Paris Responds to John McCain

Absolutely hilarious! A great retort to a ridiculous original.

Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave

NY Times Op-Ed Columnist

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil,” and, by gosh, he was going to do something about it. Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: “Get more addicted to oil.”

Actually, it’s more sophisticated than that: Get Saudi Arabia, our chief oil pusher, to up our dosage for a little while and bring down the oil price just enough so the renewable energy alternatives can’t totally take off. Then try to strong arm Congress into lifting the ban on drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

It’s as if our addict-in-chief is saying to us: “C’mon guys, you know you want a little more of the good stuff. One more hit, baby. Just one more toke on the ole oil pipe. I promise, next year, we’ll all go straight. I’ll even put a wind turbine on my presidential library. But for now, give me one more pop from that drill, please, baby. Just one more transfusion of that sweet offshore crude.”

It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is. But it gets better. The president actually had the gall to set a deadline for this drug deal:

“I know the Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past,” Mr. Bush said. “Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions. If Congressional leaders leave for the Fourth of July recess without taking action, they will need to explain why $4-a-gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act.”

This from a president who for six years resisted any pressure on Detroit to seriously improve mileage standards on its gas guzzlers; this from a president who’s done nothing to encourage conservation; this from a president who has so neutered the Environmental Protection Agency that the head of the E.P.A. today seems to be in a witness-protection program. I bet there aren’t 12 readers of this newspaper who could tell you his name or identify him in a police lineup.

But, most of all, this deadline is from a president who hasn’t lifted a finger to broker passage of legislation that has been stuck in Congress for a year, which could actually impact America’s energy profile right now — unlike offshore oil that would take years to flow — and create good tech jobs to boot.

That bill is H.R. 6049 — “The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008,” which extends for another eight years the investment tax credit for installing solar energy and extends for one year the production tax credit for producing wind power and for three years the credits for geothermal, wave energy and other renewables.

These critical tax credits for renewables are set to expire at the end of this fiscal year and, if they do, it will mean thousands of jobs lost and billions of dollars of investments not made. “Already clean energy projects in the U.S. are being put on hold,” said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

People forget, wind and solar power are here, they work, they can go on your roof tomorrow. What they need now is a big U.S. market where lots of manufacturers have an incentive to install solar panels and wind turbines — because the more they do, the more these technologies would move down the learning curve, become cheaper and be able to compete directly with coal, oil and nuclear, without subsidies.

That seems to be exactly what the Republican Party is trying to block, since the Senate Republicans — sorry to say, with the help of John McCain — have now managed to defeat the renewal of these tax credits six different times.

Of course, we’re going to need oil for years to come. That being the case, I’d prefer — for geopolitical reasons — that we get as much as possible from domestic wells. But our future is not in oil, and a real president wouldn’t be hectoring Congress about offshore drilling today. He’d be telling the country a much larger truth:

“Oil is poisoning our climate and our geopolitics, and here is how we’re going to break our addiction: We’re going to set a floor price of $4.50 a gallon for gasoline and $100 a barrel for oil. And that floor price is going to trigger massive investments in renewable energy — particularly wind, solar panels and solar thermal. And we’re also going to go on a crash program to dramatically increase energy efficiency, to drive conservation to a whole new level and to build more nuclear power. And I want every Democrat and every Republican to join me in this endeavor.”

That’s what a real president would do. He’d give us a big strategic plan to end our addiction to oil and build a bipartisan coalition to deliver it. He certainly wouldn’t be using his last days in office to threaten Congressional Democrats that if they don’t approve offshore drilling by the Fourth of July recess, they will be blamed for $4-a-gallon gas. That is so lame. That is an energy policy so unworthy of our Independence Day.

Sili (The Slap)

Directed by Ehsan Amani (Iran)

A soldier, a young woman, a colonel, and an old woman board a train. Nobody, save one of them, can explain what happens next.

The Story of Stuff

What is the Story of Stuff?

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever. Click here to watch the full show.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

It begins with a solemn funeral…for a car. By the end of Chris Paine's lively and informative documentary, the idea doesn't seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes, "They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline." Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later. He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s, the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s, however, car companies started exploring alternative energy sources, like solar power. This, in turn, led to the late, great battery-powered EV1. Throughout, Paine deftly translates hard science and complex politics, such as California's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, into lay person's terms (director Alex Gibney, Oscar-nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, served as consulting producer). And everyone gets the chance to have their say: engineers, politicians, protesters, and petroleum spokespeople--even celebrity drivers, like Peter Horton, Alexandra Paul, and a wild man beard-sporting Mel Gibson. But the most persuasive participant is former Saturn employee Chelsea Sexton. Promoting the benefits of the EV1 was more than a job to her, and she continues to lobby for more environmentally friendly options. Sexton provides the small ray of hope Paine's film so desperately needs. Who Killed the Electric Car? is, otherwise, a tremendously sobering experience. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Objections? Try Plug in America

Roots of Breakdance (Run DMC - It's Like That)

The Soviet Union with their Russians were already getting it on with the moves! This should have been some real propaganda during the Cold War!

