Faced with nationwide protests, violence and the threat of a general strike, the French government is starting to back away from its unconditional support of a new law intended to -- yes -- reduce unemployment.

The law, which would allow employers to terminate employees age 26 and under within two years of hiring without cause and severance pay, is just the latest lightening rod to prod French students, labor unions and their confreres into the streets to preserve what they see as their rights.

What is their objection? The law would make new entrants into the labor force as dispensable and disposable as Kleenex tissues.

In many cultures, students who graduate from college with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, let’s say, soon realize they are ill-equipped for any real-world enterprise. Many are happy to sign on with a good company as temporary workers in the hope that they can prove themselves and work their way into permanent positions.

Not in France. While it’s always possible the students’ objections to the new law translate or travel poorly, from across the pond their argument seems to be that no job is preferable to a temporary job or an uncertain term of employment.

Contractual Suicide

Is it possible these fortunate, educated young men and women can’t see where the road ends? If my French weren’t so rusty, I’d sit down with one of the students and ask her a few questions. I can only fantasize about the response.

CB: Are you aware that you are objecting to a law that would actually improve your chances of finding a job when you graduate?

French Student: Mais non. We have a social contract with the government that protects us from the dehumanizing experience of being discarded. We are happy to have guaranteed benefits -- education, health care, a good pension -- and enjoy our life without worrying about the future.

Natural Rights

CB: You want all the benefits, but what about the cost? Creating disincentives for the private sector to hire increases the burden on the public sector, which is already the third largest in the industrialized world. Last year, total French government spending was 53 percent of GDP, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. With French unemployment at 9.6 percent, youth unemployment running at more than 22 percent and 40 percent among certain minorities -- remember the riots last fall? -- the government should be making it easier for private companies to hire and fire.

FS: But a job is a right!

CB: It is? It’s not among the rights delineated by the Founding Fathers of our arguably young nation: those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are unalienable: They are not the government’s to give or to take away.

How do we know whether something is a right or not? If the exercise of my right puts a burden on you -- my right to a job forces you to hire me -- by definition it can’t be a right. Everyone can exercise his or her rights simultaneously without imposing a burden on someone else.

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite

A job isn’t a right. Neither is health care or a guaranteed wage. It is my right to pursue a job -- to negotiate freely with a potential employer, to accept or reject an offer, to terminate that job when I choose, unless I am contractually bound. But there is no right to be hired.

Maybe this will help you understand why a job is not a right.

FS: Maybe not in the states. I assume you’re familiar with the motto of the French revolution: ``liberte, egalite, fraternite.’’

CB: Would that be the revolution modeled after ours? And you are on what, your fifth republic? Unless France, along with the U.S. and other industrialized countries, addresses the burdens the aging population will put on government finances in the not-too- distant future, it will be liberte, egalite, pauvrete.

Self-Destruction

FS: The pension system was reformed in 2003, increasing the number of years public-sector employees have to work before qualifying for full pension benefits. Public support for Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin plunged, but ultimately the public got more fed up with the protests and violence than the government.

CB: You have the right of free speech and assembly -- to protest the new law, in other words. You don’t have the right to destroy someone else’s property.

Maybe one day you’ll realize that you’re destroying your future as well.

Traditional studies that try to tally up the costs and benefits of immigration usually focus on the taxes paid by immigrants, the direct impact of immigration on labor markets, and the government services that they receive. Typically such measures show a rough balance, some showing a slight gain to the native-born population, and some showing a slight loss. (All show large gains for immigrants themselves, of course, as well as large gains for the overall population including both immigrants and natives.)

But the approach taken by Ottaviano and Peri is a good effort at trying to identify one of the less tangible effects of immigration: its impact on the productivity of non-immigrants. Their result is striking. In cities with more immigrants, the non-immigrant population tends to get paid more, and the market tends to value real estate higher, implying that the city is generally viewed as a more desirable place to live. They use some careful and rather clever econometrics to ensure that the causation runs from more immigrants to higher pay for non-immigrants, rather than the other way around. After all of their controls for other determinants of non-immigrant wages, and after taking account of the fact that richer cities would be expected to attract more immigrants, they still find a statistically robust and positive residual effect of immigration on the income and productivity of non-immigrants.

Exactly why diversity improves the productivity of native-born Americans is a bit of an open question, though I suspect it has to do with the rich variety of viewpoints, experiences, and ideas that a diverse community offers. Regardless, it is not at all surprising to me that this paper shows the effects of immigration to be large, robust, and very beneficial.

Suppose you could give American high school dropouts a 1000% raise by exterminating every man, woman, and child in Latin America. Would that be the right thing to do? No? Why not? Your answer, hopefully, is that murder is wrong, even if it financially benefits low-skilled Americans. In fact, when you put it that way, it’s hard not to exclaim, "What’s so great about low-skilled Americans? Are they the master race, in whose service any crime is justified?" OK, suppose you could give American high school dropouts an 8% raise by deporting every man, woman, and child from Latin America back to their home countries. Would that be the right thing to do? Economists are used to rolling their eyes when people object to better policies on the grounds that some special interest will suffer from the change. It’s time to cross the final frontier, and start rolling our eyes when the special interest is low-skilled Americans. Call me a Non-Bleeding Heart Libertarian, but for once, the shoe doesn’t fit. My heart does bleed for people born in poor countries who come here to better their condition with hard work. What about low-skilled Americans? They were born in the U.S. and speak fluent English. Let them count their blessings.

Thousands of immigration advocates marched through downtown Los Angeles in one of the largest demonstrations for any cause in recent U.S. history.

More than 500,000 protesters — demanding that Congress abandon attempts to make illegal immigration a felony and to build more walls along the border — surprised police who estimated the crowd size using aerial photographs and other techniques, police Cmdr. Louis Gray Jr. said.

Wearing white T-shirts to symbolize peace, the demonstrators chanted "Mexico!" "USA!" and "Si se puede," an old Mexican-American civil rights shout that means "Yes, we can."

In Denver, more than 50,000 people protested downtown Saturday, according to police who had expected only a few thousand. Phoenix was similarly surprised Friday when an estimated 20,000 people gathered for one of the biggest demonstrations in city history, and more than 10,000 marched in Milwaukee on Thursday.

"We construct your schools. We cook your food," rapper Jorge Ruiz said after performing at a Dallas rally that drew 1,500. "We are the motor of this nation, but people don’t see us. Blacks and whites, they had their revolution. They had their Martin Luther King. Now it is time for us."

Many protesters said lawmakers were unfairly targeting immigrants who provide a major labor pool for America’s economy.

"Enough is enough of the xenophobic movement," said Norman Martinez, 63, who immigrated from Honduras as a child and marched in Los Angeles. "They are picking on the weakest link in society, which has built this country."

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation that would make it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally, impose new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants, require churches to check the legal status of people they help, and erect fences along one-third of the U.S.-Mexican border.

The Senate is to begin debating the proposals on Tuesday.

President Bush on Saturday called for legislation that does not force America to choose between being a welcoming society and a lawful one.

"America is a nation of immigrants, and we’re also a nation of laws," Bush said in his weekly radio address, discussing an issue that had driven a wedge into his own party.

Bush sides with business leaders who want to let some of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants stay in the country and work for a set period of time. Others, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, say national security concerns should drive immigration reform.

But many protesters rejected claims the national security claim, noting that the legislation would hurt Hispanics the most.

"When did you ever see a Mexican blow up the World Trade Center? Who do you think built the World Trade Center?" said David Gonzalez, 22, who marched in Los Angeles with a sign that read, "I’m in my homeland.’"

Between 5,000 and 7,000 people gathered Saturday in Charlotte, carrying signs with slogans such as "Am I Not a Human Being?" In Sacramento, more than 4,000 people protested immigration legislation at an annual march honoring the late farm labor leader Cesar Chavez.

The demonstrations are expected to culminate April 10 in a "National Day of Action" organized by labor, immigration, civil rights and religious groups.

In February 2004, our Kurdish comrades in northern Iraq intercepted a courier who was bearing a long message from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to his religious guru Osama bin Laden. The letter contained a deranged analysis of the motives of the coalition intervention ("to create the State of Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates" and "accelerate the emergence of the Messiah"), but also a lethally ingenious scheme to combat it. After a lengthy and hate-filled diatribe against what he considers the vile heresy of Shiism, Zarqawi wrote of Iraq’s largest confessional group that: "These in our opinion are the key to change. I mean that targeting and hitting them in their religious, political and military depth will provoke them to show the Sunnis their rabies . . . and bare the teeth of the hidden rancor working in their breasts. If we succeed in dragging them into the arena of sectarian war, it will become possible to awaken the inattentive Sunnis as they feel imminent danger."

Some of us wrote about this at the time, to warn of the sheer evil that was about to be unleashed. Knowing that their own position was a tenuous one (a fact fully admitted by Zarqawi in his report) the cadres of "al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" understood that their main chance was the deliberate stoking of a civil war. And, now that this threat has become more imminent and menacing, it is somehow blamed on the Bush administration. "Civil war" has replaced "the insurgency" as the proof that the war is "unwinnable." But in plain truth, the "civil war" is and always was the chief tactic of the "insurgency."

Since February 2004, there have been numberless attacks on Shiite religious processions and precincts. Somewhat more insulting to Islam (one might think) than a caricature in Copenhagen, these desecrations did not immediately produce the desired effect. Grand Ayatollah Sistani even stated that, if he himself fell victim, he forgave his murderers in advance and forbade retaliation in his name. This extraordinary forbearance meant that many Shiites--and Sunnis, too--refused to play Zarqawi’s game. But the grim fact is, as we know from Cyprus and Bosnia and Lebanon and India, that a handful of determined psychopaths can erode in a year the sort of intercommunal fraternity that has taken centuries to evolve. If you keep pressing on the nerve of tribalism and sectarianism, you will eventually get a response. And then came the near-incredible barbarism in Samarra, and the laying waste of the golden dome. It is not merely civil strife that is partly innate in the very make-up of Iraq. There could be an even worse war, of the sort that Thomas Hobbes pictured: a "war of all against all" in which localized gangs and mafias would become rulers of their own stretch of turf. This is what happened in Lebanon after the American withdrawal: The distinctions between Maronite and Druze and Palestinian and Shiite became blurred by a descent into minor warlordism. In Iraq, things are even more fissile. Even the "insurgents" are fighting among themselves, with local elements taking aim at imported riffraff and vice-versa. Saddam’s vicious tactic, of emptying the jails on the eve of the intervention and freeing his natural constituency of thugs and bandits and rapists, was exactly designed to exacerbate an already unstable situation and make the implicit case for one-man "law and order." There is strong disagreement among and between the Shiites and the Sunnis, and between them and the Kurds, only the latter having taken steps to resolve their own internal party and regional quarrels.

America’s mistake in Lebanon was first to intervene in a way that placed us on one minority side--that of the Maronites and their Israeli patrons--and then to scuttle and give Hobbes his mandate for the next 10 years. At least it can be said for the present mission in Iraq that it proposes the only alternative to civil war, dictatorship, partition or some toxic combination of all three. Absent federal democracy and power-sharing, there will not just be anarchy and fragmentation and thus a moral victory for jihadism, but opportunist interventions from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. (That vortex, by the way, is what was waiting to engulf Iraq if the coalition had not intervened, and would have necessitated an intervention later but under even worse conditions.)

Pledging money to Africa was the hip thing to do last year. The United Nations Millennium Project rolled out its big plan to combat global poverty. British Prime Minister Tony Blair talked about "a big, big push forward" to help Africa. Jeffrey Sachs wrote an earnest tome on how to end poverty, made the cover of Time and wound up traveling across Africa with Angelina Jolie. At Gleneagles, Scotland, the G-8 pledged to double its aid flows to Africa; Bob Geldof organized the Live 8 concert at the same time. Time magazine capped off the year by naming Bono one of its persons of the year for his tireless campaigning for African debt relief.

The trouble with these charitable efforts is that they will probably do more harm than good. At least, that is the conclusion one comes to after reading William Easterly’s "The White Man’s Burden." Mr. Easterly was a World Bank economist for more than 15 years, until he wrote a book -- 2001’s "The Elusive Quest for Growth" -- that was honest enough to note that the World Bank did not have a good grip on how to promote economic growth in the developing world. In "The White Man’s Burden," Mr. Easterly -- now a New York University economist -- focuses his keen analytic prowess on the utility of foreign aid.

The foreign-aid community, according to Mr. Easterly, is mostly composed of Planners. They think of development as a technical engineering problem and generate ambitious plans to eliminate the causes of poverty in a multi-pronged intervention. But Planners are embedded in and beholden to rich donors -- large institutions in the West. Thus they lack real-life, on-the-ground feedback, and they lack accountability, both of which would allow them to improve their policies over time. Mr. Easterly prefers what he calls Searchers -- those who learn through trial and error in the field. They can’t achieve the ambitious goals set out by Planners, but they can deliver at least some results.

"The White Man’s Burden" is one long exercise in demonstrating why the Planners’ mentality is wrong and why a little humility is in order: "The West cannot transform the Rest. It is a fantasy to think that the West can change complex societies with very different histories and cultures into some image of itself. The main hope for the poor is for them to be their own Searchers, borrowing ideas and technology from the West when it suits them to do so."

Mr. Easterly shows why many of the development fads of the past 50 years -- the big push, donor coordination, shock therapy -- failed to do much good. He does a nifty job of disproving Jeffrey Sachs’s claim that the real problem with Africa is that it is stuck in a "poverty trap" -- i.e., so poor that it cannot generate economic growth on its own. The real problem is bad governance. Aid institutions have not helped matters by doling out grants and loans to corrupt and thuggish regimes. Even the recent push to make AIDS treatment more accessible in Africa withers under Mr. Easterly’s gaze. The aid community, by focusing on treatment of those already suffering from HIV, has cut back on investments that would get a bigger bang for the buck -- like efforts to prevent the spread of AIDS or to encourage vaccination for other diseases.

Lest one think that Mr. Easterly is generalizing unfairly, it is worth noting that he has done something that very few people do: He has actually read the reams of reports churned out by the development community year after year. Déjà vu begins to set in after seeing Mr. Easterly quote from the failed projects of decades ago -- the problems and "solutions" repeat themselves miserably. He has great fun, too, interpreting this turgid prose for the layman. A war is relabeled as a "conflict-related reallocation of resources"; corrupt leaders who raid public coffers create "governance issues."

After reading Mr. Easterly’s assault on the hubris of Planners, one should not expect him to provide miracle cures. And indeed, he makes it clear that "the only Big Answer is that there is no Big Answer." He suggests that development experts take the economic equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath and first pledge to do no harm. After that, focus aid on observable outputs so that aid agencies can measure their effectiveness. Fund ombudsmen or other outside observers to evaluate what has been done. Aim for piecemeal, gradual progress rather than the big bang.

Yes, it’s the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl. there or there abouts and so we’ve got a nice article in The Observer.

It was not merely the most devastating accident in the short life of the nuclear power industry; it was the greatest man-made disaster in history.

Really? Each and every death is a tragedy, of course, but it killed 300 people or so over the last 20 years. There are single Egyptian ferries that kill more than that in a single day.

The long-term health effects of the accident continue to be the subject of statistical debate and manipulation by governments, NGOs, scientists and doctors around the world.

Well, I dunno, might the UN or IAEA reports sufice? That’s where I got the 300 number from.

The total number of deaths caused by the explosion of Reactor No 4 remains the subject of fierce debate; early predictions of hundreds of thousands of fatalities have apparently proved unfounded. Last year, a WHO and International Atomic Energy Authority-backed report estimated that of the 600,000 people across the Soviet Union exposed to high levels of radiation by the accident, 4,000 would eventually die.

Indeed, the difference in numbers being those who have and those who will die. Worth noting those numbers. Fewer than killed by coal fired plants. Nuclear is, as Chernobyl shows, a great deal safer than you think.

Governments use coercion to make things happen. Government coercion can be legitimate, but it has to meet certain conditions. One of the traditional conditions is that a majority of the citizens who are going to be coerced, or a majority of their representatives, have to agree to it. However, if policies are structured so that we can’t see whether or how we are being coerced, then we can’t freely endorse them in the democratic process. So those policies fail the test of legitimacy.

Part of the issue here is a big principle-agent/incentive compatibility problem between representatives and the citizens they represent. Politicians want to get re-elected. If they can subsidize interest group A at group B’s expense without group B really noticing due to the hidden transfer, then that will sound like a real winner to a politician. Which is just to say that the incentives politicians face encourage them to violate the very conditions of transparency and public justification that make their coercive powers legitimate. That sounds like a problem to me.

Politicians would have a constant incentive to try to violate and work around an explicit transfer requirement. Which is exactly why we need one. It would give anyone in the group from which resources are being appropriated standing under the Constitution to file suit in order to repeal the law licensing the hidden transfer. The whole class wouldn’t need to notice the hidden transfer, and then fight it off politically. Only one person would have to notice and win in court. If the politicians can succeed in passing a law that makes the transfer explicit, then that’s OK–it satisfies the minimal conditions of legitimate government power.

It occurs to me that Charles Murray’s “just give everyone $10,000 a year” plan is a lovely example of a rule that satisfies both the explicit transfer/public justification/democratic transparency requirement and Buchanan’s generality requirement.

For those of us, like Murray and me, who are Hayek/Friedman/Buchanan-style classical liberals as opposed to Rand/Rothbard-style libertarians, things like generality and transparency matter. There is no natural rights beef against transfers per se, but a fundamentally liberal beef against institutional forms that undermine the conditions for liberal legitimacy. If the conditions of liberal legitimacy are met, then the result is the free-market, minimal welfare state. This is a “libertarian” result according to the vernacular, if not according to orthodoxy. It is surely a classical liberal result. (Is Samuel Freeman right that Rand/Rothbard libertarianism is not really a kind of liberalism?)

Here is a hypothesis for debate: The cause of classical liberalism as a really existing possibility for political reform has been harmed by bundling free markets with a ban on transfers. This package deal has influenced people who think justice requires transfers to eschew free markets. If we had spent the last forty years hammering away at liberal fundamentals like transparency and generality instead of the natural right to not be taxed, our society would now be closer to the free market, limited government ideal.

Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.

It is the policy of the United States to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. In the world today, the fundamental character of regimes matters as much as the distribution of power among them. The goal of our statecraft is to help create a world of democratic, well-governed states that can meet the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system. This is the best way to provide enduring security for the American people.

This disclosure element is often vastly overrated, especially in pharmaceuticals, where teams of patent attorneys write descriptions that conclude lots of language like "through a mechanism well known to those schooled in the art" - which is a bald-faced lie, and I can point to several court cases where we proved it was. Further, this disclosure aspect could be handled in the free-market - those who think it would be useful, could pay for it, and sign non-disclosure, non-compete agreements. And that way, they’d actually get useful disclosure, and not the crap that currently gets drafted into patents by patent attorneys who have a good idea just how far they need to go.

Even many people with little sympathy for the Soviet Union admire its "heroic" role in World War II. What all too few people realize is that for the first twenty-two months of World War II, the Nazis and the Soviets were allies. Under the auspices of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler and Stalin partitioned the countries that lay between them, beginning with Poland. (...)

After they fell out with their Nazi allies, of course, the Soviets claimed they had just been protecting themselves from the future German invasion, but that’s nonsense. World War II might not even have started if Hitler didn’t have Stalin’s help. And if Stalin was expecting an invasion, he wouldn’t have ignored all the evidence that Hitler was about to invade.

For Hitler, no doubt, the Pact was just a marriage of convenience: He stabbed his ally in the back as soon as he had a chance. But many Nazis saw things differently. Here’s a fascinating passage I came across in Nazism, 1919-1945, vol. 4, from the daily German press conference of 2/2/1940:

[T]he German public must not now be given the impression, through a description of Russian domestic life, that we want to achieve an ideological merger and that we are more or less adopting and imitating Bolshevik terminology. There is an undoubted danger that such a merger will occur because our struggle against England and France is, after all, also directed against the plutocratic system and, as a result, certain Socialist conceptions have to be discussed quite often. But one must distinguish this propaganda and keep it clearly separate from the Bolshevik terminology. The reference in some newspapers to the German state as the workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ state must not be repeated.

Methinks they dost protest too much!

While in alliance with the Nazis, the Soviets claimed, as usual, to be "liberating" the countries they invaded. The reality was quite different. Most shockingly, during Stalin’s alliance with Hitler, almost two million Poles were deported to Siberia. Hitler’s double-cross was the only reason the Polish deportees didn’t all die in Soviet slave labor camps; in his desperation, Stalin allowed many to leave the Soviet Union via Persia to fight for the West.

The upshot is that there are many witnesses to the Soviets’ atrocities toward the Poles. Lately a lot of them - and their surviving relatives - have been contacting me. They’re known as the Kresy Siberia Group, and make it their goal to educate the world about what really happened to them.

It’s a tale that deserves to be heard for its own sake. But to understand what happened to Poland between 1939 and 1941 also puts all of twentieth century history in perspective. The Big Story of the century wasn’t a left-versus-right struggle, or a struggle of moderation versus extremism. It was a struggle of cosmetically different totalitarian socialisms to enslave the world. They fought freer countries to subjugate them; they fought each other out of lust for power. I’m still amazed that things didn’t turn out far worse.

The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the regime’s domestic terrorism operations and planned for attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. In a document dated May 1999, Saddam’s older son, Uday, ordered preparations for "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]." Preparations for "Blessed July," a regime-directed wave of "martyrdom" operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion.

where the riches are in few hands, these must enjoy all the power, and will readily conspire to lay the whole burthen on the poor, and oppress them still farther, to the discouragement of all industry.

This is from his correspondence:

The large open market including all of Europe is aim of the large banks and the capitalist business class whose main goal is simply larger profit. The idea of economic growth, with no specific end in sight, fits this class perfectly. If they speak about distribution, it is most always in terms of trickle down. The long-term result of this — which we already have in the United States — is a civil society awash in a meaningless consumerism of some kind. I can’t believe that is what you want.

So you see that I am not happy about globalization as the banks and business class are pushing it. I accept Mill’s idea of the stationary state as described by him in Bk. IV, Ch. 6 of his Principles of Political Economy (1848). (I am adding a footnote in §15 to say this, in case the reader hadn’t noticed it). I am under no illusion that its time will ever come – certainly not soon – but it is possible, and hence it has a place in what I call the idea of realistic utopia.

(...) The real question is how much this should cause us to downgrade his moral philosophy. I say "a lot." I used to think there was some deep argument of consilience behind "maximin," but now I am ready to classify it as a simple mistake, akin to a person who doesn’t understand what drove the flow of traffic across the Berlin Wall in one direction and not the other.

1. US Forces in Iraq
A large majority of Iraqis think the US plans to maintain bases in Iraq permanently, even if the newly elected government asks the US to leave. A large majority favors setting a timeline for the withdrawal of US forces, though this majority divides over whether the timeline should be six months or two years. Nearly half of Iraqis approve of attacks on US-led forces—including nine out of 10 Sunnis. Most Iraqis believe that many aspects of their lives will improve once the US-led forces leave, but are nonetheless uncertain that Iraqi security forces are ready to stand on their own.
2. Current Situation in Iraq
The majority of Iraqis overall view the recent parliamentary elections as valid, are optimistic that their country is going in the right direction and feel that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has been worth the costs. Sunnis, on the other hand, overwhelmingly reject the validity of the elections, see the country going in the wrong direction, and regret the overthrow of Saddam.
3. Support for International Assistance
Many Iraqis express strong support for various forms of international assistance, including the presence of foreign security forces, UN (rather than US) leadership on reconstruction, an international conference of global and regional players to address Iraq’s needs, engagement by the Arab League and a variety of forms of nonmilitary US assistance. In some cases, international forms of assistance are even endorsed by Sunnis who tend to strongly oppose all US-led efforts in Iraq

If two elections, one constitutional referendum, a free press, an independent judiciary, greater religious liberty, the lifting of economic sanctions, reintegration into the region and the wider international community count for “nothing”, then nothing is a reasonable assessment. As many leaders of the anti-war movement have nothing but contempt for “bourgeois democracy” and hate capitalism and its manifestations, then, for them, “nothing” is entirely accurate.

