Tsunami Warning

I haven’t had much time to keep up with the blog lately as I’ve been working on a new book, Hitchhiker’s Guide to Enlightenment, but I had to take a little time off to comment on the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan.

It’s ironic that Japan, the country that’s suffered most from radiation has relied so heavily - 30% of its electricity - on nuclear power. It is also, of all countries, most subject to strong earthquakes. Something like 20% of all earthquakes over magnitude 6 on the Richter scale happen in Japan. As you’d expect, with that background, Japan is, relatively speaking, very well prepared for quakes. Forty story buildings in Tokyo swayed like palm trees but didn’t crumble.

However, at 9.0 that was the 4th strongest quake recorded since 1900, and the strongest in Japan in 300 years. It moved the entire country 4 meters to the east. That was not something you’d ever expect, at least not in your lifetime, so not something Japanese officials cared to plan for. But they do happen and with the consequences of nuclear meltdown so grave, even a 1000 year event should’ve been taken into account.

Moreover, with the very word tsunami derived from the Japanese, that’s also something they should’ve considered. There again, this wave was so outsized nobody there would’ve believed it could’ve ever happened. Nevertheless, when dealing with nuclear meltdown, the worst case scenario has to be part of the calculation. It’s not like when a windmill crashes and all you have to do is recycle the metal.

The government had been saying that radiation releases have been small and not dangerous, but now they are admitting spikes of unhealthy levels of radiation. One slick move made by the Japanese government was to lower standards for allowable radiation exposure when workers at the plant were getting over the maximum limit, otherwise they would’ve had to stop working. No big deal unless you’re one of the workers who might die from that exposure. More recently, they announced levels of radiation in food produced in the general area that were over allowable limits, but then said it wasn’t dangerous. Then why have a limit if there’s no harm in going over it? Some people feel there is no safe limit, that any amount is harmful.

The conventional wisdom has it that there was little radiation released at Three Mile Island and nobody died from it, in spite of the fact that cancers in the area spiked for a whole generation. It boggles the mind how the industry and their government enablers either believe their own lies or don’t care as long as there are profits to be made. After all, they have to breathe the same contaminated air as everyone.

Moreover, the industry, aligned with western governments is pushing nukes all over the world. Turkey, China, Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, amongst several other countries, are all planning on developing nukes, so further meltdowns are inevitable. Take India for instance, it’s a great country with a lot going for it, but they haven’t been able to figure out how to provide toilets for more than half their population so those people just shit around, even in the big cities, so how the hell could they be trusted to safely operate a nuke?

Fortunately, this will force a rethink of nuclear power plans around the world, though many countries are certain to go ahead with them anyway. Not one single nuke would exist in the world today without government subsidies and exemption from full liability insurance in case of an accident. Not one single bank or investor in the entire world will finance a nuclear power plant without 100% guarantees. They take 6 to 10 years to build and cost a fantasic amount of money and now their power is more expensive than wind power. Still, many countries will continue to build them.

Meanwhile, four different units in the Fukashima complex have experienced serious explosions. The great irony is that the problem stemmed from the breakdown of the conventional pumping systems. The tsunami wiped out the electricity used to operate the pumps as well as the backup diesel generators. Now they are dumping in sea water. These are Hail Mary passes, acts of desperation, last ditch attempts to avoid meltdowns because once the containment vessel is covered in sea water it’s toast as a power facility. Billions of dollars down the drain and the country is experiencing rolling black outs because they now have a shortage of power.

Having four reactors out of control at the same time also seriously complicates matters because it’s hard to work on any one of them with the others so close by spewing their nasty stuff all around you. Moreover, the greatest danger comes not from the reactor cores themselves but the spent fuel rods. They may be spent for the purposes of use in the reactor, but they still contain a lot of radioactivity and generate a lot of heat and require water to be constantly circulating to keep them cool. And further, the spent fuel rods are not enclosed in thick steel containment vessels as the reactor core is and thus in case of overheating will spread their radiation very easily.

There area around those plants will become a permanent exclusion zone. Without protective clothing, nobody will be able to safely go near those plants as far in the future as one can imagine.

There’s been a feeling on the part of climate scientists for several years that global warming could have an impact on earthquake activity. If you remove heavy land ice in places thus lightening up those areas, while adding water to the oceans making them heavier, that may well increase frequency and intensity of quakes. I’m also convinced that withdrawing vast amounts of fossil fuels and water from the earth’s crust has an impact. Finally, the latest natural gas extraction technology – hydraulic fracturing – has shown to be exacerbating earthquake tendencies. The idea is to break up layers of shale to get the gas out. If you take a strong solid shale formation and shatter it into a lot of pieces it has to be destabilizing.

So it can only get worse. The world should prepare, however much it’s possible, for a wave of 100 year, 500 year, 1000 year natural events. And tough luck if you gamble on nuclear power and lose.

Revolution is in the Air

Revolution is in the Air

Nobody would’ve believed just a couple months ago that protests demanding freedom and democracy would erupt across the Middle East, and that two long time dictators would be driven out of power with more to come. As it happens both were aided in their tyranny and kleptocracy by US approval and assistance but it isn’t just America’s long time ‘friends’ and promoters of ‘stability’ who are feeling the heat.