Hollywood History

I just finished watching The Hunting Party. What a disappointment! Reminded me of Behind Enemy Lines. Same old propaganda. The US and Western Europe have written this story of modern history in a typical, nice and tidy 'good' versus 'evil' manner with almost total disregard for reality. I would hate to be a Serb in America, since, you know, Serbs are such evil-doers; those ethnic cleansers. What most people aren't generally aware of is the manipulation and exploitation of 'narrative' that has taken place in the history of the Balkan war. Yes, Serbs committed war crimes. But to present the war only in that light is a half-truth. Having heard from Canadian and American service-men on the ground at the time of the war, I think Hollywood's characterization is not only misleading, it's insulting to the victims on all sides. The truth is more important than political agendas. While it is tragic that Serbian war criminals are not brought to justice, it's equally tragic that war criminals on the other side of this conflict became the political leaders after the war. In my assessment, that is more injust than merely getting away with it scott free. But don't expect any movies about that anytime soon. We have ourselves a nice and tidy 'good guys' and 'bad guys' narrative that makes us the hero. We're always the hero, aren't we? Narrative is a powerful tool of nationalism, isn't it.

Young Hillary Clinton

A few giggles from this one.

No graceful bow-out for Clinton

Silly as it may seem, I think many thought she would just call it a good match and move in line to support the party over her own ambitions. Not when one believes in the divine right of kings (or in this case, queen) She would sooner see the "democratic baby" sort of speak, cut in half than give up her divine goal of ruling. I found this interesting commentary on CNN:

By Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor

Remember all those wrestling "death matches," during which they talked about guys tearing their opponents' heads off in the ring? We all knew wrestling is fake, but the promotion was awesome, because it always sucked us in.

Lest anyone think the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination is going to end peacefully in June, forget about it.

Sen. Hillary Clinton will do anything and everything to win, and the idea that Sen. Barack Obama should give in to her demands to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates is ludicrous. When you're ahead, you don't concede any ground. If the roles were reversed, she would do the same.

This race, regardless of what anyone says, is still airtight. Obama has the lead among superdelegates and has garnered a majority of pledged delegates, but they always can change their allegiance, per Democratic Party rules, and don't think for a second that the Clinton camp doesn't understand that.

Her comments to The Associated Press that she may take this to the convention in August shouldn't be dismissed. I don't think Clinton cares about the party. Last week, CNN's Suzanne Malveaux said a Clinton source told her that their focus is Clinton first and the party second.

The only way Obama can truly focus on the next step is if he does everything to get to 2,026 delegates. If he gets there first, he wins. But Clinton will go to the mat to prevent that from happening.

Everyone talks about her running in 2012 if Obama wins the Democratic nomination but loses the general election, or 2016 if he wins two terms. But nothing is guaranteed. She's 60 years old. This is her best shot at winning, and she'll leave it all on the table to try to get the nomination.

In the past few days, her surrogates, and even Clinton herself, have ramped up the talk about sexism. There is little doubt that she is trying to stir the ire of her female base and push them to demand that she either be the nominee or be given the vice president slot. But it's really about the former rather than the latter.

In Florida on Wednesday, she invoked slavery and the epic civil rights battle against Jim Crow in her quest to count the vote in Florida as-is.

Forget the fact that she once said the states wouldn't matter because they broke the rules.

Forget the fact that many of her supporters on the Democratic National Committee's rules committee supported the stripping of delegates in Michigan and Florida.

And forget the fact that her chief supporter in Michigan, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, signed the bill into law that allowed the state to move up its primary.

Clinton and her supporters now discount all of that and act as if they were always champions of the "disenfranchised" voters in Florida and Michigan. But they weren't. And the record is clear. Only when it became apparent that she needed the states' delegates to close the gap with Obama did she change her tune. She said one thing in Iowa and New Hampshire and now is saying something else.

The Clintonites don't want any compromises in Michigan and Florida. They want the results to stay the same, even though Obama's name wasn't on the ballot in Michigan and all candidates signed an agreement not to campaign in those two states.

But The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets say the Clinton camp doesn't care. Her biggest backer, former President Clinton, is telling her to stay in it until the end, hoping to persuade superdelegates to switch and give her the nomination.

The DNC rules committee will meet May 31. Expect a bloodbath. Trust me; there will be nothing nice about that meeting.

The Obama camp better not let its guard down. The Clinton camp is gearing up for a protracted battle. Folks, this is for all the marbles, and feelings -- and party -- be damned.

Only one thing is certain: If this battle goes to Denver, the Democrats might as well dump those inauguration tickets on eBay, because supporters of Sen. John McCain will need them.

Roland S. Martin is a nationally award-winning journalist and CNN contributor. Martin is studying to receive his master's degree in Christian communications at Louisiana Baptist University. You can read more of his columns at http://www.rolandsmartin.com/.

My Appologies to Hillary

As embarrassing as it is, I must retract my last post. Here is the newly discovered video showing that Hillary was telling the truth. Enjoy...

Hillary When Will You Learn?

It is amazing to me that Hillary's advisors don't mention to her that we live in a technological age. One where if something is in picture, writing, or on video it will be brought up when you make claims, especially exaggerated ones... or straight out lies. In her most recent lie, Democratic hopeful Hillary has been challenged over claims that she came under sniper fire during a trip she made to Bosnia in the 1990s. Video shown on US TV network CBS shows the then First Lady walking calmly from her plane. At a recent campaign event, she described having landed under fire. Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said Mrs Clinton "misspoke" on one occasion about the incident. Yet... In her book, she described how the airstrip greeting had been cut short because of sniper fire on a nearby hillside - and that was the account she had given many times.

I was going to post more examples of Hillary's lies here in this post, but the list would be a little long. If you are bored and need a laugh, google Hillary's lies. I got 1.8 million hits. There are some funny ones there.

