Asymmetrical Information

We are less concerned about world affairs than most other countries. We, meaning the adult population in general.

Good, bad, unavoidable?

All of the above, probably.

TO: Jane Galt
RE: Replies R US

Go to, gal! Go to!!!!

And with respect to matters of 'size'.

Go 1000 miles in any direction from the middle of England and you ARE in a foreign country. Either that or all wet.

Which, I think the character Ted is referring to is already.

Chuck(le)

Don't send it. Email sent in anger is always a bad idea.

Mindles,
Good grief Charlie Brown, when you respond you really respond.

I'm not 100% sure what the point of your Brit friends email was, but he was right to a degree about the coverage of domestic news as compared to International news within the USA, except for the really big issues, natural disasters etc, which get due coverage.

That's understandable because of the size in both area, and population of the USA so its a fulltime job covering domestic issues, let alone trivial nonsense about what's going on in the UK (they're getting beaten at cricket, same as normal).

What your friend didn't say was that generally US citizens are friendly, hospitable and immensely proud of their country. They welcome visitors and wear their heart on their sleeves. Thy're generous to a fault, and much more open and forthcoming than just about any other nation on earth.

Hang loose, happy New Year, and at least cook the red meat before you eat it.

Well, maybe tone it down a bit, he seems friendly.

But then -
"This made me think that in at least one respect, the Pax Americana is different from the Pax Romana and Pax Britannica. The latter two were all quite small places and were obliged to take account of what was going on elsewhere."
Uh, the latter two didn't just "take account of" other places, they just plain took them. I suppose it might be argued we did that with the Southwest, taking it from Mexico - now was that when it was part of the Spanish Empire, or was it the Napoleonic Succession?

Ah well. I feel sympathy for the British, their pols are still pushing to join the EU so they can turn over home rule to the EC and retire. Might make Prince Chuckles happy too, being able to sell his "organic" produce to the EU instead of trying to force it on the Army and school kiddies because noone else will buy it. "Buy British" my left... uh... foot.

>>Indeed, having reacted less violently to terrorists on their doorstep than any other regime in history

You may be embarrassing yourself if you make this claim to a Briton; we tend to be of the opinion that we reacted less violently to the Provisional IRA in the 1970s than the Israelis have done.

Mindles,

All you can do for the old chap is listen, smile and recognize the old' boy is in much worse shape than you. It's small consolation, but you're right and he's wrong and there's not a whole lot you can do about it. After all, we Americans can't just go around solving everyone's problems can we?

I'd like to address my remarks to Ted, Mindless' lil' buddy from Jolly Ol' England.

Consider the attitude and contempt that you, a Brit who's actually been to America, express when you're Emailing a supposed buddy who lives in America. Why the heck should we give a hoot about you guys? Considering that the rest of the world is worse than you are, why should we care about the rest of the world?

Riddle me that, Batman.

James

Hi, there,

>>I'm sure that the citizens who give more than $2.6 Billion in private foreign aid annually (more than the official aid budget of most countries, seven times as much as the U.K.'s private aid and two-thirds of the U.K's official aid budget) will be pleased to know that you do not hold them fully accountable for their "indifference".

One should but take into account the different population bases when comparing figures like that. Do that and the Americans still lead, but not by a factor of 7 but by a mere 1.25.
Now also figure in the different brutto domestic products per head ( Apologizes: I did roughly translate that term from my german source. It means productivity for the entire country as an average per head, also counting population that doesn´t produce like grandpas, childs and so on ). My figures of 1999: US ~30000 US$, UK ~24000 US$. And you see, you get an even result now, as Brits spend 1.25 less in private aid than Americans do, but they also produce 1.25 less and therefore are probably as well earning 1.25 less than their american counterparts.

Still, Americans spend much money on private aid, and therefore do not at all earn to be hold fully accountable for their indifference, as you put it. Your figures however do not really display any difference between Americans and Brits, which you seemed to be insisting.

Just my 02 cents,

Chief Pedro

Poor Europeans, they have to make do with unfair comparisons because fair comparisons would just make them sad. Americans hold more college degrees and travel more widely than Europeans. The fact that Americans are richer and America is more powerful is inescapable. It just would not do for Europeans to lose their one little shred of self-esteem that they can hold onto and be able consider themselves still somehow superior to the brutish, "uncultured", "uneducated" Americans. So they compare Olive Gardens to the best restaurants in the largest cities in Europe and they compare the average working class North Dakotan to globe trotting Britons and they compare the BBC to a local broadcast station. And then THEY watch CNN and ABC and think they know all about us simple little Americans.

