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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Friday, April 2, 2004
More on Outsourcing
A good piece on the subject in the Financial Times. Read it while you can. Here's the key graph:
The first mistake of many politicians, argues Matthew Slaughter, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, is to assume that a job created overseas is one not created in the US. "An overseas worker is sometimes a substitute for a US worker but very often they are a complement for a US worker," he says. "Expanding an overseas network frequently means you have to hire more workers in the US too."
This is one of the arguments as well:
Economists also argue that while the job losses caused by offshoring are conspicuous, the benefits are larger. Although the gains are hard to quantify, some analysts are now attempting to do so.
Assuming that companies shift staff overseas partly to save money, economists argue that the effect of offshoring is to lower prices in the US. This raises the purchasing power of US consumers and, on the margin, helps keep interest rates lower. This in turn should lead to higher consumer spending and stronger economic activity, which creates more jobs.
That concept tends to be beyond the sophisticated, deep-thinkers in Democratic politics, though. Ironically, it's one of the few Clinton-era positions that they haven't retained, and one of the few that they should have. Even Al Gore seems to have forgotten much on this score, and is almost unrecognizable from the man who made the case for NAFTA on similar grounds. Today, they and their supporters seem to prefer to demagogue the issue.
I wonder what impact this claim will have. Not sure the leaker has any evidence other than an assertion. So far apparently no one corroborates the claim. So it probably won't become significant unless and until someone else steps forward or she can produce something concrete to document the claim. Interesting timing, too. Anyone remember her mentioning this earlier? I don't, so I’m filing it under “politics” for now.
So I haven't blogged at all about the latest atrocities in Falluja. Note the deliberate use of the word atrocity: The world should be using that term, especially the part of the world that likes to emphasize "international law" but does so selectively. They rarely invoke it over real atrocities, conducted by Third-World mascots. But I won't let myself get distracted by that.
The point here is that, aside for paying respects to the dead (or disrespect as the case may be, if you're a Lefty like Kos), there is little to say. We know what the enemy is trying to provoke here - a reaction, an over-reaction. Either brutality or a route. We mustn't give it to them. Instead, we will simply have to keep buggering on and persevere.
For me, there's really nothing else to say. I could throw out all sorts of ideas about "how to handle Falluja" specifically, since it is obviously a locus of enmity, but they'd be armchair generalship stuff, and either clouded by emotion or seemingly coldly indifferent and detached from what the foe there does to our fellow citizens when they get the chance.
So I’m not going in for either, and if you wonder why so far I’ve ignored this episode, this is my explanation. That doesn’t mean I don’t wish I had something more to say, something so brilliantly insightful that it could turn the whole thing around. But I don’t, so I can only offer sympathy for the dead, and urge perseverance in the face of a despicable foe (though we shouldn’t describe our foreign enemies in such terms, as Madame Albright and other Liberals caution us. We should reserve such terminology to be employed properly, that is at Republicans and conservatives at home. But I digress again).
Check out what Christopher Hitchens has to say about Falluja. I'm really without words here, which is one reason I can't stick to it and kept going off-point in this post.
So last Sunday 60 Minutes had a piece on Charles Pickering that is being discussed here. Check out the comments, check out the transcript.
Credit where credit is due, of course. What does this do to theories such as mine about how much of the media are effectively an arm of the Kerry Campaign at this point? In particular when I slammed 60 Minutes the week before on this very subject?
Well, these things are not binary, they aren't digital. Likewise, none of the people involved see themselves as anything but open minded and fair to both sides. It's just their natural inclinations shade things, and more and more they think fair means getting Republicans out of office, exposing them, &tc. That doesn't mean they believe the Democrats are always right in every instance. Look, I go after Bush when I think he's wrong, jab the Republicans when I think they're wrong, and give kudos to Democrats and Liberals (see the Richard Cohen post yesterday) when I agree with them. But it doesn't change the fact that I believe what I believe and support who I support.
But blogging is by its nature a partisan - or at least ideological and not neutral - endeavor. We write about what we think about and how we react to something. The folks on 60 Minutes present themselves - and believe themselves to be - impartial transmitters of information. But it's not really the case and hasn't been since journalism became a "profession", if not before.
Check out this report in the Telegraph. The key paragraph is somewhat buried:
The EU suppressed a report last year by German academics concluding that Arab gangs were largely responsible for a sudden surge in the anti-Jewish violence, allegedly because the findings were politically unpalatable.