Why do conservatives like Bush? After all, even his defenders call him a "big-government conservative," which was once an oxymoron. He’s increased federal spending 48 percent in six years, further centralized education (which on this side of the pond we consider both un-conservative and un-[classical] liberal), inaugurated the biggest expansion of entitlements since the profligate President Lyndon B. Johnson, lured 17 percent more people onto the welfare rolls during five years of economic growth, and declared that "When somebody hurts, government has got to move."

1. Tax cuts. Defying the establishment media and the class warfare of the Democrats, he has persisted in the Reaganite mission of cutting taxes, especially income tax rates.
2. The war. He stands up to the Islamo-fascists, as Reagan stood up to the evil empire. And as long as conservatives believe that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terrorism, they will support Bush there.
3. Religion. Conservatives like his willingness to talk about his born-again faith and to bring conservative Christian values (as he defines them) to political issues such as abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, and government funding for religious charities. And finally,
4. As a nominating speech for President Grover Cleveland once put it, "They love him most for the enemies he has made." Conservatives love Bush because the left hates him. If the New York Times would run a front-page story headlined "Bush Delivers the Big Government Clinton Never Did," and the lefty bloggers would pick it up and run with it, maybe conservatives would catch on.

So here’s your challenge, lefty bloggers: If you don’t like the tree-chopping, Falwell-loving, cowboy president - if you want his presidency fatally wounded for the next three years - then start praising him. One good Paul Krugman column taking off from that USA Today story on the surge in entitlements recipients under Bush, one Daily Kos lead on how Clinton flopped on national health care but Bush twisted every arm in the GOP to get a multi-trillion-dollar prescription drug benefit for the elderly, one cover story in the Nation on how Bush has acknowledged federal responsibility for everything from floods in New Orleans to troubled teenagers, and maybe, just maybe, National Review and the Powerline blog and Fox News would come to their senses. Bush is a Rockefeller Republican in cowboy boots, and it’s time conservatives stopped looking at the boots instead of the policies.

By preventing certain people from investing in your country because they aren’t citizens of your country, or by preventing certain people from selling goods and services in your country because they are produced by people who aren’t citizens of your country, you diminish the size of the pool of creative ideas available to help you.

Think of what I’m saying: creative human insights are the driving force of our prosperity. By allowing xenophobia and protectionist rent-seekers to restrict the number of people who contribute their ideas to the market process, we inevitably reduce -- and perhaps even reverse -- the rate of economic growth. Our prosperity will be lower and lower than it would otherwise be.

Until recently, companies that provided Internet access followed a de-facto commoncarriage rule, usually called “network neutrality,” which meant that all Web sites got equal treatment. Network neutrality was considered so fundamental to the success of the Net that Michael Powell, when he was chairman of the F.C.C., described it as one of the basic rules of “Internet freedom.” In the past few months, though, companies like A.T. & T. and BellSouth have been trying to scuttle it. In the future, Web sites that pay extra to providers could receive what BellSouth recently called “special treatment,” and those that don’t could end up in the slow lane. One day, BellSouth customers may find that, say, NBC.com loads a lot faster than YouTube.com, and that the sites BellSouth favors just seem to run more smoothly. Tiered access will turn the providers into Internet gatekeepers.

The logic of the tiered-access approach is simple: broadband companies do the work of providing Internet access, so they should be able to charge what they can for it. Telecom executives say that the revenue from tiered access would let them invest more in adding bandwidth and improving download speeds, and argue that Web sites are parasites taking, as A.T. & T.’s chairman, Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., put it, a “free ride” on the pipes the broadband companies own. But these companies have pipes into people’s homes in the first place only because of a long history of government regulation, and people want to use those pipes only because of all the value the so-called parasites have created. And it’s that value which tiered access—even if it does improve the Internet’s infrastructure—will put in harm’s way. The Internet has become a remarkable fount of economic and social innovation largely because it’s been an archetypal level playing field, on which even sites with little or no money behind them—blogs, say, or Wikipedia—can become influential. If the Internet turns into a zone of tiered access, it will be harder for noncommercial sites or startup companies to compete with bigger firms.

Broadband providers insist that they have no plans to block access or degrade service to those who don’t pay a premium rate. But if some companies are getting better service, then all the others are getting worse service. Besides, there have already been examples of active discrimination. Last year, a rural telecom company in North Carolina blocked its users’ access to the Internet-based phone service Vonage, and in Canada the telecom company Telus blocked access to a Web site supporting the telecommunications workers’ union. Market forces will offer some check to this kind of interference—if a particular provider goes too far, customers will take their business elsewhere—but, in the world of broadband, market forces are weak, because most cities have only two major providers. More than ninety per cent of Americans get Internet service from either their local phone company or their local cable company, and A.T. & T.’s newly announced acquisition of BellSouth means that there will soon be only three major phone companies in the entire U.S.

Ultimately, Internet providers hope to manage the Internet the way a supermarket owner manages his store, charging companies “slotting fees” in exchange for better shelf space, or the way bookstores charge publishers extra in order to have books placed on tables at the front of the store. Up to this point, the Internet has been operated more or less like a public utility. All bits of data have been treated similarly, just as the highway system doesn’t allow trucks from some companies to go faster than others, and the electrical grid does not deliver reliable power to some customers and erratic service to others. We could write this principle into law, as a new bill sponsored by Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon, proposes. But the bill’s chances of success are slim at best. Increasingly, it seems likely that the Net will end up looking less like the highway system and more like a collection of Safeways.

A collection of Safeways is not a terrible thing—supermarkets in the U.S. do a good job of delivering food that people want, at a reasonable cost—but it’s hardly what we’ve come to expect of the Internet. Decisions that once were made collectively by hundreds of millions of Internet users would now be shaped in large part by a handful of telecom executives. It used to be said that the Internet was all about “disintermediation.” With the end of network neutrality, the middlemen are striking back.

The highlights of his more lurid criminal career ought to be briefly set down before anyone tries to airbrush them. He arranged for his own entourage to be pelted with stones in Kosovo in 1987 (this we have on film) so that the provocation could appear on Belgrade television and isolate the civilized elements in the ruling party. He made a secret agreement with his equally disgusting counterpart Franjo Tudjman of Croatia for a sort of Stalin-Hitler carve-up of Bosnia, and thus empowered the very Croatian extremists who later turned on Serb civilians. He entered into a collusion with fascist and irredentist groups, among them Bosnian Serbs and Belgrade Serbs, which deliberately threw Bosnia into civil war and gave us the modern (and euphemistic) term "ethnic cleansing." He hijacked the national army of a unitary state and used it to attack the autonomous republics within that state. He very nearly destroyed two of the urban cultural treasures of Europe: Dubrovnik and Sarajevo. He emptied the treasury of Serbia and reduced its citizens to poverty and paranoia. He and Saddam were the only two heads of government to welcome the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. Eventually, he went even further and ordered the mass expulsion of the majority population of Kosovo, who were herded onto trains and forced onto the roads; an act that would, if successful, have lethally destabilized the two neighboring states of Albania and Macedonia. And at that very belated point, the Western powers decided they had had enough of him and brought about his removal from Kosovo and his removal from power.

There are three reasons for wanting to economise on energy in general and oil in particular. First, there is climate change. In a recent address, Sir Nicholas Stern, who is conducting a British Treasury inquiry into the economics of global warming, listed a number of policies such as carbon-free electricity generation, which could reduce unhealthy emissions. All of them would be stimulated by high oil prices and most would be well worth achieving for their own sake.

Second, there are old-fashioned environmental considerations. The ever-increasing emission of toxic substances into the atmosphere cannot be healthy; and it is noticeable that protagonists on all sides of the debate like to live in country areas as far removed from motorways and industrial works as possible.

Third, George W. Bush, US president, is right to stress the need to reduce energy dependency on the Middle East and other volatile areas. In my book, it is the most important reason of all for energy saving.

Does that mean another “soak the rich” campaign? One is indeed likely in the US. Republicans will not be able for ever to divert attention to religious and “moral” issues. But it is still unwise to push top marginal tax rates on income too high. Prof Gordon reminds us that there are extremely long cycles in income distribution, which was indeed just as much flattened in the half century to 1970 as it widened in more recent decades. Nevertheless, the Republicans would be wise not to tempt fate by insisting on making permanent the tax cuts at the top of the scale, and the Democrats would be well advised to look carefully at forms of redistribution that do not inhibit economic performance, as the top marginal income tax rates of above 90 per cent that the British had before 1979 did. Land and wealth taxes and more shareholder activism are a much better bet.

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that income inequality in the U.S. -- after 30-plus years of steadily increasing -- may be decreasing. The bad news is why that trend is reversing. It looks like another lesson in how profoundly a globalizing economy is upending what we thought we knew.

Rising income inequality has settled comfortably into America’s big economic picture as a reliable--and much lamented--megatrend. Starting around the late 1960s, U.S. incomes started to become more disparate. The trend was remarkably steady. Recessions might slow it down or briefly reverse it, but mostly it just marched on.

While such a large tendency has many causes, the chief explanation centered on education and skills. The late 1960s were arguably high summer of the era in which a man with 12 years of schooling could work in a unionized factory or trade and earn a solid middle-class or even upper-middle-class income. Then began the age of the info-based economy in which higher education really started to pay. The "skill premium" began growing dramatically. The college graduate’s income started beating the high school graduate’s income by a wider margin every year--and income inequality began to swell.

That explanation makes sense, and the data support it. But now it appears just possible--based on the latest research available--that the whole chain of causation is falling apart. Wait before you cheer.

The evidence is in a new Fed study of family finances, the latest in a triennial series. It shows modest but clear signs of incomes converging rather than diverging. Between 2001 and 2004 (the most recent year for which data are available), incomes of the poorest 20 percent of families increased while incomes of the richest 20 percent fell. Basically, the poorest families’ share of total incomes grew, and the richest families’ share shrank. Incomes became just a little less unequal.

What could that trend reversal mean? The most obvious explanation seems highly counterintuitive: The skill premium, the extra value of higher education, must have declined after three decades of growing. The Fed researchers didn’t pursue that line of thought, but economists Lawrence Mishel and Jared Bernstein at the Economic Policy Institute did, and they found supporting evidence in the new Economic Report of the President, issued within days of the new Fed survey. It cited Census Bureau data showing that the premium had indeed fallen sharply between 2000 and 2004. The real annual earnings of college graduates actually declined 5.2 percent, while those of high school graduates, strangely enough, rose 1.6 percent.

That is so contrary to the conventional view of this major economic trend that it demands explanation. One possibility is that it’s just a blip. Could be, but remember that 2004, when the readings started going haywire, was a year of strong economic growth, low unemployment, and rising productivity, offering no obvious reason to expect weird results.

The other main possibility is that something unexpected and fundamental is changing in the way the U.S. economy rewards education. We don’t yet have complete data, but anyone with his eyes open can see obvious possibilities. Just maybe the jobs most threatened by outsourcing are no longer those of factory workers with a high school education, as they have been for decades, but those of college-educated desk workers.

Perhaps so many lower-skilled jobs have now left the U.S.--or have been created elsewhere to begin with--that today’s high school grads are left doing jobs that cannot be easily outsourced--driving trucks, stocking shelves, building houses, and the like. So their pay is holding up.

College graduates, by contrast, look more outsourceable by the day. New studies from the Kauffman Foundation and Duke University show companies massively shifting high-skilled work--research, development, engineering, even corporate finance--from the U.S. to low-cost countries like India and China. That trend sits like an anvil on the pay of many U.S. college grads.

We need more evidence before concluding that we’re at a major turning point in the value of education to American workers. But it certainly feels like one, based on what we can observe. Higher education still confers an enormous economic advantage. Just not as enormous as it used to be.

As for income inequality, pretty much everyone has always hated it, and its growth was a certain cue for handwringing and brow furrowing. Well, it’s not growing anymore. Because our best-educated workers are earning less, and the incentives for higher education may thus be declining, the result could be a more uniform--and lower--standard of living. Be careful what you wish for.

A movement to uproot crop subsidies, which have been worth nearly $600 billion to U.S. farmers over the decades, is gaining ground in some unlikely places -- including down on the farm. In Iowa ... a Republican running to be state agriculture secretary is telling big farmers they should get smaller checks. Mark W. Leonard, who collects subsidies himself ... told a room full of farmers ... that federal payments spur overproduction, which depresses prices for poor growers overseas. "From a Christian standpoint, what it is doing to Africa tugs at your heartstrings," Mr. Leonard told them. ...

There is a long history of mostly failed attempts to pare farm payments. But the current anti-subsidy sentiment ... is stirring attention because it is unusually broad. Students for Social Justice at Baylor University in Texas have dumped cotton balls on the ground to protest cotton subsidies. The foundation of late Nascar legend Dale Earnhardt has teamed up with rock star Bono, ... to overhaul Western agriculture policies to boost African development. In Washington, D.C., the Alliance for Sensible Agriculture Policies is meeting to share ideas about changing the farm bill. Participants include Oxfam and Environmental Defense from the left, the National Taxpayers Union on the right and the libertarian Cato Institute. Prominent philanthropic organizations, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, are financing some of this advocacy. ... Another spur to the anti-subsidy movement comes from the World Trade Organization...

The movement is tilting against one of the most deeply entrenched federal entitlements. In 1996, a Republican-led Congress passed legislation to wean farmers from subsidies over seven years. But Washington backed off as the farm economy entered one of its cyclical tailspins. The 2002 farm bill signed by President Bush is one of the most lavish ever, even as the economic cycle improved. ... There isn’t any serious talk in Washington of wiping out subsidies entirely, and the powerful farm lobby has defended itself against attacks in the past. ... But now, farm leaders, federal officials and politicians are seriously discussing alternatives, such as buying farmers out from subsidy programs, incentives to encourage farmers to save during good years and paying growers for environmentally friendly practices...

The government created subsidies during the Great Depression to fight rural poverty. At the time, 25% of the U.S. population lived on farms. ... Today, farmers represent less than 1% of the population. ... The government caps annual payments to an individual farmer at $360,000, though loopholes allow higher payments. Most subsidies go to farmers who are wealthier than the typical U.S. taxpayer. Little of it goes to poor farmers because subsides are tied to production. ... 72% of subsidy money goes to 10% of the recipients. ...

The Bush administration is in the reform camp. ... Last month, the White House Council of Economic Advisers took the unusual step of devoting a chapter in the annual "Economic Report of the President" to lambasting crop subsidies, saying they "hurt countries that could benefit from exporting these commodities to the United States." President Bush has yet to propose his own specific solutions. ...

What makes today’s atmosphere so perilous for Bush is that both sides of the Republican divide feel betrayed. The conservative realists outside the administration, who thought the pre-9/11 Bush was one of their own, were alarmed by the decision to invade Iraq. They expressed grave doubts about the war — and it looks as if their fears were realized. The absence of a stable Iraq has hamstrung the White House in other areas where force might need to be an option. Meanwhile, the neoconservatives have become disillusioned too, as Bush’s second-term foreign policy has failed to even remotely match the ambitious rhetoric of the second inaugural. Finally, doctrinal disputes aside, Republicans like me are angry at Bush because he has frittered away one of the party’s greatest assets — the belief that when it came to international relations, the GOP was the party of competence. Between 1965 and 2000, analysts gave Republican presidents better grades than Democrats in managing American foreign policy. The latest public opinion polls, however, give congressional Democrats a new edge on national security issues. Which is not surprising given the administration’s failures at matters that should be routine — interagency cooperation, contingency planning, congressional consultations, alliance management and so on. In the eyes of his party, Bush’s biggest foreign policy sin is not his aims, or even his means. It’s that he has done the improbable — he’s made the Democrats look like a credible alternative.

Does this really accurately reflect the European attitude towards science? If so, it goes a long way towards explaining the weak growth.

It continues to astonish, but the recording industry STILL does not have a clue WTF they are doing. Utterly amazing. A story in the NYT Thursday reveals that the actual levels of business knowledge and economic understanding that exists in the recording industry. The answer, it turns out, is nonewhatosever. Proof for this revelation is what the RIAA braintrust now thinks is hurting CD sales: its legal digital downloading that is holding back CD sales. Not illegal P2P, as the RIAA likes to tell us, but legal sales! Consumers have long ago figured out that CDs as sold by the major labels represent a poor deal for the dollar. How many times can I buy a CD soundtrack (Hi-Fidelity, Garden State, The Big Chill) that costs more than the DVD of the film? Whether a CD gets played mre than a DVD is irrelevant to the person standing in Target, with a 45 minute audio CD in one hand ($15.98) and a DVD of the same -- 2 plus hours of Audi/Video Movie, plus hours more of interviews, outtakes, directors commentary, etc. for the same or less money. The bottom line is while all other media entertainment has dropped in price or given you alot more for the same price -- games, DVDs, internet, software, etc. -- CDs retain their prior price point. In the fiercely competitive market for consumer entertainment dollar, they Recording Industry has simply become non-competitive. Economics 101 is why CD sales have slid so perniciously. Until sub $10 CDs become the norm, I expect to see the slide continue. Amazing that these guys are allowed to run companies; If it were up to me, they should only be handling rounded safety scissors . . . I almost forgot -- this is the music industry -- these guys are anti-competitive, serial price fixers. First with CDs, and now they stand accused of price fixing digital downloads. No wonder the whole concept of competition is so foreign to them!

LIKE gravity, globalization has come to be seen in recent years as an unstoppable force of nature. If the world is flat, capital, goods and services can go wherever they want. But last week, the process of cross-border economic integration suffered the same fate as foolish mortals who would defy Newtonian physics: it crashed to earth.

The furious fight over whether several port terminals in the United States should be owned by a company based in Dubai was resolved uncharacteristically and abruptly on Thursday. DP World, owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates, announced it would transfer the American operations of Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation, the British company it is in the process of acquiring.

During the port debate, opponents warned darkly of the perils of Arab control of vital industry in the United States, and advocates warned, equally darkly, of the perils of alienating foreign investors. But the maelstrom over maritime services is not the first heated exchange on the way globalization appears to pit national economic interests against national security.

Last summer, anguished protests stopped the Chinese oil company Cnooc from acquiring United States-based Unocal, even though Unocal slakes only a tiny fraction of America’s oil thirst. Indeed, the Dubai controversy is merely the latest manifestation of a new condition afflicting politicians, policymakers and ordinary citizens all over the globe. Call it Selective Globalization Syndrome.

The main symptom: a desire to pick and choose the outcomes of globalization, as if from an à la carte menu. For instance, nobody squawked in 2004 when DP World, then British-owned, bought the port operation of Florida’s CSX Corporation for $1.2 billion, or when a company based in Dubai bought the Essex House hotel in New York for $440 million last year.

Yet pro-globalization presidents and policymakers can be anti-globalists when convenient. President Bush, an ardent champion of free trade, has fervently argued for the ports transaction as a matter of principle. But he ordered protective steel tariffs early in his first term, and has shown little interest in exposing sugar growers in politically important states like Florida to the benefits of global competition.

Selective Globalization Syndrome drives politicians and government officials to even more seemingly contradictory stances. For instance, a Dubai-based company controlling East Coast ports is an unacceptable security risk, but Chinese companies controlling West Coast ports is fine.

The government body that approves such deals, the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, had no problem with China’s Lenovo controlling I.B.M.’s personal computer business. But it is examining the proposal by Check Point Software Technologies, an Israel-based company, to acquire Sourcefire, a Maryland-based software company that makes security products used by the federal government.

Selective Globalization Syndrome is also sweeping Europe. Political elites on the Continent may fancy themselves far less parochial and unilateral than their counterparts in the United States. Yet the prospect of foreign companies acquiring certain businesses inspires nationalistic angst. In Spain, whose banks have been re-enacting the conquista by acquiring rivals in Latin America, a bid from a German utility E.On for the Spanish utility Endesa has set off alarm bells. Apparently, the prospect of German engineers controlling the Spanish electricity grid is an insult to national dignity.

The United States, however, is similarly eager to dictate investment terms to non-citizens.

Buying debt? No problem. Foreign investors own more than half of United States government bonds. The biggest portfolios reside on the ledgers of China’s central bank and of various Saudi Arabian and other Persian Gulf government-controlled entities. But equity, which connotes ownership and control, in the same people’s hands sparks off Selective Globalization Syndrome.

"Our public is very concerned about a foreign country, in this case specifically a foreign country from the Middle East, having a major role in our ports," said Representative Jerry Lewis, a California Republican. But this is closing the barn door after it’s already been sold.

"The substantial majority of American containerized commerce is handled in U.S. ports by marine terminal operators that are subsidiaries or affiliates of foreign enterprises," said Christopher Koch, the president of the World Shipping Council, in recent Senate testimony.

Selective Globalization Syndrome causes politicians to lash out at symbolic issues they can influence, like the ports deal, because they cannot or don’t want to confront the root cause: the propensity of American government and consumers to buy more than they produce, to export more than they import and to borrow more than they save.

The United States runs a gigantic trade deficit, some $723 billion in 2005, which means it exports huge amounts of capital. But the foreigners who receive all those dollars in exchange for oil or manufactured goods are no longer content to park those greenbacks in government bonds.

"Why hold Treasuries that give you a mediocre 4.5 percent return over 30 years when you can instead buy higher return capital such as U.S. corporations, factories, ports and real estate?" asks Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Open borders and the free flow of goods and services across borders have created the conditions for Selective Globalization Syndrome to spread. And it may just be in its early stages.

Emboldened by their success at thwarting the Dubai ports deal, legislators are now more eager to challenge foreign economic interests in the name of national security. Members of Congress are falling over themselves to introduce legislation that would tighten the review process, requiring, for example, extended scrutiny of any deal involving a state-owned company.

But they had better hurry. The International Monetary Fund has noted that the world’s fuel-exporting nations will have a $533 billion current account surplus in 2006. That’s a half-trillion dollars for foreign countries, specifically foreign countries from the Middle East, to put to work in government bonds, stocks, real estate and, yes, whole companies.>

Freedom of speech is not just a special and distinctive emblem of Western culture that might be generously abridged or qualified as a measure of respect for other cultures that reject it, the way a crescent or menorah might be added to a Christian religious display. Free speech is a condition of legitimate government. Laws and policies are not legitimate unless they have been adopted through a democratic process, and a process is not democratic if government has prevented anyone from expressing his convictions about what those laws and policies should be.

Ridicule is a distinct kind of expression; its substance cannot be repackaged in a less offensive rhetorical form without expressing something very different from what was intended. That is why cartoons and other forms of ridicule have for centuries, even when illegal, been among the most important weapons of both noble and wicked political movements.

