition, I agree with Brink that America is a truly wonderful country.
But I wonder: What role did Iraq have in the 9/11 attacks?
The links between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks are laughably tenuous, especially when compared with the record of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. These two countries provided the funding, the leadership & the ideology for all of 9/11.
Moreover, even in Afghanistan, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda were the progeny of Saudi Wahhabism and Pakistan�s ISI. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are still conspiring with all sorts of baddies -- North Korea, various terrorist outfits masquerading as charities and such like.
So when do we invade (liberate) Pakistan or Saudi Arabia?
After all, if America is in the "liberation" business, there's no dearth of totalitarian regimes that could do with some toppling.
Why stop now?
Iraqi invasion fallout - 6: Where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Maybe I'm missing something but I thought the primary reason for invading Iraq was to neutralize its arsenal of WMD. Otherwise, all of us in the free world were in imminent threat of terrorist attacks with aforementioned WMD.
Where are the WMD?
And even more importantly, why is no one in the media posing this question to Bush & his cronies?
The "mother of all equity analysts"!
David Callaway tells us about a genius whose immense talent was wasted because of the Iraqi regime
Forget Saddam.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf is the man who needs to be found safely -- and then transported to Wall Street.
The hilarious Iraqi flack, who contended with a straight face earlier this week that U.S. forces were committing suicide at the walls of Baghdad while coalition tanks roared past him, is just the ticket to restore confidence in scandal-plagued corporate America.
With his arrogant confidence and spectacular turn of phrase, Sahhaf would add style and flair to the otherwise dull world of corporate public relations, which has devolved over the last few years into nothing more than a series of "off the records" and "no comments."
Imagine Sahhaf representing Microsoft (MSFT: news, chart, profile) in its anti-trust battle with the U.S. government.
OK, so maybe he wouldn't restore confidence in corporate America. But think of the character he'd add to the existing flock of lies and spin that the media is fed each day. At least investors could have a laugh while they are being manipulated.
If they do find him alive, a war crimes trial is almost surely in his future.
I just hope he gets to represent himself.
To me, this is yet another reason to look forward to worldwide freedom and liberation, for oppressed peoples, wherever they may be (Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan� )
Because, in such a world, future Sahhafs will finally get a chance to utilize their God-given talent to the fullest extent possible, for the benefit of all humanity, rather than squandering it on mere piffle like Sahhaf did.
I disagree with Callaway a tad, though.
To me, Sahhaf�s true calling was sell-side research.
Here was a man surely destined to become the �mother of all equity analysts�.
His skills (sic) would have left even such worthies as Henry Blodget, Anthony Noto and Mary Meeker in the shade.
But it wasn�t meant to be [sigh]
Poor Sahhaf!
Wrong place, wrong time
Update: The Economist thinks that Sahhaf has yet another career option
For many Arab viewers, he became a star.
Their hope is that he will re-emerge in time, unscathed and unconvicted of war crimes, to be given his own talk-show on al-Jazeera.
Sidebar: Check this site for a collection of Sahhaf's gems
(Many thanks to Rasul Shariff for forwarding me the Callaway story)
Iraq invasion fallout � 5: Free the children!
Some good news from Iraq.
In one of the most heartening stories to come out of the entire Iraq imbroglio, AP reports on Yahoo news that
More than 100 children held in a prison celebrated their freedom as US marines rolled into northeast Baghdad amid chaotic scenes which saw civilians loot weapons from an army compound, a US officer said.
These children had allegedly �been imprisoned because they had not joined the youth branch of the Baath party, according to a US army office.
I�ve been very critical of Bush and America in my previous posts.
However, I want to make it clear that I�m not Arundhati Roy (who can�t see any difference between the Taliban and Bush), nor Noam Chomsky (who can�t distinguish between democratic America and totalitarian China or Russia).
While I'm a critic of Bush and his band of crony capitalists, there's no question of even equating these guys with a thug like Saddam.
There's absolutely no comparison!