Well that's fine. You can have your snooty egotistical superiority and we'll continue having everything better that really matters. Maybe you can provide good company in irrelevancy land for the French.

But a day or two ago, I was made to think by a BBC correspondent in Washington saying, when asked what Americans made of British reservations about an attack on Iraq, replied that they thought nothing at all because they did not know about them.

Riiiiiight. That's why, when I walked into work one morning last week, that very story was above the fold on the covers of the Washington Post, Washington Times, and the New York Times. And on the Top News Stories on Yahoo and CNN.com.

D^2:

Perhaps that's because most of the violence doesn't happen in your country. Relative to losses and the number of attacks, the Brits make the Israelis look like pacifists.

I hate to say it, but I used to be one of those people who might agree with a letter like this. I suppose it made me feel better for investing in a Master's degree in in International Relations and growing up on the oh-so cosmopolitan East Coast.

Then I began to work and reality intervened. My smartest colleagues and most effective clients were not all from Ivy league schools (not at all). I got to know people whose lives might have seem sheltered to me before, and found they were more aware of the rest of us than I had assumed. Blogging has been a similar experience, although I expected it this time.

I have also hosted nine exchange students in my home, from Germany, Spain, Brazil and Austria, ranging in age from 19 to 26. I found they know less than the average high schooler about us or other countries. For instance, Asia has been a complete black hole for all of them. They know nothing of it.

I'll never forget one of the Germans insisting that Bremen was the capital of a united Germany. She was a Bremner herself, of course.

Every developed country has its elite and its ignorant, its global news channels and its tabloids. I think Europeans tend to exaggerate the evidence they find of American ignorance just as we exaggerate many positive things about the United States. I think I hit the heart of the matter when I told Ted he was judging us by our "Page Three Girls".

No I haven't sent it (true, Kevin). I'll make the points here, but kid him for being the provocateur, he clearly intends to be.

I have no idea what the news in Europe tends to be like, but here in Canada local news tends to be, well, local. Big surprise. International stories aren't all that hard to find if you're interested in looking for them. I find that CNN generally does a better job with international coverage than the Canadian networks do.

If Americans are indifferent and ignorant about the rest of the world, I guess Canada is no better.

>>Perhaps that's because most of the violence doesn't happen in your country.

With respect, bullshit. I can think of extremely few IRA attacks which took place anywhere other than the UK. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, far more so than the disputed territories are part of Israel.

>> Relative to losses and the number of attacks, the Brits make the Israelis look like pacifists.

Again, with respect, not true. Out of 3500 deaths in the 1970-1998 Troubles, only 300 were attributable to the British Army. A further 56 are attributable to the RUC, leaving 350 deaths attributable to the British State. (around 900 further deaths would be attributable to various paramilitary Loyalist groups). The British Army itself suffered around 1,000 casualties.

In the intifada between Sept 2000 and October 2002, I have figures of 1829 Palestinian deaths (the majority of which are attributable to arms of the State of Israel) and 627 Israeli deaths (in total).

I have commented in the past that it is productive to see Arafat's Palestinians as the moral equivalent of the IRA, and that by this standard, the Israeli (Likud) government's handling of the affair has to be judged pretty harshly.

dsquared (11:06am), thanks for the numbers. They don't address the reason why the Intifada is not wholly comparable to Republican actions.

Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, and Al Qaeda are working towards a Judenrein Middle East. By their own words. Fatah and the PA are cannier in playing to European opinion, but seem quite happy with this agenda as well. A majority of Palestinians appear pleased with the current murder-suicide bombing campaigns, as reported in recent opinion polls.

Are the IRA's goals analogous with respect to England, Scotland, and Wales? Even with respect to Unionists in Northern Ireland? No.

I'll agree with you that we can and should compare terror organizations, and responses to them. That the Irish conflict shows Israelis' excessive cruelty to the Intifada's promoters?

No sale.

D^2:

While Northern Ireland is of course part of the UK, I submit that the majority of British voters do not regard a bomb in Belfast the same way they regard a bomb in London. They don't think of the Irish as their countrymen, nor do the Northern Irish regard their fellow UK citizens in that way. Nor do I think that it is even remotely possible to argue that British citizens feel the same daily terror of IRA attacks that the Israelis do. People in Belfast don't worry the way Israelis do, nor are their worries compounded by the fear that the Republic may invade or start lobbing missiles towards them. The situations just aren't parallel -- though if the Ulstermen controlled the British parliament, I think you'd have a rather different response. Which was, as I recall, the start of renewed British involvement.