Supporting the Iranian people

I was asked a very simple but insightful question: "What do you mean by saying that the West should support the Iranian people?"

Well, there are many forms of support any freedom-loving nation could lend to another nation which is enchained by tyrants: It could supply them with guns, it could give them money, it could destroy their enemies, etc.

I don't agree with any of these.

I think if a freedom-loving nation was to ever lend support to an oppressed one, it should first and foremost recognize and publicly acknowledge the situation. Why are the European states, for example, refraining from separating the population of Iran, the oppressed, from the regime of Iran, the oppressors? Why do they insist on embracing and having a dialogue with those who violate the Iranian people's basic rights? We have to draw the line somewhere, don't we?

So, by "support," I mean moral support. The West should acknowledge that the Iranian people are enslaved by a bunch of unelected tyrants, and it should isolate those tyrants, instead of doing political and economic business with them. Even now, after 3 UNSC sanctions against Iran, some companies in Germany and Italy are still selling components to Iran that could be used for an atomic bomb or long-range missiles. Well, that just makes a mockery of the UNSC sanctions.

We should make any dialogue with the Iranian regime dependent on the improvement of human rights in Iran. We should not even offer to talk with the Iranian mullahs unless there are tangible improvements in human rights. We should remember that women get stoned to death in Iran.

We should also impose stricter sanctions on the Iranian regime including an oil embargo. Sure, that hurts business, but think about the long-term effects of not doing this.

It's most interesting that when there are the most miniscule election worries in Russia, for example, or other countries, all the news media harp on it to no end. But, when Iran conducts sham and bogus elections, no one in the West considers it apt to condemn the unfree and unfair "elections." So-called analysts are still saying Ahmadinejad is an elected president. Instead of these ludicrous remarks, we can call for a UN-sponsored elections in Iran, instead of legitimizing the fake and bogus elections run by the mullahs. What are the mullahs so afraid of? We all know the answer.

Finally, by lending support to the Iranian people, I mean recognizing their right to oppose a brutal tyranny. Right now, the largest opposition movement is on the terrorist list in the EU and the U.S. Why? Because whenever the mullahs sit at the negotiating table, the first thing that they request from their interlocutors to pressure their most effective and largest enemy, the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran.

I've talked about this organization before, and I've said that as an Iranian, I believe they are the most realistic hope for a free Iran. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been on the terror list. They would have occupied seats at the Iranian parliament and became buddies with Ahmadinejad.

We should remove the PMOI from the terror lists. This is what 35 British MPs from both houses asked for last year. They took their case against the British Government to court and a UK court called the decision to designate the PMOI as terrorists, "flawed" and "perverse." Why is the British Government still insisting on keeping the PMOI on the lsit? Is the appeasement of the mullahs so important that would make our leaders trample upon our own laws and courts?

The terror designation against Iran's main opposition movement is now illegal and must be removed immediately. That is what I mean by supporting the Iranian people in their endeavor towards a free Iran. It means we should not place barriers on their path. The Iranian people don't want money, guns, or jets. It is their responsibility to free themselves. We should morally support them in that endeavor and politically and economically isolate the Iranian mullahs.

Iran: World’s Number One Power (Enemy?)

These days we don’t get a lot of entertainment from the Middle East. But, thank God for the Iranian so-called “president” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (for those of you wondering why the word president is in quotes, well, let’s just say Iran is not exactly a blossoming democratic utopia).

Today, the somewhat human-resembling Mr. President, dubbed the Iranian mullah regime as the world’s “number one” power (Agence France Presse, February 28, 2008). Didn’t I say he’s funny?

But, don’t laugh too much. Something tells me the “Professor” (another title he gives himself) has not missed the mark completely. After all, what really constitutes a ‘number one power’? A superpower basically has the highest levels of hard and soft power in the world.

Well, Isn’t Iran ‘number one’ in many ways? Of course, it is. It has hard power, but just not in the traditional sense of the term. It uses extraordinary hard power on the Iranian people to suppress and terrorize them, so that they will never think of opposing the brutal theocracy ruling them.

On Tuesday, authorities hanged a young man in a prison in central Iran for a crime allegedly committed when he was 16 years old, state media and human rights activists said.

A woman and a man were stoned to death in Iran in May 2006. Two sisters, Zohreh Kabiri and Azar Kabiri, allegedly found guilty of adultery, face death by stoning.

The Iranian regime also has soft power. But, again, not in the traditional sense of the term. For example, the state-run TV displays many of the public hangings (done by construction cranes) to instill fear in the population.

The Iranian regime is also the world’s number one power in the amount of hangings (per capita), stoning, suicides, brain drain, child executions (See Amnesty International report (http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/059/2007), corruption, and a slew of other things.

It’s also, of course, the “number one state sponsor of terrorism.”

All these crimes have transformed the Iranian regime as the most ruthless enemy in the eyes of the Iranian people, who wish to overthrow it and establish a democratic order in its place.

So, yes, the Iranian regime is number one: The number one enemy of the Iranian people and the world at large.

