We want war, and we want it now

Reading the  roasted duck

By Pepe Escobar 

It was deep into the night, somewhere over Siberia, in a Moscow to Beijing flight (BRIC to BRIC?) when the thought, like a lightning bolt, began to take hold. 

What the hell is wrong with those Arabs? 

Maybe it was the narcotic effect of that perennially dreadful Terminal F at Sheremetyevo airport - straight out of a Brejnev gulag. Maybe it was the anticipation of finding more about the Russia-China joint naval exercise scheduled for late April. 

Or it was simply another case of "you can take the boy out of the Middle East, but you can't take the Middle East out of the boy". 

With friends like these ... It all had to do with that Friends of Syria (fools for war?) meeting in Istanbul. Picture Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal - who seems to have a knack for sending US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton into rapture - feverishly arguing that the House of Saud, those paragons of democracy, had "a duty" to weaponize the Syrian "revolutionary" opposition. 

And picture al-Faisal ordering an immediate ceasefire by the Bashar al-Assad government, guilty - according to the House of Saud - not only of cruel repression but crimes against humanity. 

No; this was not a Monty Python sketch. 

What Export-Oriented America Means

“Two sectors, under God, with liberty and justice"

By TYLER COWEN

In his State of the Union address two years ago, President Obama promised to double American exports over the next five years. At the time critics called this an unrealistic political promise, one that voters would forget by the 2012 election. But America is currently on track to meet that goal. As of early 2012, exports measure in at about $180 billion each month, whereas two years ago it was $140 billion per month. The growth rate of exports is about 16 percent per year, a trend that at least conceivably could get us to Obama’s target. 

The Supreme Court's Disturbing Decision

Strip Searching just for kicks

By ADAM COHEN

It might seem that in the United States, being pulled over for driving without a seat belt should not end with the governmentordering you to take off your clothes and "lift your genitals." But there is no guarantee that this is the case -- not since the Supreme Court ruled this week that the Constitution does not prohibit the government from strip searching people charged with even minor offenses. The court's 5-4 ruling turns a deeply humiliating procedure -- one most Americans would very much like to avoid -- into a routine law enforcement tactic.

This case arose when a man named Albert Florence was pulled over by New Jersey state troopers while he was driving to his parents' house with his wife and young son. The trooper arrested him for failing to pay a fine -- even though, it turned out, he actually had paid the fine. Florence was thrown into the Essex County Correctional Facility, which has a strip search policy for all new arrestees.

The green economy strikes out

Solar Flare-out

As companies go bust, Europe rethinks solar power subsidies.

The green economy strikes again, or shall we say strikes out. Oakland-based Solar Trust of America filed for bankruptcy this week, leaving its planned multibillion-dollar plant in California on ice. The company declared itself insolvent after its parent—Germany's Solar Millennium—filed for bankruptcy in December, and Solar Trust realized it wouldn't be able to pay a $1 million rent check due April 1.

Solar Millennium, in turn, had been hoping to sell a controlling stake in Solar Trust to the German company, solarhybrid, until solarhybrid also filed for bankruptcy in March. Then there's Q-Cells, another German solar company, which also filed for bankruptcy this week, sharing that fate with Solon, the Berlin-headquartered photovoltaic firm that went bust in December.

Putting adults first is better for everyone – the kids included

No bowing down before Bebe
by Nancy McDermott 

I recently rediscovered the handwritten record of the first months of my son’s life. No, it’s not reminiscences of his babyhood, just page after page of columns recording every feed, burp and diaper change. The detail is astounding. Between 9.03pm and 9.37pm on Thursday 19 December 2002, he nursed on my right side, burped twice then followed up with an ‘explosive’ bowel movement. Two days later, at 3:45pm, he was ‘fussy’. On Thursday 15 January, the comment by the 11.49 diaper change reads ‘bright green!’