Changes in Tunisia and Egypt have inspired Libya’s people to try to end their 42-year-long nightmare with Gaddafi and Iran’s theocratic rulers are also facing demands for reform, the institution of fundamental human rights we all purport to believe in. The same freedoms America doesn’t mention much when the despised tyrant is our friend and is willing to do our bidding. Now that the people of Bahrain are clamoring for democracy you have the amazing spectacle of uprising in one of the richest countries in the area. So consider Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, in addition to Egypt and Tunisia, the two who are already down, and you have rich and poor, secular and theocratic, Arab and non-Arab, almost the entire Middle East in flux.

Moreover there should be no doubt that the people of Iraq would also be deposing Saddam if Bush and Blair hadn’t jumped the gun. Instead of the few hundred Saddam would’ve killed trying to maintain power, Western action to stop the threat of non-existent WMD’s cost a million Iraqi lives and displaced another four million. To be fair, one should also take into account the number, probably in the thousands, of Iraqis who would’ve suffered in one way or another over the eight years since Saddam was ousted, but still, that doesn’t compare much to the million who died, or maybe even the numbers who are still dying nearly every day from insurgent attacks and suicide bombers.

Just two months ago the conventional wisdom had it that the Arabs weren’t ready for democracy, or interested in electing their leaders; that they were better off with autocratic rulers. Israel could also tout itself as the only democracy in the area, though that’s not really true since Lebanon is governed by elected leaders and the Palestinians held free and fair elections in 2006. The reason why the Palestinians don’t have a legitimate democratic leadership now is that Hamas, the party they chose back in 2006 by a wide margin, didn’t meet with the approval of the US or Israel, thus began the purposeful economic and political squeezing and strangulating of the Palestinian people.

Moreover, the word democracy can only be applied very loosely to what takes place in Israel. In the first place, while Arabs make up 20% of Israel’s population they hold only 5% of the seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. That’s not to say democracies have to be perfect, as anomalies are frequent. The US Senate in particular is one of the most glaring examples of inequality since a senator from California represents 70 times more people than one from Wyoming. But at least in the US there are some checks and balances. There are also countries like Malaysia where one group, the indigenous Malays, receive a lot of benefits from the state which the Chinese and Indians, though they they’ve lived in the country for more than a century and make up 40% of the population, don’t receive, but that’s not a true democracy, and neither is Israel’s. True democracy absolutely requires that all citizens have equal citizenship rights. It’s not possible for a democracy to have second class citizens as the Arabs are in Israel.

It is not possible, as far as I’m concerned, for any country based on a single religion or race to be a true democracy. America’s founding fathers understood that more than two centuries ago. They put an impenetrable (at least in theory) wall of separation between church and state and placed an absolute prohibition of a religious test for leadership or citizenship. There can be no exceptions: either all human beings are entitled to the same rights or they are not; there’s no such thing as a part democracy or sort of democracy or a democracy for one group while others are discriminated against or subjugated.

Meanwhile in the midst of clamor throughout the Middle East for freedom and democracy, the US once again comes down on the wrong side of history in vetoing a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for continued settlement building in the West Bank. The resolution was sponsored by 130 countries; the Council vote was 14-1 against Israel. America’s UN rep said we too condemn settlement construction, we just don’t think this is the place to bring it up. Bullshit. Pure cowardice. Once again a light shining on America’s hypocrisy. We believe in all that human rights and stuff… but only when it suits us politically. As long as we are beholden to and afraid of Jewish donors and the right wing Jewish lobby, then humanity be damned.

What a terrible message to send to all those millions on the streets, all those people putting their lives on the line for freedom to say justice for Palestinians is not important, that protecting Israel from censure for acts that arrogantly flout international law and norms and that are almost universally disdained if not despised around the world is necessary and correct in a craven political calculation even if it’s not politically correct. The US used intense pressure to try to stop the Palestinians from bringing the measure up before the Security Council because Obama didn’t want to be shamed and embarrassed by vetoing it, but at this point the Palestinians have nothing to lose. Every day they see their land being usurped and colonized and their opportunity for a viable state diminished.

It took a long time for Apartheid to be vanquished but it had to end because it was fundamentally unfair, an affront to humanity. Israel is in the process of making a two state solution impossible so its Jews will eventually wind up with a single state they will have to share with the Arabs. It won’t come soon or easy, but there is becoming no other option. Apartheid was brought down by world pressure in the form of sanctions, boycotts and divestment. The same will happen to Israel.

On another topic, I have to bring up the case of Raymond Davis the American ‘diplomat’ who killed two ‘thieves’ in Pakistan and is being held in that country on a murder charge in spite of America insisting he has diplomatic immunity and wide ranging threats if he isn’t released into America’s custody.