It goes on and gets worse:
While far-Right and traditional "Christian" forms of anti-Semitism still exist, the report homes in on a new form of "anti-Zionist Left" prejudice.
This demonises Israel and subtly leaks into prejudice against all Jews. The study describes Belgium as a country where anti-Semitism has become almost fashionable among the Left-leaning intelligentsia.
But most of the report focuses on Jew-baiting by Muslim youths. It paints an alarming picture of daily life for France's 600,000 Jews, the EU's biggest community.
In schools, Jewish children are beaten with impunity, and teachers dare not talk about the Holocaust for fear of provoking Muslim pupils, it said.
Well, Europe has ratified it. But because it was always intended as a means of hobbling the American economy, they're enthusiasm and confidence in implementing it themselves is rather underwhelming. Don't buy into the hype about how they'd love to implement it, but, gosh, not enough countries (read = U.S.) have signed on so they just can't.
That's what we call Bovine Fecal Matter. Since it involves policy changes at home, if they really thought those changes were a good idea, they would implement them regardless of whether the treaty had passed some threshold or not. Indeed, they would need no treaty. The Kyoto Protocol Fixation only shows that it's not about solving the ostensible problem, it's about imposing things on others.
Read the story, and remember it the next time someone lectures us about Kyoto.
Lest people get the wrong point when it comes to my China Harangues, it's not that I fall for the dubious demagogy over outsourcing aimed at whipping the electorate into a frenzy in ways that, if it were done by a Pat Buchanan type (Right-winger) would be called xenophobic demonization. "Outsourcing" isn't bad for the economy, though to be sure it sucks to lose your job. But as I mentioned in a previous post, you may as well blame surging productivity then. Economically it makes as much sense as blaming outsourcing. This is significant because, while partisan hacks want you to believe the American economy is approaching collapse, it is booming and will keep booming. But, as Kerry says, elect him and he'll put an end to all that.
I also not an advocate for "fair trade", which is always a protectionist boondoggle. The Washington Post had a good article on anti-dumping measures and how they're used in practice. Check out the methodology the Commerce Department uses. Often it's simply protectionist methods to punish efficient production.
Of course, there is such a thing as dumping, and China has yet to implement all of what they agreed to in exchange for membership in the WTO. While it's more than fair to point out and highlight economic demagogy here at home, doing so while ignoring economic (and other) practices of other countries that are also inimical to trade liberalization is to engage in propaganda oneself. I'm happy to hit us for our agricultural subsidies, steel tariffs, and other benighted policies, none of which are a "gift" to foreign countries for all that it allows them to buy, for example, American wheat at a lower price. But our violations of free trade principles, while particularly odious because we're supposed to be a leader in trade liberalization, are objectively minor compared to those of China.
"Right now, the people of Hong Kong are fighting for direct elections...but the Beijing authorities are unable to consent. They even say, 'Wait another 30 years and we'll see'."
Well, as I said in previous posts, if things go well in China, then in a generation they'll be where India is now.
Update: Frank Gaffney has more on the threat we're ignoring now. Is China a threat? Well, to paraphrase a Reagan '84 ad:
There's a dragon in the woods. For some people, the dragon is easy to see. Others don't see it at all. Some people say the dragon is tame. Others say it is vicious and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who is right, isn't it smart to be as strong as the dragon? If there is a dragon.
Interesting observation in this David Brooks piece on the transition from school to the rest of the world:
The people who succeed most spectacularly, on the other hand, often had low grades. They are not prudential. They venture out and thrive where there is no supervision, where there are no preset requirements.
As I wrote in the previous posts, there are serious problems with intelligence and serious questions that can be asked about how it's handled. It is being said that with more sharing of information, 9/11 might have been prevented. This is quite possibly true.
There are also the intelligence failures with respect to Iraq. Israel has completed it's investigation (more here. Mossad is one of the most respected intelligence agencies in the world, but their failures with respect to Iraq and Libya were no different than ours. The report concludes that there was no effort to deliberately mislead anyone. For that reason, little attention is being paid to it here in America, because it doesn't serve the partisan cause of those who want to keep alive the passions of the "Bush Knew! Bush Lied!" crowd whose votes their grasp at power depends upon.
When it came to Iraq, one of the problems was not the failure of agencies to share information, but came precisely from the sharing of information. In this case, it served to reinforce preconceptions rather than as a method of verification. Lets take one example that I heard on a TV news report on the subject but isn't in the online stories I've found. Mossad asked the U.S. about an aspect of Iraq's weapons program, our intelligence agencies then referred the question to Israeli Military Intelligence, and then gave that answer back to Mossad. The Mossad then reported to the government that U.S. intelligence confirmed what Israeli Military Intelligence was saying.