So in a democracy no one, however powerful or impotent, can have a right not to be insulted or offended. That principle is of particular importance in a nation that strives for racial and ethnic fairness. If weak or unpopular minorities wish to be protected from economic or legal discrimination by law—if they wish laws enacted that prohibit discrimination against them in employment, for instance—then they must be willing to tolerate whatever insults or ridicule people who oppose such legislation wish to offer to their fellow voters, because only a community that permits such insult as part of public debate may legitimately adopt such laws. If we expect bigots to accept the verdict of the majority once the majority has spoken, then we must permit them to express their bigotry in the process whose verdict we ask them to accept. Whatever multiculturalism means—whatever it means to call for increased "respect" for all citizens and groups—these virtues would be self-defeating if they were thought to justify official censorship.

Muslims who are outraged by the Danish cartoons note that in several European countries it is a crime publicly to deny, as the president of Iran has denied, that the Holocaust ever took place. They say that Western concern for free speech is therefore only self-serving hypocrisy, and they have a point. But of course the remedy is not to make the compromise of democratic legitimacy even greater than it already is but to work toward a new understanding of the European Convention on Human Rights that would strike down the Holocaust-denial law and similar laws across Europe for what they are: violations of the freedom of speech that that convention demands.

It is often said that religion is special, because people’s religious convictions are so central to their personalities that they should not be asked to tolerate ridicule of their beliefs, and because they might feel a religious duty to strike back at what they take to be sacrilege. Britain has apparently embraced that view because it retains the crime of blasphemy, though only for insults to Christianity. But we cannot make an exception for religious insult if we want to use law to protect the free exercise of religion in other ways. If we want to forbid the police from profiling people who look or dress like Muslims for special searches, for example, we cannot also forbid people from opposing that policy by claiming, in cartoons or otherwise, that Islam is committed to terrorism, however misguided we think that opinion is. Certainly we should criticize the judgment and taste of such people. But religion must observe the principles of democracy, not the other way around. No religion can be permitted to legislate for everyone about what can or cannot be drawn any more than it can legislate about what may or may not be eaten. No one’s religious convictions can be thought to trump the freedom that makes democracy possible.

The UAE is in many respects the model Arab country. It is a staunch American ally that has apprehended several major al-Qaeda suspects. In diplomatic and economic terms, the UAE could not be friendlier to America. Critics have pointed out that two September 11 terrorists from the UAE moved money through Dubai. Yet several of the terrorists resided in New Jersey and Florida, moving money through these states as they completed their training. If guilt by association is applied across the board, then Congress would have to scrutinize Saudi Prince Al-Waleed as the largest shareholder of Citigroup, a possible conduit of terror financing. After all, most of the September 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Tarring entire countries like the UAE with the "terrorist" brush is absurdly unfair, and blocking all Muslim investments in the United States would be impractical and self-defeating. The national security issue is a red herring. In my own experience, security at Dubai’s airport was rigorous. My baggage was searched thoroughly by hand. Interestingly, this search was faster and more thorough than the one I experienced upon entering or leaving the United States. President Bush is correct, whatever his motives, to support Dubai Ports World’s planned acquisition of some US port operations. Tragically, this and future foreign investments are threatened by the national security hysteria and anti-Arab atmosphere that Bush initially created. The net result may be less foreign investment in the United States as Middle Eastern investors take their petrodollars elsewhere.

Whatever you think of the ports deal, this has been a major foreign policy f$%#-up. The UAE is the closest thing we have to a reliable, stable, Westernized ally on the Arabian peninsula, and both official Washington and the American public just pissed on their leg.

Mixing dramatised sequences with interviews, and cutting to news footage, The Road to Guantanamo tells how three young Midlanders went off to Pakistan to organise a marriage, soon after 9/11. The film suggests that, after having arranged things, they were at a bit of a loose end and, walking along a Karachi road one day, were swept up by a crowd entering a mosque. There they were moved by a spirit of adventure — and a desire to eat very large naan breads — to volunteer to go to Afghanistan to help in aid projects. A few days later they departed by bus.

They make it, via Kandahar, to Kabul, where they sit around for a fortnight doing nothing, and then get a lift in a van going back to Pakistan. Except it isn’t going to Pakistan, it is heading in the exact opposite direction, and they wind up in the last remaining Taleban stronghold of Kunduz, alongside lots of foreign fighters. They are captured by the Northern Alliance, appallingly treated, then handed over to the Americans who eventually fly them to Guantanamo. There they languish until finally being released last year.

If this account is to be believed then these three are either the luckiest or unluckiest men in Britain, and certainly among the stupidest. Winterbottom, asked about their reasons for going to Afghanistan, replied: “If you’re talking about people’s motives, it’s very difficult . . . It’s very hard to pin down your motives to one thing. But what they say in the film is that they were interested to see Afghanistan, and wanted to help the people there.”

What the film doesn’t tell you is that the Karachi mosque that the three boys happened across, the Binori Mosque, had already, in 2001, been described as “the alma mater for jihadis”. The most militant elements in the battle for Kashmir studied at the Binori madrassa — a centre of the extreme Deobandi ideology — as did many members of the Taleban. It was thought to be the spiritual home of the Harkat ul-Ansar terrorist organisation, and in the autumn of 2001 the mosque and seminary were openly recruiting fighters to go to the aid of the Taleban.

There is also a curiosity in the timeline of the film. The boys left Karachi on the October 12, crossing the border on the 14th. They hadn’t, they told the film-makers, really expected that a war would actually happen. That’s how innocent they were. But the bombing of Kabul and Kandahar began at 7.45pm local time on October 7, and the battle was already five days old before they left Karachi. The film glosses over this fact, too.

Finally, though the Tipton lads are shown as having been lovable rogues back home, there are no interviews with those who have claimed that, by September 2001, they had already become religiously zealous, and anxious to listen to the preaching of men like Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal, the imam later jailed in Britain for calling upon Muslims to murder Jews.

I am emphatically not saying here that I believe that the Tipton Three took up arms in Afghanistan and fought for the Taleban. Their story may be implausible, but it isn’t impossible. What I am noting here is the way in which Winterbottom banishes ambivalence. His Guantanamo detainees are innocent, even if the facts have to be selected carefully so as to reinforce that impression.

I’ll come back to this in a moment. Meanwhile, let’s agree that Guantanamo has been a disaster for America, a disaster for America’s friends and a godsend for America’s enemies. It represents a panicky descent into arbitrary behaviour, a descent that was partly responsible for the Abu Ghraib catastrophe and wholly responsible for the United States Administration authorising the use of torture during interrogation. In August 2002 the Justice Department, in what is now known as the Torture Memo, permitted the CIA to inflict pain and suffering on detainees, and later in the year Donald Rumsfeld gave formal approval to the use of techniques such as stress positions, sleep deprivation, hooding, extra-loud music and extra-bright lights. The result of all this has been precisely as Dr Williams has argued: comfort to every tyrant, encouragement to every zealot. The Lord Chancellor has recently said that Guantanamo should be shut.

So there we are, if things go the way we say they should then it’s all done and dusted, the world set to rights, the camp closed and everyone happy except the terrible Bushites. But if that was really the case — if it was so damn simple — why would we need our Tiptonites to be so very innocent in order to make our case? Surely the argument would stand whether they were jihadis or not.

Just to recap. There are British jihadis who have killed, or planned to kill, dozens of Britons. And the problem is that their profiles are not so very different from the Tiptonites, and certainly not very different from that of Moazzam Begg. They’re always nice guys, family guys, and we simultaneously demand that the intelligence services and the police know who they are and pre-empt their possible acts of terrorism, while demanding that they only be detained if they can be brought to trial and found guilty in a court of law, and that the wrong ones are never detained.

Not all of us are such hypocrites. I have heard, in the past week, an eminent progressive lawyer argue that the threat from jihadis is no greater than that we faced from the IRA. On that basis (conveniently forgetting the extra-legal actions that actually were taken back then), you may argue that we can afford to take the risk that a few bombers escape the net, in order to safeguard our legal integrity.

What you can’t do is what, I think, Winterbottom and all too many Britons now do, which is to obliterate the dilemma, so that the problem becomes entirely one for the authorities and not for us. Guantanamo is a bad reaction to something real, but none of us quite knows what the good reaction looks like.

Every nation has its founding myth. For communist China, it is the Long March - a story on a par with Moses leading the Israelites’ exodus out of Egypt. I was raised on it...

...The myth can be stated succinctly. The fledgling Communist Party and its three Red Armies were driven out of their bases in southern China in the early 1930s by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government. Pursued and harried by their enemies, they crossed high mountains, turbulent rivers and impassable grassland, with Mao Zedong steering the course from victory to victory. After two years and 16,000km of endurance, courage and hope against impossible odds, the Red Armies reached northwestern China. Only a fifth of the original 200,000 soldiers remained, worn out and battered, but defiant. A decade later, they fought back, defeated Chiang, and launched Mao’s New China.

How does China’s founding myth stand up to reality? In 2004, 70 years after it began, I set out to retrace the Long March. Of the 40,000 survivors, perhaps 500 are still alive; I tracked down and interviewed 40 - ordinary people like Huang Zhiji, who was a boy when he joined the Red Army. He had no choice: they had arrested his father and would not release him until Huang agreed. He thought of deserting, but stayed for fear of being shot. Many did run away.

Six weeks into the March, Mao’s First Army was reduced from 86,000 to 30,000 troops. The loss is still blamed on the Xiang River Battle, the first big engagement of the march. But, at most, 15,000 died in battle; the rest vanished. Another battle, at the Dadu River, is the core of the Long March legend: 22 brave men supposedly overpowered a regiment of Nationalist troops guarding the chains of the Luding Bridge, and opened the way for the marchers. Mao told Edgar Snow, author of Red Star Over China, that crossing the Dadu was the single most important incident during the Long March.

But documents that I have seen indicate that the general who commanded the division that crossed the Dadu River first told party historians a very different story. "This affair was not as complicated as people made it out to be later," he said. "When you investigate historical facts, you should respect the truth. How you present it is a different matter."

So, there was only a skirmish over the Dadu River. The local warlord, who hated Chiang, let Mao pass. As a reward, he was later made a minister in the communist government.

The marchers did not know where they would end up. When they converged in north China in October 1936, it was hailed as the end of the march. But the "promised land" could barely support its own population, let alone the Red Armies. Barely a month later, the party decided the Long March was to continue. But the communists were saved when Chiang was kidnapped by the general he had ordered to wipe them out. As part of the price for his release, Chiang recognised the communists as legitimate: the march was over. But not, however, for the 21,000 men and women of the Western Legion. They belonged to the Fourth Army, headed by Zhang Guotao, Mao’s arch-rival. Their mission was to get help from Russia. But Mao kept sending them contradictory orders, so they could neither fight nor retreat. They were trapped in barren land, and the overwhelming forces of Muslim warlords wiped them out. Only 400 reached the border. It was the Red Army’s biggest defeat, yet it is missing from official history.

So, what motivated the marchers? I asked a top general what he knew of communism at the time. "I had no idea, then and now," he replied. "I doubt that even Mao knew what it was." Perhaps no one knew how much suffering would lie ahead, and how great the difference would be between the dream and the reality.

Odd though it may sound, somewhere in Baghdad a man is working in secrecy to edit new Arabic versions of Liberalism, by the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, and In Defense of Global Capitalism, by the Swedish economist Johan Norberg. He is doing this at some risk of kidnap, beating, and death, because he hopes that a new Arabic-language Web site, called LampofLiberty.org—MisbahAlHurriyya.org in Arabic—can change the world by publishing liberal classics.

Odder still, he may be right.

The Lamp of Liberty is a non-profit and non-partisan educational advocacy project that promotes ideas of liberty and freedom in the Middle East society, to its policy makers, observers, businessmen, students, and the media. It makes available in the Arabic language important articles, books, essays, and detailed policy studies. The Lamp of Liberty hopes to create a dialogue between individuals in the Middle East and the rest of the world on the ideas that underpin a free society and the universal aspiration for freedom. It will publish opinion articles in Arabic newspapers, present policy reports, and translate important works by Frederick Bastiat, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Leonard E. Read, Hernando de Soto, Fareed Zakaria, Julio H. Cole, Mario Vargas Llosa, David Hume, Voltaire, and Ibn Khaldun, among others. Topics include classical liberalism, the rule of law, civil liberties, property rights, economic freedom, religious toleration, free trade and globalization, the division of labor, individual rights, limited government, challenges of democratization, and the role of institutions in economic and social development.

If the ancient political wisdom is correct that a charge unanswered is a charge agreed to, the Bush White House pleaded guilty yesterday at the Cato Institute to some extraordinary allegations.

"We did ask a few members of the Bush economic team to come," explained David Boaz, the think tank’s executive vice president, as he moderated a discussion between two prominent conservatives about President Bush. "We didn’t get that."

Now why would the administration pass up such an invitation?

Well, it could have been because of the first speaker, former Reagan aide Bruce Bartlett. Author of the new book "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," Bartlett called the administration "unconscionable," "irresponsible," "vindictive" and "inept."

It might also have had something to do with speaker No. 2, conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan. Author of the forthcoming "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It; How to Get It Back," Sullivan called Bush "reckless" and "a socialist," and accused him of betraying "almost every principle conservatism has ever stood for."

Nor was moderator Boaz a voice of moderation. He blamed Bush for "a 48 percent increase in spending in just six years," a "federalization of public schools" and "the biggest entitlement since LBJ."

True, the small-government libertarians represented by Cato have always been the odd men out of the Bush coalition. But the standing-room-only forum yesterday, where just a single questioner offered even a tepid defense of the president, underscored some deep disillusionment among conservatives over Bush’s big-spending answer to Medicare and Hurricane Katrina, his vast claims of executive power, and his handling of postwar Iraq.

Bartlett, who lost his job at the free-market National Center for Policy Analysis because of his book, said that if conservatives were honest, more would join his complaint. "They’re reticent to address the issues that I’ve raised for fear that they might have to agree with them," he told the group. "And a lot of Washington think tanks and groups of that sort, they know that this White House is very vindictive."

Waiting for the talk to start, some in the audience expressed their ambivalence.

"It’s gonna hit the [bestseller] lists, I’m sure," said Cato’s legal expert, Roger Pilon.

"Typical Bruce," replied John Taylor of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy.

Admitted Pilon: "He’s got a lot of material to work with."

Bartlett certainly thought so. He began by predicting a big tax increase "to finance the inevitable growth of government that is in the pipeline that President Bush is largely responsible for." He also said many fellow conservatives don’t know about the "quite dreadful" traits of the administration, such as the absence of "anybody who does any serious analysis" on policy issues.

Boaz assured the audience that he told the White House that "if there’s a rebuttal to what Bruce has said, please come and provide it."

Instead, Sullivan was on hand to second the critique. "This is a big-government agenda," he said. "It is fueled by a new ideology, the ideology of Christian fundamentalism." The bearded pundit offered his own indictment of Bush: "complete contempt" for democratic processes, torture of detainees, ignoring habeas corpus and a "vast expansion of the federal government." The notion, he said, that the "Thatcher-Reagan legacy that many of us grew up to love and support would end this way is an astonishing paradox and a great tragedy."

The question period gave the two a chance to come up with new insults.

"If Bush were running today against Bill Clinton, I’d vote for Clinton," Bartlett served.

"You have to understand the people in this administration have no principles," Sullivan volleyed. "Any principles that get in the way of the electoral map have to be dispensed with."

Boaz renewed his plea. "Any Bush economists hiding in the audience?"

There was, in fact, one Bush Treasury official on the attendance roster, but he did not surface. The only man who came close to defending Bush, environmental conservative Fred Singer, said he was "willing to overlook" the faults because of the president’s Supreme Court nominations. Even Richard Walker, representing the think tank that fired Bartlett, declined to argue. "I agree with most of it," he said later.

Unchallenged, the Bartlett-Sullivan tag team continued. "The entire intellectual game has been given away by the Republican president," said Sullivan. "He’s a socialist in so many respects, a Christian socialist."

Bartlett argued that Richard Nixon "is the model for everything Bush is doing."

Sullivan said Karl Rove’s political strategy is "pathetic."

Bartlett said that "the administration lies about budget numbers."

"He is not a responsible human being; he is a phenomenally reckless human being," Sullivan proclaimed. "There is a level of recklessness involved that is beyond any ideology."

"Gosh," Boaz interjected. "I wish we had a senior White House aide up here."

If you go to any proper market, you’ll see people trading freely and as equals, and without gross exploitation or causing big inequalities. People have been selling fruit and veg on Leicester market for 700 years, and no-one thinks unacceptable inequalities have emerged as a result. Everyday eyeball evidence should, then, show that there’s nothing for the left to complain about in well-functioning markets. Much of what they object to about markets shouldn’t be (and isn’t) markets as such but the same things rightists object to - market imperfections. Instead, I suspect the left’s instinctive hostility to the principle of markets stems from two sources. One is a form of category error. They identify markets with business. Markets, they think, consist not of honest fruit and veg sellers making an ordinary living, but of rapacious managerialists. They fail to recognize, as Adam Smith saw, that business is the enemy of markets.

One thing that impresses me during my visit to Howraman is that it is an example of US policy actually working in the region. Unlike other parts of Iraq, the Kurds in Howraman were not fundamentalist by inclination, and a limited action by the American and Kurdish governments was able to restore their land and rid the area of terrorism. This is important specifically because it is not the case in most of Iraq, and yet it draws little attention in the West.

After two months in Kurdistan I am convinced that what applied to Howraman in 2003 can apply to the Kurdish region in general. The people here have many problems — a meddling and opaque government being one of them — but they also have many of the core qualities neccessary for liberalism to take root. Most importantly, they are not chauvinists. There is no theory of Islamic or Kurdish exceptionalism that is spread through the media or popular culture; on the contrary there is a great curiosity about outsiders and a desire to form personal and professional links with visitors. There is also the widespread expectation that the government must answer to the people and that delays to improve civic society represent genuine failures of leadership.

There is an argument pursued by some in the United States that Iraq consists only of factions, not citizens. This is true enough for much of the country, but in this argument the Kurds are inevitably presented as no more than the faction obsessed with seizing Kirkuk. The fact that they have built a university system, allowed a free press, begun to embrace feminism, and held successful elections makes no impression on proponents of this thinking. The Kurds’ eagerness to work with UN agencies, NGOs, and private investors also leaves them cold. And the fact that the Kurds have done all of this while upholding minority rights and inviting displaced Arabs to settle in their territory, even after suffering a genocide conducted by an Arab government, produces only an icy shrug.

This thinking, which often masquerades as realism, is no less petty than claiming that Lebanese are responding only to clan politics, or that Ukrainians are motivated only by their phobia and hatred of Russians. In each of these instances there is an element of truth — the Kurds do want Kirkuk, the Lebanese are fractured, the Ukrainians do fear the Russians — but to reduce these groups only to their visceral motivations is to lie and do so cynically.

The future of Kurdistan is all the more important because of America’s inability to stabilize Iraq. The people I am living amongst, whose friends and family members are fighting alongside American troops, wonder what will happen after a US withdrawal. The signs are not reassuring: Iranian meddling in Iraq’s south is already a reality, and Ibrahim Jafari’s recent visit to Turkey created panic that a deal is in the works to curtail Kurdish autonomy after America draws down its forces. What is certainly clear is that the Kurds face hostile neighbors on all sides, and the failure of American policy in Baghdad runs the risk of leaving them at the mercy of governments with no interest in their welfare and development.

As difficult as this situation is, America could easily consolidate liberalism’s gains in Kurdistan, and in all likelihood it could do so without further violence. The most important thing we could do is simply keep Turkey and Iran out. In the longer run we could facilitate the democratic transition by working with nascent Kurdish institutions — the universities, the press, the courts — to ensure their relative independence from the political parties. This would be a greater challenge than merely preventing foreign interference, but a walk through Sulaimania would convince most visitors that even minimal investments in the region have made a positive difference.

(...) Kurdistan is not yet a full member of the free world, but you will not find a people more favorably inclined to America and its aspirations.

Would it be possible for the Americans to invade just for a few days, get rid of the mullahs and the weapons, and then leave?

The overwhelmingly young population—an ironic result of the mullahs’ attempt to increase the birth rate after the calamitous war with Iraq—is fed up with medieval rule. Unlike the hermetic societies of Baathist Iraq and North Korea, Iran has been forced to permit a lot of latitude to its citizens. A huge number of them have relatives in the West, access to satellite dishes and cell phones, and regular contact with neighboring societies. They are appalled at the way that Turkey, for example, has evolved into a near-European state while Iran is still stuck in enforced backwardness and stagnation, competing only in the rug and pistachio markets. Opinion polling is a new science in Iran, but several believable surveys have shown that a huge majority converges on one point: that it is time to resume diplomatic relations with the United States. (The vast American Embassy compound, which I visited, is for now a stupid museum of propaganda. But when one mullah recently asked if he could have a piece of the extensive grounds for a religious school, he was told by the authorities that the place must be kept intact.)

So, picture if you will the landing of Air Force One at Imam Khomeini International Airport. The president emerges, reclaims the U.S. Embassy in return for an equivalent in Washington and the un-freezing of Iran’s financial assets, and announces that sanctions have been a waste of time and have mainly hurt Iranian civilians. (He need not add that they have also given some clerics monopoly positions in various black markets; the populace already knows this.) A new era is possible, he goes on to say. America and the Shiite world have a common enemy in al-Qaida, just as they had in Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban, and the Iraqi Baathists. America is home to a large and talented Iranian community. Let the exchange of trade and people and ideas begin! There might perhaps even be a ticklish-to-write paragraph, saying that America is not proud of everything it is has done in the past—most notably Jimmy Carter’s criminal decision to permit Saddam to invade Iran.

On Tuesday the Commission began examining French justification for its decision to protect 11 sectors from foreign takovers.

Suleimaniya is the most liberal city in Iraqi Kurdistan, partly because of its long-standing and deep ties to nearby Iran, one of the most culturally liberal countries in the Middle East. The Iraqi Kurds I met who have been to Iran wanted me to know – and they want you to know, as well – that the distance between the Iranian people and their hideous regime is galactic. I heard the same refrain over and over again: “Persians are just like us.” In other words, they are liberal, secular, pro-Western, and fed up with tyrants. “Iranians love America,” the Kurds told me. “They have nothing to do with Ahmadinejad.”

All the way back in 1973 Moula Mustafa Barzani, the famous and beloved leader of the anti-Baathist Kurdish resistance, said he wanted Iraqi Kurdistan to become the 51st American state. Nowhere did Barzani’s fierce campaign resonate more deeply than it did in Suleimaniya. Suli isn’t only the cultural capital of the region – its New York, if you will. It also is the capital of Kurdish nationalism. Saddam Hussein called it “The Head of the Snake.”

He answered with genocide. No one in Iraq experienced the full wrath of Saddam’s Black Arabism more than the Kurds. If the Kurds refused to morph themselves into loyal little Baathists, he would erase them from the face of the earth.

Worldwide protests, riots, boycotts, and threats aimed at Denmark and its citizens have taken place ever since the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed cartoons featuring the Islamic prophet Muhammed. In response to this unprecedented assault on the right to free speech, rallies supporting Denmark have occurred in Washington D.C. and New York,. Others are planned for Chicago, London, Toronto, Montreal and Sydney. There will be a "Rally to Support Denmark and Free Speech" outside the Danish Consulate in San Francisco

We support the right of all people to freely express themselves without fear of violent retaliation.