In the first place, it is widely known outside America that the two ‘thieves’ were Pakistani intelligence agents who were trailing him. Also, in one account I read he shot them in the back so hardly self-defense. He had lots of spy devices on his person when arrested including a GPS that was used to designate targets for drone attacks. Two days before the incident the US embassy sent Pakistan a list of employees for the record, something they are required to do by law. Davis’ name wasn’t on the list. The day after the incident, the embassy sent Pakistan a revised list with his name on it. So hardly eligible for diplomatic immunity. In fact, he’s a security contractor. Besides, there is no immunity for serious crimes; diplomats don’t get away with murder.

To bring a personal threat from Obama demanding his release into US custody means the US is deathly afraid of what Pakistan will learn from him. So great fun as far as I’m concerned.

Palestine Papers and Arab Revolutions

The latest revelations to come from Wikileaks involve secret negotiations in the Middle East peace process. Two points in particular were revealed.


The first has to do with a breathtaking and unconscionable betrayal of the Palestinian cause by the leaders of the PLO who are in control in the West Bank. They just about gave away the farm in a futile effort to please and placate the Israelis. They offered to give up the right of return of Palestinian refugees. The right of return is enshrined in international law. Refugees must always have the right to return to their former homes.


They agreed to accept nearly all of the illegal Jewish settlements in Jerusalem. All settlements are illegal in international law. It would be very hard to have their capital in East Jerusalem if it was surrounded by Jewish settlements.


They collaborated with the Israeli secret police in the murder of their own citizens who happened to be their political opponents. The idea, I guess, being that if Israel feels more secure it’d be more likely to agree to an independent Palestinian state.


None of those concessions had the slightest impact on Israeli intransigence. Thus the other half of the revelations gave lie to the incessantly repeated Israeli mantra that they have no partner for peace; that they really want peace but the Palestinians are not interested. The Papers show that no matter how far the Palestinians went it wasn’t far enough for Israel. The reason is simple: Israel cannot agree to a viable Palestinian state because they’ve populated the West Bank with hundreds of thousands of fanatic fundamentalist Jews who will fiercely and violently object to being removed. One has only to look back at what happened in Gaza when Sharon removed the settlers from there. Though Gaza has no significance in Jewish history the 8000 Jews living there acted like their hearts were being ripped out and fed to swine. There were 8000 Jews living on 40% of Gaza, 1.5 million Arabs on 60%; for most Israeli Jews it was a perfectly reasonable and fair division of land.


Just in the last 20 years Israel has built homes in occupied Palestine for nearly 400,000 Jews. Forty percent are economic settlers; they are there because Israel subsidizes the cost of settlement housing to encourage Jews to move there. Why would they purposely want to encourage Jews to settle on stolen land? That construction has taken place under so-called left wing governments as well as right wing. They’ve spent billions of dollars colonizing Judea and Sumeria, Israel’s name for the West Bank, how could they walk away now?


This is all happening because 3000 years ago God said it belonged to the Jews. Presumably, He also implied that in securing the land for Jews it didn’t matter how mean, nasty or ruthless they had to be or how many other non-chosen people had die or have their lives ruined or how far they had to veer from basic human standards of justice or fairness. God must also have stated somewhere in the Old Testament, though I’ve never come across the actual passages, that they could set aside any thought of love, compassion or righteousness in the pursuit of their amassing of real estate.


As far as I can tell what they want Palestinians to accept is either to move to Jordan or some other country, maybe someplace in South America as Secretary of State Clinton suggested in the leaked papers, or to allow themselves to be herded into three small Bantustans in the West Bank where they have no international borders and so can ever remain under the thumb of Israel, not to mention provide a cheap labor source for the jobs Jews don’t want to do. They would effectively be third class citizens of Israel. The 1.2 million Arabs who live in Israel proper are, to all intents and purposes, second class citizens. They are not even equivalent to blacks living under segregation in the American south since in segregation there was at least the pretense of ‘separate but equal’ treatment. I’ve already detailed the institutionalized discrimination of Arab citizens of Israel so I won’t bore you with more repetition.


Meanwhile, Israel exonerated itself in the killing of nine Turks, including one who had dual Turkish/American citizenship, of any wrongdoing in the raid on the Gaza aid flotilla last year. Of course it was a totally impartial investigation. No need for an international commission, they would always be hopelessly biased against Israel. The commandos who participated in the raid were not allowed to testify, but that’s not important since we all know they have the utmost respect for the lives of all people, even the non-chosen.


Meanwhile, America’s best friend and bulwark of stability in the Arab world, Mubarak of Egypt, who’s become adept at Bush-type elections over the past 30 years he’s been in power, is having a few problems inspired by the revolution in nearby Tunisia. It seems in spite of his consistently winning elections by wide margins, the people at large actually despise him. But he’s America’s friend, so what’s a few stolen elections between allies?


A week after the start of protests it looks like Mubarak’s end is certain. The Egyptian army has said it won’t fire on protesters, so there’s nothing to stop the anti-government growth. The Tunisians called their uprising the Jasmine Revolution but a more apt term would be Facebook Revolution because it’s the young, secular and world-minded who made it happen. Same in Egypt. While it’s true that Islamicists will gain power in true democracies in those countries, the major Islamic parties have stated clearly that theirs is a moderate way on the order of Turkey, where a religious party rules but the state remains staunchly secular and democratic.