An Unreasonable Political System

Synopsis
In 1966, General Motors, the most powerful corporation in the world, sent private investigators to dig up dirt on an obscure thirty-two year old public interest lawyer named Ralph Nader, who had written a book critical of one of their cars, the Corvair. The scandal that ensued after the smear campaign was revealed launched Ralph Nader into national prominence and established him as one of the most admired Americans and the leader of the modern Consumer Movement. Over the next thirty years and without ever holding public office, Nader built a legislative record that is the rival of any contemporary president. Many things we take for granted including seat belts, airbags, product labeling, no nukes, even the free ticket you get after being bumped from an overbooked flight are largely due to the efforts of Ralph Nader and his citizen groups. Yet today, when most people hear the name "Ralph Nader," they think of the man who gave the country George W. Bush. As a result, after sustaining his popularity and effectiveness over an unprecedented amount of time, he has become a pariah even among former friends and allies. How did this happen? Is he really to blame for George W. Bush? Who has stuck by him and who has abandoned him? Has our democracy become a consumer fraud? After being so right for so many years, how did he seem to go so wrong? With the help of exciting graphics, rare archival footage and over forty on-camera interviews conducted over the past two years, "An Unreasonable Man" traces the life and career of Ralph Nader, one of the most unique, important, and controversial political figures of the past half century.

While the United States is theoretically a multi-party system, it has operated as a de facto two-party system since the Civil War. Seventy-five percent of registered U.S. voters currently belong to either the Democratic or Republican party.

Third-party or independent candidates face a slew of obstacles in American politics, from limited media coverage to legal barriers and Congressional leadership rules. Laws regarding third-party candidates also vary from state to state, presenting additional difficulties. In addition, popular belief holds that a third-party candidate won’t win an election, so there is no need to give him or her publicity. This often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But U.S. politics have not always been solely dominated by two major parties.

Creating the Two-Party System

The notion of “parties” in American politics is not indigenous to American government itself. The administration of George Washington and the first four sessions of Congress were non-partisan. By 1797, factions had coalesced into the Federalists (who supported the policies of the Washington administration and a strong national government) and the Democratic-Republicans (who supported states’ rights).

The Federalist party eventually collapsed, and the Democratic-Republican party split further into additional factions: Democratic Republicans, who became the Democrats, and National Republicans, who became known as the Whigs in the 1830s. But by the 1850s, the Whigs had become bitterly divided over slavery. So-called “conscience” Whigs joined “free” Democrats and nativists known as the Know-Nothing party to form what is known today as the Republican party, while other Whigs joined what is known today as the Democratic party.

U.S. Third Parties

Major third parties in America have included the Socialist Party, Libertarian Party, Anti-Masonic Party, Know-Nothing Party, Constitution Party, Green Party and Free Soil Party. While third-party candidates have never held presidential office, they have ran and won numerous smaller positions at the state and local levels. Third parties have also advocated for issues such as women’s suffrage, the abolition of slavery and workers’ rights, challenging incumbent parties to put reforms into effect.

There are more than 100 national third parties in the U.S. today, but most lack the ballot status in most states to make a bid for president. The “winner takes all” system of the U.S. electoral college also favors the two-party system. In recent years, the presence of third-party and independent candidates such as Ross Perot in the 1992 election and Ralph Nader in the 2000 election have drawn attention to the need for election and party reform.

Presidential Debates

A black-and-white image of two men in suits standing at podiums at opposite ends of a stage with another man in the center seated at a desk with an American flag, in front of an audience consisting of four other men in suits seated at a long table

In October 2000, a month before the presidential election, Ralph Nader was prevented from not only participating in, but even attending the presidential debates, physically barred by the private security firm hired by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Because the televised presidential debate—the “Super Bowl of politics”—is seen as the final showdown between the top candidates prior to the election, the exclusion of third-party candidates from the event not only denies them a public forum, but also ensures that the status quo of the two-party, two-candidate system remains in place. The reasoning behind such exclusions can appear to be contradictory. As political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell says, “In an election in which now the Gore world wants to say, ‘Ralph Nader lost the election for us,’ I guess he must have been a factor in the election. But you said he couldn't be in the debates because he wasn't a factor in the election.”

History of Debates

Presidential debates usually take place during the two months leading up to an election and consist of a series of three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate. In 2004, the first presidential debate focused on domestic policy, the second was held in a “town meeting style” with questions posed by attendees, and the third centered on foreign policy. Each debate lasts for 90 minutes and has one moderator, often a prominent journalist or newscaster.

The major presidential nominees did not debate publicly until 1960, when Richard Nixon and John Kennedy faced one another on network television. But because incumbents often refused to participate in debates, and federal communications laws required equal time for all presidential candidates, the next official presidential debate did not take place until 1976.

Since then, debates have played a major role in forming and reaffirming public opinion about presidential candidates, allowing them to strategically broadcast their personalities to a national audience.

The Commission and Controversy

Nader filed a lawsuit with Pat Buchanan—another third-party candidate barred from attending the 2000 debates—in 2004, challenging the Federal Election Commission’s legitimizing of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). The CPD was created in 1987 by the Republican and Democratic parties. The nominees of the CPD decide the number of debates that will take place, the format of the events and who will ask the questions. Further investigations followed the lawsuit, but the CPD continues to be the main organizer of presidential debates, despite growing criticism.

The CPD was initially formed to replace the non-partisan League of Women Voters, which had included independent candidate John Anderson in the 1980 presidential debate and prohibited major party candidates from selecting the debate panelists in 1984. Opponents of the CPD argue that its partisanship is questionable due to the fact that the senior staff and board members are all prominent Democratic and Republican leaders. In order to participate in a CPD-sponsored debate, a candidate must have garnered 15 percent of voter support in a major poll. Critics say that this requirement is tailored to exclude third-party candidates from participating.