I hardly know what to think about this. What wisdom did I imagine might come from this morbid accounting of my son’s digestion? My only consolation is knowing I wasn’t alone. All the other new mothers I knew were doing the same thing. Incredibly, it seemed completely normal at the time. And this is the problem with parenting culture: it’s very hard to see it clearly when you’re in the thick of it. Sometimes it’s only with time and distance that we can really be objective.

A Hegelian Moment in the Middle East

Chaos in North Africa

On April 6, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad declared an independent state in northern Mali, the first assertion of Tuareg control of Timbuktu, their old capital, since 1591

By ADAM GARFINKLE

What do you think of when you see or hear the word “Tuareg”? Most Americans, I think, are left utterly blank by the sight and the sound of this noun. Those who do find some association with the word probably tend to think of a car, specifically a Volkswagen of recent vintage, but spelled “Touareg” for some no doubt very sensible Germanic reason. Most Americans do not read a newspaper or consult any other serious news source on a daily basis, so their heretofore blank Tuareg slates are unlikely to have been marked by the recent copy in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press dispatches in a host of other papers and electronic news sources. That copy, if read, arrests attention—or should.

It's A Riot

They are victims of bad ideas and a rotten culture

by Theodore Dalrymple

When the riots in England that astonished the world (but not me) broke out, I happened to be in Brazil. Thanks to the demand for my opinion from around the world – but not from England – I am glad to say that I benefited economically more from the riots than the most assiduous looter. It is truly an ill-wind that blows nobody any good.

After the riots were over, the government appointed a commission to enquire into their causes. The members of this commission were appointed by all three major political parties, and it required no great powers of prediction to know what they would find: lack of opportunity, dissatisfaction with the police, bla-bla-bla.

Collateral Damage

Tales from "Little Mogadishu"

The "war on terror" still casts a long shadow in some unlikely places.

BY PAUL SALOPEK

I had been away from Kenya for too long. So when I returned last August, I sought out two long-lost friends.

The first was Abdirizak Noor Iftin, an energetic and friendly teacher. He is 26, and he does not belong in Kenya. Iftin is Somali; we had met three years before in his ruined hometown of Mogadishu, where Iftin tutored his young students in English. The job sometimes required darting from house to house under mortar fire. In Somalia one is always in the middle of a war.

Mexico will partly determine what kind of society America will become

With the Focus on Syria, Mexico Burns

by Robert D. Kaplan

While the foreign policy elite in Washington focuses on the 8,000 deaths in a conflict in Syria -- half a world away from the United States -- more than 47,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 in Mexico. A deeply troubled state as well as a demographic and economic giant on the United States' southern border, Mexico will affect America's destiny in coming decades more than any state or combination of states in the Middle East. Indeed, Mexico may constitute the world's seventh-largest economy in the near future.

Certainly, while the Mexican violence is largely criminal, Syria is a more clear-cut moral issue, enhanced by its own strategic consequences. A calcified authoritarian regime in Damascus is stamping out dissent with guns and artillery barrages. Moreover, regime change in Syria, which the rebels demand, could deliver a pivotal blow to Iranian influence in the Middle East, an event that would be the best news to U.S. interests in the region in years or even decades.

Argentina’s Totalitarian Economy

A Fascistic 'Zwangswirtschaft' is Implemented

Argentina's central bank president Mercedes Marco del Pont:
 'money printing does not cause inflation'
(that's actually true, in a sense: money printing is inflation)

By Pater Tenebrarum

The government of Christina Kirchner is well-known for its interventionism, protectionism and disregard of property rights and freedom of expression. Anyone doing business in Argentina today or contemplating an investment in its stock market must realize that their property and assets could end up confiscated at anytime. Moreover, the high dividend yields of Argentine stocks are clearly no longer safe.

Why is distrust of immigrants so universal?