I give the IRA slight props for trying harder to hit paramilitary and police targets rather than civilians. But they do target civilians and they're repulsive thugs. You won't anger this Irish American by comparing them to Palestinian terrorists -- but I just don't think you can realistically compare the response of the British government to something that is, for most voters, comfortably far away, with the response of the Israelis. The situations are too different.

Not wanting to be high-handed about this, but I quite simply disagree with you on the subject of the IRA's plans for the Protestant Northern Irish (and for that matter, the UVF's plans for the Catholic Northern Irish). I am hazarding a guess that you are American, and that like so many of your countrymen, you never quite understood exactly how horrible the Provos were.

dsquared (12:35pm)
>I am hazarding a guess that you are American
Right.

>[and that you don't understand] exactly how horrible the Provos were.

In detail, you are right. Sad to say, it's Capability and not Intent that separates the Worst-of-20th-Century winners from the also-rans.

Your original point (2:42am) was that the British "reacted less violently to the Provisional IRA in the 1970s than the Israelis have done." While true, this is not a meaningful indictment of the Israelis (as it was meant to be?). The situations are different, with Israel's being much more precarious in most respects.

I will say, the IRA lobbed mortars at 10 Downing Street, an act of war by anyone's definition. And that was certainly not the only attack in London. There was the Canary Wharf bombing, for instance, which clearly targeted civilians.

On the other hand, the IRA's reaction to September 11 was to come to the table. Not so the Palestinians.

I understand the British point of view on the IRA, and I am ashamed of US funding of terror there. However, I don't view the situations as entirely parallel in scale or potential solutions.

Ted and I have discussed this one a bit.

After reading Ted's provocation, particularly his claim that Americans are blissfully unaware of the world around them...I could'nt help but think of the famous scene in Rand's "Fountainhead":

"Mr. Roarke, I don't know what you must think of me..."

"But I don't think of you".

DSquared has raised that tired old argument that suggests that moral righteousness is directly proportional to the number of casualties suffered.

If that were the case, a cursory, after-the-fact analysis of WWII would now show that Nazi Germany was absolutely the in the right.

Israel's military is so far superior to anything that the Palestinian terrorists could put together that Israel, if it so wished, could utterly obliterate all of the Palestinian villages, towns, and settlements, terrorists and civilians inhabitants alike.

Have they done this? No. Instead, Israel's military has, at incredible increased risk to itelf, targeted terrorist operations as carefully as anyone in their right mind would expect, precisely so as to reduce civilian casualties. This is no small feat given that a major tactic of the terrorists has been to hide among civilian populations.

Too bad Arafat's thugs haven't been so careful in selecting their targets...

My dearest hope is that DSquared does not have to flip-flop his stance about Israel's "handling of the affair" because of some future Palestinian terrorist atrocity large enough to reverse the relative body counts.

By the way, since when does intentially targeting and blowing up mothers and babies with the stated purpose of erasing all of your kind from the map forever constitute an "affair"?

aww, c'mon Mindles, even with the fabulous update you just provided, it still amounts to less than 1% of US GDP! (at least thats what every foriegn NGO is going to tell you -- that America spends less on a % basis).

On a related topic, one of the disappointing aspects of Hernando de Soto's recent work is the failure to identify a blueprint for the third world to reform its legal system. Its only a 15-20 Trillion dollar problem. As a matter of policy, I would support spending $100B to fix a $10T problem. But until someone can show me how it could be done, I'm of the mind that we're giving enough as it is.

Recognizing that the prior comment is tongue-in-cheek, I will just point out that 1% of GDP would put us at the top of the aid list with a bullet. See page 26 in this large document on private aid and "crowding out".

But this would only put us at about 0.3-0.4%, I think.

Contrary to the paper's conclusions, there would seem to be good anecdotal evidence that official aid crowds out private aid, eh?

re the Palestinian/IRA comparison: Look at the casualty figures as a proportion of population. Every Israeli must know someone who was killed by terrorism now. (And in 1948, every Israeli must have known of several Jews killed by Arabs - even before the war officially started.) The IRA comes nowhere near that. Possibly the British losses in WWI and WWII were comparable - and the Brits were among those insisting on terrible punishment for the Germans after WWI, and on unconditional surrender to end WWII. (I'm not sure how they reacted to American rebuilding of Germany after we pretty much destroyed it, but maybe they were satisfied with a hell of a lot of dead Germans and an apparently permanent Russian occupation of the ancient Prussian regions.)

