Hope is not a plan

The BBC reports today that the 14-year-old ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan was breached as fighting occurred between forces from both nations in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The Azeri government is claiming that the Armenians intentionally started this incident to distract attention from extensive internal protests within Armenia over claims that last month's elections were rigged.

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is yet another one of those long-term ethnic conflicts that was contained behind the iron curtain for nearly a century, only to "spring to life" again in the late 80s and early 90s. Around the time of the inception of the Soviet Union, the NK territory had a majority Armenian population. Based on this, the Soviets converted it into an autonomous territory within the nation of Azerbaijan. As the Azeri population increased over time, the ethnic Armenians within the NK territory pushed for unification with Armenia. The formal attempt to do so in 1988 sparked reciprocal massacres of Armenians and Azeris, and prompted the Soviets to give the government of Azerbaijan a freer hand in how it policed the territory.

By 1989, Azerbaijan was actively blockading trade between Armenia and the other Soviet Republics (I bet you had no idea this was going in at the time). Gorbachev's proposal for increased autonomy within the NK territory was met by ethnic violence against Armenians in Azerbaijan, which in turn prompted the Soviets to send an armed presence, killing a number of Azeris.

In 1991, on a day now cited as the independence day of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, an Armenian referendum within the territory declared it an independent state. This amounted to an immediate secession of about one-fifth of Azerbaijan and the displacement of one million Azeris. Local Armenian forces attacked Azeri forces, pushing them out of the new state and capturing territory to bridge them with Armenia proper. Russia mediated a ceasefire in 1994 -- the same ceasefire that was breached in today's military action.

All told, things seem to have worked out tremendously poorly for Azerbaijan. Russia came in firmly on the side of Armenia, to the tune of a billion dollars in arms during and after the last years of the war, and a friendship agreement between the two nations that included promising fuel supplies from Gazprom to make up for fuel lost due to the Azerbaijani blockade. In contrast, the Azeris have been punished by, among others, the United States for imposing that blockade. That seems, in a word, unfair.

You can read more from the NK Armenian point of view at the website of the NK Republic, or at the website of their DC office. You can read a general summary of the entire situation here at GlobalSecurity.org. You can read more about the Azerbaijani point of view at their embassy web page, including this specific page on the NK conflict, and a recent press release on a massacre of Azeris by Armenian troops in 1992 (that last one is a PDF).

BBC article

Alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout was picked up by Thai authorities this week in a Bangkok hotel. Bout stands immediately accused by the Thai police of traveling to their country in attempt to secure arms for the Colombian narco-rebel group Farc, but he also has a long and storied pedigree of international arms trafficking that includes charges of importing weaponry past UN embargoes into areas such as Bulgaria, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, as well as supplying arms to combatants in Liberia, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Afghanistan. He has also been accused of supplying weapons to Hezbollah and al Qaeda.

Not surprisingly, his fleet of saved-from-mothballs Soviet-era transport craft has also been subcontracted by American-paid contractors to fly supplies into Iraq for us (given how poorly we vet our contractors, it's not shocking that they subcontract to very dodgy people). More recently, the Treasury Department froze all of Bout's assets it could find, as well as seizing those planes of his that it could reach.

The Russian government is reportedly seeking Bout's extradition into Russia from Thailand, where they will most likely not bring him to any kind of trial. Russia will have to wait, however, as America has dibs on Bout once the Thai authorities are done, under an earlier DEA warrant for his arrest.

BBC article
al Jazeera article

Late last year, unofficial estimates suggested that Zimbabwe would hit 100,000% inflation by the end of the year. Well, they did it. Zimbabwe's inflation rate has topped 100,000%, resulting in a nonsensical unofficial exchange rate of 25 million Zimbabwe dollars per American dollar, or about your body weight in Zimbabwe currency for $300-400.

More pressing are food concerns, as Zimbabwe has now become dependent on its neighbors for imports of all kinds of food, whereas at least year they had canned foods covered.

No word on whether Mugabe is going to go ahead with the Sunrise Two plan, although at this point his second sunrise will have to cut off more than a simple three digits from the currency to have any noticeable effect.