The embassies of Denmark and several other nations have been attacked in response to the publication of cartoons depicting Muhammed in a Danish newspaper. The twelve cartoonists and their families now live under police protection. Meanwhile, Danish imams travel the Muslim world reproducing the cartoons, along with more offensive fabrications that were never printed in Europe, in an attempt to further the outrage against Denmark. We respect that many followers of Islam are deeply offended by the caricatures, but they cannot be allowed to force others to abide by their beliefs.

As Canadians we express our unwavering support for our ally Denmark, which currently struggles against these attacks from forces anathema to the liberty and peaceful expression at the heart of our great nation.

As Torontonians we are citizens of our nation’s largest and most multiethnic city. That people of so varied cultures can coexist not merely in tolerance, but in a spirit of mutual respect where all are free to practice their customs without imposition on others, is a testament to the strengths of free expression and secularism.

We cannot expect Canadian soldiers to risk their lives securing secularism and liberty abroad if we are unwilling to make a modest effort at home. We support Denmark in an attempt to honour these values.

The country’s 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10) supports progress in the areas of nuclear-power-plant development and construction. As a result, more than 16 Chinese provinces, regions and municipalities have already announced plans to participate in nuclear-power-plant construction. CNNC president Kang Rixin recently noted that this construction boom could increase the amount of nuclear power generated from 2% of the country’s total energy capacity to 6% by 2010, with as many as 32 additional reactors built within the next 15 years.

Several factors have encouraged Beijing to pursue nuclear energy. First, chronic electricity shortages of 35 million kW in 2004 and 25 million kW in 2005 forced Beijing to recognize the country’s deteriorating energy situation. Second, continuing difficulties with the Chinese coal-mining industry, the country’s main energy source, have become inescapable. Coal produces 74% of China’s energy; however, the industry is beset by dangerous safety issues, with more than 6,000 killed in 2005 in mining-related accidents. In addition, the negative environmental impact of greenhouse gases makes coal an increasingly unattractive energy alternative.

Third, China’s growing reliance on foreign oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) has placed the country in a precarious position. For China, dependence on oil means dependence on the Middle East - a complex and potentially explosive region that currently provides 60% of the country’s oil imports. Predictions by some industry experts that China will import more oil than the United States within the next two decades has raised fears in Beijing that oil could control the country’s destiny, making the identification and development of alternative energy sources a key priority.

Fourth, the skyrocketing cost of building the country’s oil and LNG infrastructure has raised concerns in Beijing. Intricate pipeline-construction agreements involving foreign countries; the construction of a fleet of modern LNG carriers and updated and expanded railroad systems; and the construction of large transport terminals capable of handling huge quantities of oil and LNG continue to place an enormous financial burden on the country.

Google Print aims to put some 15 million books online by 2015 and several of the world’s leading English-speaking universities -- including Harvard, Stanford and Oxford -- have signed on to the ambitious project. But instead of joining Google, the director of France’s national library has warned the project could endanger Europe’s cultural heritage. He said the Google initiative would Americanize and commercialize culture, science and knowledge.

Following Chirac’s chest-thumping routine, the Europeans have apparently decided more discretion might be called for until Quaero really gets off the ground. Thompson sealed off the project’s Web page in mid-January with password protection. However, that didn’t completely keep it from the public -- parts of the site were still cached on Google.

Nadat we het fascisme, het nazisme en het stalinisme verslagen hebben, staat de wereld nu voor een nieuwe totalitaire globale dreiging: het islamisme.

Wij, schrijvers, journalisten, intellectuelen, roepen op tot verzet tegen religieus totalitarisme en voor de promotie van vrijheid, gelijke kansen en seculiere waarden voor iedereen.

De recente gebeurtenissen, die plaatsvonden na de publicatie van tekeningen van Mohammed in Europese kranten, hebben de noodzaak aangetoond van een strijd voor deze universele waarden. Deze strijd zal niet gewonnen worden met wapens, maar op het vlak van ideologieën. Het is geen botsing van beschavingen noch een oost-west-tegenstelling die we meemaken, maar een globale strijd die democraten en theocraten met elkaar confronteert.

Zoals alle totalitarismen, wordt islamisme gevoed door angsten en frustraties. De haatpredikers gokken op deze gevoelens om bataljons te vormen met de bedoeling een liberticide en ongelijke wereld op te leggen. Maar wij stellen klaar en duidelijk: niets, ook niet de wanhoop, rechtvaardigt de keuze voor obscurantisme, totalitarisme en haat. Islamisme is een reactionaire ideologie die gelijkheid, vrijheid en secularisme doodt waar het ook aanwezig is. Zijn succes kan enkel leiden tot een wereld van dominantie: dominantie van de man over de vrouw, van de islamist over alle anderen. Om dit tegen te gaan moeten we universele rechten verzekeren aan verdrukte of gediscrimineerde mensen.

Wij verwerpen "cultuurrelativisme", dat erin bestaat te aanvaarden dat mannen en vrouwen in de moslimcultuur geen gelijke rechten, vrijheid en seculiere waarden krijgen, uit naam van het respect voor culturen en tradities. Wij weigeren om onze kritische zin op te geven uit vrees beschuldigd te worden van "islamofobie", een ongelukkig concept dat kritiek op de islam als religie verwart met stigmatisering van zijn gelovigen.

Wij pleiten voor de universaliteit van vrijheid van meningsuiting, opdat een kritische zin mag bestaan op alle continenten, tegen alle misbruiken en alle dogma’s.

Wij roepen democraten en vrije geesten van alle landen op, zodat onze eeuw er een kan worden van Verlichting, en niet van obscurantisme.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val, Ibn Warraq

Stel dat we wisten dat er een uitermate paranoide religieuze sekte was met een geheime leider. Stel vervolgens dat deze sekte als ze wordt bekritiseerd door de pers, onmiddelijk wraak neemt door een kind te gijzelen. Stel dat nog eens twee kinderen lukraak worden doodgeschoten indien de geheime leider belachelijk wordt gemaakt. Zou de pers schuldig zijn aan "zelfcensuur" als men ervan af zou zien iets te publiceren dat de woede van genoemde sekte zou aanwakkeren? Goed, men zou inderdaad schuldig zijn, maar er zouden maar weinig mensen zijn die erop zouden staan gebruik te maken van regel 1 uit de grondwet; de vrijheid van meningsuiting. De gevolgen zouden echter voor de sekte en haar leider ook ernstig zijn. Ieder beschaafd persoon zou de organisatie beschouwen als haatdragend en gevaarlijk en er zouden stappen worden ondernomen om haar invloed te beperken en om er zeker van te zijn dat er geen precedent werd geschapen.

Het ongelooflijke aan de voortdurende Kristallnacht tegen Denemarken (en op sommige plaatsen, tegen de ambassades en burgers van Scandinavische en zelfs van andere Europese landen) is dat het niet heeft geresulteerd in minachting voor de religie die er zich aan bezondigt en het goedpraat, maar in een verhoogd respect! Een klein democratisch land met een open samenleving, een systeem van grondwettelijk pluralisme en een vrije pers, werd onderworpen aan een bizarre, ongelooflijke georganiseerde haat- en leugencampagne, die leidde tot een van de ernstigste schendingen van het internationale recht en wellevendheid: de aantasting van diplomatieke onschendbaarheid. En er kan geen wetgevend orgaan worden gevonden dat de meest voor de hand liggende en noodzakelijke woorden uitspreekt - dat we opkomen voor de Denen tegen deze lastering, chantage en sabotage. In plaats daarvan dient al ons medeleven, al onze bezorgdheid klaarblijkelijk uit te gaan naar diegenen die het lontje hebben aangestoken en die schreeuwen en blèren van blijdschap als de ambassades van democratische landen in brand worden gestoken in de hoofdsteden van hun ellendige, bezoedelde dictaturen. Laten we ervoor oppassen dat we de gevoelens van de vandalen niet kwetsen.

Misschien dat iemand wil tegenwerpen dat het een klein dagblad in Kopenhagen was dat het lontje aanstak. Welk een verwerpelijk masochisme, wat een baarlijke nonsens. Het waren de arrogante Deense mullahs die geduldig de cartoons over de wereld verspreidden (ja, maakt u zich niet druk, zij hebben toestemming ze zo vaak te laten zien als ze willen) totdat ze eindelijk een kwaadaardig antwoord provoceerden tegen de economie en samenleving van het land dat ze gastvrij heeft opgenomen. Voor de goede orde, er zat een prent bij die nooit in Denemarken of waar dan ook gepubliceerd was. Deze prent toonde de Profeet Mohammed als een varken en kan wel of niet naar een Deense mullah zijn gestuurd door een anonieme ophitser. Deze hypocrisie is beschamend, misselijk makend en onvergeeflijk. Het oorspronkelijke verbod op welke beeltenis van de profeet dan ook - wat niet absoluut blijkt te zijn (1) — was oppervlakkig gezien lovenswaardig omdat het was bedoeld als bescherming tegen idolatrie en de aanbidding van afbeeldingen. Maar zie nu hoe dit principe wordt ontkend. Het gerucht van een cartoon in een land dat zich ergens ver weg bevindt, is genoeg om de naam Mohammed te veranderen in een fetish-object en een excuus voor barbaars gedrag. Terwijl ik dit schrijf heeft het dodental de 30 al gepasseerd en - raad eens? - een mullah in Pakistan heeft $1 miljoen plus auto geboden als lokmiddel voor de moordenaar van ’de cartoonist’. Deze ophitsing zal onbestrafd blijven en vrijwel zeker tot geen enkele berisping leiden.

Kan de kwestie nog verachtelijker en cynischer worden? Dat kan het zeker. In een onbedachtzame poging tot vergelding, zijn verschillende Islamistische groeperingen en regimes op zoek gegaan naar hun gevoel voor humor en ironie. Aldus is een tegenactie voorgesteld. Jullie maken ’onze’ profeet belachelijk en wij zullen ’jullie’ Holocaust ontkennen. Zelfs al was hier maar enigermate sprake van gelijkwaardigheid en waren joodse hordes nu bezig moslimwinkels en -ambassades te vernielen, dan nog zou het vernederend zijn om je over te geven aan zo’n lage en goedkope stunt. Ik veronderstel dat we dankbaar moeten zijn dat de Shoah alleen maar wordt ontkend en niet, zoals in sommige islamistische propaganda, enthousiast wordt omarmd en voorgeschoteld als een model dat navolging verdient. Maar alleen een morele idioot gelooft dat anti-semitisme slechts bedreigend is voor joden. De herinnering aan het Derde Rijk is zo levend in Europa precies omdat een racistisch Duits regime er ook in slaagde miljoenen niet-joden, waaronder talloze Duitsers, af te slachten onder het gestoorde voorwendsel daarmee een niet-bestaand Joods complot uit te roeien. Ik wijs erop dat ik een van de weinige mensen ben die publiekelijk David Irving’s recht op publikatie hebben verdedigd, en ik vind het schandelijk dat hij in een Oostenrijkse gevangenis zit voor het uiten van zijn mening. Maar mijn verdediging van het recht op vrije meningsuiting is tenminste absoluut en consistent.

Degenen die oproepen tot moord en brandstichting, of zij die dit zoetvleiend goedpraten, zijn niet in staat uit te rijzen boven de kinderlijke vreugde die wordt veroorzaakt door het idee dat je twee kwaden tegen elkaar kunt wegstrepen. De zoetvleienden zouden op de lange termijn wel eens een groter probleem kunnen zijn dan de kwaadaardigen en de idioten. In een korte periode - dit is een waarschuwing - zal de verdachte term ’islamofobie’ zich binnen onze grenzen nestelen. Iedereen die ervan beschuldigd wordt zal beleefd doch dringend worden verzocht voortaan te zwijgen en het grondwettelijke recht een religie te bekritiseren zal verbeurd worden verklaard. Per definitie zal iedereen die op deze wijze wordt beschuldigd ook impliciet schuldig zijn. Aldus zal de ’milde’ censuur triomferen, niet door de kracht van het argument, maar door de associatie met de ’harde’ censuur waar we de laatste weken de manifestatie van zagen. Een artikel in de New York Times van 13 februari jl. probeerde zo neutraal mogelijk te zijn, maar maakte desondanks het gevoel van dreiging duidelijk. ’Amerikaanse moslimleiders’, zo werd ons verteld, zijn slimmer. Ze zijn erin geslaagd effectieve organisaties op te bouwen en een grotere mate van integratie, acceptatie en economisch succes te bereiken dan hun broeders in Europa. Ze beschouwen de cartoons als onderdeel van een golf aan Islamofobie en hebben moslimgroeperingen in Europa aangespoord hetzelfde te doen.’ In andere woorden, ze willen middels een referentie aan het wereldwijde islamitische geweld een discrete boodschap meegeven aan de Amerikaanse dialoog.

Misschien is de herhaalde melding van de term ’Een komma twee miljard moslims’ u ook opgevallen. Enkele jaren terug raakte ik gewend aan de beschuldiging dat ik door Salman Rushdie te verdedigen ’een miljard moslims’ had beledigd. Dat getal is dus aanmerkelijk gestegen sinds ik deze belachelijke klacht voor de eerste keer hoorde. Maar let op de impliciete bedreiging. Het gaat niet alleen om het weergeven van een getal, er schuilt ook een gevaar in dit aantal. Hoeveel Denen of joden of vrijdenkers zijn er? Het moge duidelijk zijn wat de ’woordvoerders’ insinueren met deze tactiek van massapsychologie en bendevorming.

Die strategie werpt onmiddelijk vruchten af. De onzinnige Karen Hughes wordt in datzelfde artikel in de New York Times geciteerd met de belachelijke titel ’Onderminister van buitenlandse zaken voor diplomatie’. Met een kinderlijke naïviteit geeft ze aan bereid te zijn onze rechten op te geven. ’De stemmen van de Amerikaanse moslims hebben eerlijk gezegd meer geloofwaardigheid binnen de moslimwereld dan mijn stem als vertegenwoordiger van de regering, omdat zij de taal van hun geloof kunnen spreken en hun ervaring van het in vrijheid beleiden van hun geloof in het Westen kunnen delen. Zij kunnen uitleggen waarom de cartoons zo kwetsend zijn.’

Goed, laten we erkennen dat bijna iedere stem in welke wereld dan ook meer geloofwaardigheid heeft betreffende welk onderwerp dan ook dan deze balkende onbenul uit het Bush-kamp; wil het Department van Buitenlandse Zaken nu echt beweren dat we in de moslimwereld alleen mogen worden vertegenwoordigd door moslims? Ik denk dat daar een debat over nodig is en ook een wetsontwerp. In de tussentijd mag er geen dollar aan Wahhabi geld worden besteed aan het openen van madrasahs in dit land. In ieder geval niet totdat kerken en synagoges en bibliotheken die het vrije woord propageren zijn toegestaan in ieder land wiens ambassadeur de Denen heeft geïntimideerd. Als we dit misselijkmakende gezwets over ’respect’ moeten accepteren, zullen we in ieder geval moeten eisen dat het geheel wederzijds is.

Dan resteert nog de kwestie Denemarken: een kleine democratie, die Hitler braaf tegenstand bood en zijn joden net zo goed beschermde als de andere burgers van het land. Denemarken is lid van de NAVO en een land dat zijn soldaten erop uitstuurt om te helpen bij de verdediging en wederopbouw van Irak en Afghanistan.

En wat is de beloning van Washington? Geen woord van solidariteit, maar in plaats daarvan enkele laffe excuses (2) aan diegenen die haar vrijheid, haar handel, haar burgers en haar ambassades hebben aangevallen. Uit schaamte. Deze kwestie mag zeker worden aangezwengeld door al diegenen die bezorgd zijn dat Amerika te gemakzuchtig en te arrogant omgaat met zijn bondgenoten.

It is a matter of pervasive restrictions that make it difficult to create new businesses, and an insider-outsider culture that provides lavish welfare benefits to employed and usually unionized insiders while leaving the unemployed outsiders to riot and burn in the Paris suburbs.

Let’s examine the assertion that trade deficits are a sign of weakness by going back to look at what has happened to the U.S. economy since we last ran a trade surplus, which was in 1975. After 1975, we began to run up trade deficits. In each successive year they have increased: to one-half of 1 percent of GDP in 1980, 1.3 percent of GDP in 1990, 3.9 percent of GDP in 2000 and 5.8 percent of GDP last year.

Has the economy weakened? You be the judge. Here are the numbers.

In 2005 dollars, per capita disposable personal income in 1975 was $17,019. Today, it’s $30,429.

In 2005 dollars, per capita GDP in 1975 was $22,383. Today, it’s $42,047.

In 2005 dollars, mean household net worth was $195,000 in 1975 (fourth quarter). Today, it’s $434,000.

What these numbers tell us is that since 1975, the American people have become better off by a factor of two, net of inflation.

What about those among you who are investors? How have you done?

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed 1975 at 90. It closed yesterday over 14 times higher, at 1,263.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 852 in 1975. Last night the Dow closed at 10,892.

The purchasing power of consumers and investors has increased to a far greater degree than just their income levels and net worth, because many of the things you buy and use have become better at ever-cheaper prices since 1975.

In 1975, a 19-inch Sears color TV cost $359.95 and a 25-inch console was $599.95. Today, a 20-inch Magnavox is $118.99 and a Sharp 27-inch model is $200.99. Today’s models have a much better picture, last longer, use less electricity, and come with a whole host of added features such as remote control.

The first PC, the Apple I computer, sold for $667 in 1976. It ran at the speed of 1 to 2 megahertz and had a 4k memory. Just $500 spent today on, say, a Dell Dimension E310 with a Pentium 4 processor will get you 2.87 billion times the processing power and millions of times the memory, with a free flat-panel screen and lots of other features.

In 1975, when I graduated from Stanford Business School, they didn’t have very sophisticated handheld calculators for use by financial analysts. In 1981, I bought this little guy, an HP12C calculator, which most investors will tell you is all you need to do financial calculations for portfolio management; I use it to this day. It cost me $150. Yesterday, if you were to have looked on eBay at 11:32 a.m., you could have bought an HP12C for $5.

What the numbers tell you is that we are far richer as individuals and as a nation than when we last ran a trade surplus.

many think that we academic economists are complacent because our professorial jobs have not been outsourced. In fact, there is a cartoon which shows, in one frame, some economists saying that outsourcing is no problem; the next frame has someone coming in and saying new information has come in; the third frame says that the information is that economists are being outsourced; and the final frame has the economists saying that outsourcing must be reconsidered. My good friend Professor Herbert Gans, one of America’s most distinguished sociologists, said mockingly in the same vein to me: “ Wait until someone in Delhi starts teaching your Principles of Economics course online and you become his Teaching Assistant”. So, I teased him back: “Do not worry about me, Herb. Even as a Teaching Assistant in Economics, I will be earning more than you as a Professor of Sociology”

The orthodox justification for intellectual property rights is utilitarian. Advocates for strong intellectual property (IP) protections note that scientific and technological innovations, as well as music, books, films, and other literary and artistic works, are often difficult to create but easy to copy. Absent IP rights, they argue, copyists will free-ride on the efforts of creators, discouraging future investments in new inventions and literary and artistic works. In a world without IP rights, the orthodox justification predicts that copying will stifle innovation. The orthodox justification for IP rights is logically straightforward, intuitively appealing, and well reflected in American law. Yet few seem to have noticed a significant empirical anomaly: the existence of a large and global industry that produces a huge variety of creative goods in markets larger than those for movies, books, music, and most scientific innovations, yet does so without strong IP protection. Copying in this industry is rampant, as the orthodox account would predict. Yet competition, innovation, and investment remain vibrant. That industry is fashion. Like the music, film, video game, and book publishing industries, the fashion industry profits by originating creative content. But unlike those other industries, the fashion industry’s principal creative element – its apparel designs – is outside the domain of IP law. And as a brief tour through any fashion magazine or department store will demonstrate, design copying is ubiquitous. Yet the industry develops a tremendous variety of clothing and accessory designs at a rapid pace.

I don’t know of anyone opposed to globalization – that is, international integration, economic and otherwise – except, perhaps, for some dedicated hermits.

As soon as we bring up the matter of free movement of capital, we have to face the fact that although in principle people are at least equal in rights, in a just society, talk of capital conceals the reality: we are speaking of owners of capital, who are vastly unequal in power, naturally.

Today, Beijing oversees a vast patronage system that secures the loyalty of supporters and allocates privileges to favored groups. The party appoints 81 percent of the chief executives of state-owned enterprises and 56 percent of all senior corporate executives. The corporate reforms implemented since the late 1990s—designed to turn wholly state-owned firms into shareholding companies—haven’t made a dent in patronage. In large- and medium-sized state enterprises (ostensibly converted into shareholding companies, some of which are even traded on overseas stock markets), the Communist Party secretaries and the chairmen of the board were the same person about half the time. In 70 percent of the 6,275 large- and medium-sized state enterprises classified as “corporatized” as of 2001, the members of the party committee were members of the board of directors. All told, 5.3 million party officials—about 8 percent of its total membership and 16 percent of its urban members—held executive positions in state enterprises in 2003, the last year for which figures were available.

An incestuous relationship between the state and major industries can doom developing countries, and China is more susceptible than most. The combination of authoritarian rule and the state’s economic dominance has bred a virulent form of crony capitalism, as the ruling elites convert their political power into economic wealth and privilege at the expense of equity and efficiency. The state’s economic dominance preserves systemic economic inefficiency as scarce resources are funneled to local elites and bureaucratic constituencies. The World Bank estimates that, between 1991 and 2000, almost a third of investment decisions in China were misguided. The Chinese central bank’s research shows that politically directed lending was responsible for 60 percent of bad bank loans in 2001–02. The problem persists today. Chinese economic planners revealed in early 2006 that 11 major capital-intensive manufacturing industries were overproducing. For example, the country’s steel industry, the world’s largest, has 116 million tons (or about 30 percent) of excess capacity.

State enterprises are also miserably unprofitable. In 2003, a boom year, their median rate of return on assets was a measly 1.5 percent. More than 35 percent of state enterprises lose money and 1 in 6 has more debts than assets. China is the only country in history to have simultaneously achieved record economic growth and a record number of nonperforming bank loans.

I AM TROUBLED TO FIND THAT I like more and more of what The Guardian, this left-wing liberal British newspaper has to say; and its Sunday sister, The Observer. Perhaps I am really left-wing after all, a socialist, as was the aforementioned artist and statesman.(Bonus point: name the "aforementioned artist and statesman") He too would probably have liked The Guardian in its present colours.

Pfizer marketing vice-president Peter Rost was fired on Thursday. Rost rose to prominence as a whistleblower and his public support for free trade in pharmaceuticals. It is reported that Pfizer has given him virtually no responsibilities for the past two years. After appearing on major US television show 60 Minutes, his e-mail and cellphone stopped working, which Pfizer says was not intentional.

Rost told a Committeee of the US Senate earlier this year: “I joined this industry to save lives, not to take them. And that’s the reason I’ve chosen to speak out.” He carefully explained to the Committee that the views expressed were his own and did not reflect those of Pfizer Inc. His subject was “Drug Importation: The Realities of Safety and Security”. At one point during his career, Rost was responsible for an entire region in Europe where he gained personal experience with parallel trade. He observed first-hand how the free market works and thinks the industry is making a huge mistake in opposing drug importation.

In fact, Rost told the committee, that there came a time when he had lots of parallel traded drugs coming into his market in Europe, and admitted, "I was not happy about this." However, in order to compete, Rost dropped his own prices, and by doing so, he said, "I doubled sales and increased my company ranking from No. 19 to No. 7 in less than two years."