In his book No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates, George Farah asserts that the CPD took over the debate process from more non-partisan groups in order to give more power to the two-party system. Funded by corporate monies, the current debate system, according to Farah, was created with the intent to stifle third-party candidates.
Debate Reform

With the 2008 elections looming, several conservative and liberal non-profit groups are working to sponsor more non-partisan debates. Increased access to the Internet has also allowed for an increased number of forums for opinion sharing and political debate. The Citizen’s Debate Commission, established by civic leaders from across the political spectrum, aims to host presidential debates that allow room for more diverse political views. However, whether or not these goals will be implemented prior to the election remains to be seen.

Keep in mind that I am not advocating that we all run out and vote for Nader, although in a way I am. I think the system should be open and fair. America promotes and exports the notion of open market and the benefit of competition. Then why not in politics? Why is competition litigiously opposed? Why is a third party candidate automatically a spoiler? Or even worse, a wasted vote?

Wikipedia has outlined the arguments for and against a two-party system. It seems a little strange that the US promotes and pushes multi-party democracies in other countries, yet at home the government vehemently opposes any challenge to the current monopoly on power. One more choice for president than North Korea and Cuba has is just that, one choice.

Japan's Economic Woes

Floundering economies effect us all. That is part and parcel of globalization and the interconnectedness of market economies. So how does the second largest economy impact the world? I would say, in many ways. If the US sub-prime ripple shook the world, the failure of the Japanese economy would hurt us in many more ways. First of all, they, much like the US, are consumers. That keeps the market turning to some extent. They are also investors. Not only in the US economy, but also, and more importantly in China. A continued downturn in Japan could have economic ramifications worldwide. Not to mention, a rise in nationalism and right and left wing groups in Japan, who are more than happy to capitalize on such events. Anyways, here is an interesting article I found in The Economist.

The world's second-biggest economy is still in a funk—and politics is the problem

THE ghost of Japan's “lost decade” haunts the United States. As the consequences of America's burst housing bubble are felt through financial markets, it has become popular to ask whether Japan's awful experience of boom-and-bust has lessons for other rich countries facing, at best, sharp slowdowns. Japan's property-and-stockmarket bubble burst in 1990, creating bad loans equivalent in the end to about one-fifth of GDP. The economy began growing properly again only 12 years later, and only in 2005 could Japan say it had put financial stress and debt-deflation behind it. Even today the country's nominal GDP remains below its peak in the 1990s—a brutal measure of lost opportunities.

Yet ghosts can deceive. Similarities exist between Japan then and America today, notably the way that a financial crisis threatens the “real” economy. But the differences outnumber them. Japan should indeed be a source of worry—not, however, because other rich countries are destined for the same economic plughole, but because it is the world's second-biggest economy and it has not tackled the fundamental causes of its malaise.

A tale of two crunches

Even by today's gloomiest assumptions, Japan's bust dwarfs America's, if in part because its boom did too. Take for instance the collapse in the equity market. America's S&P 500 is down just 8% from its 1999 peak. The Nikkei 225 share index is now nearly two-thirds below its 1989 peak. In commercial property the comparison between the two boom-and-busts is almost as dramatic.

The more important difference, though, is how each country got into its mess and then responded to it. In America, the government can be blamed for inadequate oversight of the vast market in slicing and dicing mortgages, but it has reacted aggressively to the bust, with monetary and fiscal stimulus. Financial institutions are busy declaring their losses. In Japan, the government was deeply complicit in puffing up the market and complicit, too, in hiding the ensuing mess for years.

Japan's economy is still held back by its politicians (see article). Though much has changed since 1990, a cyclical slowdown is now laying bare Japan's structural shortcomings. A few years ago, people hoped that Japan, which is still a bigger economic power than China and has some marvellous companies, would help take up some of the slack in the world economy if America tired; that now looks unlikely. Productivity is disastrously low: the return on new investment is around half that in America. Consumption is still flagging, thanks in part to companies' failure to increase wages. Bureaucratic blunders have cost the economy dearly, and Japan needs a swathe of reforms to trade and competition without which the economy will continue to disappoint.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled for the best part of half a century and remains a machine of pork and patronage, has given up trying to tackle these problems. What reformist tendencies it had under the maverick Junichiro Koizumi, prime minister between 2001 and 2006, have now gone into reverse. To make matters worse, last July the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won control of the upper house of the Diet (parliament). The constitution never envisaged upper and lower houses of the Diet being controlled by opposing parties, and since the upper house has nearly equal powers to the lower one, the opposition can frustrate virtually every government initiative.

Thus Yasuo Fukuda, prime minister since September, spent his first four months in office fighting to reauthorise a solitary refuelling ship operating in the Indian Ocean. Now the government is locked in grinding battles with the DPJ over bills to authorise a budget for the fiscal year that starts in April and to appoint a new governor of the Bank of Japan on March 19th.

But the problem is not merely a constitutional one. Japan is at an uncomfortable point: no longer a one-party state, yet still far from being a competitive democracy with rival parties alternating in power. Both main parties are riven by contradictions: both contain modernisers alongside a grizzled old guard of conservatives and socialists. Political chaos has allowed the old forces within the LDP—the factions, the conservative bureaucrats, the builders and the farmers—to reassert their influence. Meanwhile, the DPJ's leader, Ichiro Ozawa, who used to have a reformist streak, now sounds like an old-style LDP boss.