Sidebar: my graduate school roommate at UCLA, Farhad Heidary, was a Ba�hai refugee from Iran. During the Iran-Iraq war, he was enlisted by the mullahs and when he refused to serve (he was only twelve then), he was imprisoned. Farhad managed to escape somehow, and made his way across Pakistan to New Delhi where he obtained refugee status.
Around the same time, I was in school in India. My biggest worry then, which kept me up for many a night, was whether I would make it to the school cricket team.
Iraqi invasion fallout � 4: Saddam, a martyr?!
Admiral Nadkarni, in a Rediff column says that
Just a few months ago, Saddam Hussein was a despised figure both at home and within the Arab world. The United States was a highly respected nation, known for its democratic values, concern for human rights and generous helpings of aid to nations in distress.
Now, the US has made a martyr out of Saddam.
By their action, the United States and Great Britain have emerged as new bullies on the block. People around the world who always admired America for its principles, for its record of human rights have been disillusioned. America's moral strength has diminished and it will take a long time for it to be restored. In retrospect, it may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory.
The combined US/UK action has dissipated whatever goodwill these countries had in the Gulf. The action has created a crescent of hatred for the West in general and for the United States in particular. Years of respect and credibility have been destroyed to grab a few barrels of oil. Even in moderate and so-far friendly countries like Jordan and Egypt, public opinion may force the regimes to distance themselves from the United States and the Western world.
The Iraq war could see the resurgence of nationalism in the Middle East. In fact, the war would be the right fillip for the fundamentalist forces, which were lying low after their initial success in the eighties. One should not be surprised to see the spread of militancy and fundamentalism in the Gulf in the next two or three years. The remnants of the Ba'ath party will still be active in Iraq and will be supported by sister organisations in neighbouring Syria and Lebanon. Any puppet regime put in place by the US in Iraq will not only be unpopular but is likely to be overthrown after a couple of years.
I�m a tad skeptical about Saddam becoming a martyr to all the Islamo-fascists out there � his socialist/ secular views might get in the way.
However, I do think the good Admiral is right when he says that the current battle might well turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory.
The fallout from this ill-advised mission of Dubya will last for decades.
David Halberstam, in an interview on CNN tonight, said something similar -- the Bush administration was woefully short-sighted in regarding regime change as their primary mission. Unfortunately, for the anti-US forces in the Middle East, this is just the end of round one.
One has to credit Bush & his merry band of crony capitalists: they�ve done a good deal to ensure this fight is much harder & longer than it might have been.
Iraqi invasion fallout � 3: Impact on Indian economy
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta in a Rediff column says that:
The United States-led war on Iraq is certain to hurt India's economic interests. Higher prices of crude oil and petroleum products would stoke inflationary fires. Civil aviation, shipping, tourism, inward remittances and exports are also going to be affected...
That the war would have an adverse impact on India is beyond doubt. What is not clear is the precise extent of the impact...
One hates to sound like a prophet of doom. But the reality on the ground does not leave much room for optimism...
I�m baffled by Thakurta's reasoning.
Exactly what reality on the ground (sic) is he referring to?
Thakurta�s article is dated April 7.
Check out this report from Reuters, also dated April 7
Oil Hits 4-Month Low on Iraq War
Oil has slumped 30 percent in the last month as fears in the market of war losses to Middle East production outside Iraq were not realized, with other OPEC producers raising output sharply...
London Brent crude fell 93 cents to $23.75 a barrel, its lowest since mid-November. U.S. crude futures lost $1.07 to $27.55 a barrel...
In other words, oil prices have been FALLING for over a MONTH, and are now at their lowest in four months.
A slightly different view of reality vis-a-vis Thakurta [grin]
Takeaways
I�ve been against this war, or more precisely, the manner in which the US has gone about it.
But now that it�s already under way, let�s finish the war quickly and get that psycho Saddam out of the way.
Once he's gone, oil prices will fall even further, which should reduce India's oil import bill significantly.