Given the history of the British before the present generation, I suspect that if the IRA had murdered proportionally as many English in the period 1920-1947 as the Arabs murdered Jewish settlers, Northern Ireland would have been "Catholic-rein" soon after the British Army returned from Germany, Burma, etc. - and the Irish Republic would have been obliged to do some serious groveling and convince the Brits that they would never pose any danger whatsoever. But when most Palestinians left their land in 1948 to join or follow the armies attacking Israel, the Israelis merely refused to let their declared enemies come back within their borders afterwards.

Sean E: CNN in the US is crap IMO. I generally go to BBC's World News online, myself.

How about "europeans care about the outside world because they have economic reasons to do so?" The foreign aid thing is a complete non-sequitir.

Oh, I forgot: are the payoffs to dictatorships (Egypt, et al.) included in those US foreign aid numbers?

Hi,

I do see myself as pro-american, unlike many other germans. So all I intended with my previous post was to help you ( Jane Galt ) with your e-mail ( since you seemed to be inquiring about hints for how to response, as I understood it). And I just wanted to make sure you weren´t going to post facts that were not helpful for your case against someone who had just attacked you and your country with his claims.
Right now I am not so sure I´ve read your intentions correctly. It seems now you were just letting steam off and wanted some of your american fellows to join and support you. Helpful hints from foreigners were not welcome, since you now want me to "adjust" your new facts ( as if I am not on your side ).

Let´s see, when you have batter A with 20 homeruns and batter B with 10 homeruns, you should get batter A into your lineup, right ?
Now what if it took batter A 500 plate appearances to get to 20, but batter B only needed 80 trips to the plate? You still want A over B ?
To compare those baseballplayers, you need a level ground. Therefore, you shall figure out how many plate appearances they needed to hit a homerun. And the one batter who took less to do so is your guy, that is, if you run a baseball team and want a slugger somewhere in your lineup. And that´s why you always should compare things you can compare and not things you can´t compare.

Now on to your update: The second link you provide is to Mindles H. Drecks site. Lets scroll down to the interssting part ( part of that link included here):

>>Leonard Dickens dug up a recent analysis of the (2000) ratio of private and official aid and posted it in the comments thread Jane Galt's site . Yup, U.S. is tops. Only Ireland is in the same ballpark (see page 26 of the link).

Now a ratio between two figures doesn´t mean the underlying figures were scaled to a level ground. Do they have to ? Of course not, because even so the ratio tells us something.
Now what tells us the ratio of official aid to private aid ? It shows how one figure in the ratio relates to the other, of course. So, for US being tops ( or having a low ratio in that article mentioned on MHDs site ), that would mean you have much private aid, you see.
You have, of course, and you are right: american people spend much and don´t need to be taken for "indifferent" ( this is the part where I hoped you see that I am on your side ).
A little caveat, though, remains. The ratio will also be low when your official aid is not high. Lets see: US official aid in 1998 - 8786 $ millions, UK official aid in 1998 - 3864 $ millions ( for my own purposes: Germany official aid in 1998 - 5581 $ millions ).
Now comparing their population bases ( US 280 millions, UK 49,5 millions, Germany 84 millions ) and their official aid, you will see that the US spents official aid at a clip of 31,4 $ per head, UK does so at a clip of 78,1 $ per head and Germany 66,4 $ per head. Now this shows that the US spends little official aid compared to the UK ( and germany ). And this gives a good explaination on why that mentioned ratio is LOW.
But as stated in the link, US gives more through the individual than through official ways. Again, that is right and you don´t need to be called "indifferent".
The private aid figures in the article the link mentiones also show that the people of the UK spend a little less than US people ( to my own surprise, germans spend even more ).
Figures per head: US 9,50 $, UK 8,20 $, Germany 11,60 $ in private aid. Adding private and official aid, you get: US 40,90 $ per head, UK 86,30 $ per head and Germany 78,00 $ per head. You see, by "adjusting" I came ( again ) up with figures that don´t help your case much.

The article also shows another ratio which US clearly trails, but Mingles H. Drecks seemed not inclined to mention this one ( official aid to GNP ratio ).

It can but be, however, that not all private or official aid has found its way into the study, as is correctly suggested by Mingles H. Drecks.

Anyway, since 1517 and the deeds of Martin Luther we know that no amount of money ( private or official aid included ) will help you with your sins.

Oh, by the way, if someone tells me bloggers are unpatriotic, because many of them are against a war, I can now safely claim he is wrong. Bloggers and their readers are patriotic, indeed.