Japan's politics is skidding for the buffers. The crash may come as early as March, over budget differences. One way to avoid it, some politicians think, is for the LDP and the DPJ to form the kind of “grand coalition” which Mr Fukuda and Mr Ozawa talked about in November. This plan was thwarted when the rest of the DPJ leadership, rightly, balked: in effect, it would have taken Japan back towards being a one-party state, distributing largesse rather than reforming the economy.

Time for a good wash

Yet the buffers may be the best place for Japan. Or rather, a general election—perhaps a string of elections—offers the best chance of forcing parties to confront their inconsistencies, offering voters real choices rather than candidates who compete to bring home the bacon.

There are glimmers of hope. A cross-party group of modernising politicians, academics and businessmen has formed a pressure group, Sentaku (with connotations both of choice and of giving things a good wash). Radically, they want to decentralise the top-heavy system in which local politicians are in thrall to Tokyo's pork providers; they think the main parties should campaign on coherent manifestos; and they are urging ordinary Japanese, who do not readily bother their heads about such things, to reflect on the folly of voting for politicians who smother their districts in unused highways and bridges that lead nowhere—the visible blight of failed politics.

Many politicians say a general election would only add to the chaos. That is the argument of a political class grown fat on a broken system. Voters need a chance to start putting it right. If choice is chaos, bring it on.

Think Again: Soft Power

The weighing, or balancing, of "hard" and "soft" power is now being integrated into "smart" power. I notice that Nye and a few other of the scholars in this field are starting to discuss this topic. It is very fascinating and well worth talking about when looking at foreign policy and the geo-political events of the world.

“Soft Power Is Cultural Power”
Partly. Power is the ability to alter the behavior of others to get what you want. There are basically three ways to do that: coercion (sticks), payments (carrots), and attraction (soft power). British historian Niall Ferguson described soft power as “non-traditional forces such as cultural and commercial goods”—and then promptly dismissed it on the grounds that “it’s, well, soft.” Of course, the fact that a foreigner drinks Coca-Cola or wears a Michael Jordan T-shirt does not in itself mean that America has power over him. This view confuses resources with behavior. Whether power resources produce a favorable outcome depends upon the context. This reality is not unique to soft-power resources: Having a larger tank army may produce military victory if a battle is fought in the desert, but not if it is fought in swampy jungles such as Vietnam.

A country’s soft power can come from three resources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority). Consider Iran. Western music and videos are anathema to the ruling mullahs, but attractive to many of the younger generation to whom they transmit ideas of freedom and choice. American culture produces soft power among some Iranians, but not others.

“Economic Strength Is Soft Power"
No. In a recent article on options for dealing with Iran, Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation refers to “soft power options such as economic sanctions.” But there is nothing soft about sanctions if you are on the receiving end. They are clearly intended to coerce and are thus a form of hard power. Economic strength can be converted into hard or soft power: You can coerce countries with sanctions or woo them with wealth. As Walter Russell Mead has argued, “economic power is sticky power; it seduces as much as it compels.” There’s no doubt that a successful economy is an important source of attraction. Sometimes in real-world situations, it is difficult to distinguish what part of an economic relationship is comprised of hard and soft power. European leaders describe other countries’ desire to accede to the European Union (EU) as a sign of Europe’s soft power. Turkey today is making changes in its human rights policies and domestic law to adjust to EU standards. How much of this change is driven by the economic inducement of market access, and how much by the attractiveness of Europe’s successful economic and political system? It’s clear that some Turks are replying more to the hard power of inducement, whereas others are attracted to the European model of human rights and economic freedom.

“Soft Power Is More Humane Than Hard Power”
Not necessarily. Because soft power has been hyped as an alternative to raw power politics, it is often embraced by ethically minded scholars and policymakers. But soft power is a description, not an ethical prescription. Like any form of power, it can be wielded for good or ill. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, after all, possessed a great deal of soft power in the eyes of their acolytes. It is not necessarily better to twist minds than to twist arms. If I want to steal your money, I can threaten you with a gun, or I can swindle you with a get-rich-quick scheme in which you invest, or I can persuade you to hand over your estate as part of a spiritual journey. The third way is through soft power, but the result is still theft.

Although soft power in the wrong hands can have horrible consequences, it can in some cases offer morally superior means to certain goals. Contrast the consequences of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.’s choice of soft power with Yasir Arafat’s choice of the gun. Gandhi and King were able to attract moderate majorities over time, and the consequences were impressive both in effectiveness and in ethical terms. Arafat’s strategy of hard power, by contrast, killed innocent Israelis and drove Israeli moderates into the arms of the hard right.

"Hard power Can Be Measured, and Soft Power Cannot"
False. Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland has complained that soft power, like globalization, is too “elastic” a concept to be useful. Like others, he fails to understand the difference between power resources and behavior. In fact, it’s quite possible to quantify sources of soft power. One can, for example, measure and compare the cultural, communications, and diplomatic resources that might produce soft power for a country. Public opinion polls can quantify changes in a country’s attractiveness over time. Nor is hard power as easy to quantify as Hoagland seems to believe. The apparent precision of the measurement of hard power resources is often spurious and might be called “the concrete fallacy”—the notion that the only important resources are those that can be dropped on your foot (or on a city). That’s a mistake. The United States had far more measurable military resources than North Vietnam, but it nonetheless lost the Vietnam War. Whether soft power produces behavior that we want will depend on the context and the skills with which the resources are converted into outcomes.