Rost advised the committee that every day, "Americans die because they can’t afford lifesaving drugs, because we want to protect the profits of foreign corporations. I believe we have to speak out for the people who can’t afford drugs, in favor of free trade and against a closed market..." Blocking re-importation has a high cost, Rost warned, "Not just in money, but in American lives."

What is the American economy? It is conventionally identified as that mix of industrial and commercial activities carried on within the borders of the United States. Its participants are people living within these borders and its resources are the natural and man-made inputs found there.

People outside of these borders (except the tiny handful of Americans living abroad) belong to other economies, not America’s. Resources in other locations are part of other countries’ economies, not America’s. Investments made elsewhere become part of other economies, not ours. Savings done by persons living in Ukraine are Ukrainian savings, not American savings. We speak of America enjoying a comparative advantage at producing this and Ireland having a comparative advantage at producing that. We talk about "China" trading with "America."

Thinking of economies as national phenomena, we measure them as if they are so. We measure Gross Domestic Product of the United States and compare it to the GDP figures of other nations. We calculate America’s trade deficit. These statistical exercises reinforce the presumption that the salient economic unit is the nation-state.

(...)(T)his practice of using political boundaries to define economic boundaries is troublesome. In fact, the term "American economy" is more misleading than useful. To see why, consider the following examples.

My next-door neighbor in Virginia agrees to mow my lawn for $25. He mows and I immediately give him $25 in greenbacks. Rather than spend his earnings on beer or a back massage, my neighbor uses the $25 to by a share of Microsoft.

Everyone applauds. An American earns money and invests it, making "our" economy stronger.

Now consider a slightly different example in which I live, not in Virginia, but in Maine on the U.S. side of the Canada-U.S. border. My neighbor is a Canadian living in Canada. He mows my lawn; I pay him 25 U.S. dollars.

While my neighbor and I are just as pleased with our transaction in this example as we are in the previous one, pundits and politicians regard the second case with much more suspicion.

First, by spending his dollars on a share of Microsoft rather than on U.S-made goods and services, my Canadian neighbor increases the U.S. trade deficit. The reason is that statisticians count my purchase of his lawn-mowing services as a U.S. import but, because my neighbor doesn’t spend his earnings on goods or services made in the U.S., these statisticians find no U.S. exports to "balance" my imports.

So we cheer when the American saves and invests in America, but quake with anxiety when the Canadian does so, fretting about the "imbalance" in American trade. But no economically significant differences separate these two scenarios.

Second, because my Canadian neighbor doesn’t spend his $25 on U.S. goods and services, this $25 is regarded formally as U.S. debt. This statistical classification is what permits Warren Buffett and talking heads such as Lou Dobbs to get away with calling the U.S. trade deficit "debt." But there’s no more debt created in the example in which my neighbor is Canadian than in the example in which he’s American. In both cases I get my lawn mowed and pay for it fully and immediately. In both cases my neighbor invests his earnings in dollar-denominated equity. In neither case does anyone incur any obligation to repay anything to anyone.

Of course, my neighbor might instead lend his $25 to Uncle Sam. If he does so, debt is created. Uncle Sam now owes him $25 plus interest. But why should anyone care if the creditor is a foreigner or an American? The debt must be repaid by American taxpayers regardless.

"Gotcha!" I hear a skeptic shout. "It’s better that an American rather than a foreigner receive this repayment."

"Not so," I reply. It’s true that the holder of the debt -- because to him it’s an asset -- is wealthier than he would be without this asset. But how is my life affected if the bondholder who receives repayment of this debt lives in Tulsa, Toronto, or Timbuktu?

Obviously, I would be better off if I or someone in my family were the bondholder. But my being an American doesn’t mean that I benefit if the bond is owned by another American -- or that I suffer if the bondholder is not American. To imagine the contrary is to mistake the nation for the self or the family. It is neither.

Indeed, the nation isn’t even the economy -- a fact that explains my indifference to the nationality of economic actors. Our economy isn’t American; it’s global. It should be reckoned as such.

the billions we’re spending in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are buying a chance of democracy in those countries. Democracy doesn’t just make people happier. It also makes them richer. This matters, because the discounted present value of a rising income stream can be a very large sum indeed. Even the small chance of such a sum could be worth billions. If so, the billions we’re spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is money well spent. By contrast, spending on schools and hospitals might not be effective.

David Irving is a worthless human being, and in a karmic sense one can’t help feeling that his being in jail seems like the working of divine justice, but the principle at stake here is much larger than one man, even a man as odious as this one. Austria should let him go, take its ridiculous "Holocaust denial" thoughtcrime law off the statute books, and leave the determination of the "correct" interpretation of history to academics and intellectuals, rather than delegating the responsibility to judges. By the way, while we’re on the subject of thoughtcrime legislation, let me take this opportunity to note something elided by many apologists for censorship of opinions Muslims don’t like: Austria may have Holocaust denial legislation on its books, but Denmark does not, and in the latter country claiming the Holocaust is a myth is every bit as legal as poking fun at the "prophet" Mohammed; in other words, charges of Danish hypocrisy on this issue are entirely unwarranted

This reliance on subsidies and command-and-control remains true despite the fact that if the President really wished to reduce our "addiction" to imported oil, the most effective way of accomplishing this aim would be an energy tax. That is because on the supply side, production is unlikely to rise strongly given the depletion of onshore reserves, even with the most generous subsidies. In addition, production takes years to put into operation. Moreover, a tax acts immediately, while standards would take longer to have an impact on consumption (since it would have to work through an alteration of the capital stock embodied in trucks and cars). Furthermore, a tax has a further advantage that it reduces the price foreigners -- including Saudi Arabia and Iran -- would receive for their oil exports. In this sense, it has a similar effect as an oil tariff, although it is WTO-consistent, while a tariff would not be. A back-of-the-envelope calculation can be useful in defining the potential impact of a gasoline tax. In 2004, the United States imported about $180 billion worth of petroleum and petroleum-related products, equal to about one-third of the trade deficit. Ignoring interaction effects, a $1 per gallon tax on gasoline would reduce annual petroleum imports by $10 to $25 billion, or about 1.6 percent to 4 percent of the trade deficit.

The incredible thing about the ongoing Kristallnacht against Denmark (and in some places, against the embassies and citizens of any Scandinavian or even European Union nation) is that it has resulted in, not opprobrium for the religion that perpetrates and excuses it, but increased respectability! A small democratic country with an open society, a system of confessional pluralism, and a free press has been subjected to a fantastic, incredible, organized campaign of lies and hatred and violence, extending to one of the gravest imaginable breaches of international law and civility: the violation of diplomatic immunity. And nobody in authority can be found to state the obvious and the necessary—that we stand with the Danes against this defamation and blackmail and sabotage. Instead, all compassion and concern is apparently to be expended upon those who lit the powder trail, and who yell and scream for joy as the embassies of democracies are put to the torch in the capital cities of miserable, fly-blown dictatorships. Let’s be sure we haven’t hurt the vandals’ feelings. You wish to say that it was instead a small newspaper in Copenhagen that lit the trail? What abject masochism and nonsense. It was the arrogant Danish mullahs who patiently hawked those cartoons around the world (yes, don’t worry, they are allowed to exhibit them as much as they like) until they finally provoked a vicious response against the economy and society of their host country. (...) And there remains the question of Denmark: a small democracy, which resisted Hitler bravely and protected its Jews as well as itself. Denmark is a fellow member of NATO and a country that sends its soldiers to help in the defense and reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. And what is its reward from Washington? Not a word of solidarity, but instead some creepy words of apology to those who have attacked its freedom, its trade, its citizens, and its embassies. For shame.

Our studies show that ...the total gain for the EU producers is just above €100m a year if an anti-dumping duty of 40 per cent is being levied on leather shoes from China and Vietnam. For the consumers and the user industries in the EC the total loss can be estimated to approximately €975m per year. In other words, for each €1 gained by the EU producers from trade protection, EU consumers and user industries have to pay almost €10.

David Irving, the British historian, was sentenced in Austria today to three years in jail for denying the holocaust in two speeches he gave in 1989. I have little sympathy for Irving but support the right to free speech. How can we in the West take a principled stand against radical Muslims who riot and kill to protest depictions of Muhammad when we jail those who attack our sacred beliefs?

Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber and the Central Council of Jews blasted "Valley of the Wolves -- Iraq" (Kurtlar Vadisi -- Irak) as anti-American and anti-Semitic and called on German cinemas to stop showing the picture. "This irresponsible film does not encourage integration but sows hate and mistrust against the West," Stoiber told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper in a reference to the film’s popularity among Germany’s large Turkish immigrant community. "I urge the cinema owners in Germany to pull this racist and anti-Western hate film immediately," he said

While the average tariff applied to U.S. imports is relatively low at 1.4 percent, there are peaks within the U.S. tariff schedule that fall most heavily on lower-income consumers. Studies have shown that, on balance, U.S. trade barriers are regressive because they disproportionately raise the relative price of goods consumed by lower-income Americans. Some of the most restrictive trade barriers persist on everyday consumer products such as textiles, apparel items, and footwear. Tariffs disproportionately affect the poor in two ways. First, many tariffs are highest on products that represent higher shares of income expenditures for lower-income households. Staple consumer products such as shoes and clothing face import taxes over 30 percent, some of the highest tariffs in the U.S. tariff schedule. Footwear represents 1.3 percent of income expenditures for lower-income households (1.5 percent for single- parent households) compared to just 0.5 percent for higher-income households. Similarly, lower-income households (and single-parent households) spend roughly 6 percent of their disposable income on apparel, while upper-income households spend just 4 percent. Second, within these high-tariff product categories, tariffs are often most pronounced on the cheapest products. That is, products that are more commonly purchased by lower-income consumers are subject to higher import taxes than are those commonly purchased by upperincome consumers. For example, lower-priced sneakers ($3–$6 per pair) are marked up with a 32-percent tariff, while higher-priced sneakers, such as $100 track shoes, are subject to a 20-percent tariff.

International trade also allows consumers to choose from a broader variety of goods and services. One study shows that that the number of imported product varieties has increased by a factor of four over the last three decades, reflecting an important source of gains from trade. Welfare gains from variety growth alone have been estimated to be a remarkable 2.8 percent of GDP, which translates into gains of over $4,000 for the average American family of four. International trade allows year-round availability of seasonal and perishable food items such as fruits and vegetables. For example, U.S. consumers today enjoy grapes and peaches from Chile, limes and avocados from Mexico, mandarin oranges from China, and cashews from India, many during the offseason for U.S. production. Trade also provides U.S. consumers with greater variety and choice for agricultural products that the U.S. does not produce in large quantity. For example, Americans enjoy coffees from all over the world, including from Colombia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

One of the perquisites of being president is the ability to have the author of a book you enjoyed pop into the White House for a chat.

Over the years, a number of writers have visited President Bush, including Natan Sharansky, Bernard Lewis and John Lewis Gaddis. And while the meetings are usually private, they rarely ruffle feathers.

Now, one has.

In his new book about Mr. Bush, "Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush," Fred Barnes recalls a visit to the White House last year by Michael Crichton, whose 2004 best-selling novel, "State of Fear," suggests that global warming is an unproven theory and an overstated threat.

Mr. Barnes, who describes Mr. Bush as "a dissenter on the theory of global warming," writes that the president "avidly read" the novel and met the author after Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, arranged it. He says Mr. Bush and his guest "talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement."

"The visit was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalists all the more," he adds.

And so it has

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

Tienduizend jaar geleden begint de lente. De glinsterende ijskap die Scandinavië bedekt smelt weg als sneeuw voor de zon, en de Oostzee haast zich om de opengevallen plaats weer in te nemen. De zeespiegel stijgt snel, en steeds meer land dat in de ijstijd had drooggelegen komt onder water te staan. De zeehonden die honderdduizend jaar voor de kust van Portugal hadden overwinterd zolang de Noordzee droog lag, zwemmen eindelijk terug naar de Waddenzee. De poolwoestijn van Noordwest-Europa kleurt plotseling groen. Insecten brengen plantenzaden naar het noorden, en een voor een komen de bomen vanuit hun warme schuilplaats achter de Alpen terug: eerst de berk, dan de den, nog later de eik, en tenslotte de beuk. Het is een wedloop wie het snelste gaat; hoe lichter hun zaden, hoe sneller.

Onze voorouders trekken hun pelsmantels uit, eten de laatste mammoeten op, en in het steeds maar groener wordende Midden-Oosten bedenken ze manieren om niet steeds maar naar nieuwe jachtgebieden en visgronden te hoeven zoeken. Ze zetten de lekkerste graszaden bij elkaar op vierkante lapjes grond, en ontdekken al gauw dat ze zo veel beter voedsel kunnen produceren dan vroeger. Hun uitvinding verovert Europa in hoog tempo. Planten, dieren, mensen, allemaal zijn ze in de ban van het snel warmer wordende klimaat.

Nu is het hoogzomer. Wij mensen hebben ons ontwikkeld tot een succesvol maar zorgelijk type. Het klimaat is vrijwel constant, maar toch zijn we bang dat het over een eeuw een graadje warmer is. De zeespiegel stijgt nauwelijks meer, maar wij doen of het een levensbedreiging is. Door de uitvinding van de landbouw tienduizend jaar geleden kunnen we ons ongebreideld vermeerderen, maar we slikken pillen om dat weer te voorkomen. We maken ons zorgen over de verscheidenheid aan planten en dieren in onze omgeving, maar nog nooit hebben we zoveel verschillende soorten om ons heen gehad als nu. Op onze velden staan Irakees graan, Mexicaanse maïs en aardappels uit de Andes, onze tuintjes staan vol met tulpen uit Turkije en rododendrons uit Madagaskar, we hebben aquaria met tropische visjes, en de exotische huisdieren zijn niet aan te slepen. We maken ons zorgen over de rampen die ons treffen, maar veel van die rampen zijn alleen maar zo catastrofaal omdat we zelf op de vulkanen zijn gaan wonen, op de actieve breuken, aan de inzakkende kusten, aan de overstromende rivieren. We hebben zelf het bos weggehaald zodat de rivieren meer water moeten meevoeren, we hebben zelf het veen afgegraven zodat het land onder de zeespiegel kwam te liggen en de zee het land kon binnendringen. Tobbers zijn we geworden, vol schuldgevoel.

Maar dat schuldgevoel is luxe, een luxe die alleen maar voortkomt uit het feit dat we zonder het te beseffen in de zomer leven. De natuur is ons genadig in de hoogzomer, zodat we ons bezig kunnen houden met kleine klimaatpiekjes en vage rimpeltjes in de zeespiegelcurve. Want wij meten de natuur alleen met de menselijke maat.

Maar over tienduizend jaar is het herfst. Dan is het afgelopen met de euforie. Dan komen de ijskappen terug, en gaat de zeespiegel weer dalen. Dan moeten de zeehonden terug naar Portugal. Dan bevriezen de rododendrons in de tuinen, en vluchten de anti-bontactivisten tot achter de Alpen. Vulkanen barsten uit met een kracht die in de korte tijd van de menselijke beschaving nog niet is voorgekomen. Dan pas zien we dat de maten van de natuur veel groter zijn dan de menselijke maat.

there is a (current) distinction between justice – as in the established legal framework of international law – and justice in another sense: that of correcting past injustices and overthrowing an unjust tyranny. These two may conflict - and deciding which sense of justice is the most powerful will be a matter of debate to be judged on a case by case basis. But to assert the formal legal framework is always preferable - simply because it is the only established legal framework existing - precludes the possibility that current laws may not be all that helpful to the victims of injustice: which should, after all, be the primary concern of law. Rather than making a fetish of current international law, applying the letter of the law could be viewed as a fetter on global justice. And with fetters, there should be only one possibility:

They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

From the 1966 Coleman Report, the landmark study of educational opportunity commissioned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Gentzkow and Shapiro got 1965 test-score data for almost 300,000 kids. They looked for evidence that greater exposure to television lowered test scores. They found none. After controlling for socioeconomic status, there were no significant test-score differences between kids who lived in cities that got TV earlier as opposed to later, or between kids of pre- and post-TV-age cohorts. Nor did the kids differ significantly in the amount of homework they did, dropout rates, or the wages they eventually made. If anything, the data revealed a small positive uptick in test scores for kids who got to watch more television when they were young. For kids living in households in which English was a second language, or with a mother who had less than a high-school education, the study found that TV had a more sizable positive impact on test scores in reading and general knowledge.

Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University has co-authored a study of 517 reviews written by the government for use at Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearings, and the results of the study mirror the findings of Corine Hegland’s recent investigation for National Journal. (...)(O)ne of the study’s findings is that only 11% of the Guantanamo prisoners were captured on the battlefield by coalition forces. A full two-thirds of them were rounded up in Pakistan and turned over to the United States, likely in response to flyers like this distributed by the United States:

Get wealth and power beyond your dreams....You can receive millions of dollars helping the anti-Taliban forces catch al-Qaida and Taliban murders. This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people.

The Seton Hall study also concludes that fewer than half of the Guantanamo detainees are accused of any hostile action against the United States, and that evidence of association with al-Qaeda or the Taliban is often laughably weak. An awful lot of these prisoners have simply been turned in for reward money or else done nothing worse than be conscripted into low-level positions in the Taliban.

Figuring out what to do with prisoners captured in Afghanistan presents a real problem, and civilian style courtroom trials are simply not in the cards for many of these people. At the same time, the limbo we’ve placed them in is simply not something that Americans should accept, especially for the half or more of the prisoners who are known to be either innocent or essentially harmless.

Even critics of the administration can probably agree that a certain amount of confusion over the status of the Guantanamo detainees might have been excusable for the first year or so. But four years? It’s long past time to do the right thing and give these men fair hearings, followed by release for those who have never been near a battlefield and have never fought against the United States.

In Pakistan a hardline Muslim cleric explained to the Guardian how offering a bounty of £600,000 and a Toyota car in return for the death of the Danish cartoonists would reflect well on Islam:

This killing will enhance respect for Islam and for Muslims. Next time nobody will dare to commit blasphemy against our prophet.

The strength and survival of free society and the advance of human knowledge depend on the free exchange of ideas. All ideas are capable of giving offence, and some of the most powerful ideas in human history, such as those of Galileo and Darwin, have given profound religious offence in their time.

The free exchange of ideas depends on freedom of expression and this includes the right to criticise and mock.

We assert and uphold the right of freedom of expression and call on our elected representatives to do the same.

We abhor the fact that people throughout the world live under mortal threat simply for expressing ideas and we call on our elected representatives to protect them from attack and not to give comfort to the forces of intolerance that besiege them.

Talk to top-level scientists and educators about the future of scientific research, and they will rarely even mention Europe. There are areas in which it is world-class, but they are fewer than they once were. In the biomedical sciences, for example, Europe is not on the map, and it might well be surpassed by much poorer Asian countries. The CEO of a large pharmaceutical company told me that in 10 years, the three most important countries for his industry would be the United States, China and India.

And I haven’t even gotten to the demographics. In 25 years, the number of working-age Europeans will decline by 7 percent, while those over 65 will increase by 50 percent. One solution: let older people work. But Europe’s employment rate for people over 60 is low: 7 percent in France and 12 percent in Germany (compared with 27 percent in the U.S.). Modest efforts to allow people to retire later have been met with the usual avalanche of protests. And while economists and the European Commission keep proposing that Europe take in more immigrants to expand its labor force, it won’t. The cartoon controversy has powerfully highlighted the difficulties Europe is having with its existing immigrants.

What does all this add up to? Less European influence in the world. Europe’s position in institutions like the World Bank and the IMF relates to its share of world GDP. Its dwindling defense spending weakens its ability to be a military partner of the U.S., or to project military power abroad even for peacekeeping purposes. Its cramped, increasingly protectionist outlook will further sap its vitality.

This year’s State of the Union came not long after Karl Rove sparked outrage among liberals by unveiling the GOP’s strategy for the 2006 elections. "At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security," Rove said. "Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview." I think Rove’s claim is largely false, and I think his strategy is cynical. But if Rove wanted evidence that it will succeed, then he should have watched the State of the Union with me.

I watched the speech at an event sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, perhaps the most high-profile liberal advocacy organization in the country. A panel of pundits--which included radio commentator Sam Seder as well as several liberal bloggers--were there to "decode, debunk, and deride" Bush’s speech in real time on Air America.

A packed house of 100 or so viewers huddled around a few plasma screen TVs to watch the address. Early on, when Bush invoked September 11, the audience let out a loud groan and snickered. Seconds later, the president mentioned "weapons of mass destruction" for the first time. A bell rang, and the audience laughed; then Bush said the words "freedom" and "terror" and bells rang again, followed by more laughter. This ritual was repeated throughout the speech whenever Bush uttered any of these words or phrases.

This made me wonder: Why the visceral reaction to these particular formulations? The speech contained plenty of lines worthy of ridicule, and Bush certainly uses his share of dishonest conservative catchphrases ("activist judges" for instance). But spreading freedom around the world is--or should be--a paramount goal of liberalism. Meanwhile, terrorism remains a real threat to America, and a source of continuing death and destruction the world over. As for "weapons of mass destruction": A fanatical regime in Iran with a history of sponsoring terrorism and a stated desire to see Israel "wiped off the map" is well on its way to having such weapons. This is not an invention of the Republican imagination; it is reality. Why, then, laugh at Bush’s warning that "Dictatorships shelter terrorists, and feed resentment and radicalism, and seek"--get ready for that bell to ring--"weapons of mass destruction"?

To be sure, there is a compelling argument that Bush overuses these words, or uses them to justify unwise policies. "Terror" and "weapons of mass destruction" can be invoked effectively and cynically to raise levels of public fear and alarm. And certainly Bush has, in practice, proven less than fully committed to his stated desire to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world. But if liberals disagree with Bush’s means, they can still remain sympathetic to his ends. Even the most vociferous critic of the Iraq war, or the most zealous opponent of domestic wiretapping, should agree that preventing terror, denying nuclear weapons to dictatorships, and opposing tyranny are worthy goals.

And yet when Bush spoke of "writing a new chapter in the story of self-government," spectators burst into laughter. When he said, "Ultimately, the only way to defeat the terrorists is to defeat their dark vision of hatred and fear by offering the hopeful alternative of political freedom and peaceful change," I heard a mix of bell ringing and belly laughs. Why is the goal of promoting "political freedom" worthy of such derision?

The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi-Arabia and the United States”.

The West’s focus on sensational tragedies obscures the achievements of people such as Patrick Awuah and Robert Keter, who are succeeding even against tremendous odds. Economic development in Africa will depend -- as it has elsewhere and throughout the history of the modern world -- on the success of private-sector entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs and African political reformers. It will not depend on the activities of patronizing, bureaucratic, unaccountable and poorly informed outsiders. Development everywhere is homegrown. As G-8 ministers and rock stars fussed about a few billion dollars here or there for African governments, the citizens of India and China (where foreign aid is a microscopic share of income) were busy increasing their own incomes by $715 billion in 2005.