Now, this is a serious problem, the product of the fact that Western intelligence agencies often share information but for a variety of good reasons don't share the source of that information. They're also reluctant to say "we don't know", and prefer to recycle intel from others, presenting it as their own, when they don't have any. Certainly some way to prevent or at least minimize this problem should be looked into. But there is no obvious partisan benefit to be gained from stressing that, so the "loyal opposition" in America doesn't highlight things like this.
Intelligence Failures and the Pan-Western Culture War
The other "two wars" post Joe Katzman links to is one by Wrechard who asks if a war on the Left is necessary as part of the war on Islamo-Fascism.
Wrechard and Laughingwolf describe somewhat different wars but the "war on the left" and the "war over the international order" are one and the same. They are part of what Joe Katzman has previously called the "Pan Western Culture War" (enter that into the search engine at Winds for more).
I am not one who, to flip Clausewitz, sees politics as the continuation of war by other means. But you have to recognize when war is thrust upon you. It is fairly clear and has been for some time that elements of the Left are waging internal intellectual war and prefer to wage that war even at the expense of the war against the external radical Islamic enemy.
Just as with their "anti-war" rhetoric with regard to the external enemy, they assert that we can avoid domestic political war by simply not fighting back. They then list the demands we can submit to if we want peace. As with all who fight wars, including those on our side of the fence, they see peace as the fruits of their victory. Their list of what America and the Western Democracies should do in response to terror attacks upon us is quite often a list of their own aims and goals, sometimes mixed with some of the actual demands the terrorists make. They assert that waging war in response to the war declared against us is counterproductive. They argue the only solution is for us to submit to their demands. This wing of the Left I have called the propaganda arm of the enemy, and I believe that is an accurate if inflamatory description.
It is, however, inaccurate to call them allies of the Islamist Radicals. They are more aptly described as co-belligerents, who share the same enemies and hatreds, but do not share the reasons for that enimity, nor do they share the same vision. Many Democrats and not a few Leftists and Liberals are principally focused on waging scorched earth war against their domestic political opponents on the Right, regardless of the consequences. A great part of the Left does not consist primarily of pacifists. Yes, there are some sincere, principled pacifists among the anti-war Left. But that is not the basis of the movement. The majority are quite willing to rationalize and see as legitimate violence targeted at America and the West (see here for more).
Liberals and Democrats who are not themselves part of this Left are co-belligerents with them because they are reserving their vitriol and antipathy not for our external enemies who wish to see us destroyed, but for their domestic political opponents. Simply listening to the Democratic Candidates and their affiliates throughout the campaign season is instructive. They speak with dispassion and distance when it comes to our external foes. Their passion is only engaged when they speak of their domestic political opponents. There, they use vitriolic language that they would see as out of bounds, too inflamatory, if employed against our external enemies. The only time they are emotionally engaged on subjects related to the war is when they are lashing into how their domestic political opponents are handling it.
A domestic war against the Left is not a war I seek. I am not someone who believes in a one-party State, who thinks that political opponents must be crushed. I have written that I am for sincere Liberalism even though I highly doubt I will ever become a Liberal again myself (anything is possible, but I doubt it). Why? Because we need a robust internal politics, not a one-party echo chamber. I am not, unlike the Left and Liberals, one who invokes "divisive!" as a means of silencing disagreement. That indeed is one of their tactics in the Pan-Western Culture War, to destroy and delegitimize those who do not share their vision. But while we should not seek out war with political opponents, when war is thrust upon us there are two choices, just as when external enemies wage war against us. The one the Left would have us choose, both abroad and at home, is submission. The other choice is to fight back. I believe we must fight, strongly but with regret. Our civilization and all it represents is at stake. Some in the West, the other side of the Pan-Western Culture War, do not value it. But if we do we must fight to preserve and enhance it.
I have to say that I agree with the sentiments Armed Liberal expresses. But his "pox on both your houses" view of what is going on here is, I believe, misplaced. One can't look at the fire and the fire brigade the same way. I think it is a mistake to fault those who are defending themselves from partisan-driven political attacks as much as those making the attacks. While I definitely think the Administration has been reluctant to admit mistakes and be open about them, I can understand why, given how any such admission is responded to by the other side. There are legitimate questions that people can and should ask in how things are being handled, aimed at improving our efforts rather than simply destroying domestic political foes. These are not the ones being asked.