“Europe Counts Too Much on Soft Power and the United States Too Much on Hard Power”
True. Robert Kagan’s clever phrase that Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus is an overstatement, but it contains a core of truth. Europe has successfully used the attraction of its successful political and economic integration to obtain outcomes it wants, and the United States has often acted as though its military preeminence can solve all problems. But it is a mistake to rely on hard or soft power alone. The ability to combine them effectively might be termed “smart power.” During the Cold War, the West used hard power to deter Soviet aggression, while it also used soft power to erode faith in Communism behind the iron curtain. That was smart power. To be smart today, Europe should invest more in its hard-power resources, and the United States should pay more attention to its soft power.

“The Bush Administration Neglects America’s Soft Power”
More true in the first term than the second. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked about soft power in 2003, he replied “I don’t know what it means.” The administration and the country paid a high price for that ignorance. Fortunately, in Bush’s second term, with Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes at the State Department and Rumsfeld’s reputation dented by the kind of failures the private sector would never tolerate, the second term team has shown an increased concern about America’s soft power. The president has stressed values in foreign policy and has increased the budget for public diplomacy.


“Some Goals Can Only Be Achieved by Hard Power”
No Doubt. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il’s penchant for Hollywood movies is unlikely to affect his decision on developing nuclear weapons. Hard power just might dissuade him, particularly if China agreed to economic sanctions. Nor will soft power be sufficient to stop the Iranian nuclear program, though the legitimacy of the administration’s current multilateral approach may help to recruit other countries to a coalition that isolates Iran. And soft power got nowhere in luring the Taliban away from al Qaeda in the 1990s. It took American military might to do that. But other goals, such as the promotion of democracy and human rights are better achieved by soft power. Coercive democratization has its limits—as the United States has (re)discovered in Iraq.

“Military Resources Produce Only Hard Power”
No. The mention of hard power immediately conjures up images of tanks, fighters, and missiles. But military prowess and competence can sometimes create soft power. Dictators such as Hitler and Stalin cultivated myths of invincibility and inevitability to structure expectations and attract others to join their cause. As Osama bin Laden has said, people are attracted to a strong horse rather than a weak horse. A well-run military can be a source of admiration. The impressive job of the U.S. military in providing humanitarian relief after the Indian Ocean tsunami and the South Asian earthquake in 2005 helped restore the attractiveness of the United States. Military-to-military cooperation and training programs, for example, can establish transnational networks that enhance a country’s soft power.

Of course, misuse of military resources can also undercut soft power. The Soviets had a great deal of soft power in the years after World War II, but they destroyed it by the way they used their hard power against Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Brutality and indifference to just war principles of discrimination and proportionality can also destroy legitimacy. The efficiency of the initial U.S. military invasion of Iraq in 2003 created admiration in the eyes of some foreigners, but that soft power was undercut by the subsequent inefficiency of the occupation and the scenes of mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

“Soft Power Is Difficult to Use.”
Partly true. Governments can control and change foreign policies. They can spend money on public diplomacy, broadcasting, and exchange programs. They can promote, but not control popular culture. In that sense, one of the key resources that produce soft power is largely independent of government control. That is why the Council on Foreign Relations recently suggested the formation of a Corporation for Public Diplomacy—modeled on the U.S. Corporation for Public Broadcasting—to engage wider participation among private groups and individuals (who are often unwilling to be part of official government productions).

“Soft Power Is Irrelevant to the Current Terrorist Threat”
False. There is a small likelihood that the West will ever attract such people as Mohammed Atta or Osama bin Laden. We need hard power to deal with people like them. But the current terrorist threat is not Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations. It is a civil war within Islam between a majority of moderates and a small minority who want to coerce others into an extremist and oversimplified version of their religion. The United States cannot win unless the moderates win. We cannot win unless the number of people the extremists are recruiting is lower than the number we are killing and deterring. Rumsfeld himself asked in a 2003 memo: “Are we capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrasas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?” That equation will be very hard to balance without a strategy to win hearts and minds. Soft power is more relevant than ever.

Joseph S. Nye Jr. is distinguished service professor at Harvard University and author, most recently, of “The Power Game: A Washington Novel” (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004).

Source:
Foreign Policy

Water

In many nations, threats to our water supplies are exacerbated by urban and agricultural runoff, pesticide and toxic pollution, clearcutting of forests, and by overconsumption of aquifers, rivers and streams.

Recent US federal proposals to relax Clean Water standards, including allowing increases of mercury pollution from power plants while reducing funding to domestic and international water conservation and pollution-prevention measures are only exacerbating the problem at home and abroad.

A recent survey found that clean fresh drinking water is more important to the majority of Americans than any other issue. While we invest billions of dollars in highways, airports and other infrastructure programs (all good things), the Bush administration has proposed cutting the EPA's Clean Water funding.

We must promote political leadership that invests in clean water protection for us and the generations to come..

Can Capitalism Have a Soul?

The Economist just posted an interesting article on capitalism and development.

SOCIALISM and radical environmentalism evidently have the ability to inspire. Capitalism, on the other hand, tends to leave most folks cold, despite the not insignificant fact that it actually delivers the goods.

By perpetually raising productivity, capitalism has not only driven down poverty rates and raised life expectancy, it has also released much of humanity from the crushing burden of physical labour, freeing us to pursue ‘higher’ objectives instead. What Clive Hamilton airily dismisses as a ‘growth fetish’ has resulted in one hour of work today delivering twenty-five times more value than it did in 1850. This has freed huge chunks of our time for leisure, art, sport, learning, and other ‘soul-enriching’ pursuits. Despite all the exaggerated talk of an ‘imbalance’ between work and family life, the average Australian today spends a much greater proportion of his or her lifetime free of work than they would had they belonged to any previous generation in history.