Protests have also spread to Yemen, Sudan, Algeria and Jordan so we may be seeing a 1989 Berlin Wall movement. Amazing, fantastic, heartening; history in the making.


The biggest loser in these changes will be Israel. Netanyahu has already raised the dreaded specter of Islamic terrorists taking over Egypt and that the world therefore should get behind Mubarak. They are already talking about possible war with Egypt, but the reality is far more mundane. The first thing that would happen in a democratic Egypt is that they would no longer collaborate with Israel in the strangulation of Gaza. There probably aren’t a handful of Egyptians outside of Mubarak’s ruling clique who support that policy. Just the opposite, they’d probably open the border wide so Gazans could start to rebuild their shattered infrastructure and live like human beings again. They wouldn’t start a war with Israel but would no longer be the greatest of friends either. One more plank in the international isolation of Israel. In the past few weeks several South American countries have recognized Palestine as an independent state in defiance of Israeli wailing and gnashing of teeth.


Once again the US has been on the wrong side of history, supporting hated dictatorships for simple craven political purposes. The US Coddles friendly dictatorships, castigates enemies for not being democratic. Hypocrisy at its best.


One last thought on the wrong side of history front. It looks like the Haitian government will let Jean-Bertrand Aristede back into the country. He was elected by landslides twice, deposed and exiled by US backed coups twice. His party wasn’t allowed to stand in recent elections but he would have won in a landslide if it had. There may be hope for Haiti after all.

Polyglot Nation – An Overview of Cambodia Today

The Cambodian people run the gamut of skin pigmentations from almost lily white to nearly black as African, but in contrast to America where people are hyphenated as African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, etc., here they are all Khmer: there’s never a hint of differentiation. Closer to home, in neighboring Thailand, people of Chinese ethnic background, even those who are only half ethnically Chinese proudly refer to themselves as Chinese, whereas in Cambodia, if the response of an older Chinese-Khmer woman I know is a valid indicator, ethnically Chinese Khmer, when asked if they are Chinese, say no, I’m Khmer.

They also cover a wide variety of facial types. First there’s the round faced, broad nosed, medium dark indigenous Malay people, then the very dark, beak-nosed Indians who started migrating here more than a millennium ago, then the light skinned, slanty eyed Chinese who’ve come here consistently over the centuries. Those three basic racial types have mixed very easily since the first migrations so now most people reflect combinations of types. You see narrow eyes on round Malay faces, long Indian noses on light skinned faces and it’s still possible to see quite a few Khmers who look totally Indian or Malay or Chinese and that’s not referring to recent migrants.

That racial melding hasn’t stopped the general population from looking down on dark skin. They all want to be white which is undoubtedly reinforced by everyone who appears in Cambodian television having almost white skin. A lot of the women use all kinds of concoctions, some clearly toxic, to whiten their skin. The problem is it often makes them look pale and sickly, almost ghostly, as well as a little lighter in complexion.

More recently were the European colonizers who added their genes over the last century to the point where, for instance, you can see dark skinned people with green eyes. Finally, today’s immigrants are now mixing with the Khmer people who are coming at least partly as a result of one of the world’s most open immigration policies. The majority of my expat friends have mixed children.

Anybody who wants to live in Cambodia is welcome, though I have heard that immigration officers sometimes try to extort large sums of money from Africans in the visa process. Officially, anyone in the world who thinks they can make it here is welcome to try, there are no restrictions. Moreover, there are no onerous requirements that you leave the country periodically to renew your visa, you can renew it indefinitely within the country. As a result Cambodia has a very diverse expat community that’s becoming integrated into the larger society. In a sense, this may compensate a bit for the loss of so much of the country’s intellectual community in the Khmer Rouge era: people who wore glasses, for instance, were targeted as enemies of the state.

Also targeted at the time as potentially disloyal were the country’s Cham people who are Muslims. While Cambodia is overwhelmingly Buddhist, other religions are tolerated with very few instances of discrimination or communal violence. As opposed to the situation in most other neighboring countries in which many Muslims have been radicalized and/or are participating in violent insurrections, they are completely at peace here. I’ve never caught a whiff of anger or dissent on the part of the country’s Muslims towards the government or any public action to suppress them. People in leadership positions sometimes complain about Christian evangelizing - Seventh Day Adventists are nearly everywhere, as you’ll not be surprised to learn – but there too, there is no public disapproval of any religion. This is all part of the welcome and tolerance Cambodia has towards all who live here or desire to make it their home.

Easy immigration is one of the several reasons why Cambodia had the seventh fastest growing economy in the world over the past decade. Not many people are aware of that fact because the country is so small and is starting from such a small base it just doesn’t register. There are now, I would guess, between 150,000 and 200,000 foreigners living in the country.