Fear Factor

BY JOSHUA E. KEATING

Stoking fears of foreigners is perhaps the oldest trick in the political playbook. From Benjamin Franklin's 1751 warning that Pennsylvania would soon become a "Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them," to modern-day Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who laments a coming "Eurabia" dominated by Islam, playing up the threat posed by new arrivals is a surefire, if cynical, way to win votes.

Why do such arguments still work? Western countries have absorbed wave after wave of immigration without civilizational collapse. How can Americans, whose ancestors were accused of importing German fascism, Italian Catholicism, or Jewish socialism, take seriously the threat of "creeping sharia" or a Mexican reconquista? If one judges by recent studies, it's pretty hard to stop the cycle of fear.

A Crisis of Civilization

The future doesn’t exist yet; we have to make it up

BY WALTER RUSSELL MEAD

As I’ve been writing about the crisis of the blue social model, I’ve mostly focused on its consequences for North American and European societies. Canada, the US and the countries of western and central Europe are the places where the blue model has become most solidly entrenched and fully developed, and in the first instance the decline of that social model is registering most forcefully in their political and cultural lives.

That process has a long way to run; the creative destruction of the world of big blue is going to be causing social and economic crises for years and even decades to come. But we won’t grasp the immense importance and the urgency of what’s happening in the west until we fully take on board the importance of the decay of the blue model for global politics.

Enter totalitarian democracy

On the difficulties of making law in the modern world

by Andrew C. McCarthy

    "I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.” 

The speaker was Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Supreme Court. These, therefore, were astonishing words.

The authority over American law enjoyed by Justice Ginsburg and her colleagues on the Court owes solely to the existence of the U.S. Constitution, complemented by the high court’s proclamation that it has the last word on how that Constitution is to be construed. That latter power grab traces its roots back to Chief Justice John Marshall’s legendary 1803 opinion in Marbury v. Madison. Marshall “emphatically” declared it “the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.” Despite naysayers from Jefferson to Lincoln, who thought that judicial supremacy would eviscerate popular sovereignty, Marshall’s assertion paved the way for the modern Court to claim even more boldly, in Cooper v. Aaron (1959) for instance, that judicial control over the Constitution’s meaning is a “permanent and indispensable feature of our constitutional system.”

The nationalization of the family

Bringing It Home

By Mark Steyn

A year or two back, I started using the city of Bangalore as an all-purpose shorthand for emerging economies. If you've heard me on air or in person, you'll know the kind of thing: 

"Chip in Berkeley doesn't work as hard or create as much wealth as Rajiv in Bangalore, who gets up early every morning and heads off to put in a full shift making the latest electronic toys that Chip loves. But Chip assumes he will always live better than Rajiv simply because he's American and Rajiv isn't. He's wrong. Eventually, economic reality will assert itself." 

Whenever I use my little riff on radio or TV, I get a flurry of e-mails asking what was that goofy, foreign-sounding city I mentioned. That would be Bangalore, a burg whose name I have found mellifluously exotic since my childhood but which over the last three decades has become known as "the Silicon Valley of India." Even Americans who've never heard of the joint would feel instantly at home if suddenly dropped in one of its many IT parks to stroll past the likes of Dell, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard.

The ongoing destruction of the West

A dangerous enemy of democracy

Will Galloway's victory have galvanised radicalised Muslims by showing how to drive a devastating wedge into British politics

By Melanie Phillips

The general response to George Galloway’s sensational victory in the Bradford West by-election has missed the point by a mile.

Comment has concentrated on the undoubtedly stunning defeat for Labour, and has ascribed Galloway’s victory to widespread disaffection with mainstream political parties. 

This is certainly part of the story — strikingly, a significant section of the Tory vote appears to have gone to Galloway — but it is not the key factor behind this torrid triumph of a  discredited demagogue.

For this rested principally on something that commentators are too blinkered or politically correct to mention.

Galloway won because young Bradford Muslims turned out for him in droves. 