Zimbabwe remains the head of the UN's commission on Sustainable Economic Development. Committee chair Francis Nhema will be leading the next review session from May 5 to May 16 of this year, covering topics such as agriculture, rural development, land, drought, desertification, and Africa. Nhema is Zimbabwe's Minister of Environment and Tourism, with a background in marketing. One wonders if he is a devotee of Mugabe, or yet another person in Zimbabwe in the unpleasant position of sitting on a committee discussing agriculture and rural development while agriculture collapses in his own home country due to an utter lack of proper rural management.

al Jazeera article

Ian Paisley, Northern Ireland's first minister, head of the Democratic Unionist Party and general purpose, murder-inspiring sectarian hate-monger, has announced that he's retiring from both the ministerial and DUP lead positions.

Simon Jenkins has some kind words for Paisley in his column:

Then the big man began. Like a revivalist preacher from the deep south, Paisley ranted over the sodden slopes of Stormont. It was electrifying and archaic. The curses of God were called down on "old red socks", the Pope, the "anti-Christ", whom Paisley was later to heckle with primitive discourtesy in the European parliament. Catholics were damned - "they breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin" - and King Billy glorified. The crowd sang hymns and roared. It was like watching a mad Celtic druid blessing the Brythonic hordes before confronting the Roman army.

The man was a monster, a fanatic, a hangover from the middle ages. I remember wondering how on earth Britain had allowed Ulster's constitution so to fester as to have this man roaming the woods and hills of Ulster. One thing Britain does not do well is postcolonial partition. It creates a fertile breeding ground for the likes of Paisley, and his antagonist, Adams.

Jenkins sees it clearly:

These men eventually eliminated moderate leaders so they could claim moderation for themselves. They smashed power-sharing so they could share power between themselves. They now pretend that change could not have been faster because the people would not let them. The climate of public opinion in the province was not ready.

That is a lie. These men were the climate, and it was one of systematic bigotry and violence. They chose their methods and terrorised all who opposed them. While religious sectarianism elsewhere in Europe was on the wane, lovers of Northern Ireland had to watch in despair as it drifted to ever greater separatism - territorially, politically and psychologically.

...and...

What restored devolved government to Stormont was not Good Friday but, as Adams claimed yesterday, a decision by him and Paisley to abandon their former ways, stand on their heads and compromise. Each got what he wanted and could seek comfort in old age, lubricated with exorbitant amounts of British money.

Needless to say, Paisley was soon "Paisleyed" by the hardliners he had once led, and has had to resign. As anyone who walks the Falls will know, the Real IRA is still a menace to Adams. The legacy of four decades, if not four centuries, of communal hatred is entrenched in segregated schools and housing estates. The men who now claim to have brought peace to Ulster delayed it so long that their peace is insecure and their landscape traumatised.

Paisley was one of the worst in terms of thriving on the power of the tribalism he stoked in his people, and the countertribalism that stoked among the Catholic minority, and the continuous cycling of the two.

My personal recommendation to Ian, in his dotage, is that he consider missionary work. Perhaps he can go to Saudi Arabia, and explain to the locals just how bad the Catholics are.

BBC article

This week, the government of Thailand began the (quite likely forced) repatriation of Hmong refugees into Laos, in an attempt to clear the roughly 8,000 Hmong who are currently living in a refugee camp in Petchabun province, Thailand. This is a problem, as the Hmong people, our ally in an anti-communist insurgency in Laos in the 70s, face a very credible threat of persecution if they are kicked back into that still-communist nation.

For their role in helping us during the war, the Hmong have already been subject to extensive persecution, including chemical weapon attacks on fleeing civilians. The United States is already home to a substantial Hmong refugee population, and has taken refugees from Thailand before. I see no reason why we can't continue to provide a second, safe home to these people who continue to be punished for having once fought on our side.

Given that the government of Thailand is looking to clean its hands of the refugee problem and establish better relations with Laos, now is an excellent time to write to your senators and representative, urging them to take action.

We could do worse than adopting another couple thousand good people into a country that already has the fourth-largest Hmong community in the world. Here's a template:

Representative/Senator X -

I'm writing to bring to your attention the critical plight of Hmong refugees living in camps in Petchabun, Thailand. These women, children, and men were once our strong allies in our fight against communism in Laos and surrounding nations. Now, they face persecution at the hands of the Laotian government if they are forced to leave Thailand and return to a land that they can no longer safely call home.