They have several functions within the economy. For one, many provide essential services like English teaching in which native speakers cannot be substituted by local teachers. They also are employed in the many non-governmental organizations trying to uplift the nation. Others invest in the country by opening businesses. It is very easy to start new enterprises and there are no requirements of partial local ownership. That’s created a situation in which there are often more businesses oriented towards the expat community and tourist trade than can be currently supported; they are generally ahead of the curve. But it also can happen that lots of new businesses will attract the customers.

Both sectors, expats and tourists, are growing rapidly so I expect the new entrepreneurs are hoping customers will eventually come. Tourism has increased tenfold since I first arrived in 2001 from 200,000 per year to 2 million. I’m constantly surprised at the number of ordinary looking, middle aged, middle class people wandering around Cambodia in contrast to a decade ago when only the most intrepid traveler would dare to come. In Siem Reap, gateway town to the Angkor temples, that’d be expected since it’s one of the great wonders of the ancient world, but to see them in Phnom Penh and other small towns is still a shock to me.

The majority of tourists in Cambodia come to take in the temples and visit no other part. Angkor Wat refers to the largest and grandest of the temples, which were built between the eighth and twelfth centuries, but there are about half a dozen other temples of breathtaking stature and lots of smaller ones in an archeological park that encompasses about 50 square miles – 125 square kilometers. I spent three days wandering around the area, two days on bicycle, and still did not take in all the major sights.

The problem with having a business in Cambodia is the great difference between high and low seasons. Even if it does well in high season, it might only break even during the slow half of the year. If you’ve ever dreamed of opening a bar, for instance, with five or ten grand you can be in business in no time. If you don’t make a lot of money it also doesn’t take a lot to keep it going, though rents are going up in the more expat/tourist parts of Cambodia.

Finally there are the retirees like myself and others who have independent means so don’t need to work, who only add income to the country. We come for the low cost and ease of living: For as little as $150 or $200 per month one can rent a decent apartment in the heart of Phnom Penh. The other attraction is the very open and friendly nature of the Khmer people. Khmer parents teach their little ones to say hello to every white face they see.

It isn’t just the small timers that are attracted to Cambodia. There are now nine mobile phone companies, though there will soon be some consolidation happening since the market simply can’t support that many. Still, you have a spare $100 million and want to have your very own phone company? No problem, it’s your gamble. If you lose your wad in Cambodia, it’s no loss to the country.

The country now has 31 banks… and, once again, there’s always room for more if you’ve got the wherewithal. Most are internationally based with eight or ten countries represented. It’s hard for me to imagine where the customers will come from - Cambodia itself certainly can’t support that many - but the ease of opening banks may turn the country into an international banking center. Eighty or ninety percent of transactions are in US dollars which I imagine would facilitate banking on a more than national scale.

The recent run-up in property prices until the crash in 2008 was also a major factor in the country’s growth. Property prices went through the roof and helped to create a construction boom, which is continuing, if currently somewhat subdued. Even now with values cut in half, per square meter prices in central Phnom Penh are equal to those in Seoul, a first world city with eight times the population. I too got caught up in the enthusiasm and bought a small plot of land but now, if I could find a buyer, I’d be lucky to get back half of what I paid.

The run up in prices has resulted in a lot of displacement and land grabbing. The Khmer Rouge abolished all private property and then torched almost all the records, leaving land ownership very murky. In addition, whole families were wiped out, leaving many properties without owners. Out of that confusion, laws were passed which give anyone living on land for five years ownership rights. That worked fine when prices were rock bottom, but as soon as land became valuable, conflicts arose. In some cases, after villagers have lived on land for ten or twenty years, a well connected individual appears with paperwork saying he/she purchased the land ten years previously. The peons are powerless against the elite in that event. Urban squatters are booted off land they’ve lived on for a long time and are compensated, but not at anywhere near the current price level. Once the land is cleared, it is sold off to developers at high prices.

The other mainstay of the economy is the garment industry which now has more than 300,000 workers and is responsible for 90% of the country’s exports. That growth was facilitated by a quota system put in place by the US and Europe to insure that several countries could develop garment industries and not allow China take over the entire sector itself.

The entire industry is unionized. Many manufacturers hate that and do their best to harass union reps, as you would find in a lot of places. On the other hand, some retailers, The Gap, for one, purchase from Cambodia specifically to be able to say that their workers have union representation and are treated fairly. That fair-labor part of the industry makes up about 20% of output. Workers are not shy about asserting their rights and strikes and wildcat strikes are not infrequent.

In spite of a recent small increase, wages are still pretty dismal at $61 per month for 60 hour weeks, but for many workers that still provides a much better income than they could otherwise obtain. Even at that paltry sum, many workers send money home to their families. The unions have been fighting for $93 per month, what they calculate is a living wage, but that’s very unlikely to happen soon considering the fierce competition in the sector from other even lower cost countries like Bangladesh. They may, in the end, be able to convince the government to raise the minimum wage to around $75.

Cambodia expects to export nearly 4 million tons of rice next year but the sector is barely developed so almost all of that is in the form of paddy, or unmilled rice. The country is working on upgrading its processing facilities so it can sell milled rice at international standards but that’s still a ways off. Also lots more can be done to increase the harvest. Yeilds are higher in neighboring Thailand and Vietnam, world’s biggest and second biggest rice exporters, because they use a lot more fertilizer. They are also far more advanced than Cambodia in using irrigation so get three crops a year to one here. This is a very watery country so there’s no shortage of resources for irrigation.