The statistical analysis of the national data received and used for this report permits the following conclusions:
- Mobility flows between the EU10 and the EU15 are very limited and are simply not large enough to affect the EU labour market in general. In addition, mobility flows from EU15 to EU10 Member States and between EU10 Member States are generally negligible.
- The percentage of EU10 nationals in the resident population of each EU15 Member State was relatively stable before and after enlargement, with increases in the UK and, more conspicuously, in Austria and in Ireland. In Austria, however, there is evidence to suggest that the stock of EU8 nationals stabilised in 2005.
- There is no evidence to show a direct link between the magnitude of mobility flows from EU10 Member States and the TA (transitional arrangement to limit the inflow of foreign workers, IJ) in place. Ultimately, mobility flows are driven by factors related to supply and demand conditions. If anything, TA will only delay labour market adjustments, with the risk of creating "biased" destination patterns even on a more permanent basis.
- The employment rate of EU10 nationals in EU15 Member States is similar to that of country nationals, and it is even higher in Ireland, Spain and the UK.
- The migration flows following the enlargement have had positive effects on the economies of the EU15 Member States: EU10 nationals positively contribute to the overall labour market performance, to sustained economic growth and to better public finances.
- This employment rate has increased in several countries since enlargement. Enlargement has helped to formalise the underground economy constituted by previously undocumented workers from the EU10, with well-known beneficial effects, such as greater compliance with legally sanctioned labour standards, improved social cohesion and higher State income from tax and social security contributions. This also improves the integration of EU10 nationals due to a change in employers’ attitudes, greater opportunities to set up private businesses, better information and regulation.
- The sectoral composition of the EU15 national workforce has not shown significant changes since enlargement showing no evidence of crowding out of national workers by the limited inflow of workers from EU10 Member States. EU10 nationals have a complementary role to play.
- EU10 nationals alleviate skills bottlenecks in the EU15 Member States and contribute to long-term growth through human capital accumulation.

Out of fear of retaliation from the international brotherhood of radical and bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do. ...Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and as deeply as we believe in the principles of free speech and a free press, we could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year publishing history.

A far-right Swedish party’s website showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad has been shut down by the Internet hosting company after pressure from police and the foreign ministry, fearing it would fuel Muslim anger. The anti-immigrant Swedish Democrats had invited readers to send in cartoons for publishing on its website alongside the Danish cartoons, which have sparked violent demonstrations by Muslims around the world. After Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds warned of "grave consequences for Swedish people and Swedish interests" and said Muslim countries were already reacting, the web hosting company Levonline pulled the plug, a company director said on Friday. "We have been in contact with the foreign ministry and SAPO (security police) and in consultation with them we decided this was best," its deputy director Anna Larsson told Swedish Radio.

It is possible that Muslims living outside the Middle East will have a substantial role to play in revivifying Islamic civilization--in shedding some light on the convulsive path that one may still hope will lead from dysfunctional dictatorship through bin Ladenism to more peacefully self-critical, democratic societies. If Westerners appease Muslims who countenance violent intimidation, we are doing a terrible injustice to the liberal and progressive Muslims among us, who really would like to live in lands where people can say about the Prophet Muhammad what they have said about Jesus, Mary, and Moses.

Damascus and Tehran, more closely allied than ever before, are under pressure from the West for their terrorist and nuclear ambitions, respectively. Both have responded by inciting demonstrations in Lebanon and Syria. It is a bizarre spectacle to observe the heretical Shiite-Alawite Baathist regime in Damascus--which has in the past been on the cutting edge of anti-Islamic pan-Arab nationalist propaganda and slaughtering thousands in the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood--now defend the Prophet Muhammad from Danish despoliation. Tehran has probably also been behind the demonstrations in Iraq. And the government-controlled media throughout the region, especially in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have not been helpful. As the French scholar Olivier Roy acutely noted in Le Monde, Europe is now in the cross hairs of many Middle Eastern governments for its more activist role in the region since the invasion of Iraq. The French, British, and Germans have taken the lead in trying to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. France has sided with the United States against Syria in Lebanon. Most of Europe under the umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is now in Afghanistan, increasingly in combat roles against Taliban insurgents and the holy warriors of al Qaeda. And however timidly, Europe has joined the United States in calling for more open political systems in the Muslim Middle East. Democracy is an ugly word to most of the region’s rulers. With official encouragement, anti-Europeanism is bound to rise throughout the area. Muslim autocrats, in conjunction with European and Middle Eastern Muslim militants, are likely to interfere increasingly in Europe’s internal affairs to create fear and a more hesitant European community.

Correctly understood, anti-Americanism (or anti-Westernism in general, IJ) when it accompanies the loosening of political controls in the Middle East is a sign that the status quo that gave us bin Ladenism and 9/11--the perverse marriage of autocracy and Islamic extremism--is coming apart. Under dictatorship, Muslims cannot evolve politically. They will not be able to confront the "baggage" that all Middle Eastern Muslims have with the West, especially the United States, and come to a livable consensus on how they are going to absorb Western ideas, influence, and money. Even in Iran, where the bankruptcy of a virulently anti-American clerical dictatorship has done wonders for the democratic ethic and the prestige of the United States, a functioning democracy is probably the only way the Iranian people will find a sustainable, peaceful modus vivendi with their complicated love-hate for America. It is democracy, not dictatorship, that can best take Muslims through the difficult religious reformation that is well under way among both Shiites and Sunnis. Like Christendom before it, the Muslim Middle East will have to work out its relation to modernity. The faster democracy arrives, the sooner the debates about God and man can begin in earnest. It will probably be for both Muslims and Westerners a nerve-racking experience. But we have no choice, since continuing autocracy will only make the militants’ message stronger and judgment day, as in Iran, a possibly bloody revolutionary event. The electoral victory of Hamas should not give us pause. It should give us hope and encourage us to push for real elections where our national interest stands to gain the most--in Egypt and Iran. We should also not neglect to defend vigorously Christian, Muslim, or Jewish satirists, be they clever, banal, or ugly, wherever they may be found. Both elections and satire are basic to the evolution of the Muslim world.

Two days ago the editor in chief of Al Fager Adel Hammouda wrote an article expressing his surprise why this war is suddenly launched after 4 months. He indicates as I said in my previous post that it is politically motivated to hide more corrupt issues behind. And he is not apologizing for publishing the cartoons as the Danish newspaper did. Instead, he is proud his paper was first to publish.

Once again, the West pursued the principle of turning first one cheek, then the other. In fact, it’s already a tradition. In 1980, privately owned British broadcaster ITV aired a documentary about the stoning of a Saudi Arabian princess who had allegedly committed adultery. The government in Riyadh intervened and the British government issued an apology. We saw the same kowtowing response in 1987 when (Dutch comedian) Rudi Carrell derided (Iranian revolutionary leader) Ayatollah Khomeini in a comedy skit (that was aired on German television). In 2000, a play about the youngest wife of the Prophet Mohammed, titled "Aisha," was cancelled before it ever opened in Rotterdam. Then there was the van Gogh murder and now the cartoons. We are constantly apologizing, and we don’t notice how much abuse we’re taking. Meanwhile, the other side doesn’t give an inch.

There should be solidarity. The cartoons should be displayed everywhere. After all, the Arabs can’t boycott goods from every country. They’re far too dependent on imports. And Scandinavian companies should be compensated for their losses. Freedom of speech should at least be worth that much to us.

The World Trade Organisation ruled on Tuesday that European restrictions on the introduction of genetically-modified foods violated international trade rules, finding there was no scientific justification for Europe’s failure to allow use of new varieties of corn, soybeans and cotton. The ruling was a victory for Washington in a long-running dispute that has pitted US faith in the benefits of the new crops against widespread consumer resistance in Europe. It was immediately welcomed by US farmers and the biotechnology industry, but castigated by environmental and consumer groups who charged the ruling was a blatant example of international trade rules running roughshod over democratic decisions aimed at protecting consumer health and safety.

But Friends of the Earth criticised the ruling as an “inappropriate intrusion into decisions about what food people eat”. Brent Blackwelder, president of the group’s US division, said: “The WTO is unfit to decide what we eat or what farmers grow. It is an undemocratic and secretive institution that has no particular competence in environmental or health and safety matters.

In De Standaard (11 januari) werd gemeld: “De Vlaamse minister-president, Yves Leterme (CD&V), vierde gisteren het islamitische Offerfeest mee bij een Turkse familie in Antwerpen. Daarmee wilde hij zijn respect tonen voor de islamitische gemeenschap.”

Moet ik voor deze bloederige praktijk ‘respect’ opbrengen? Moet ik Leterme navolgen en uit ‘respect’ deelnemen aan zo’n offerfeest? De islamieten menen van wel. Zij dienen klacht in tegen Gaia omdat deze organisatie het gewaagd heeft om (met zwakke stem) te protesteren de rituele slachtingen. Maar kan ik niet evengoed zeggen dat diegene die mij het recht wil ontzeggen om mijn afkeer voor dit schouwspel uit te drukken, gebrek aan respect aan de dag legt tegenover mijn overtuiging? Natuurlijk wel.

Wie eist dat mensen ‘respect’ opbrengen voor elkaars opvattingen, religies, cultuur en levenswijze vraagt iets wat logisch onmogelijk is. Men kan van geen mens verlangen dat hij tegelijk gelooft dat 1+1=2 en 1+1=3. En wie gelooft dat 1+1=2 kan precies daardoor niet het minste authentiek respect opbrengen voor de hierop haaks staande opvatting dat 1+1=3. De eenvoudige waarheid is dat meningen, opvattingen, culturen en religies helemaal niet a priori op enig respect aanspraak kunnen maken. De bewering dat meningen, opvattingen en religies ipso facto recht hebben op ‘respect’ is intern tegenstrijdig. Men kan van niemand authentiek respect eisen voor meningen, opvattingen of gebruiken die als fout of schadelijk worden aanzien, want dat zou betekenen dat men van de betrokkene respect zou eisen voor datgene wat als leugen, dwaling of zonde wordt beschouwd. Zo’n eis is onverenigbaar met de inhoud zelf die door het begrip respect wordt gedekt.

In werkelijkheid dienen de protagonisten van het ‘respect’ (bewust of onbewust) een verborgen agenda. Deze agenda is dubbel en bestaat hierin, dat (a) sommige meningen en overtuigingen selectief zullen kunnen genieten van de eis tot ‘respect’, terwijl andere meningen wegens hun gebrek aan respect voor de eerste meningen zullen worden bestreden, en (b) dat de staat in het algemeen wordt gepromoot als opvoeder van de individuele mens.

The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can’t do that. Politics exacerbates and magnifies differences.

The thing is, for all the complaints about and pointing at the way in which the American work-week has been rising over the decades there’s one uncomfortable little fact (or, depending upon how you look at it, hugely comforting one): At the same time as everyone has been working ever harder for The Man -- and getting nowhere according to the doomsayers -- it’s also true that Americans have been getting ever more leisure time. (...) The actual numbers show that American men work almost exactly the same hours, paid and unpaid together, as German men do; and German women actually 1.5 hours a week more than their sisters across the pond. No, I think you’ll agree, this isn’t the basic story we get told about the European social model. We know that incomes are higher in the US but this is usually explained away as not really being higher income, as it’s leisure that counts. And as we can see, what actually happens is that Americans get both the higher income and as much or more leisure as the Germans. Oh, and the Germans have problems with social exclusion as well as they’re not generating the service jobs that employ the low-skilled.

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

How can we expect immigrants to integrate into western society when they are at the same time being taught that the west is decadent, a den of iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to be despised? Why should they, in the words of the African-American writer James Baldwin, want to integrate into a sinking ship? Why do they all want to immigrate to the west and not Saudi Arabia? They should be taught about the centuries of struggle that resulted in the freedoms that they and everyone else for that matter, cherish, enjoy, and avail themselves of; of the individuals and groups who fought for these freedoms and who are despised and forgotten today; the freedoms that the much of the rest of world envies, admires and tries to emulate." When the Chinese students cried and died for democracy in Tiananmen Square (in 1989) , they brought with them not representations of Confucius or Buddha but a model of the Statue of Liberty." Freedom of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it or it will die from totalitarian attacks. It is also much needed in the Islamic world. By defending our values, we are teaching the Islamic world a valuable lesson, we are helping them by submitting their cherished traditions to Enlightenment values.

Over the past four decades, depending on which of their measures one uses, the amount of time that working-age Americans are devoting to leisure activities has risen by 4-8 hours a week. (For somebody working 40 hours a week, that is equivalent to 5-10 weeks of extra holiday a year.) Nearly every category of American has more spare time: single or married, with or without children, both men and women. The only twist is that less educated (and thus poorer) Americans have done relatively better than more educated ones (see chart). And that is not just because unemployed high-school drop-outs have more free time on their hands. Less educated Americans with jobs—the overstretched middle class of political lore—do very well.

De vrije meningsuiting geeft niet het recht religieuze overtuigingen te beledigen. Dat meldt het Vaticaan zaterdag naar aanleiding van de polemiek over de publicatie van spotprenten van de profeet Mohammed in verscheidene Europese kranten. In een eerste publiek commentaar op de zaak verklaarde Joaquin Navarro-Valls, de woordvoerder van het Vaticaan, dat ,,het samenleven van mensen een klimaat vereist van wederzijds respect om de vrede tussen de mensen en de naties te bevorderen’’. ,,Het recht op vrije meningsuiting omvat niet het recht om de religieuze gevoelens van gelovigen te kwetsen’’, aldus de Vaticaanse woordvoerder.

A boatload of European publishers claim search engines are "building [their business] on the back of kleptomania.”

From the FT: The group of publishers, which includes the International Publishers’ Association, the European Federation of Magazine Publishers and Agence France Presse, is seeking meetings with Charlie McCreevy, the European Union’s internal market commissioner, and Viviane Reding, the commissioner responsible for media. It would not rule out legal action to enforce copyright or “collective action.”....

....Mr O’Reilly likened the initiative to the conflict between the music industry and illegal file-sharing websites and said it was not a sign that publishers had failed to create a competitive online business model of their own.

“I think newspapers have developed very compelling web portals and news channels but the fact here is that we’re dealing with basic theft,” he said.

Finally, the elections that Bush trumpets in all four countries, and in Palestine, which he did not mention in this regard, were rebukes to Bush, not affirmations of him. The Afghans elected warlords, the Iraqis put in the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Muqtada al-Sadr’s people (the ones who killed Cindy Sheehan’s son) along with the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood and some Baathists. The Shiite parties of Hizbullah and Amal have new weight in Lebanon. The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt got 88 seats, an unprecedentedly large number. These elections were Middle Eastern referendums on Bush, and he lost every one hands down. Bush’s main accomplishment in the Middle East since 9/11 has been to strengthen Muslim fundamentalist parties everywhere in the region.

I think that this is the closest Juan has come in some time to actually criticizing Sadr, his "young Shi’ite nationalist." Without getting into the logical holes in Juan’s argument here (are folks like Dostum over in Afghanistan supposed to be Islamists now too?) and the fact that he’s conflating SCIRI, the Sadr movement, Hezbollah, Amal, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood into such a large category that it’s essentially meaningless (isn’t this one of his problems with the use of the term "Islamofascist?"), this actually explains a lot about his attitude towards US policy with regard to the Middle East, even with regard to cases like the empowerment of the Iraqi Shi’ites that he would otherwise support. Juan’s argument that all of the elections in the Middle East were in fact referendums on Bush is so self-evidently absurd that I’m not even going to comment on it except to say that in what context should then view the reelection of Blair, Howard, Koizumi, to say nothing of the defeat of Schroeder and Martin to conservative opponents, should be seen purely as referendums on Bush? I think that’s equally absurd on the face of it and the same goes for elections in the Middle East. That Juan can only view them solely through the lens of his domestic political views and his hatred of Bush only goes to show just how petty and small our renowned expert’s "informed" commentary is.

De Leuvense vzw Movement of Unexpected Pleasure (MUP) organiseert fuiven met muziek waarvoor geen auteursrechten betaald moeten worden. Deze muziek wordt verspreid via netlabels, platenlabels op het internet. De artiesten die hun muziek op zo’n netlabel plaatsen, doen afstand van bepaalde auteursrechten via een zogenaamde Creative Commons-licentie. De fuiforganisatoren ontsnappen zo aan de bijdrage voor Sabam. Op de website www.netlabelism.net van MUP staan hyperlinks naar verschillende sites die onder de Creative Commons-licentie werken, wat gratis en legaal downloaden van muziek mogelijk maakt. De site bevat ook muzieklijsten en een algemene top honderd. Het gaat wel om elektronische muziek zoals house, discopunk, trance, triphop en lounge. En echt bekende namen ontbreken. De eerstvolgende CC-fuif vindt plaats op vrijdag 3 februari in het Musicafé in Leuven.

In a poll conducted for the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes between June and August last year, fully 74% of Chinese citizens said they agreed with the statement "the free enterprise system and free market economy is the best system on which to base the future of the world." The Philippines, at 73%, and the U.S., at 71%, were second and third. The poll, which surveyed 20,791 people in 20 countries, seems like a pretty good snapshot of current sentiment, as such things go. ...Fully half of the French disagreed that capitalism is the best way forward. Italians and Spaniards were more supportive of Adam Smith’s ideals, with 59% and 63%, respectively, voting for free markets.

Nearly three-quarters of Palestinians want the newly elected Hamas movement to drop its call for the destruction of Israel. This came in an opinion poll released by the Ram Allah-based Near East Consulting Institute on Monday. The survey also found that 84% of those surveyed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip want a peace agreement with Israel while 86% want Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian Authority president, to remain in his post. The Islamist movement Hamas, which has been behind most attacks against Israel during a five-year uprising, has come under growing pressure to drop its charter’s call for the destruction of Israel in the wake of its landslide victory last week over the secular Fatah party. While Hamas’s international reputation is based on its campaign of attacks against Israel, its popularity in the West Bank and Gaza stems in part from its providing a safety net for some of the poorest Palestinians. Rather than indicate backing for Hamas’s hard-line tactics, the survey found that 73% of respondents believed that Hamas should "change its position on the elimination of the state of Israel". Not only did an overall 84% support a peace agreement with Israel, but 77% of Hamas voters also wanted a settlement.

Sen. Charles Schumer says that the additional $4 billion in taxes that he wants oil companies to pay "is a pittance" compared to the profits these firms have made since Katrina (Letters, Dec. 7). Let’s make other comparisons, such as $4 billion compared to Uncle Sam’s annual expenditures of $2.2 TRILLION. Schumer’s tax would fund less than 0.2 percent of these outlays. And this: even if oil-industry profits double in 2005 from their 2004 level, they’d equal a mere four percent of federal expenditures. And as for Schumer’s claim that accounting practices keep reported profits "artificially low," don’t forget that nearly 17 percent of federal expenditures are off-budget - a shady accounting practice that artificially shrinks the reported size of the federal budget.

In mijn dorp is er geen nachtwinkel, er is wel een buurtwinkel. De uitbaatster laat ’s nachts haar koopwaar gewoon buiten staan. Wie ’s nachts thuiskomt en nog wat pepers of tomaten voor de spaghettisaus nodig heeft, kan die daar gewoon oppikken, een briefje onder de deur steken en ’s anderdaags gaan betalen. Een dergelijk systeem werkt natuurlijk enkel wanneer iedereen het respecteert en niemand de voorraad plundert. Informele regelingen kunnen bepaalde problemen oplossen.

Onlangs heb ik gelezen dat het marktaandeel van de supermarktjes aan benzinestations toeneemt. Dat heeft onder meer te maken met de (ruimere, IJ) openingsuren.

Wat de evolutie van de buurtwinkels betreft, is mijns inziens de meest recente informatiebron de studie die professor Van Ossel, professor Retail & Trade Marketing aan de Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, uitvoerde naar aanleiding van het vierde Belgian Consumer Goods onderzoek in oktober 2005. De studie is dus heel recent. Belangwekkend is zijn bevinding dat de kleinere buurtwinkels tot 400 vierkante meter in de komende jaren marktaandeel zullen afsnoepen van de hypermarkten. Volgens professor Van Ossel is de verwachte groei van dit winkeltype een duidelijke breuk met het verleden. Na ruim dertig jaar van daling, zowel van het aantal als van het gezamenlijk marktaandeel van deze handelszaken, zou het tij nu dus keren.

The Cuban economy is mostly communist, yet one sector in Cuba is booming. That is music. It is the only area that is allowed to be capitalist and where artists keep what they earn. The music sector in Cuba is also driven by globalisation. Cubans are very poor. They will beg for medicine or a pencil, or just that you give them a dollar, but for the most part the successful Cuban musical groups have earned their income by selling their product overseas or to tourists, or by touring Europe or other parts of the world. Also keep in mind that many styles of Cuban music date from the 1950s, when Cuba was more open and North American tourists financed an amazing network of nightclubs and other musical venues. Cuban music is itself a blend of Spanish, European, African and North American influences. This whole history is another example of how globalisation is giving us increased diversity.

Radio, like television, is an area that is changing rapidly – indeed, we have seen many more changes in radio than television, and more rapid ones. There is a thing called internet radio (...) which has almost more stations than you could discover in a lifetime, and there would be more again, at least in the United States, if we improved our regulatory policy toward internet radio. We insist on an excessively high payment for compulsory licensing of music that is more than many internet radio stations can afford. With some quite simple and feasible legal changes we could get an enormous boom in internet radio, especially for smaller countries, regions, cultures, languages and religions. There is also something in the United States, and now Canada, called satellite radio, which I believe is not yet available in New Zealand or Australia. I have a satellite radio in my car for which I pay US$15.00 a month and get about a hundred channels. Seventy of them are music. They are commercial-free. There is a single channel for bluegrass, a channel for reggae, a channel for African music. It is a whole set of menus that you never got on mainstream radio in the past. I do not care greatly now about AM or FM; I have not listened to them much in a long time. There is also something called podcasting, the musical equivalent of blogs, where people post MP3 files for free and you can listen to them via something like an ipod or similar. This is the next hot thing. So, if there is an area where, not in the last five years or ten years, but in the last two years, even the last six months, there has been an incredible blossoming of diversity of all kinds, it is radio. I think, in the United States, AM and FM are largely obsolete and being superseded. I might add, all of this has happened in the private sector – the public sector, if anything, has been a hindrance – and it is an excellent example of where the world is headed and why we can expect more diversity in the future.

The recent strong economic performance of developing economies and the relatively rapid growth projected for these economies over the medium term owe much to the economic reforms undertaken over the past several years. Improved macroeconomic policies, reflected in lower inflation, trade liberalization (average tariffs have fallen from 30 percent to less than 10 percent since the 1980s), more flexible exchange rate regimes, and lower fiscal deficits have reduced uncertainty and improved the overall investment environment. More microeconomic structural reforms, such as privatization and regulatory reform initiatives, have also played a key role. These factors are expected to contribute to better long-term growth performance as compared with past decades. Consistent with recent improvements in economic performance, per capita incomes in developing countries are projected to grow some 3.5 percent a year, more than twice as fast as the 1.5 percent growth rates recorded during the 1990s. Projected future growth rates are higher than during the 1980s and 1990s in every developing region except East Asia, where they are expected to decline somewhat due to an aging population. (...) (O)ver the next 15 years the share of the population living in extreme poverty is expected to decline in all developing regions. With the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa, all regions are expected to achieve their Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty by 50 percent from its 1990 level. In East Asia, the target has already been achieved. Moreover, based on the current long-term forecast, extreme poverty would be almost eliminated by 2015 in both the East Asia and Pacific and the Europe and Central Asia regions. Overall, the number of people living on $1 a day or less will fall to around 620 million, from 1.2 billion in 1990 and an estimated 1.0 billion in 2002.