That's Peter Saunders of the Australian Centre for Independent Studies in a new essay in Policy aimed at the arguments of growth skeptic Clive Hamilton. Hamilton, Saunders says, admits that capitalism has opened up heretofore unimagined opportunities. But it has gone too far; we have lost the balance. Capitalism has made us tawdry and small, too obsessed with beady-eyed materialism to use our wealth in the quest for authenticity. Saunders replies:

The attraction of living in a capitalist society is not just that the economy works. It is also that if your version of the good life leads you to turn your back on capitalism, you don’t have to pick up sticks and move away. If you don’t like capitalism, there is no need to bribe people-smugglers to get you out of the country. You simply buy a plot of land, build your mud-brick house, and drop out (or, like Clive, you set up your own think tank and sell books urging others to drop out).

And people do drop out, or at least scale down. A survey conducted by Hamilton’s Australia Institute claims that 23% of Australians between the ages of thirty and sixty have taken a cut in their income to get more control over their lives, spend more time with friends and families, or achieve greater personal fulfillment. Clive calls them ‘downshifters.’

The fact that about a quarter of the population is opting out of the rat race is the best imaginable evidence that it is possible to take command of one's consumption habits and bend them to the service of deeper satisfaction. But apparently this is not good enough for Mr Hamilton, who writes:

The downshifters are the standard bearers in the revolt against consumerism, but the social revolution required to make the transition to a post-growth society will not come about solely through the personal decisions of determined individuals … Making [this] transition demands a politics of downshifting.

But what if those other 77% don't want to downshift. Too bad! False consciousness! They don't know what they really need! This is ominous not only for the implied authoritarianism of a "politics of downshifting" that will no doubt force people to be free, but for its egregiously stunted sense of the human horizon.

Growth skeptics are, among other things, people who think we are at a late phase of material development. But it seems to me the evidence points decisively in the other direction. We are in the infancy of the economic advance, and its humanitarian effects have only barely begun to register. That thought ought to be inspiring. At the end of this century, after lifespans have tripled and average incomes have multiplied many times over, the idea that we had "too much" at the beginning of the century will be seen as the sad absurdity it is.

Interesting article, what do you think?

Ah... Fredom of Speech

Khmer Rouge's Pol Pot a patriot???

A UN tribunal is mulling genocide charges against Khieu Samphan. The leader of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge was a patriot who staunchly defended social justice, the regime's former head of state has said.

In a new book, Khieu Samphan says there was never a policy to starve people and no order to carry out mass killings.

Prosecutors are studying the book to determine what defence Khieu Samphan may take if he is ever charged.

Some estimates say up to 2.5 million people died during the Khmer Rouge reign from 1975 to 1979.

Khieu Samphan is one of the few surviving senior figures of the regime.

Four of his colleagues have been charged by a UN-backed genocide tribunal and Khieu Samphan, 76, is expected to be added.

People's well-being

In his book, Reflection on Cambodian History Up to the Era of Democratic Kampuchea, Khieu Samphan says Pol Pot was a leader who "sacrificed his entire life... to defend national sovereignty".
Pol Pot was responsible for all policies, right or wrong, Khieu Samphan says.

He writes: "There was no policy of starving people. Nor was there any direction set out for carrying out mass killings.

"There was always close consideration of the people's well-being."

Khieu Samphan says "coercion was also needed" to make people work to redress food shortages.

But analysts say that mass graves and abundant testimonies from survivors paint a picture of a regime that oversaw the deaths of between one million and 2.5 million people through executions, forced labour and starvation.

Millions were forced from cities to communal farms in the countryside until the Khmer Rouge was finally overthrown in 1979 by invading Vietnamese troops.

The UN tribunal was established to seek justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Maoist regime.

The BBC's Guy de Launey in Phnom Penh says Khieu Samphan's arrest was apparently only days away this week when the former head of state apparently suffered a stroke at his home in Pailin, near the Thai border.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen arranged for Khieu Samphan to be airlifted to hospital.

Officials must now decide whether ill health will affect any charges.

In his book, Khieu Samphan also criticises the current regime, saying: "Government officials, military officers, the rich, indulge themselves with excessive spending."

Can it really be argued that analyzing Pol Pot's legacy is just a matter of perspective? I guess in all fairness, I haven't really examined the evidence of "good" things he did during his reign. But I have watched his confessions and they didn't really persuade me.

Give Her Her Due?

So many blogs are saying that even if we don't like Hillary, we have to give her her due. I'm sure many will, but I'd rather not. The only due deserving is to the spinmasters behind the scenes who have rapidly turned Hillary into the candidate of "change." Hmmm perhaps it would be good to examine her voting record in the senate and take a close look at who is funding her campaign. Not too much change, I would venture to say. I read on the BBC the other day that Hillary has pulled out all the old political pals of Bill and his original campaign in the effort to boost her in the primaries, looks like it might have worked for now...

Obama: One Voice

After watching Our Brand is Crisis I am much more aware of the spin doctors and marketing that goes into these productions, but I have to say Obama nailed it here. His team of marketers must be a good one because this video really nails: the desire for change, patriotism, hope, etc.