The government of Thailand is, at this moment, making moves to send 8,000 Hmong living in Petchabun over to Laos. I urge you to take immediate action to prevent this. The United States is already home to one of the largest Hmong communities in the world. They have proven that they can be an integral part of American society, and have proven their commitment to our side many times over in the past. It is no small thing to place your life and home on the line for a cause you believe in. Now that they have lost that life and their homes, I urge you to take action now, and to provide asylum, safety and a new life for these people here in the United States.

Thank you --

That's what I'm about to mail out to my representative and senators. Our abandonment of the Hmong was one of many terrible, falsely "realpolitik" minded moves me made in the wake of our wars in Southeast Asia. It is our responsibility as a nation to live up to our ideals and, when a friend needs our help, give them a place to stay and a new community to call home.

al Jazeera article
More about the Hmong

Following the somewhat unsettling news that job losses of 63,000 last month were the biggest in five years, George Bush insists that while we are experiencing some economic issues, we are definitely not in or near a recession. His words:

"Losing a job is painful, and I know Americans are concerned about our economy. So am I," he said. "It is clear our economy has slowed, but the good news is we anticipated this and took decisive action to bolster the economy by passing a growth package that will put money into the hands of American workers and businesses."

Many American taxpayers will receive $600 rebates in May. Mr. Bush says that will boost consumer spending and create more jobs.

Let's break that "decisive action" down a bit. "Many" American taxpayers will receive $600 rebates. Well, let's say that all 146 million of us who are currently employed get that $600 rebate. Then let's say that instead of doing the logical thing and either saving or investing this money, we all turn around and blow it on heavily service-oriented expenditures, the kind that play most directly into providing wages for our fellow Americans. Say, we go and buy $600 worth of lunches over the next couple months at our local McDonald's.

On top of this, let's assume that all this money will be converted relatively directly into work at the cheapest possible rate, minimum wage. What does this all mean?

Well, at the current Federal minimum wage of $5.85 per hour, a full-time employee receiving no other benefits of any kind pulls in $11,700 per year. Of course, no one's just handing money directly over to folks. Now, taking a very rough assumption, we'll go with the knowledge that about a third of the operating costs from a McDonald's go toward wages (and benefits, but we'll pretend it's just pure wages). This means that if we assume a basically profit-free McDonald's, we have to pump about $35,000 into a restaurant to employ one minimum-wage worker for a year.

That's about 60 rebates (at $600 per rebate). So by this hyper-optimistic, back-of-the-envelope calculation, if we all go dump our cash on low-wage service industry jobs in the most direct way possible, we can employ about 2.4 million people.

That would be amazing, if it worked like that. Of course, there would still be another 5 million or so unemployed people. And this all gets scuppered even more by the fact that money doesn't translate over nearly that directly, by the fact that increased consumer spending will actually go into products, by the fact that your state minimum wage may be significantly higher, and by the fact that the Federal minimum wage is rising to $6.55 in a couple months (that last point alone shaves off 300,000 jobs from our nominal model).

This is all patently goofy, of course. With so many people in debt, and so many homes near foreclosure, the smartest possible thing for individuals to do with their tax rebates is not to dump it on consumer spending, but to bolster their savings, maybe earn some interest, pay off some debt, or otherwise try to get their financial homes back in order.

The president who has never once run a successful company may well expect his plan of "cutting taxes in the face of a war" to work twice, but the rest of us certainly shouldn't. It didn't even work the first time.

Voice of America story

Last October, the legislature of Zimbabwe pushed forward a bill requiring majority local (as in black locals, not just any citizen of Zimbabwe) ownership in all companies in the country. Last week, Robert Mugabe approved the final version of this measure, not coincidentally three weeks before the next round of presidential elections.

Under the legislation, every company must have at least 51% of their shares owned by black Zimbabweans.

The new law means some of the country's biggest businesses - such as the mining giant, Rio Tinto, and Barclays Bank - will have to find local partners.

Here's what the country's information minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu had to say about the measure:

"It is an historic economic empowerment bill that has been signed," Mr Ndlovu told the BBC.

"It is the first of its kind in the whole of Africa."