While corruption here is all pervasive it seems to have no effect on the country’s pace of development and in some ways facilitates it. There are substantial informal fees involved with starting a business, but they make for a speedy process. In some ways living with corruption makes life easier. For instance, when I went through an agent to get my Cambodian driver’s license I was told I had to pay an extra $5 for an eye test since I was over 60. But, the fellow said, this is Cambodia so you don’t need to take a test only pay the five dollars. Passing an eye test would be no problem, but finding the office, possibly waiting around for service and especially dealing with bureaucrats with limited English language skills could be a real hassle, so a little corruption was a small blessing.

Since I had a valid license from another country I was issued a license without having to pass any kind of test. And if you get caught driving without one a simple bribe of $5 or $10 will get you on your way. Since the license costs $40, it’d probably be cheaper to pay an occasional ‘fine’ than be totally legal. Anyway I prefer having all my paperwork in order.

All in all, in spite of endemic corruption, intense poverty and immense social problems, the country is at peace with less conflict and unrest than almost all surrounding countries. And in spite of many and glaring deficiencies it is also more democratic than most in the region. When polled eighty percent of the people approve the direction the country’s going in. Without getting into politics, the current prime minister, now in power for 24 years, has brought stability and growth in a very free and open economy and the future is looking good.

Wikileaks Under Attack

The Julian Assange/Wikileaks affair is taking on fascinating and bizarre twists. A couple weeks back it was announced that Assange was wanted on rape charges in Sweden dating back to August concerning two women. Then the chief prosecutor looked at the case and dismissed it out of hand, saying there was nothing there. A week or so later a prominent politician took up the cause, found a lesser prosecutor willing to take on the case and asked the UK to detain him for extradition to Sweden for questioning.



Wanting to play by the rules, considering the dangerous and precarious position he is in, he turned himself in to the police and asked to be released on bail. At first, at Sweden’s request, bail was denied saying he’s a flight risk; which is a bit disingenuous since he had just voluntarily given himself up.



Finally, after a week or so in solitary confinement, he’s granted bail of $320,000. The accusation, as far as I can tell, is that he didn’t use a condom in one case and in the other the condom malfunctioned. Seems like they’re going through a whole lot of trouble and asking a fantastic amount of bail money for an act of unprotected sex with two women who, as it happened, acted like nothing was amiss at the time: one went out to eat with him the same day, the other went to a party with him a day or so later.



At about the same time, the US government – obviously – pressured his web server to shut down the Wikileaks website and Paypal and credit card companies to turn off portals for donations. But this being the internet age, their pressure served to merely to harass Assange rather than actually prevent people from seeing the information since there are now over 1800 web sites that mirror the Wikileaks site. Moreover, an additional five international news organizations have the diplomatic cables and are also publishing the information.



Several prominent American politicians and news personalities have called for Assange’s assassination or that he be brought to the states on treason charges, which in fact doesn’t apply since he’s not an American citizen.



They can’t get back at him for his supposed crime of publishing confidential cables because there’s no law against that. The original leaker can be prosecuted but not Wikileaks or the New York Times which has also published the information.



He could be killed just for spite, but that’s not going to stop the dissemination of information. Assange is holding back an immense 1.5 gigabyte file which will be released automatically if anything happens to him. The file, in a 256 bit encryption and thus impossible to decode, has been distributed to hundreds of people who will receive the encryption key should harm come to Assange. In the words of his lawyer, it’s a thermonuclear device for the internet age - I can’t wait to see that one. Essentially, all the shit the US government is putting him through is just for fun, anger, revenge.



As for the diplomatic cables themselves, they are merely an embarrassment to the government. To anyone who gets their news outside the corporate media, there’s nothing the least bit surprising in the actual information. All the cables do is confirm the wide divergence from what the US government says publicly and what it does and thinks privately.



On another topic: While I’m at my computer I’ve got to bring up some of the austerity measures Greece and Ireland are having to make at the demand of the European Central Bank and the IMF in order to qualify for their bailout money. Greece is being required to water down union rules to weaken collective bargaining. You might ask how that is supposed to help the country balance its budget. In Ireland’s case it has to lower it’s minimum wage. One again you ponder how that can possibly be a solution to the country’s financial woes.



I guess the thinking goes like this. If you lower labor costs, investors will come with new business and the welfare cost of the unemployed will go down. On the other hand the government will also be collecting less taxes from poorer workers, so in reality it might be a wash. Meanwhile the financial overlords will have furthered their real agenda of austeritizing the workers so they can prosperitize the bosses.



Certainly can’t raise taxes on corporations or force bank owners to take a hit for the corruption and malfeasance of their bankster CEO’s or make the the wealthy pay a little more to balance the budget, that’s unthinkable.

Ireland Again

Ireland Again

An Irish friend on my email list commented on my last post saying he agreed with everything I said except for my position on Ireland’s very low corporate tax rate, saying companies will leave if it is raised.