Iraq invasion fallout � 2
Some more bad news
The Washington Post reports:
Riding a wave of anti-American sentiment, outlawed Islamic extremist organizations that were routed by the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan in 2001 are making a comeback.
Recruitment in Pakistan of potential terrorists appears to be on the rise. Militant leaders freed from house arrest have returned to the mosques to rally the faithful against the United States.
Muslim radicals are feeding on anger over the war in Iraq to regroup and revitalize, raising the threat of more anti-U.S. terrorism around the world.
Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on radical Islamic groups at Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said he has noticed a trend as he navigated Web sites and chat rooms in recent days.
"Now we have many calls to jihad, and those calls aren't only coming from what we usually call radicals or extremists," he said. More moderate clerics are using such language, as are Islamic thinkers who usually confine themselves to political analysis, not calls to arms, he said.
Takeaways
While the news about supposedly �moderate� clerics jumping on the militant bandwagon is ominous, these developments were fairly predictable.
What happens next though is harder to predict. I'm pessimistic, to say the least.
Iraq invasion fallout - 1
The US invasion of Iraq will have repercussions for a long, long time.
Not all for the good.
Here's an opening salvo from our friends, the North Koreans!
North Korea said on Sunday the war in Iraq proved that only by building a powerful military deterrent could the communist state protect itself against the US.
Pyongyang said Iraq's fate showed that bowing to Washington's demands for weapons inspections and disarmament increased the chances of attack by the US
During my time in India (the last two weeks of March), I spoke to a number of people about the US-Iraq war. Not a single person (regardless of ideology, religion or socioeconomic background) believed the spiel given by the US about freedom and democracy and all that. While official criticism of the US was muted, and almost no one expressed any sadness at seeing the end of Saddam, the manner in which the US has gone about this affair has spawned an incredible amount of skepticism. I�m not exaggerating when I say that I�ve never seen American credibility at such a low, not even during the India-Pakistan conflict.
A comment I heard repeatedly: �The United States� double standards are stunning! For instance, what about North Korea or Pakistan � almost everything you say about Iraq applies to them.
Both countries have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), without any doubt.
Both of them were helped in their nuclear programs by China, another dictatorship.
Both countries are brutal dictatorships, and have spawned far more terrorism outside their countries than Iraq.
Not to mention, that the North Korea�s Kim is surely crazier and far more unpredictable than Saddam. Most people�s reasoning was that one reason the US wasn�t invading these two countries was that they actually had WMD, so the US couldn�t take them too lightly."
Takeaways by people in India
1) The US is a hypocritical, arrogant bully � it�s after Iraq because the regime is evil AND can be toppled relatively easily.
2) If you�re a tyrannical regime, the best defense is to get WMD ASAP. Therefore, the North Korean reaction is very predictable. My guess is that every tinpot despot all round the globe is doing his best to get WMD as soon as possible. The old Soviet nuclear capabilities and staff are going to be much sought after
Will blogs oust newspapers?
Blogging is still very much under the radar, and in the opinion of many, a passing fad.
Dave Winer would beg to differ. In one of the coolest sites on the web, LongBets.org, Winer predicts that
His claim is challenged by Martin Nisenholtz CEO, New York Times Digital. Both Winer & Nisenholtz have put their money ($1,000 each) where their mouth is.
Arnold Kling says that blogging is not a fad but here to say, and builds a preliminary model wherein they could prevail. At the same time, Kling is very pessimistic about the future of newspapers , and predicts:
The newspaper business is going to die within the next twenty years. Newspaper publishing will continue, but only as a philanthropic venture.
Now here�s Anil Dash, with a take on blogs that sort of parallel Kling's views.
In 2 or 3 years, many of us will be reading 10,000 weblogs. It's a hard statement to justify literally unless you factor in how software and platforms are going to evolve.
Two or three years ago, I read about a dozen weblogs. Now I actively track nearly a hundred, with another hundred that I either check infrequently or read because they're linked from the sites I am already visiting.