Krugman vs. The Poor

The Cult of Easy Money

by David Harsanyi

Why does Paul Krugman, a guy who fashions himself guardian of the working class and poor, feel so comfortable advocating for the devaluing of all our savings and retirement accounts? Why does he want to see a spike in food, clothing and fuel costs? (Now, if we employed his writing style, we could simply accuse him of hating the poor.)  

In the New York Times today, he tells us he fears that Republican might be bullying Ben Bernanke into bad policy. What we need, the Nobel winner explains, is for the Fed to induce more inflation.

The attackers want the Fed to slam on the brakes when it should be stepping on the gas; they want the Fed to choke off recovery when it should be doing much more to accelerate recovery. Fundamentally, the right wants the Fed to obsess over inflation, when the truth is that we'd be better off if the Fed paid less attention to inflation and more attention to unemployment. Indeed, a bit more inflation would be a good thing, not a bad thing.

Spontaneous Order in Action

Market Order in War-Torn Iraq

by Joel Poindexter

In the course of my deployments to Iraq I learned a great deal about economics, though I didn't realize it at the time. I hadn't yet been introduced to the Austrian School or a Rothbardian view of laissez-faire capitalism. Looking back, however, I can see quite clearly that in several important areas voluntary systems not only existed in that country but thrived.

My first deployment was to Baghdad, that ancient Mesopotamian city positioned on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It was there I discovered how, even during the most violent and unstable times, markets can adapt to the needs of consumers and peacefully provide essential services to humanity.

The obscene concept of after-birth abortion

Mothers who abandon or kill their infants have a friend in the courts

By Barbara Kay

In May of 2007, April Halkett gave birth to a baby boy at the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan Wal-Mart and walked out alone. The baby was found shortly afterward, and was saved. Charged with the crime of child abandonment, she was tried and acquitted in 2009. In weighing the facts and statements presented, Queen’s Bench Justice Neil Gabrielson ruled that the mother should be judged subjectively and, having considered Ms. Halkett’s fear and confusion, found she was guilty of negligence in leaving the store, but her action was not criminal.

The Ontario attorney general seeks to intervene in the case when it comes before the Supreme Court later this year, because it will affect future criminal cases involving child abandonment if Ms. Halkett’s acquittal is upheld.

All euros are not (created) equal

The Eurozone X-Factor

By Finance Addict

Whatever one thinks about Lord Wolfson’s euro-skeptical meddling, it certainly has been entertaining. The British baron’s offer of a £250,000 prize for the best ideas to deal with a possible breakup of the eurozone has brought all sorts of people out of the woodwork. (Including this precocious 11-year old.) But one of the most fascinating ideas on the shortlist has come from Neil Record — although I’m not sure that my takeaway was his main intent.

Suppose that a country does leave the eurozone — this was the starting premise of all the responses to Wolfson’s essay contest. Greece, as the weakest link, seems the most likely candidate. But on the other hand it’s possible that one of the strongest countries chooses to go its own way. Of course we’re talking about Germany. Whether it remains in the euro or decides to take its chances by introducing a new Deutschemark, the fact is that in the case of a euro breakup, Germany is where it’s at. Its fiscal position and reputation for prudence is among the strongest of all developed countries. If it were on its own then its currency would rise to reflect this. So, to the extent that you can choose, you will want to get your banknotes from Berlin.

Central Planning for Dummies

The US government prepares for economic collapse

By Mike Krieger

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations.

Each central bank... sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.

- Carroll Quigley (Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown) from his 1964" book Tragedy and Hope

Crime Once Exposed Has no Refuge but in Audacity.

- Tacitus

Euramerica

A Safety-First Economy

by Anthony de Jasay

The thirty years from the end of the war to the mid-1970s were the Glorious Thirties of Europe on the nicer side of the Iron Curtain. Spurred on by a sense of dire necessity, people went hard at work to clear up the rubble, repair the damage, and get over as fast as they could the grim phase of post-war reconstruction. In 1948, the Marshall Plan came in to fill up empty economies with working capital, and Western Germany amazed all by taking off into the Wirtschaftswunder. Robust economic growth, exceptional by historical standards, became a commonplace.