In his column in The New York Times , Paul Krugman is one of President George W. Bush’s most outspoken foes. "Heck of a Job, Bushie," the Princeton University economist taunted on Dec. 30, accusing the President of breaking the law and misleading the public. But Krugman is far more generous to the President in his introductory textbook, Economics (Worth Publishers), which came out on Dec. 22. There he praises Bush’s advisers for supporting "aggressive" measures to fight the 2001 recession. Photos contrast a confident Bush with a squinting Herbert Hoover, whose policies worsened the Depression. Far from picking fights with Republican academics, Krugman writes that "media coverage tends to exaggerate the real differences in views among economists."

The homogenization of Paul Krugman may illustrate a basic principle of economics: The customer is always right. Textbooks are chosen by professors of all political stripes. Krugman says in an interview that he and his wife and co-author, Robin Wells, were "extremely careful" to be evenhanded.

Mass-market, event-size movies, CDs, TV shows and books are all getting exterminated, displaced by hundreds or thousands of titles that appeal to ever more narrow audiences. We’re seeing the birth of "the niche blockbuster, if that’s not an oxymoron," says Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Erik Brynjolfsson, who this month will release a paper showing the trend growing stronger.

There will always be a handful of titles that lots of people across many tastes want to watch, but those titles will rarely draw Star Wars-size audiences. More people, in aggregate, want to get all those niche products. A graph of what sells would start with a spike of a few popular titles, then trail off forever like the long tail of a comet. The bulk of the customers and money are in the tail, not the spike — opposite of what used to happen.

President Bush is offering no encouragement to any U.S. automobile companies that might be thinking about turning to the federal government for a financial bailout. "I think it’s very important for the market to function," he said in an interview in the Thursday editions of The Wall Street Journal. He said companies need to manufacture "a product that’s relevant" and that his administration has discussed new fuel technologies with the nation’s top two auto makers. "As these automobile manufacturers compete for market share and use technology to try to get consumers to buy their product, they also will be helping America become less dependent on foreign sources of oil," Bush said. Asked whether he had talked with the chairmen of Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., the president said: "Not about their balance sheets. And I haven’t been asked by any automobile manufacturer about a bailout." Together, the two companies plan to cut about 60,000 jobs over the next few years and there is concern on Wall Street that one or both could wind up seeking bankruptcy protection. That, in turn, has raised the prospect of one or both seeking government assistance as Chrysler did in 1979 when it won $1.5 billion in loan guarantees. "I have been very reluctant," Bush said, cutting off his sentence. "I’m mindful of the past where at one point in time, a predecessor of mine was faced with that same dilemma. I would hope I wouldn’t be asked to make that decision." Bush suggested his sympathies are more with the workers than the corporations, saying his administration would focus on retraining laid-off employees. "This is going to be a very troubling time for workers and their families," Bush said, adding that companies had an obligation to assist employees who are laid off. He also called on GM, Ford and others to be careful about backing away from fully meeting pension obligations. "That’s not how the market works and that’s not corporate responsibility as I see it," he said. "I’m very firm on seeing to it that this government hold people to account."

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force today denounced the United States’ vote against two gay rights organizations’ applications to join the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The United States joined the repressive, anti-gay regimes of Iran, Zimbabwe, China, Cameroon and others (why not mention Cuba? IJ)in voting against even granting a hearing to the application of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) and the Danish Association of Gays and Lesbians (Landsforeningen for Bosser og Lesbiske — LBL). Instead, the two groups’ applications were summarily dismissed without a hearing.

Iraqis and Afghans are among the most optimistic people in the world when it comes to their economic future, a new survey for the BBC suggests. Italians join people in Zimbabwe and DR Congo as the most downcast about their future, according to the poll of 37,500 people in 32 nations. The World Bank gets a clear vote of confidence, with 55% saying it has a positive influence in the world.

It was the English in 1624 who really pioneered patent law with the Statue of Monopolies. Notice that at that time the euphemism of intellectual “property” had not yet been introduced – that it was a monopoly right and not a property right that was being granted was not in question. The Statue of Monopolies defined the basic concept of patents and allowed for the possibility of a fourteen years monopoly provided that: “they be not contrary to the law nor mischievous to the state by raising prices of commodities at home, or hurt of trade, or generally inconvenient.”The Statute of Anne, in 1710, extended, revised and improved the law, while also introducing copyright. Until these formal laws were introduced patents and copyright were either nonexistent, used as a form of governmental extortion through the sale of economic privileges, or were a tool for harassing scientists and philosophers, as Galileo and many other were forced to learn. Insofar as the British system of patent was helpful in inducing the industrial revolution, it is likely that it was the limitation placed by these laws on the arbitrary power of government to block and monopolize innovation that was important.

It would be interesting to discover how far a seriously critical view of the benefits to society of the law of copyright ... would have a chance of being publicly stated in a society in which the channels of expression are so largely controlled by people who have a vested interest in the existing situation.

a slavish application [to intellectual property] of the concept of property as it has been developed for material things has done a great deal to foster the growth of monopoly and . . . here drastic reforms may be required if competition is to be made to work. In the field of industrial patents in particular we shall have seriously to examine whether the award of a monopoly privilege is really the most appropriate and effective form of reward for the kind of risk-bearing which investment in scientific research involves

There can be rewards – and great ones – to the successful competitive innovator. For example, the mail-order business ... The innovators ... were Aaron Montgomery Ward, who opened the first general merchandise establishment in 1872, and Richard Sears ... Sears soon lifted his company to a dominant position by his magnificent merchandising talents, and he obtained a modest fortune, and his partner Rosenwald an immodest one. At no time were there any conventional monopolistic practices, and at all times there were rivals within the industry and other industries making near-perfect substitutes...

Good economic laws and institutions are not designed to make a few lucky people super wealthy, but to make the average consumer better off. Three features of a world without “intellectual property” should be noted: * The number of copies available to consumers is higher and the price is lower, thereby making consumers better off. * The initial innovator still earns a substantial amount of money. * The market functions whether there is one or many innovators – and socially beneficial simultaneous innovation is possible.

Er kan geen enkel verband worden aangetoond tussen het gebruik van een gsm en het risico op een hersentumor. Dat blijkt uit een Britse studie waarvan de resultaten vrijdag verschijnen op de online-editie van het British Medical Journal (BMJ). De studie vond plaats bij 966 Britten tussen achttien en 69 jaar die regelmatig een gsm gebruiken en die tussen 2000 en 2004 aan een glioom -de meest voorkomende hersentumor- leden. De resultaten werden vergeleken met die van 1.700 gezonde gsm-gebruikers. De vorsers konden geen specifiek risico aantonen over een verband met de gemiddelde duur van en het aantal gepleegde telefoontjes, de leeftijd van de gebruiker, of het aantal jaren dat het toestel werd gebruikt, stellen Patricia McKinney van de universiteit van Leeds en haar collega’s die de studie uitvoerden. De resultaten bevestigen de conclusies van eerdere onderzoeken in de Verenigde Staten, Denemarken en Zweden, zeggen de vorsers. De vrijdag gepubliceerde resultaten kaderen in een internationale studie, Interphone genaamd, in dertien landen naar de gevolgen van gsm-gebruik voor de gezondheid.

De Wereldgezondheidsorganisatie heeft recent de wens uitgesproken dat er verder onderzoek zou verricht worden naar het verband tussen het risico op hersenkanker en intensief gsm-gebruik, in het bijzonder voor kinderen.

Speaking at a nuclear base in Brittany (France), Mr Chirac said "The leaders of states who would use terrorist means against us, as well as those who would consider using in one way or another weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would lay themselves open to a firm and adapted response on our part." He added that such a response could be a conventional one, but "It could also be of a different kind." Analysts point out that it is the first time the French leader has linked the possibility of the country’s nuclear response to a terrorist attack, arguing that it means a policy change.

The Czech republic has joined Slovenia among new member states with higher levels of wealth per capita than old member Portugal, according to European Commission statistics. The central European country enjoyed gross income per capita of 73 percent of the EU 25 average last year compared to 71 percent in Portugal, according to the latest estimate by the commission’s statistical wing, Eurostat. The spending power comparison takes into account lower consumer prices in the Czech republic compared to Portugal however, with Portuguese people still carrying more money in their pockets in absolute terms. Slovenia, which was already ahead of Portugal in 2003, is estimated to have reached 81 percent of the EU average last year. The poorest countries were the Baltic states, Poland and Slovakia at 50 to 54 percent, while the wealthiest on over 110 percent were Ireland, the UK, the Nordic countries, Austria, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The results have left Slovenia and the Czech republic chasing Greece, on 83 percent, as the next old member state to overtake, with Slovenia set to draw level with Greece by 2007 and the Czech republic to narrow the gap further in the next two years, the study predicts. Commission figures also show that Slovenians have more mobile phone subscriptions per person than many western European countries, including Germany, France and Spain.

Cohen et al surveyed R&D managers to find out why firms do and do not choose to patent. In the case of product patents they find that reasons that firms choose to patent
* 96% it prevents copying
* 6% it provides a measure of divisional performances
* 28% licensing revenues
* 47% to use in negotiations
* 59% to prevent suits
* 82% to block competitors
* 48% to enhance reputation
The results for processes are similar. The use of patents in negotiations and horse trading among firms is higher (but not overwhelmingly higher) in complex industries than in simple ones. Examining this, we see a total rating of 206% to prevent copying, provide licensing or block competitors, which may be loosely translated as “being a monopolist.” We see a substantial amount, 106%, for patents being used for negotiations or to prevent suits, which may be loosely translated as “wasteful rent-seeking.” This effort is not directed at innovation, but is used as legal and bargaining tool. The economically valuable uses of patents, that is, measuring performances and obtaining licensing revenues, add up to a meager 34% .

Libération has published several recent articles about hundreds of thousands of young Frenchmen decamping to Britain to seek employment. Britain’s relatively flexible labor market (a symptom of the economic liberalism that Libération abhors and that the British government is doing its best to destroy) makes it easier for them to find work in the U.K. than in their native country.

The latest article suggests that racial discrimination in employment in Britain is weaker than it is in France. It tells the stories of well-qualified young French people of African or North African origin who could not find work in France for several years, but on crossing the Channel immediately were able to find responsible positions in accord with their abilities and even to start businesses a little later. They all said that discrimination is less evident in Britain than in France. And, making the point from a slightly different perspective, research in France shows that it is twice as hard for a Frenchman with a Muslim name to find work as for an equivalently qualified Frenchman with a French name.

But are the British paragons of tolerance? I doubt it.

What, then, is the difference? According to Libération, it is that Britain boasts anti-discrimination laws and a bureaucratic apparatus to enforce them: in other words, minorities have it better in Britain than in France because the state—in this respect—is more active. Thus, a bigger state (and more taxes to pay for its expansion) is the answer to France’s problem.

This explanation is exactly wrong. It overlooks entirely the role (admittedly relative and on the decline) of economic freedom in Britain. Where employers must compete for labor, they dare not disregard ability and willingness to work, whatever private prejudices they might harbor. In dirigiste France, by contrast, the young need “piston”—connections with powerful people—to find work: and prejudice can find practical expression where grace and favor allocate employment opportunities.

Where an economy is open, prejudice is no bar to advancement. Where the regulation of a powerful central government grows excessive, the possibilities for social mobility shrink. But this lesson runs against the prejudices of Libération, and of the French intelligentsia generally.

Lobbyist groups, such as the MPAA often point, for example, to the high cost of producing movies as a reason for strong copyright protection. But examination of the balance sheets of movies production companies shows that much of this high cost is due to the cost of paying a few “stars” large amounts of money. Since the opportunity cost of these people is generally quite small – Harrison Ford worked as a carpenter before becoming an actor, and Lars Ulrich as a service station attendant, most of the others were probably waiters and waitresses at some Sunset Strip fashionable hangout – an important effect of increasing copyright protection will simply be to raise the rents earned by these “stars,” and consequently increase the cost of producing movies of a given quality. This is ironic, in light of the MPAA ads that feature marginal workers in the movie industry concerned about losing their jobs due to piracy. In fact, the marginal workers are paid close to their opportunity cost, and so stand to lose little through reduced copyright protection. The big stars that the ads claim will be unaffected stand to lose much more. However, it is hard to think of a good public policy argument for promulgating socially costly monopolies in order to further enrich already very rich individuals.

We have recently learned that the NSA used law enforcement agencies to track members of a pacifist organisation in Baltimore. This is, first of all, an appalling abuse of state power and an unjustified invasion of privacy, uncovered by any definition of "national security" however expansive. It is, no less importantly, a stupid diversion of scarce resources from the real target. It is a certainty that if all the facts were known we would become aware of many more such cases of misconduct and waste.

We are, in essence, being asked to trust the state to know best. What reason do we have for such confidence? The agencies entrusted with our protection have repeatedly been shown, before and after the fall of 2001, to be conspicuous for their incompetence and venality. No serious reform of these institutions has been undertaken or even proposed: Mr George Tenet (whose underlings have generated leaks designed to sabotage the Administration’s own policy of regime-change in Iraq, and whose immense and unconstitutionally secret budget could not finance the infiltration of a group which John Walker Lindh could join with ease) was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

I believe the President when he says that this will be a very long war, and insofar as a mere civilian may say so, I consider myself enlisted in it. But this consideration in itself makes it imperative that we not take panic or emergency measures in the short term, and then permit them to become institutionalised. I need hardly add that wire-tapping is only one of the many areas in which this holds true.

The better the ostensible justification for an infringement upon domestic liberty, the more suspicious one ought to be of it. We are hardly likely to be told that the government would feel less encumbered if it could dispense with the Bill of Rights. But a power or a right, once relinquished to one administration for one reason, will unfailingly be exploited by successor administrations, for quite other reasons. It is therefore of the first importance that we demarcate, clearly and immediately, the areas in which our government may or may not treat us as potential enemies.

Verizon, Comcast, and their ilk have been lobbying Congress to transform the Internet into a two-tiered system. By tagging content, broadband providers would ensure that their own packets (or those from companies paying them protection money) get preferential treatment and reach subscribers faster than second-tier content. This would give companies like Verizon a tremendous advantage as they roll out their own television and VoIP telephone services.

Telco-cable companies have spent billions to lay down broadband pipe and want a return on their investment. They are tired of bandwidth hogs like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft getting a free ride. This was fine when the Internet consisted mostly of e-mail and static Web pages. With the advent of online video, Internet telephony, and IPTV, Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth want content providers to share the cost. Their reasoning: If Google is going to introduce a video service, shouldn’t it have to pay for some of the bandwidth it scarfs down?

But it isn’t just the Googles of the Web that are soaking up bandwidth. According to the U.K.-based technology firm Cachelogic, peer-to-peer traffic accounts for 80 percent of the traffic of so-called last-mile providers, companies like Verizon and Time Warner Cable that take broadband that final mile into your home. All of this demand for video, music, and file-sharing could create bottlenecks for Verizon and Time Warner—the ones who hook up your home to the data grid.

As a result, telco-cable has been lobbying Congress to rewrite the Telecommunications Act of 1996. A draft of the new bill would codify "network neutrality" (which to this point has been voluntary) and forbid network service providers from blocking or otherwise sabotaging content. Usually fierce competitors, these gatekeepers can agree on one thing: They want to strike the network neutrality clause. Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and eBay want to keep it. If telco-cable wins, it will be able to set up separate tiers, forcing Google to pay up or ride in the slow lane.

If the telcos and cable companies get their way, we’ll have a Balkanized Web. Content providers who can afford to pay for premium service will market superior products to consumers with fast connections. Everyone else will make do with second-class companies at second-class speeds.

Ahmadinejad is not stupid. Fanatical yes, but not stupid. We just need to understand the entirety of the "they" he’s referring to. The old "we," or the Old Core, needs the New Core for our shared global economy to continue flourishing. The Old Core may have decided that Iran can’t have the security it seeks with the bomb, but the New Core (India, Russia, China) have decided they need access to Iran (for China and India, it’s energy, for Russia, it’s a market where their marginally competitive exports can find purchase--just like the French more and more). When Ahmadinejad refers to "they," he’s referring to the entire Core, not just the West, but we, in the West (or at least the U.S.) can’t seem to see this playing field for real. The New Core has already chosen Iran for integration. We either get with that program or we split the Core on this issue. Iran is smart enough to see this, especially Ahmadinejad, and that is why he will continue to play us for fools until we see the larger picture.

In the 1960s, when the legal pornographic industry first became widespread in the U.S., publishing costs were high, and the industry was dominated by a few giants, most notably Playboy and Penthouse. However, unlike the “legitimate” industry, these large monopolists were not able to inhibit entry through the manipulation of the legal system, the abuse of copyright law, or through political favoritism. The consequence has been an industry in which entry was frequent, and innovation fairly constant. Still, as long as the main technology for the reproduction and distribution of pornographic materials consisted of glossy magazines and movies circulating through the chain of X-rate movie theaters, the threat of competition and imitation was weak, and the big houses kept their monopoly power intact earning huge profits. All through the 1980s and then, at a much faster pace, the 1990s technologies such as videotapes and the Internet became available and were quickly adopted. Indeed it is arguable that the replication and distribution of pornographic materials was one of the reasons for the early explosive growth of the Internet during the 1994-1999 period. The thousands of Internet sites distributing pornographic materials around the globe are, most of the time, imitators of the main initial producers, most often in violation of copyrights and licensing restrictions. Online pornographers are usually among the first to exploit new technologies — from videostreaming and fee-based subscriptions to pop-up ads and electronic billing. Their bold experimentation has helped make porn one of the most profitable online industries, and their ideas have spread to other “legitimate” companies and became the source of many successful and highly valuable imitations. Notice that if intellectual monopoly were a necessary requisite for sustained innovation, the circumstances we are describing should have brought the porn industry to commercial standstill, halted innovation, and greatly reduced the amount of pornographic materials available to consumers. We are all well aware that exactly the opposite has happened. The consequence of the tremendous reduction in the cost of copying and redistributing visual materials, and the advent of peer-to-peer networks has not brought about any reduction in the quantity of new pornography available to consumers – indeed it seems to have expanded considerably – nor are we aware of complaints about a reduction in quality. There has, however, been an extremely adverse impact on the monopolies that originally dominated the industry – with Penthouse filing for Chapter 11 protection, and Playboy and Hustler dramatically losing profitability and market share. When we wrote this section, during a visit to Hong Kong in March 2004, the local newspapers announced the shutting down of the Asian edition of Penthouse, yet the newsstands in Kow Loon and Hong Kong were bursting with pornographic materials, all from the many competitive imitators of those fading monopolies. If we compare the pornographic movie and entertainment industry to its “legitimate” counterpart, we find an industry that is more innovative, creates new products and adopts new technologies more quickly, and for which the reduction in distribution cost has resulted in more output at lower prices, and a more diverse product. We also find an industry that is in many ways a cottage industry, with many small producers, and no dominant large firms capable of manipulating the market either nation- or world-wide. European intellectuals and politicians obsessively fearing colonization by American movies and music should take a note: strengthening copyright protection, as you are all advocating, may just make you a couple of euros richer and a lot more intellectually colonized. Finally, we find an industry in which “stars,” be they actresses and actors or directors, earn a good living but are far from accumulating the fabled fortunes of the “stars” of its monopolistic counterparts. The evidence shows that porno stars make many more movies and earn between one and two orders of magnitude less, overall, than regular stars. In other words, they work more and make less money. This may seem a “bad” feature of the non-protected industry, but from a social point of view it need not be. Indeed, it is the other side of the fact that more and cheaper porno movies are available. The stars of the porno movie industry are simply a lot closer to earning their “opportunity wage” – economic parlance for what they would be earning, given their skills and the prevailing market conditions, in their best alternative occupation – than are the stars of the “legitimate” movie industry. Organizing markets and industries in such a way that goods and services are provided while factors of production, either labor or capital, earn no more than their opportunity cost, is what a socially desirable policy should aim at.

We are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not We cannot refuse to participate in global markets if we want to prosper. We cannot ignore new political ideas in other counties if we want to innovate. We cannot turn our backs on conflicts and the violation of human rights within other countries if we want still to be secure.

The best news from Iraq this year would certainly be the long New York Times report of Jan. 12 on the murderous strife between local "insurgents" and al-Qaida infiltrators. This was also among the best news from last year. For months, coalition soldiers in Iraq had been telling anyone who would care to listen that they had noticed a new phenomenon: heavy fire that they didn’t have to duck. On analysis, this turned out to be shooting or shelling apparently "incoming" from one "insurgent position" but actually directed at another one.

If all goes even reasonably well, and if a combination of elections and prosperity is enough to draw more mainstream Sunnis into politics and away from Baathist nostalgia, it will have been proved that Bin-Ladenism can be taken on—and openly defeated—in a major Middle Eastern country. And not just defeated but discredited. Humiliated. Is there anyone who does not think that this is a historic prize worth having? Worth fighting for, in fact?

In an important new study, world-renowned economists--including a Nobel Prize winner and a MacArthur "genius"--argue that when demand for a good is inelastic, the cost of making consumption illegal exceeds the gain. Their forthcoming paper in the Journal of Political Economy is a definitive explanation of the economics of illegal goods and a thoughtful explication of the costs of enforcement.

The authors demonstrate how the elasticity of demand is crucial to understanding the effects of punishment on suppliers. Enforcement raises costs for suppliers, who must respond to the risk of imprisonment and other punishments. This cost is passed on to the consumer, which induces lower consumption when demand is relatively elastic. However, in the case of illegal goods like drugs--where demand seems inelastic--higher prices lead not to [TC: much?] less use, but to an increase in total spending.

In the case of drugs, then, the authors argue that excise taxes and persuasive techniques –such as advertising--are far more effective uses of enforcement expenditures.

"This analysis…helps us understand why the War on Drugs has been so difficult to win…why efforts to reduce the supply of drugs leads to violence and greater power to street gangs and drug cartels," conclude the authors. "The answer lies in the basic theory of enforcement developed in this paper."

Prior to the start of Watt’s commercial production in 1776, there were 510 steam engines in the U.K., most using the inefficient Newcomen design. These engines generated about 5,000 horsepower. By 1800, when Watt’s patents expired, there were still only 2,250 steam engines used in the U.K., of which only 449 were the superior Boulton and Watt engines, the rest being old Newcomen engines. The total horsepower of these engines was 35,000 at best. In 1815, fifteen years after the expiration of the Watt patents, it is estimated that nearly 100,000 horsepower was installed in the U.K., while by 1830 the horsepower coming from steam engines reached 160,000. The fuel efficiency of steam engines is not thought to have changed at all during the period of Watt’s patent; while between 1810 and 1835 it is estimated to have increased by a factor of five. After the expiration of the patents in 1800, not only was there an explosion in the production of engines, but steam power finally came into its own as the driving force of the industrial revolution. In the next 30 years steam engines were modified and improved, and such crucial innovations as the steam train, the steamboat and the steam jenny all came into wide usage. The key innovation was the high-pressure steam engine –development of which had been blocked by Watt by strategically using his 1775 patent. Many new improvements to the steam engine, such as those of William Bull, Richard Trevithick, and Arthur Woolf, became available by 1804: although developed earlier these innovations were kept idle until the Boulton and Watt patent expired.

In most histories, James Watt is a heroic inventor, responsible for the beginning of the industrial revolution. The facts above suggest a different interpretation. Watt is one of many clever inventors working to improve steam power in the second half of the eighteenth century. After getting one step ahead of the pack, he remained ahead not by superior innovation, but by superior exploitation of the legal system. The fact that his business partner was a wealthy man with strong connections in Parliament, was not a minor help.

