Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Jane Galt:

How bad is America, really?

There is, among some people of my acquaintance, a belief that America's recent forays into counterterrorist experiments of highly dubious legality, is some sort of brutal departure from the honorable norms that prevail in the rest of the developed world. I find this particularly shocking given that some of the people who profess this belief are actually from other parts of the developed world, and have apparently somehow never noticed that their legal systems are far less interested in protecting the innocent, much less the guilty, from the intrusive hand of the state. If the British haven't noticed that the surveillance cameras everywhere take rather more of the liberty out of "civil liberties" than an American would put up with, surely they have heard of the . . . er . . . creative ways that their government found to detain IRA members when the government could not mount adequate evidence to convict them in a court of law? And the Code Napoleon-based systems found on the continent are even less respectful of the niceties than the Brits are, as Daniel Drezner notes:

It turns out the Bush administration wishes the U.S. system was more like the French:

In the French system, an investigating judge is the equivalent of an empowered U.S. prosecutor. The judge is in charge of a secret probe, through which he or she can file charges, order wiretaps, and issue warrants and subpoenas. The conclusions of the judge are then transmitted to the prosecutor’s office, which decides whether to send the case to trial. The antiterrorist magistrates have even broader powers than their peers. For instance, they can request the assistance of the police and intelligence services, order the preventive detention of suspects for six days without charge, and justify keeping someone behind bars for several years pending an investigation. In addition, they have an international mandate when a French national is involved in a terrorist act, be it as a perpetrator or as a victim. As a result, France today has a pool of specialized judges and investigators adept at dismantling and prosecuting terrorist networks.

By contrast, in the U.S. judicial system, the evidence gathered by prosecutors is laid out during the trial, in what in effect amounts to a make-or-break gamble. A single court, the “secret� panel of 11 judges, established by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) more than two decades ago, is charged with reviewing wiretap requests by U.S. authorities. If suspects are spied on without permission in the interest of urgency, the authorities have 72 hours to file for retroactive authorization. The Bush administration’s recourse to extrajudicial means—military trials, enemy combatants—partly stems from an assessment that the judicial system is unfit to prosecute the shadowy world of terrorism. The disclosures that the Bush administration skirted the rules to eavesdrop on terrorism suspects at home is apparently the latest instance of the government’s deciding that rules protecting civil liberties are hampering the war on terror. French police and intelligence services, in contrast, operate in a permissive wiretapping system. In addition to judicially ordered taps, there are also “administrative wiretaps� decided by security agencies under the control of the government. Although the French have had their own cases of abuse—evidence has exposed illegal spying by the François Mitterrand government in the 1980s—the intrusive police powers are for the most part well known by the public and thus largely accepted, especially when it comes to national security....

Bush administration officials argue that the FISA law in its current form does not effectively counter the terrorist challenge. Yet, the administration has not made serious efforts to amend the law or push for broader reform of domestic counterterrorism. Doing so would no doubt be difficult politically and may require regular tweaking, as the French experience shows. But such an effort could pay dividends, for both law enforcement and the American people’s trust in their government.

In recent years, French authorities claim they have thwarted a number of terrorist plots by using their forward-leaning arsenal, from a series of alleged chemical attacks planned by Chechen operatives against Russian interests in Paris to a recently reported ploy by French Muslims linked to a radical Islamist group in Algeria to target one of the capital’s airports. “The French have a very aggressive system but one that fits into their traditions,� says Jeremy Shapiro, the director of research at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “They seem to be doing the best job in Europe.�

Now, for all the "pack, not a herd" memes floating around the libertarian areas of the blogosphere, I am more than willing to posit that the French system may do a vastly superior job of breaking up terrorist networks. But who cares? Vesting that sort of intrusive power in one person would do far more damage to America than any terrorists are likely to inflict (barring the--IMHO extraordinarily unlikely--possibility of a nuclear attack.)

Forbidding everyone to drive would do a dandy job of eliminating car accidents, but the cure is worse than the disease. Likewise, building up the apparatus of a police state in order to catch a few crazies would kill the very thing that makes America (if I may say so) the best damn country in history.

Conservatives who want to berate me for not appreciating the threat of terrorism, let me take a little, er, pre-emptive action here. Unless you have lost the ten or so people that I bid farewell when the towers collapsed, including my first boyfriend, have watched the smoke rising off the ruins from the roof of your childhood home, have tried frantically to find out if your current boyfriend had been taking training down at the WTC that day, and have numbly tried to convince yourself that the buildings you knew so well were really and truly and forever gone as you turned up for another weary day of work at Ground Zero . . . unless you have done all those things, then please do not lecture me on terrorism. I get it.