Millions Cried… No One Listened…

The forgotten people

By Alfred de Zayas

Historical Theses

1. Mass expulsion, deportation for purposes of slave labour and genocide have existed since biblical times.

2. During the Second World War Nazi demographic manipulation was done for purposes of gaining “Lebensraum” or vital space. The German approach to “Lebensraum” had its parallels in history, including the policy of Spanish “christianization” of Central and South America, the British and French “colonization” of North America, and the American policy of “manifest destiny” pursuant to which the autochthonous population of North America was decimated and driven out of historical lands.

Emulating Barbarism

Blasphemy by any other name

Hamza Kashgari

By Barbara Kay  

A few months ago, a young Saudi man, Hamza Kashgari, expressed his views on the prophet Mohammed in a Tweet: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you. I will not pray for you.” A Facebook group of 20,000 soon demanded his execution for apostasy under sharia law. He is imprisoned awaiting trial and possible execution.

Execution for religious blasphemy? How primitive. In Canada, we merely have blasphemers called up before human rights commissions, to be humiliated and occasionally bankrupted.

Human beings are not random events

The Invincible Dogma

By Thomas Sowell

A long-standing legal charade was played out again recently, when Federal Express paid $3 million to settle an employment discrimination case brought by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Federal Express was accused of both racial discrimination and sex discrimination. FedEx denied it.

Why then did they pay the $3 million? Because it can cost a lot more than $3 million to fight a discrimination case. Years ago, the Sears department store chain spent $20 million fighting a sex discrimination charge that took 15 years to make its way through the legal labyrinth. In the end, Sears won — if spending $20 million and getting nothing in return can be called winning.

Open Letter to Ben Bernanke

Dear Ben

You have publicly gone on record with some off-the-wall assertions about the gold standard.  What made you think you could get away with it?  Your best strategy would have been to ignore gold.  Although I concede that with the endgame of the regime of irredeemable paper money near, you might not be able to pretend that people aren’t talking and thinking about gold.  You can’t win, Ben.  In this letter I will address your claims and explain your errors so that the whole world can see them, even if you cannot.

"Personal" Nuclear Reactors to be on Sale Within 5 Years

Hyperion, Toshiba, others, race to produce "personal" nuclear power

by Michael Asher

Using technology licensed from the U.S. government, an Arizona-based company is planning to bring a new generation of miniature nuclear reactors to market. The Hyperion Hydride Reactor is not much larger than a hot tub, is totally sealed and self-operating, has no moving parts and, beyond refueling, requires no maintenance of any sort. The reactor will output 27MW, enough to power a community of 20,000 homes, says Hyperion Energy, makers of the new reactor. The first models will roll off the assembly line in five years.

Unlike conventional nuclear reactors, the Hyperion design uses no water for cooling, meaning it can be sited anywhere. It is designed to be covered in concrete and then buried while in operation, to reduce the risk of tampering. The reactor must be excavated every 7-10 years for refueling, but can otherwise be left entirely undisturbed.

"Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world", says Hyperion CEO John Deal.

Children need education, not qualifications

"Making good progress towards the next level"

Schooling has a crucial, humanist task: to introduce pupils to the accumulated learning of humanity.

by Alka Sehgal Cuthbert 

Every summer - during a notoriously slow period for news in Britain - we are invariably treated to a flurry of media headlines either celebrating or denigrating the latest school exam results. This is often accompanied by a ‘debate’ on whether standards have gone up, down or stagnated. This, in turn, is followed closely by a discussion on who’s to blame or what current educational fad can be extolled for having worked wonders.

The List

No country for anyone

by Brian Rogers

If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I’d worked for all my life.
And I had to start again,
with just my children and my wife.

I’d thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
‘ Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can’t take that away.