Lets take intelligence failures. There are serious problems with intelligence, both pre-9/11 and post-9/11. There are serious questions that should be asked, and things that need fixing. But those questions are not ones that people on the other side believe would lead to immediate partisan advantage for them and harm to their political opponents. In this, they may be wrong. I for one would have a lot more respect for a candidate who focused on the serious problems and looked at how to fix them, rather on vitriol and speaking in ways that, without explicitly endorsing the conspiracy theories, are designed to excite the "Bush Knew!" and "Bush Lied!" crowd of Left-Liberal activists in a way that a serious treatment of the subject would not.
But that only serves to highlight what is really going on here, and the priorities of one side of the political spectrum. Those priorities are not victory in the war and the wellbeing of this nation. They are positioning themselves so that they benefit politically when bad things happen to us, and their priority is not victory in the external war, but in the domestic war so that they can gain power. What will they do with that power when they have it? They are simultaneously trying to assert that nothing would have changed if they were in office post-9/11 and asserting that we are handling it the wrong way, that it should be seen as a law enforcement and diplomatic problem rather than, well, a war. They do not like that word, when it comes to the external foes who have declared war against us. They see it in terms of political advantage for themselves, not in terms of security for Americans. They use rhetorical weapons to try and delegitimize and silence any disagreement with them on this score, passive-aggressive arguments about "questioning their patriotism", "dividing Americans", and "changing the subject" (all subjects are determined by them and can only be discussed on their terms. Period). Well, yes, I'm questioning their patriotism and the seriousness with which they are taking the war. The war against our external opponents, that is. I know how seriously they're taking the domestic war. That, they take with deadly seriousness. Chillingly so.
I wish we were not so polarized, especially during a time of war, but it's not really something that we have much control over given the determination of the other side of the Pan-Western Culture War and, as Kenny Rogers put it, "sometimes you gotta fight when you're a man".
If you're a regular reader of Winds of Change you know that Joe Katzman is a big fan of American Baseball. Me? I like the Ithklur Leagues. The rules are more like Calvinball, but with less ranting when things don't go the right way.
Joe put up a new baseball-themed blogroll and I've been honored with the position of DH (R). Also, as usual Winds has some good stuff up - including two posts on the War(s) that are being waged. We've discussed similar themes here but the posts there offer a different perspective. The latest, quoting from Laughingwolf, that reminds me I want to comment on this article and Neocons & Trotsky generally. I'll do that later today.
A great and true friend of America, Alistair Cooke has died, shortly after hanging up the mike on "Letter from America". He was one of the best at explaining to a foreign audience just what made America what it is. He will be missed.
May the Lord keep his soul and comfort his family and friends.
critics of the pro-democracy policy -- in Europe, in Washington and inside the Bush administration itself -- will again proclaim that a neocon attempt to "impose" democracy on the Middle East "from the outside" has foundered. That this resistance to elected government comes from a group of kings, emirs and presidents-for-life doesn't seem to trouble the critics. The assumption seems to be that the autocrats' objections are those of their own people.
Yet, they are not. The most underreported and encouraging story in the Middle East in the past year has been the emergence in public of homegrown civic movements demanding political change. Two years ago they were nonexistent or in jail. Now they are out in the open even in the most politically backward places in the region
What's he talking about? And what happened between two years ago and now that might have affected things?
These people weren't created by George W. Bush. They are the homegrown answer to a decadent political order, and they ride a powerful historical current. But they will tell you frankly: The new U.S. democratization policy, far from being an unwanted imposition, has given them a voice, an audience and at least a partial shield against repression -- three things they didn't have one year ago.
Just an example, as it was in Eastern Europe, of how what we say and the stances we take do matter. Note that the same people who raised the same objections then are doing the same now. Some people learn nothing from history. Check out the whole piece.
Well, the UN is at least looking into their Oil-for-Blood program's expropriation of funds, and three thousand staffers are being probed.
Can the UN investigate itself? How independent is the independent investigation Annan is calling for going to be? Tune in next week as. . .live video of staffers being probed is posted to the internet. *That's sick! Shouldn't Porphy take this seriously?*
Yes, actually it's a good sign that Annan isn't just brushing this off, and too be fair there have been Administrations in Washington - both Republican and Democrat - who have resisted calling for an independent investigation where it's called for longer than the Annan is doing here. So it may be appropriate to give the UN its due here. We'll see how things unfold.