The evidence suggests that Watt’s efforts to use the legal system to inhibit competition set back the industrial revolution by a decade or two. The granting of the 1769 and, especially, of the 1775 patents likely delayed the mass adoption of the steam engine: innovation was stifled until his patents expired; and very few steam engines were built during the period of Watt’s legal monopoly. From the number of innovations that occurred immediately after the expiration of the patent, it appears that Watt’s competitors simply waited until then before releasing their own innovations. Also, we see that Watt’s inventive skills were badly allocated: we find him spending more time engaged in legal action to establish and preserve his monopoly than he did in the actual improvement and production of his engine. From a strictly economic point of view Watt did not need such a long lasting patent – it is estimated that by 1783 – seventeen years before his patent expired – his enterprise broke even; so every dollar that came after was pure gravy.

American and Iraqi officials believe that the conflicts present them with one of the biggest opportunities since the insurgency burst upon Iraq nearly three years ago. They have begun talking with local insurgents, hoping to enlist them to cooperate against Al Qaeda, said Western diplomats, Iraqi officials and an insurgent leader.

It is impossible to say just how far the split extends within the insurgency, which remains a lethal force with a shared goal of driving the Americans out of Iraq. Indeed, the best the Americans can hope for may be a grudging passivity from the Iraqi insurgents when the Americans zero in on Al Qaeda’s forces.

But the split within the insurgency is coinciding with Sunni Arabs’ new desire to participate in Iraq’s political process, and a growing resentment of the militants. Iraqis are increasingly saying that they regard Al Qaeda as a foreign-led force, whose extreme religious goals and desires for sectarian war against Iraq’s Shiite majority override Iraqi tribal and nationalist traditions. (...)

Despite such tensions, the Americans face significant challenges in trying to exploit the split. "It is against my beliefs to put my hand with the Americans," said an Iraqi member of the Islamic Army who uses the nom de guerre Abu Omar.

Still, he said in an interview in a house in Baghdad, he allowed himself a small celebration whenever a member of Al Qaeda fell to an American bullet. "I feel happy when the Americans kill them," he said.

U.S. intelligence and military officials estimate that foreign fighters make up only 5% to 10% of the insurgency, but they say that foreign fighters are responsible for most of the deadliest, most sophisticated terrorist strikes. "We can confirm that there have been Saudi Arabian fighters in Iraq but can’t go into numbers," coalition forces spokeswoman Stacy Simon said. But Saudis play a disproportionately large role, the evidence suggests. The few nongovernmental experts who track the insurgency estimate that 12% to 25% of the foreign fighters are Saudis. One study of foreign fighters in Iraq concluded that of 154 Arab fighters killed in Iraq in the six months ended March 2005, Saudis constituted by far the highest number — 94, or 61% — followed by Syria, with 16. The study by the Israel-based Project for the Research of Islamist Movements also concluded that 23 of 33 suicide bombers killed during that period were Saudis. Reuven Paz, the project’s director and a former senior Israeli counter-terrorism official, said more recent statistics showed virtually identical percentages of Saudi fighters. He said the study was based on a detailed analysis of militant websites, the only information available.

One federal law enforcement official involved in international counter-terrorism efforts said Washington believed Saudi money was, at least indirectly, aiding similar Islamic militant networks in Spain, France, Italy, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Syria and elsewhere.

A new survey in Afghanistan shows overwhelming popular support for U.S. and international troops in the country and huge opposition to Islamic militants linked to the former Taleban regime. A new public opinion survey says most Afghans have a favorable view of U.S.-led forces providing security in the country as well as the fledging democratic government of President Hamid Karzai. Results of the poll were released Wednesday by the private and nonpartisan Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. Mr. Karzai has a 93 percent approval rating and 83 percent of those surveyed think their country is headed in the right direction. And five out of six Afghans view the U.S. military presence as positive.

I don’t say this lightly, or out of any desire to arouse cheap controversy, but there is simply no other way of eliminating the grave threat presented by Iran’s nuclear ambitions. All this talk of UN Security Council referrals and so forth is of no value whatsoever in keeping the Iranians in check - no one’s going to stop buying their oil - which leaves but one option on the table, i.e. an all-out military assault aimed at destroying ever single Iranian nuclear facility. Europeans and anti-war Americans might not like what I’m saying here, but the prospect of Iran being able to fit nuclear warheads on missiles able to reach London is one I cannot complacently sit by and watch being realized: within the next year or two, we are going to have to attack Iran.

It is common to argue that intellectual property in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for the innovation and creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies. In fact intellectual property is not like ordinary property at all, but constitutes a government grant of a costly and dangerous private monopoly over ideas. We show through theory and example that intellectual monopoly is not neccesary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty.

Unions are a bad idea for reasons that the L.A. Times is unlikely to consider, much less put on the front page:

Pushing up wages creates unemployment by making employers less eager to hire. This might unemploy union members, but the more likely victims are the workers who don’t bother entering the industry in the first place because they know they won’t be able to find work. And the latter workers are likely to be especially poor; after all, migrant workers cross the border for work because - bad as conditions are here - they are worse at home.

The way to improve conditions for workers in general, and not just lucky members of successful unions, is to raise worker productivity. Instead of burning up energy fighting with employers, most workers would be better off learning English and acquiring more job skills. Compare the living standards of migrant workers in agriculture versus construction.

In the best-case scenario, unions engineer a transfer from consumers and relatively immobile employers to themselves, with considerable deadweight cost in the process.

In these turbulent times, we need a hero to guide us into the next millennium. As a profession, we must shed the dark past embodied by Dr. Hibbert — a wasteful, paternalistic and politically incorrect physician. Instead, the physician of the future must cut corners to cut costs, accede to the patient’s every whim and always strive to avoid the coroner. All hail Dr. Nick Riviera, the very model of a 21st-century healer.

Everywhere we look it seems that health care is more expensive: prescription drug prices are increasing, costs to visit the doctor are up, the price of health insurance is rising. But look closer, even closer, closer still. Don’t see it yet? Perhaps you should have your eyes corrected at a Lasik vision center.

Laser eye surgery has the highest patient satisfaction ratings of any surgery, it has been performed more than 3 million times in the past decade, it is new, it is high-tech, it has gotten better over time and... laser eye surgery has fallen in price. In 1998 the average price of laser eye surgery was about $2200 per eye. Today the average price is $1350, that’s a decline of 38 percent in nominal terms and slightly more than that after taking into account inflation.

Why the price decline in this market and not others? Could it have something to do with the fact that laser eye surgery is not covered by insurance, not covered by Medicaid or Medicare, and not heavily regulated? Laser eye surgery is one of the few health procedures sold in a free market with price advertising, competition and consumer driven purchases. I’m seeing things more clearly already.

al-Qaeda conceived 9/11 in some large part as a punishment on the US for supporting Ariel Sharon’s iron fist policies toward the Palestinians. Bin Laden had wanted to move the operation up in response to Sharon’s threatening visit to the Temple Mount, and again in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp, which left 4,000 persons homeless

The Jenin operation took place seven months after 9/11

A prominent politician yesterday told the world that he was suffering from a psychological illness. George Galloway claims - according to top political correspondent Davina McCall - that the greatest man he’s ever met is Fidel Castro. Now let’s ponder this. As an MP, Galloway will have met tens of thousands of people: war heroes, fighters of oppression around the world, voluntary workers, teachers, doctors, intellectuals. And, greater than any of these, he claims, is a petty tyrant. Worse, a petty tyrant who seems to have learnt nothing since the early 1960s. What sort of person thinks that greatness consists in oppressing one’s fellow humans, and in imposing one’s ego onto them, rather than in trying to understand the world, or to make small improvements to one’s little platoon?

The CAP is a protection racket Al Capone would look at in admiration and be proud of. Why do Europe’s farmers need protection? Farmers are being paid to look after fields - they are just gardeners. Some are growing stuff through subsidy that we don’t even need - then we are paying more taxes to store the stuff we don’t need and more taxes to destroy the stuff we don’t need. The CAP was responsible for the butter mountains and the wine lakes. These surpluses are also being shipped out to Africa and destroying local markets and economies. It is not giving people a chance to get back on their feet. The CAP should be scrapped and farmers should be open to competition. We’re not a free market. There is no free trade. The CAP is anti-free trade.

The Viktoria Institute in Gothenburg, Sweden, is working on a concept they call PUSH MUSIC, which is software that automatically shares music files with nearby users who have similar tastes. It monitors the listening history of the user, and develops awareness about what kind of new music he might like. The concept envisions Wi-Fi-enabled music players that automatically establish a peer-to-peer connection, enabling people to either "browse" the music collections of others and take a copy of whatever they like, or -- here’s the magic part -- just automatically recieve music the software has selected for you. (You (hear) that? That’s the sound of teeth gnashing and hair ripping coming from RIAA HQ).

I shall give you my choice for the world’s No1. It is Somalia, which has no government at all and where a very free village-based economy is emerging. It is doing so with no foreign aid, for which Somalia may be grateful. Going by a benchmark measure that staging a one-hour African gun battle costs about US$100,000, and taking into account that Somalia no longer has any foreign money to divert to this pastime, it is also a more peaceful country than it might otherwise be.

Few economists expect the Kyoto Accords to attain their goals. With compliance coming only slowly and with three big holdouts — the US, China and India — it seems unlikely to make much difference in overall carbon dioxide increases. Yet all the political pressure is on lessening our fossil fuel burning, in the face of fast-rising demand.

This pits the industrial powers against the legitimate economic aspirations of the developing world — a recipe for conflict.

Those who embrace the reality of global climate change mostly insist that there is only one way out of the greenhouse effect — burn less fossil fuel, or else. Never mind the economic consequences. But the planet itself modulates its atmosphere through several tricks, and we have little considered using most of them. The overall global problem is simple: we capture more heat from the sun than we radiate away. Mostly this is a good thing, else the mean planetary temperature would hover around freezing. But recent human alterations of the atmosphere have resulted in too much of a good thing.

Two methods are getting little attention: sequestering carbon from the air and reflecting sunlight.

Hide the Carbon

There are several schemes to capture carbon dioxide from the air: promote tree growth; trap carbon dioxide from power plants in exhausted gas domes; or let carbon-rich organic waste fall into the deep oceans. Increasing forestation is a good, though rather limited, step. Capturing carbon dioxide from power plants costs about 30% of the plant output, so it’s an economic nonstarter.

That leaves the third way. Imagine you are standing in a ripe Kansas cornfield, staring up into a blue summer sky. A transparent acre-area square around you extends upwards in an air-filled tunnel, soaring all the way to space. That long tunnel holds carbon in the form of invisible gas, carbon dioxide — widely implicated in global climate change. But how much?

Very little, compared with how much we worry about it. The corn standing as high as an elephant’s eye all around you holds four hundred times as much carbon as there is in man-made carbon dioxide — our villain — in the entire column reaching to the top of the atmosphere. (We have added a few hundred parts per million to our air by burning.) Inevitably, we must understand and control the atmosphere, as part of a grand imperative of directing the entire global ecology. Yearly, we manage through agriculture far more carbon than is causing our greenhouse dilemma.

Take advantage of that. The leftover corn cobs and stalks from our fields can be gathered up, floated down the Mississippi, and dropped into the ocean, sequestering it. Below about a kilometer depth, beneath a layer called the thermocline, nothing gets mixed back into the air for a thousand years or more. It’s not a forever solution, but it would buy us and our descendents time to find such answers. And it is inexpensive; cost matters.

The US has large crop residues. It has also ignored the Kyoto Accord, saying it would cost too much. It would, if we relied purely on traditional methods, policing energy use and carbon dioxide emissions. Clinton-era estimates of such costs were around $100 billion a year — a politically unacceptable sum, which led Congress to reject the very notion by a unanimous vote.

But if the US simply used its farm waste to "hide" carbon dioxide from our air, complying with Kyoto’s standard would cost about $10 billion a year, with no change whatsoever in energy use. The whole planet could do the same. Sequestering crop leftovers could offset about a third of the carbon we put into our air.

The carbon dioxide we add to our air will end up in the oceans, anyway, from natural absorption, but not nearly quickly enough to help us.

Reflect Away Sunlight

Hiding carbon from air is only one example of ways the planet has maintained its perhaps precarious equilibrium throughout billions of years. Another is our world’s ability to edit sunlight, by changing cloud cover.

As the oceans warm, water evaporates, forming clouds. These reflect sunlight, reducing the heat below — but just how much depends on cloud thickness, water droplet size, particulate density — a forest of detail.

If our climate starts to vary too much, we could consider deliberately adjusting cloud cover in selected areas, to offset unwanted heating. It is not actually hard to make clouds; volcanoes and fossil fuel burning do it all the time by adding microscopic particles to the air. Cloud cover is a natural mechanism we can augment, and another area where possibility of major change in environmental thinking beckons.

A 1997 US Department of Energy study for Los Angeles showed that planting trees and making blacktop and rooftops lighter colored could significantly cool the city in summer. With minimal costs that get repaid within five years we can reduce summer midday temperatures by several degrees. This would cut air conditioning costs for the residents, simultaneously lowering energy consumption, and lessening the urban heat island effect. Incoming rain clouds would not rise as much above the heat blossom of the city, and so would rain on it less. Instead, clouds would continue inland to drop rain on the rest of Southern California, promoting plant growth. These methods are now under way in Los Angeles, a first experiment.

We can combine this with a cloud-forming strategy. Producing clouds over the tropical oceans is the most effective way to cool the planet on a global scale, since the dark oceans absorb the bulk of the sun’s heat. This we should explore now, in case sudden climate changes force us to act quickly. Yet some environmentalists find all such steps suspect. They smack of engineering, rather than self-discipline. True enough — and that’s what makes such thinking dangerous, for some.

Yet if Kyoto fails to gather momentum, as seems probable to many, what else can we do? Turn ourselves into ineffectual Mommy-cop states, with endless finger-pointing politics, trying to equally regulate both the rich in their SUVs and Chinese peasants who burn coal for warmth? Our present conventional wisdom might be termed The Puritan Solution — Abstain, sinners! — and is making slow, small progress. The Kyoto Accord calls for the industrial nations to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to 7% below the 1990 level, and globally we are farther from this goal every year.

These steps are early measures to help us assume our eventual 21st Century role, as true stewards of the Earth, working alongside Nature. Recently Billy Graham declared that since the Bible made us stewards of the Earth, we have a holy duty to avert climate change. True stewards use the Garden’s own methods.

#1: This year I will be straight about the budget mess. I know that the federal budget is on an unsustainable path. I know that when the baby-boom generation retires and becomes eligible for Social Security and Medicare, all hell is going to break loose. I know that the choices aren’t pretty--either large cuts in promised benefits or taxes vastly higher than anything ever experienced in U.S. history. I am going to admit these facts to the American people, and I am going to say which choice I favor.

#2: This year I will be unequivocal in my support of free trade. I am going to stop bashing the Chinese for offering bargains to American consumers. I am going to ask the Bush administration to revoke the textile quotas so Americans will find it easier to clothe their families. I am going to vote to repeal the antidumping laws, which only protect powerful domestic industries from foreign competition. I am going to admit that unilateral disarmament in the trade wars would make the U.S. a richer nation.

#3: This year I will ask farmers to accept the free market. While I believe the government should provide a safety net for the truly needy, taxpayers shouldn’t have to finance handouts to farmers, many of whom are wealthy. Farmers should meet the market test as much as anyone else. I will vote to repeal all federal subsidies to growers of corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. I will vote to allow unrestricted import of sugar. (See resolution no. 2.) I will tell Americans that eliminating our farm subsidies should not be a "concession" made in trade negotiations but a policy change that we affirmatively embrace.

#4: This year I will admit that there are some good taxes. Everyone hates taxes, but the government needs to fund its operations, and some taxes can actually do some good in the process. I will tell the American people that a higher tax on gasoline is better at encouraging conservation than are heavy-handed CAFE regulations. It would not only encourage people to buy more fuel-efficient cars, but it would encourage them to drive less, such as by living closer to where they work. I will tell people that tolls are a good way to reduce traffic congestion--and with new technologies they are getting easier to collect. I will advocate a carbon tax as the best way to control global warming. Because we may well need to raise more revenue (see resolution no. 1), I’ll always be on the lookout for these good taxes.

#5: This year I will not be tempted to bash the Fed. Ben Bernanke, soon to be the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, will not inherit Alan Greenspan’s halo, and so may be a tempting target. But I will resist temptation. I know that the U.S. has an independent central bank for good reason. I know that sometimes the Fed needs to raise interest rates to fight inflation, even if it risks slowing growth in incomes and employment. I will let Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues do their job. Difficult as it is, I will hold my tongue.

#6: This year I will vote to eliminate the penny. The purpose of the monetary system is to facilitate exchange, but I have to acknowledge that the penny no longer serves that purpose. When people start leaving a monetary unit at the cash register for the next customer, the unit is too small to be useful. I know that some people will be upset when their favorite aphorisms become anachronistic, but a nickel saved is also a nickel earned.

#7: This year I will be modest about what government can do. I know that economic prosperity comes not from government programs but from entrepreneurial inspiration. Adam Smith was right when he said, "Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice." As a government official, I am not going to promise more than I can deliver. I am going to focus my attention on these three goals--peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice--and I am going to trust the creativity of the American people to do the rest.

President Clinton, his security advisor Sandy Berger, and his terrorism advisor Richard Clarke tasked the CIA in Fall 1995 with destroying al-Qaida. We asked the President: what should we do with the people we’ve apprehended? Clinton: that’s your concern. The CIA objected: we aren’t prison guards. We were again told that we should solve the problem somehow. So we developed a procedure, and I was a member of this task force. We concentrated on al-Qaida members who were wanted in their home countries or who had been convicted there in absentia.

Scheuer: That is the case for the entire “extraordinary renditions program”. It strikes me as dishonest of the Europeans to critizes this operation so strongly. Because all the information from the interrogations, everything that that had to do with Spain, with Italy, with Germany, with France, with England, was passed on. And if you were to ask the intelligence agencies of those countries, they would say: the information that we received from the “extraordinary renditions program” of the CIA helped us.

ZEIT: So the Germans were the beneficiaries of your methods?

Scheuer: Of course.

ZEIT: The German Interior Minister has spoken in Parliament of three cases, in which German officials abroad were in the prisons with the German citizens. Would it be an exaggeration to say that the CIA is doing the dirty work for us Germans?

Scheuer: As I said: some criticism strikes me as hypocritical.

But the story in the Boston Globe goes one step further than finding the dark lining in the silver cloud. It pioneers a new insight from statistics using Mark Zandi of Economy.com, one of the regulars in the market for gloom:

Economist Mark Zandi said he sees two classes emerging in Boston and nationally: One earns above the region’s median family income, about $75,000 in the Boston area, and lives in comfort, with job security, stock holdings, and little debt. The other half earns below the median, has far less job security, and worries about credit card debt and student loans.

’’This reinforces the view that the folks who are doing well are doing very well, and the folks who aren’t doing well aren’t doing very well at all," said Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com. ’’The middle class is bifurcating. It’s becoming two classes."

It’s early in 2006 but this may be the best quote of the year, or maybe even the decade for saying something that is true but totally meaningless

Two emerging classes? A bifurcating middle class? One below the median and one above. I hope Mr. Zandi was misquoted. Because as far as I know, there has always been a group below the median and a group above it except in Lake Wobegon. And those groups are pretty evenly weighted. Oh, usually around 50-50. Half above and half below.

If you worry that only 50% of the population earns above the median, you are going to be worried for a long long time.

Biotechnology will be domesticated in the next fifty years as thoroughly as computer technology was in the last fifty years. This means cheap and user-friendly tools and do-it-yourself kits, for gardeners to design their own roses and orchids, and for animal-breeders to design their own lizards and snakes. A new art-form as creative as painting or cinema. It means biotech games for children down to kindergarten age, like computer-games but played with real eggs and seeds instead of with images on a screen. Kids will grow up with an intimate feeling for the organisms that they create. It means an explosion of biodiversity as new ecologies are designed to fit into millions of local niches all over the world. Urban and rural landscapes will become more varied and more fertile. There are two severe and obvious dangers. First, smart kids and malicious grown-ups will find ways to convert biotech tools to the manufacture of lethal microbes. Second, ambitious parents will find ways to apply biotech tools to the genetic modification of their own babies. The great unanswered question is, whether we can regulate domesticated biotechnology so that it can be applied freely to animals and vegetables but not to microbes and humans.

China overtook the United States in 2004 to become the world’s leading exporter of information and communications technology (ICT) goods such as mobile phones, laptop computers and digital cameras, according to OECD data.

China exported USD 180 billion worth of ICT goods in 2004, compared with U.S. exports in the same category valued at USD 149 billion. In 2003, the U.S. led with exports of ICT goods worth USD 137 billion, followed by China with USD 123 billion.

China’s share of total world trade in ICT goods, including both imports and exports, rose to USD 329 billion in 2004, up from USD 234 billion in 2003 and USD 35 billion in 1996. By comparison, the U.S. share of total world trade stood at USD 375 billion in 2004, USD 301 billion in 2003 and USD 230 billion in 1996.

The data show a shift towards more trade between China and other Asian countries, with a corresponding decline in ICT imports to this region from the European Union and the U.S. To manufacture laptops and advanced mobile phones, China previously relied on electronic components, such as computer chips, imported from the EU and U.S. These are now also being increasingly sourced from other Asian countries, including Japan (18% of China’s ICT imports), Chinese Taipei (16%), Korea (13%) and Malaysia (8%).

The increased share of Japan’s exports to China, for example, was mainly in electronic components. China itself is also manufacturing and exporting more electronic components than ever before, with these now forming China’s second largest export item, after computer and related equipment.

China is the single largest exporter of ICT goods to the US, supplying 27% of all US imports of these goods in 2004, up from only 10% in 2000. Its ICT trade surplus with the US stood at USD 34 billion in 2004 and with the European Union at USD 27 billion.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has portrayed himself as a friend of science, going so far as to spearhead a deal to bring an arm of the prestigious Scripps Research Institute to South Florida. But don’t count on him to defend one of the pillars of modern science. Bush said last week he did not think Darwin’s theory of evolution needed to be part of the state’s public school science standards, according to an account in the Miami Herald.

If Bush’s latest acts are left unchallenged, the government will become bolder at spying on whomever it wants and secretly jailing those it deems a threat to national security -- all with no troublesome warrants or messy public trials. In this environment, acts other than terrorism will certainly be put on the subversive activities list, all in the name of protecting our freedom. Why should law-abiding citizens fear these trends? Because the government cannot be trusted. I don’t trust President Bush to honor my rights, nor did I trust President Clinton, who was caught with secret FBI files on his political enemies. It’s not that I’m unpatriotic. The founders of our country did not trust any government -- either that of George III or an uncontrolled democracy. That’s why we have the Bill of Rights to protect American citizens from their own government -- by demanding, for example, that ``Congress shall make no law abridging the right of free speech.’’ Our property is also protected from illegal search and seizure, and we are not to be put in jail without knowing the charges against us or having the right to confront our accusers in a public trial. Secret courts are inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, the defining document of American freedom. What’s the worst thing that Al-Qaida can do to America? We have probably already seen it. Of course, the government can talk about bigger things, like the use of weapons of mass destruction, to justify its use of totalitarian tactics. I would much rather live as a free man under the highly improbable threat of another significant Al-Qaida attack than I would as a serf, spied on by an oppressive government that can jail me secretly, without charges.