   - Proud To Be An American, Lee Greenwood

America, F*CK YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother f*cking day yeah,
America, F*CK YEAH!
What you going to do when we come for you now, 
it’s the dream that we all share; it’s the hope for tomorrow

F*CK YEAH!

McDonalds, F*CK YEAH!
Wal-Mart, F*CK YEAH!
The Gap, F*CK YEAH!
Baseball, F*CK YEAH!
NFL, F*CK, YEAH!
Rock and roll, F*CK YEAH!
The Internet, F*CK YEAH!
Slavery, F*CK YEAH!

   - America, F*ck Yeah, 
   Trey Parker (of South Park)

Coffee Shop at Union Square

I was out having drinks the other night with brilliant financial mind and Wall Street veteran Paulo Pereira.  Paulo is a Brazilian-American who's worked on both the buy and sell-side for years and has a long track record covering many of the large natural resource exporting countries.  A Yale grad with a degree in music, Paulo brings a unique perspective to finance and economics to say the least.

A different GDP yardstick

Worth a thousand words

The Ugly Truth For Northern Europeans

One way or another wealth will be transferred from the north to the south.

As Europe's exuberance from the LTROs fades (with Italian banks now negative YTD, Sovereigns wider than LTRO2 levels, and financials desparately divided by the LTRO Stigma) Jefferies David Zervos uncovers the sad reality that faces peripheral creditors and Northern Europeans - as we noted a month ago here. The 'success' of the LTRO monetization scheme (as opposed to EFSF/ESM transfer dabacles) is what enabled the Greek restructuring, and as Zervos notes, the losses that the big boys (Spain and Italy) need to take will not be taken via a haircut but a monetization as the number 1 rule is we must always assume that losses will be taken in a way that protects the large northern banks, northern jobs and most importantly Northern politicians. If the loss realization is not managed correctly (and losses there will be), then the ugly truth will escape but the North's large-scale vendor-financing scheme with the periphery will have to continue - even in the knoweldge that the debt will never get paid back.

The income and savings of Northern workers must be ploughed (directly or indirectly) into the rest-of-Europe or the entire structure becomes insolvent and the breaking of that social contract (that they will be looked after when they are old) will inevitably lead to revolt and nasty nationalist political forces being unleashed. The hope to avoid this is the 'wealth illusion' as the workers of the north can never be allowed to realize they have only 50% of their worth in reality. Ireland will be next on the loss-realization-monetization path but as we move from relatively small and containable sovereigns to the big-boys, the idea that Spain and Italy will roll over and accept a decade of austerity in exchange for a haircut is pure folly. These countries hold too much clout in the Eurozone and their threat of exit is a material threat to the northern jobs and hence northern politicians. 

Cheer Up!

17 18 reasons it's a great time to be alive

By Matt Ridley

“The world has never been a better place to live in,” says science writer Matt Ridley, “and it will keep on getting better.” Today, in a world gripped by global economic crisis and afflicted with poverty, disease, and war, them’s fightin’ words in some quarters. Ridley’s critics have called him a “denialist” and “shameful” and have accused him of “playing fast and loose with the truth” for his views on climate change and the free market.

Yet Ridley, 54, author most recently of The Rational Optimist, sticks to his guns. “It is not insane to believe in a happy future for people and the planet,” he says. Ridley, who’s been a foreign correspondent, a zoologist, an economist, and a financier, brings a broad perspective to his sunny outlook. “People say I’m bonkers to claim the world will go on getting better, yet I can’t stop myself,” he says. Read on to see how Ridley makes his case. Brilliant or bonkers? You decide.

1. We’re better off now

Compared with 50 years ago, when I was just four years old, the average human now earns nearly three times as much money (corrected for inflation), eats one third more calories, buries two thirds fewer children, and can expect to live one third longer. In fact, it’s hard to find any region of the world that’s worse off now than it was then, even though the global population has more than doubled over that period.