Shane can correct me if I’m off base but this is how I see the evolution of Ireland’s current economic problems. Ireland’s great boom before the recent crash was based on a combination of the mentioned low corporate tax bringing an influx of industry, an educated English speaking population and being part of the European Union so it’s products had access to a very large market. The country’s 10% tax, which some countries consider to be predatory, created an industrial boom and turned Ireland, which historically was an exporter of people, into an importer of labor.


Lots of new people needing homes and high economic growth – the Celtic Tiger - brought about the housing boom, in which, as I’ve read recently, a small house in Dublin was worth the same as a chateau in northern France. Like in America, speculation ran wild, leading to the inevitable bust.


With a more average tax rate, growth would’ve been slower providing jobs for the Irish but not creating a magnet for immigration and engendering the outsized economic boom. Ireland’s English speaking population was always going to give it an advantage in attracting American investment regardless of its tax rates. In an economic paradigm in which the highest growth is always the primary goal there will always be boom and bust. Moreover, low corporate taxes make balanced budgets impossible without placing heavy burdens on the workers.


Now we have the European Central Bank and IMF saying maybe investors in failing banks and bankrupt countries should take a loss. MAYBE! MAYBE! What a radical thought. Germany and other nations are keen for Ireland to institute severe austerity measures to get its finances together and take big loans to pay its bank’s debts. If Ireland defaults, Germany’s banks will suffer and that country will feel obligated to subsidize its banks directly instead of loaning the money to Ireland, so it’s easy to understand why it wants Ireland’s taxpayers to suffer.


Another facet of the world’s rotten banking system which is intimately aligned with mendacious government complicity has come to light in the past few days. Bernie Sanders, Independent senator from Vermont, who unabashedly refers to himself as a socialist, was instrumental in having a clause inserted into America’s recent banking reform which requires the Fed to disclose where it’s been spending its money. Ben Bernanke, Obama’s appointee to the Fed; sorry, Bush and Obama’s Fed choice, had been fiercely resisting that disclosure.


It’s not hard to understand why. The Fed printed up more than a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) to buy toxic assets from foreign banks. A German bank got nearly $300 billion, a Swiss bank around $270 billion. When it comes to saving them from their stupid decisions, the Fed will, evidently, go to the ends of the earth to find craven banksters in need.


Another couple trillion of printing press money went to American banks, Goldman Sachs by itself got $600 billion. This of course is all aside from the TARP bailout you all heard about. At the height of the banking crisis in 2008, Goldman was changed overnight from an investment bank to a retail bank (though, of course it really isn’t) in order to get free money from the US government and to protect the wealthy from their own malfeasance and greed. They’ve done so well with all that government money thrown at them, they’re making record profits and giving themselves record bonuses. Well, why not. If you’re conniving and smart enough to finagle vast sums of public money with the collusion of your government, you must deserve it. To the victor go the spoils.


To the rest go the dregs.

Ireland Et All

Ireland Et All

Now it’s Ireland’s turn to seek a bailout from Europe and the IMF.
Actually it’s not the government that has the problem - though for sure
the country has a very large budget deficit and public debt - but it’s big
banks. Gotta save those big banks and the big money people who are
invested in them. If we just give them all the money they need to be
solvent, then they’ll start lending again and all’s right with the world.
They’ve already gotten $178 billion from the European Central Bank and $48
billion from the Irish government; about $5000 for every person in the
country. But that was not enough so there must be no end to feeding the
banksters. The Irish government is now about to get another $130 million
to help out banksters in need. Considering all the ‘financial instruments
of mass destruction’ - in the words of Warren Buffet, one of the world’s
richest men - floating around the system there will never be enough money
to make them right.

Why not just let them go broke, pay off depositors, the people who had no
role in their recklessness, avarice and malfeasance, and screw the rest.
If you invest in a bank, you are gambling on its value rising. If the bank
is worthless then you lose: It’s very simple, it’s called the free market;
or unfettered capitalism, you know, the kind that makes everybody rich,
except when it doesn’t. In that case, pure capitalism requires that you
make sure nobody on top loses money, otherwise the whole financial edifice
comes crumbling down. And where would we be then?

Well, why not let the greedy bastards go bust and then start some new
untainted banks. The world would still be awash in investment cash, what
with the great transfer of wealth in the past thirty years from the lower
classes to the upper, so there’d still be plenty of money to start new
banks.

Ah, but the greedy bastards own the governments, so that can’t be allowed
to happen. If a little guy runs into a string of bad luck, maybe loses his
job in a market where there is no replacement work, or has his house
foreclosed and winds up on the dole in Europe or on the street in America,
then that’s the breaks; government can’t be responsible for the comfort
and happiness of every citizen, besides, if you help the little guy too
much he’ll lose his incentive to work.
For the fat cats, on the other hand, it doesn’t matter how much you give
them: since they’re already rich, it doesn’t impact their desire to have
more.