On the downside, there is deep concern that this law will actually drive away foreign investment, and that this may just be a cynical publicity stunt on the part of Mugabe and his supporters ahead of a contested election. Consider, once again, the words of Gideon Gono, head of the Bank of Zimbabwe:

"As monetary authorities we fully support the noble objective of empowering the majority of the Zimbabweans through the introduction of enabling statutes that expand wider involvement for the people in the mainstream economy," Gono said.

"Noble as this objective is, our well considered advice to legislators and the government in general is that a fine balance should be struck between the objectives of indigenisation and the need to attract foreign investment."

Mugabe is not one to listen to economic planners, though. Although we can't speak to what's actually happening in his mind, he clearly prefers to blame the outside world rather than consider that his own restructuring may have damaged his country's economic output beyond the hope of immediate recovery.

BBC article

The government of China announced this week that it foiled a plot by Uighur separatists to do something unspecified and bad to the Olympics -- although this link was not initially announced when the raid in Urumqi originally hit the news.

"Their aim was very clear, which was to damage the Beijing Olympics," Wang Lequan, head of the Xinjiang region Communist party, said on Sunday.

Wang offered no specific evidence of the plot, and earlier reports on the raid had made no mention of the Olympics being a target for the group.

Some people hoped that having the Olympics in Beijing would prompt a freeing up in China, and an increase in human rights, but it's also quite likely that the PRC will use the Olympics as an excuse to keep on doing what it's been doing -- stamping down on separatists in areas such as Xinjiang and Tibet. Connecting this to the Olympics also builds sympathy for the event as a hallmark of peace and cooperation, taking our eyes off of other high-profile negative events associated with the Olympics, such as Steven Spielberg's withdrawal from planning for the event. Similarly, it can overcome stories like an uptick in food poisoning deaths in China, which may negatively impact exports of food and related products from China.

There have been two terrorist hits on the Olympics, one of them particularly heinous. By linking their crackdown on an ethnic minority separatist group to the concept of terrorism targeting the Olympics, the PRC buy themselves a free hand to do as they please to stifle dissent.

AP story
al Jazeera article

Tim and I have talked quite a bit about "tribalism" versus "sectarianism." The short version is that when it's white people, it's sectarianism, and when it's anyone else, it's tribalism. Sectarianism is a natural conflict that can happen among civilized people, and that will be resolved in time with negotiations. Tribalism is hard to deal with, and the people it springs from don't think the way "we" do.

Do please note the sarcasm.

The use of tribalism to indict ethnic or religious conflicts among people you don't like and sectarianism to allow those same conflicts among people you do like is what allows people to not take an appropriately dim view of folks like the soon-to-be-departed Ian Paisley and his counterparts in Sinn Fein.

This week, Lord Goldsmith submitted a report to Gordon Brown proposing that, among other things, the U.K. should have a pledge of allegiance, a national holiday celebrating Britishness, and expanded citizenship ceremonies for schoolchildren and naturalized citizens. The obvious targets here, of course, are the disenfranchised Muslim communities that have spawned the U.K.'s blight of home-grown radicals and terrorists. But who's complaining?

"These suggestions are not something the Scottish government would support," said an official spokesman for Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond. "Nor would they find favor among parents and schools in Scotland. We don't think it's appropriate to pledge allegiance to the United Kingdom. And under devolution, responsibility for the schools in Scotland lies with the Scottish Parliament."

...and...

Paul Flynn, a Labour Party MP from Wales, said there is virtually no support in Wales for the ideas put forth by Goldsmith.

"I've never described myself as being British, I describe myself as Welsh," he said. "I live in the UK but I'm not happy that it's united and I'm less happy that it's a kingdom."

...and...

In Northern Ireland, where the Good Friday agreement has created a coalition government between those who want to remain in the U.K. and those who want to break away, Sinn Fein officials rejected the plan, saying no one in the party would consider pledging allegiance to the U.K.

Mm. Tribalism, indeed.

CNN article

A CDC study released this week reports that on average, one in four teenage girls in the United States has some form of sexually transmitted disease.

The demographic breakdown brings some grim news for African American teens, as about half of girls in that ethnic group had an STD, compared with 20% among white and Latino teenagers.

The predominant infection is human papillomavirus, which can cause cervical cancer. The next three runners up are chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and herpes.

The CDC's Devin Fenton said it was a serious issue because the diseases could lead to infertility and cervical cancer.