Not that other's haven't before. But what's noteworthy about this one is that it's written by a Leftist, but one of the (too few) ones who has some respect for factual accuracy.
Who is trying to use 9/11 to partisan political advantage? The answer's obvious to everyone except the partisans who control the mainsteam press and duckspeak Democratic talking points.
In case you missed it, it's the Democrats, of course:
The national commission looking into the September 11 terrorist attacks may see itself as nonpartisan, but Democratic officials and strategists say the panel's report, due out just before their party's July convention, can only hurt President Bush and help John Kerry.
"The report will be a perfect introduction to the Democratic convention on July 26," said Bob Mulholland, the California Democratic Party spokesman who says the commission's inquiry will be a political bonanza for the Democrats and Mr. Kerry's presidential campaign.
William Safire aptly says it's the biggest financial rip-off in history. I said it was run with a Mafia-style skim, but the Mafia are small-fry by comparison, small-thinking in their crimes. I think it was Stalin, or anyhow attributed to Stalin, that if your crimes are big enough they'll be overlooked. If you're the UN and the French holding up the banner of the "international community", you'll even win praise for your crimes - especially from the Left.
As Glenn Reynolds puts it, "Funny, isn't it, that while people were accusing the United States of starving Iraqi children, it was actually the U.N. that was doing it? "Funny," that is, in the sense that the crimes and hypocrisies of the international political classes are peculiarly unnoted, not funny in the sense of actually amusing."
So last Friday I decided to take the rest of the "Dick Clarke's Rockin' Ides-o-March Hit Week" off. Sure, he was a little late for the Ides, but you gotta get your shiv in when you can, right?
Elsewhere, Sarah has some observations on the better educated. If that's what they're getting out of their education, maybe it's not better, just more. Lots of what people are taught, and not just or even primarily here in the U.S.A., makes them understand the world less well rather than better. I'm not one of those anti-education sorts who believes that there is no value in a good education or being a knowledgeable citizen. But the emphasis is on good education, not manipulative disinformation that leaves you less well-informed about reality than if you hadn't had it at all. At home, it's pretty obvious by now that if you spend this election campaign paying exacting attention to the mainstream press, but only the mainstream press, you're going to end up less well informed than if you didn't pay any attention at all.
Allen has some observations about China worth reading. Just one comment, about China's new respect for property rights. If they were doing that, then the story I linked to in the my so-called market economy post wouldn't exist. Further regarding China, M. Simon wrote, via e-mail:
What happens in China will depend on per capita GDP.
When it passes $4K to $5K they will get democracy no matter what the
oligarchs want.
I believe that is the real lesson of history.
Actually, the real lesson of history, and of the Porphy's Paranoia post, is how you get there from here. How long does it take and what happens along the way? No, I don't believe China's oligarchy will remain in control forever. But how things unfold and the episodes along the way are not necessarily smooth, easy, and bloodless both at home and abroad.
I love the letter near the end, ripping into the French but good, and written by someone named "Jean-Pierre". Only in America.
As for Dick Clarke, if you want good coverage of that you won't find it here. Others are doing a lot better on blogging about that than I'm interested in doing.
Update: Here's a useful reminder that, no, the response to 9/11 wasn't guaranteed and wouldn't have been the same under any Administration, and no, our pre-9/11 methods weren't inevitable either:
Would a less stubborn commander in chief have pursued the risky war plan that ultimately toppled the Taliban and put al Qaeda on the run? The record of the '90s suggests otherwise. A White House that cut and ran after the death of 18 soldiers probably would not have had the stomach for the possible casualties. A White House that could not prevail over military objections to using ground troops in Kosovo would have had a hard time overcoming institutional military objections. A White House that ordered retaliation in the form of a night-time strike on an empty intelligence building would not have backed Operation Enduring Freedom.
Before Sept. 11, Clinton defenders say, we did not have irrefutable proof of the casus belli of al Qaeda-Taliban complicity, there was no international consensus on the need to invade Afghanistan, and it would have been politically risky for the United States to act in the face of military objections. The same could be said about the invasion of Iraq after Sept. 11. In other words, determined commanders in chief have the mind-set and the resolve to act in spite of the political climate and military resistance.
It's hard to remember now amid all the revisionism all the people who were, during the Afghanistan campaign, calling it a quagmire and suggesting that military action was a mistake, precipitous. Now they're all claiming anyone would have done it, including themselves, including Clinton, including Gore. Well, it's instructive to remember history - including recent history - before they slip it down the memory hole.