We heard the term moral hazard quite a bit back in 2008 when governments
in much of the developed world rushed to the rescue of the banksters. If
you bail out banks that have taken excessive risks, then they’re likely to
do it again. Makes perfect sense. There’re lots of profits when things are
going well and free money from the state when your speculations go awry.

Back in 2008 when Lehman Brothers investment bank went bust without
government help, the media characterized the result as chaotic even
catastrophic for the markets. Chaotic for who? Well, the people who
gambled on the bank and lost and further, there was a loss of confidence
in the markets which caused a lot of stocks to go down and people to lose
money. The magic of the free market again. Is it the responsibility of
government to protect investor money? Evidently yes. So now, to avoid the
turmoil of its big banks failing and causing hardship for their owners,
Ireland is going to borrow tens of billions more to shore them up.
Meanwhile the people are seething with contempt for the banksters and
their government.

Ireland levies very low corporate taxes, which along with property
speculation caused the bubble that has since burst, but is refusing to
consider raising those rates in spite of the country’s terrible financial
straits. However, if you don’t levy taxes where the money is, you’ll never
have sufficient revenues to pay your bills except in extreme bubbles.
Those low taxes have been a problem for other European countries right
along who are now expected to put up the money to rescue Ireland’s banks.
They are demanding changes before they hand over the cash. When you are
out there hat in hand seeking a bailout, you don’t get to keep all your
prerogatives, so it’ll soon be faced with a hard choice.

America’s financial situation; huge budget deficit and national debt, is
equivalent to Ireland’s and its solutions quite similar. Obama’s Deficit
Reduction Commission, aka Catfood Commission – let them eat catfood – is
recommending large cuts in Social Security, Medicare and every program
that helps the people at large, while also recommending tax cuts for
corporations and the wealthy. After nine years of Bush tax cuts not
reviving the economy and not resulting in a balanced budget, it seems pure
insanity to imagine further cuts will now reduce the deficit.

But that’s where the US is at. The American people have just elected a
House of Representatives that has as it’s top priority screwing the
commoners so the wealthy can have more. And the country still has a
president who’s will to fight for you and I is as resolute as a wet
noodle.

Sometimes I look back at what I’ve written in the past and wonder why I
keep doing it. I sound like a broken record and expect maybe you are bored
by now. Over the years I’ve written a succession of times that the
American people won’t smell the shit – that stuff that’s just been
liberally spread around after hitting the fan - until it’s right in their
faces, and yet it still keeps coming and they still can’t smell it. I keep
writing that things won’t change until the situation gets really bad and
yet things keep getting progressively worse and the only real response is
the Tea Party which is proactively dedicated to making things even much
worse. Meanwhile, no matter how bad it gets, I can’t even imagine a
scenario in which the people will rise up to demand real changes.

Moreover, in contrast to Ireland which has instituted severe austerity
measures and raised taxes for many, the US is working on a tax cut. It’s
as if the two countries were not on the same planet. Forty percent of the
US budget now comes from borrowing. Imagine where you as an individual
would be if you earned $60,000 a year but borrowed so you could spend
$100,000. How long would it be before you had to make painful adjustments
and started paying that debt off.

As a government, you have another option, you can print money, though that
too is fraught with peril. If you go too far, your money becomes worthless
and that is especially problematical for a country that’s dependent on the
wealthy and other countries to buy your debt.

Some leftist economists downplay the deficit problem saying it’s most
important to get the economy moving because that brings in additional
revenue and thus brings the deficit down. But without adequate taxation
the deficit can never be brought under control. The other problem with
giving tax breaks to the wealthy, and personally I consider someone making
$200,000 per year to be wealthy, is that they will speculate with part of
it - something which has no redeeming value for society – and since they
already have everything they need, what extra they do spend will
unnecessarily tax the world’s resources and environment.

We need to encourage people who are already wallowing in plenty to work
less, earn less and spend less. This of course is impossible for the
leadership to contemplate since they are locked into endless growth as the
be-all and end-all of civilization. The fact that endless growth is a
theoretical impossibility doesn’t seem to register.

It’s all ass-backwards. You rescue the big banks so they can go on the
business of foreclosing people’s homes and charging outrageously usurious
interest on credit cards even though they are now able to borrow money
from the Fed at zero percent interest. You save them from their own
disastrous and dishonest actions and thus keep them from bankruptcy by
plying them with public money so they can pay themselves record bonuses.

It’s all bass-ackwards and it sounds like I keep repeating myself just to
have something to say. You’ve heard it all before. Why aren’t you on the
streets like the French protesting against sacrificing benefits for
commoners so the opulent class can have more? Why aren’t you all seething
with vitriol at the great bankster ripoff? Or if you are, what are you
doing about it? Why is it that only imbecilic Tea Partiers care enough to
take a stand?

I have no idea: well, maybe I do but hardly anything about American
politics seems to make any sense anymore. The only things that would make
a difference for the American people; single payer health care, true
banking reform, a solid effort to tackle climate change and approaching
resource depletion with a carbon tax and a massive program to convert the
US to sustainable energy are nowhere on the horizon; truly inconceivable,
truly unimaginable. A truly fucked up state of affairs. So be it.