The CDC is recommending annual chlamydia screening for all sexually active women under 25, and HPV vaccines for girls aged 11 to 12, followed by booster injections.

Of course, that last recommendation was greeted with some amount of horror when it was suggested last year, on the basis that somehow vaccinating young girls against one STD would give them license to engage in sexual activity. As the current studies show, that is already happening. And it's no surprise, what with nearly all Americans having engaged in premarital sex. The extremely low 5% abstinence rate has been steady since the 1950s, meaning that if you're in your 40s or younger and you're explaining how abstinence education would totally prevent this and we don't need to screen our kids or vaccinate them, you're lying.

Or you have a terrible memory. Your kids are sexually active, and they, being just like you, will go on doing that whether or not their teacher, pastor, or parents tells them to "just abstain." I'm by no means suggesting that's a great thing -- abstinence is a good thing, and I personally believe that it would have a lot more weight if we allowed a healthier public discussion of sex in this country. However, the idea that removing the tools to have safer sex or to be informed about or screened for diseases will somehow keep kids from getting involved in sex is ridiculous, dangerous, and unfair to our kids.

BBC article

At the start of the year, an independent Canadian panel led by John Manley suggested that Canada should pull its troops out of Afghanistan unless other NATO nations took up some of the ground combat burden. Specifically, the concern has been not one of pure numbers, but that the Canadians, British, and Americans have been covering the combat zones while other NATO members restrict themselves to relatively more peaceful regions. The Manley panel recommendation was to require another thousand NATO troops in the south as a condition for a continued Canadian presence.

This week, Nicolas Sarkozy pledged additional French troops to the cause in Afghanistan, with specifics to be given next week at a meeting in Bucharest. Here's the quote:

France has proposed a strategy to its allies in the Atlantic alliance to enable the Afghan people and their legitimate government to build peace.

If these proposals are accepted, during the summit in Bucharest, France will propose reinforcing its military presence.

France currently has about 1,500 troops in the region. Sarkozy's remarks shed no light on how many additional troops they plan to send, nor where in Afghanistan they'll be posted.

BBC article

A libel case against Nobel prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe was thrown out today, after a judge ruled that the weight of history supported the plausbility of Oe's claims that the Japanese army ordered Okinawan civilians to commit suicide as the island was lost to the Americans late in World War II.

A retired army officer and another man said the military never gave the order, but the court dismissed their claim.

The claimants had wanted the book banned and claimed 20m yen ($200,000; £100,000) in compensation.

The judge noted that Japanese officers handed grenades to the locals, and that the suicides - possibly as many as 1,000 - occurred only on islands where army posts were located.

Although the judge avoided trying to definitely declare that the Japanese army of the time did order civilian suicides, he carried out a very practical, evidence-based evaluation of linkages between those suicides and the presence and actions of the military. This is an important step in a continuing struggle over Japanese history. In the long run, historical honesty, as practiced by the judge in this case, is certainly the best policy. A denial of history in service to ideology often undercuts the health and future of the nation or group the deniers think they're supporting.

Or, in other words, if you convince yourself that everything was sunny and rosy when it wasn't, you may well do the same stupid, self-destructive things over and over again.

BBC article

As reported in this al Jazeera article, worldwide rice stocks continue to decline even as demand increases:

Worldwide rising demand has seen rice stocks plummet to their lowest in about three decades, with average prices doubling over the last five years.

Earlier this month the UN secretary general warned that global food stocks had fallen to their lowest level in decades, driving prices up and threatening millions with starvation.

...and...

And recently the Philippines, the world's top importer of rice, asked Vietnam, the world's number two exporter, to guarantee supplies.

In the Philippines in particular, a key problem is that land devoted to rice growing has actually been decreasing even as the nation's population increases. I have to wonder to what extent we -- meaning California in particular -- are a driver for this kind of outsourcing in basic staple food production in Asian nations. With the combination of massive farms and general economic measures in the U.S. that drive down the cost of crops produced here, California rice is often cheaper for citizens of Asian nations than rice grown in their own back yards. South Korea has seen a number of large-scale protests by farmers who are being priced out of their own market by California product.

This is just conjecture at the moment, but I will be on the lookout for solid economic analyses of this situation and oru role in it.