As bad as terrorism is, there are worse things in the world, and governments that spy on their citizens, and torture them, and imprison them without trial, are among those things. Undoubtedly, if I ended up dying in a terrorist attack, I would wish we had done more. But hey, if I was killed in a car accident, I'd undoubtedly wish that the guy who hit me had had his license pulled. This would not be an argument for shuttering the interstates and making everyone get around on Shank's ponies.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Is America an empire?

Chris Bertram says yes. Like others on Crooked Timber, he can't resist a little bit of "See! Americans aren't so great anyway, the bastards!" His main argument is that our displacement of the Indians by white settlers is similar to that of imperial Russia and China; QED, we are an empire.

I think his definition is too sloppy. Most people do not now think of the main body of Russia and China as empires, because they are, in the main, full of people who think of themselves as Chinese or Russian. The imperial accusation comes from the substantial populations of Tibetans, Latvians and so forth who do not identify with Russia, and yet get ruled by them anyway.

Indeed, the definition that Mr Bertram uses is useless: if an empire is a nation where one or more dominant ethnic groups kicked the asses of smaller or weaker groups and took their land, then every single nation in the world is an empire. Our sins are merely more recent.

This is not to excuse them; historically; the fact that other people rape and murder and plunder is not an excuse to do so yourself. It is only to point out that such a definition of empire reduces the word to uselessness.

Nor is Mr Bertram correct in thinking that Americans particularly care to divide their colonial sins from Europe's. No one in America is unaware of what happened to the Indians; no one that I have ever met has tried to justify it, though we are all awfully glad that we have a country. Our exceptionalism comes from the fact that, for example, we actually lived here, rather than simply trying to ship the booty back home across the sea. There is a difference between having an overseas empire and having a local one; Russian and Chinese expansionism may not be superior to the European kind (although I would argue that, for all its brutality, in many cases it was), but it has a very different character. But Americans are not unaware that Manifest Destiny was a nationalist/imperialist impulse; indeed, we are so aware of it that the word "imperialist" is generally attached to it in our textbooks.

When Americans react to the word imperialism we are, at least in my experience, reacting to the accusation that what we do in the world now is somehow meaningfully comparable to what Europeans did to Africa in the 19th century. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assert: it isn't. While America does try to influence world events in its favour, it does not run governments, much less exploit local economies for its own advantage. Anyone who purports to be unable to distinguish a shoe factory in Malaysia from what King Leopold did to the Congo seems to me to have perceptions so hopelessly deranged as to make further discussion useless.

Were we imperialist in the past? Absolutely. Are we now? I think not. Mr Bertram's post (and, to be fair, the sources which he is debating), conflates the two questions, which just ins't useful.

A propos of absolutely nothing, I haven't seen many Americans going over to Europe to inform them what they think, and then grandly disabusing them of their illusions. That, at least, appears to make us exceptional.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Budget woes

Think we've got budget problems? At least we've got a budget. The EU, on the other hand, is having no luck putting one together, possibly because they need to secure unanimous agreement from all 25 member states to make it pass.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

I know I'm going overboard, but

The smug tone of this post really chaps my ass--not least because it's wrong about so many things other than its fundamental misunderstanding of American geography.

For example, this passage:

The abundance � of food, cars, roads, tv stations, just about everything a European could imagine, and then some � is probably unprecedented historically, and limited geographically to America. Growing up comfortably middle class in Ireland in the early 1980s, I found it almost unbelievable that T.V. Americans seemed to drink orange joice every day when we had it just for Christmas, went shopping just for fun and could afford to keep their enormous fridges constantly full. (T.V. Americans were forever hanging up the phone without saying goodbye, slamming car doors, and divorcing each other at the drop of a hat, but that�s another day�s incredulity.)

In my own fuzzy-logic way, I�d presumed that the cheapness of every day goods in the US was mostly because of the flexibility of the economy, i.e. the ability of employers to pay low wages, fire at will, offer few benefits, and generally pass on costs like environmental protection or maternity benefits. A few weeks in California cured me. Sure, labour �flexibility� helps. But the cheap price of petrol is more important than I�d ever imagined. As newspapers and coffee breaks filled with doomsday scenarios of paying $6 dollars a gallon for gas, I sat down one day and did the sums.

That�s what we pay in Ireland. Today. Most of the extra cost goes in taxes, and the cost of that affects every imagineable part of life. Paying more for oil makes everything more expensive � getting food to the shops, from there home, cooking it, and cleaning up afterwards. It means more people rely on public transport, creating a policy feedback loop of greater government spending and making more citizens using shared resources every day of their lives. It means we don�t run central heating or (if we had ever needed it) air conditioning all or most the time, and probably just put on another jumper when it�s cold. It means we advertise cars based on their fuel consumption and we don�t have �all you can eat� restaurant buffets. Teenagers don�t have their own jobs and cars, and rely on their parents, the bus or shanks mare to get around. They get it off in parks instead of cars. Not that many people drive to the gym. Until recently, not many people needed to go to the gym either.