So get the posts from people I care about, plus the relevant comments from the 10,000 people who are within 2 degrees of my blog, and you've got my personal MetaFilter, with posts just by people I'm interested in, and comments from only the people who are either trusted by them or me.
It's not that far from today's New York Times, in some ways. The Sunday Times has easily got 10,000 contributors in total, if you count all the AP stringers who contribute wire stories and all the editors who pore over the text and all the people who write copy for the ads, etc. Except that I don't get to be in ultimate control of what appears there. With weblogs, I will.
What is my own take on this debate? As of now, I don�t have a strong opinion either way.
I do know that
1) I get almost all of my news and views from other bloggers or from magazines. I don't read general-purpose newspapers directly any more unless there's an article on a blog or meta-filter site (Google News, Samachar.com etc.,) that cites an article from a particular newspaper.
2) However, while blogging is very addictive, it takes a decent amount of time and effort to bring out a good blog regularly. Most blogs could do with significant editorial and proofreading makeovers. In the absence of any monetary remuneration, I�m not sure how many people will continue to invest the time and energy required to bring out a quality blog.
Welcome to Emergic.org
Have added Rajesh Jain's blog, Emergic.org to my list of links. Jain appears to be one of the more prolific Indian bloggers. I only wish he'd streamline his site a bit. It might just be me, but the site appears to be a tad cluttered and hard to read.
What do you think of Western civilization?
When he was asked the aforementioned question, Mahatma Gandhi replied: I think it would be a good idea
According to Rediff, in a keynote address to the Commission on Population and Development at the United Nations, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen claims that
The single-mindedness of Western civilization fuelled separatism in the non-Western world, as exemplified by the spread of Islamic fundamentalism.
No historical justification existed for categorising science and mathematics as Western science and religious beliefs as the foundation of the non-Western world. The Arab and Muslim societies, in fact, had historically contributed greatly to both science and mathematics.
"Civilisation categorisation, which had a tendency to ignore the fact that people see themselves in myriad ways, made societies adopt singular identities and were a potent source of ill-education and social hatred".
"Respecting the plurality of our identities is the key to a harmonious contemporary world".
"The terrible effects of aggressive and intolerant identification in the world today were cultivated as much by sectarian schools as by teaching over-simplified views of history, and crude categorization, which project one group as the dominant one".
I�m not a professional economist, and haven�t read any of Sen�s technical work. I have read a few of his non-technical essays but have been rather underwhelmed.
In this particular case though, I agree with Sen, at least partially, when he bemoans the West�s self-absorption. Even though I�m an ardent fan of the Enlightenment and the liberal values that it spawned, the solipsism of the West, especially America, is stunning. Tragically, this self-absorption seems to have blinded America over the last year.
Saddam is reviled by most people worldwide, and many agree that he should be deposed. But the manner in which America has gone about the attack on Iraq -- its rationale, its reasoning, and its coalition-building or more accurately, the lack thereof in all three cases -- has been an absolute and unmitigated PR disaster.
More on this later, especially the viewpoint in India (where I just spent two great weeks).
However, I�m bemused by Sen�s claim that Islamic fundamentalism was fuelled by the �single-mindedness of Western civilization�. At the risk of being politically incorrect, I would aver that Islamic fundamentalism�s roots lie mostly within rather than without.
Why exactly did the US
Why exactly did the US invade Iraq?
Via Julian and Radley here's a maddening article from ABC News
White House officials are now admitting that Saddam was never much of a threat to the U.S., that the war was an exercise in "message sending," not in self-defense.
Or in Julian's words,
Administration officials are now basically saying, if not in so many words: "Yeah; we didn't really think Iraq was a threat. We just wanted to invade someone to "flex muscle" and show we were serious about fighting terrorism. Iraq seemed as good a place as any.
I'm furious, IF the piece is true.
However, I'm baffled, more than anything!
Why on earth would anyone in the administration want to leak this sort of information, at least right now? And if it's true, how come this piece of news hasn't created more of a stir?