Just my 02 cents ( really more like 04 ;-) )

Chief Pedro

Another note: Lets not forget the European Union , which includes the UK, also spends official aid ( as mentioned in the article that your second link points to [ the article btw can be found through a link under the name Leonard Dickens ]).

Just my 02 cents,

Chief Pedro

Pedro- you lost me. Or rather, we lost you. Or something. I wrote the post. I also wrote the comment above calculating the appropriate ratio to GDP, which you seem to think I ignored.

Please note that nowhere prior to now in my comments or in the post is the assertion that we give more than other countries. I will merely point out that once you allow for private aid (however difficult) we are on par with our critics. Allowing for our asymmetrically high backing of institutions like the World Bank and IMF, as well as our absorbing the vast majority of the expense for defense of shipping lanes, Europe, etc., I will now assert to you that the US spends much more abroad .

But I do not consider that a claim to fame. I believe that private aid is vastly superior to official aid, official aid being given to cronies, military tinpots and do-gooder international institutions that sometimes place a thin veneer of market-based analysis over their own central-planning ambitions. In other words official aid is as often wasted or destructive as it is helpful. Ask France about all the aid they've given in Africa. Big help, was it? yeah. And the money the West has given to Zimbabwe, Zaire/Congo, North Korea. Great stuff.

anony-mouse: CNN may be crap, but it's the best I have access to. CBC is Canada's primary 24 hour "news" network, but when it's not spouting pro-Paletinian garbage it's generally running programs like "Fashion File". Tough to find any actual news. CTV has some good coverage but is restricted by law to a headline news-type format and can't get in-depth on anything. There is no legal way to subscribe to Fox News in Canada. We may have access to a BBC News network - I'll have to check it out.

I tend to go on-line for most of my International news these days.

Well, it seems we ... whatsoever.
You were not asserting to me that "that we give more than other countries" but now you will. I never said so, anyway. I just pointed out that you have to factor in your huge population base when comparing any of those figures. After all, your grand nation is the third most populated in the world.
The "asymmetrically high backing of institutions like the World Bank and IMF" is perhaps another one of those figures, by the way, though even I have heard that the USA pays dearly to the UN and similar organisations ( of course, some part of that payment wasn´t coming exactly on time, I hear ).
My intention was that Jane Galt did not use any facts in her response to that email that could easily be used against her. Citing an huge amount of private aid ( and thereby suggesting that Brits spend less and therefore care less than their american counterparts ) was such fact, I thought. As I reread her entire text, it seems I may have misunderstood it.
Apologizes for my soaking up your time, then.. Here is hope, though, that I have opened your eyes for the traps that may come with the comparing of figures.

On another note:
I haven´t checked what the private aid in the article MHD refers to consists of, as it may well be that the article already includes the many examples of private aid that all of you have put together. If so, the articles numbers for private aid from the US are all there is, if not, than there is really much more. As you said, that may well be, and I think you are right.
Oh, and you are also right at pointing out that private aid more often is more of a help than official aid.

Just my 02 cents

Chief Pedro

Differences with IRA

It is not a valid comparison, for the simple reason that the Palestinians have been offered a country but refuse to accept it, and Israel does not control the territories.
The Palestinians are also no different from other Arabs. Palestinians desire is for the destruction of Israel. The PLO state this as their goals, they also were not the main residents of the land of Israel. It was a nomadic land which even Mohammed did not want, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan where established by the League of Nations, and the Arabs did not accept Israel. Israel is the only country mentioned in the UN while Syria occupies Lebanon.

The IRA want their own country. they have not been offered it and do not want to be under British control. The Palestinians are not under Israeli control and where offered their own country.

Israel does not control the entire territories and for this reason terrorism breeds in these areas. This is where huge bias comes in, Palestinians claim that Israel is occupying the territories, the word occupy is extremely vague, Israel is located in certain areas of the territories to protect against terrorism, but they are not in control of the territories, like the Americans in Iraq or the British with the IRA. If Israel controlled the territories they would not have to make incursions to weed out bomb factories and disrupt terrorism. That is the main difference. Obviously to argue about the word 'occupy' is extremely difficult (a single American in Saudi Arabia occupies Saudi Arabia) , but the Israelis are not in CONTROL of the territories.

There is one very important difference between the Irish national liberation movement and Arab terror: even the IRA has never declared elimination of the Great Britain as its ultimate aim.

It is also fair to note that the IRA has little effect on British daily life.

It is only Israel out of all countries in the world and throughout history which has been accused of not giving back territory fought in a defensive war.

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