Others on CT understand far better than I do the economic significance of America�s globally unique strategy of running a vast economy on cheap, cheap oil. And yet others can discuss how this dependence makes America less and less secure. (And how Amerca�s efforts to secure its own oil supply has made the world less and less secure for the rest of us.) It�s been a simple but revealing insight for me; the myth that America�s economic engine purrs along fuelled by of the virtues of its rather brutal labour market is only partly true. US work places may be dominated by the masochistic ideology of living to work, but the secret of success is simple. America lives or dies on cheap oil.

Yes, more Americans have cars than peoeple abroad. But the idea that Ireland's poverty in the 1980s was a result of expensive oil, rather than a thousand years of colonial dependance, its economic dependance on its former colonial master during the period when said empire had entered a period of rapid economic senescence, a debilitating regulatory and taxation scheme, and the resulting outmigration of many of its best and brightest . . . well, words fail me. Before committing to this position, Maria should have stopped and asked herself how, if cheap oil is the sine qua non of purchasing power, Ireland's GDP has gotten so close to America's on a PPP (purchasing power parity) basis while still producing gas prices high enough to cram the entire population into gas-sipping econoboxes. (I say this as someone who loved the little Renault Megane she drove around Ireland for a week--and whee! wasn't it fun to teach myself to drive manual in a country that is roughly 100% hills.) She might also have noted that the number of passenger cars per capita in Ireland was 217 in 1980, 227 in 1990, and 342 in 1999, which would seem to link ownership of passenger cars to per-capita GDP much more strongly than to the price of gas. This makes sense; while gas is indeed pricey in Ireland, the car we rented went five days of heavy driving on a single tank of gas.

In one way, we are much less vulnerable to high oil prices than Europe, because when oil prices get high, a lot of our oil gets cost-effective to extract, giving a boost to part of our economy, and reducing the volume (though not necessarily the dollar value) of our imports from abroad. When high oil prices hit Ireland, on the other hand, the only option they have is to go out looking for peat to burn.

Nor did we ever really have orange juice every day because we have cheap oil; orange juice was a daily treat for at least middle-class Americans before WWII. We have orange juice every day because we have orange trees in our country, a transportation network that can deliver it without crossing an ocean, and a population rich enough to buy it. The Irish population, on the other hand, didn't have those thinks, so they had milk instead.

But that's quibbling. The main thing I wanted to say is that while there is deadweight loss to the economy from taxing fuel (indeed, the deadweight loss is what the fuel tax is pretty much designed to produce), it is not equal to the entire value of the tax. Much of the fuel tax revenues can be used to offset other taxes, which boosts consumer income. There is a resulting shift in behaviour (people drive smaller cars), but not necessarily a big shift in purchasing power. Orange juice was a luxury item mainly because Ireland was very poor, not because fuel taxes made it too expensive to transport.

A more reasonable reading of history would suggest that government policy decisions after the British pulled out kept Ireland poor despite a very high investment in human capital, and that when those decisions were reversed (in the 1980s in Britain, and in the 1990's in Ireland), the Anglo-Irish economy boomed. Since those policy changes made the Irish and British economies more like the American one, it would seem to me that the "Myth" she claims to have abandoned was in fact more true than the one that she has installed in its place.

Then there's this:

And then you see what�s happening in New Orleans. Where a natural disaster has shone the light on what�s ugly and usually hidden in American life; the inherent and unconsidered racism, the casual brutality, the values that prize property above people. You see people being blamed for being poor. You see black people penned in like animals and made to live in their own filth. You see in America people dying of thirst. Of thirst. You see people pushed beyond civility, beyond reason, beyond any imaginable breaking point, to be met with gun fire and the self-serving response �there, do you see how these people really are? It�s the war of all against all down there.� You wonder what the Christian right might have to say, and fear it�s not �whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me�, but rather; �devil take the hindmost�. Which he clearly did.

There is a war of all against all in America. But it�s not limited to Mississippi and Louisianna. The myths that have held the poor in check are now exposed. The callous disregard of this administration for the poorest and weakest Americans is now on display for the world to see.

In some ways, we�re not surprised to see this selfishness and wickedness exposed. After all, what did you think has been going on in Iraq for the past couple of years? Or what do any of us think is going on in Niger, in Sudan, or in any of the nameless places of boundless human suffering that we just aren�t interested in hearing about? The main difference in NOLA is that it�s harder to control the reporters, and the people suffering speak English and they expect to be heard.

This is one of those jaw-dropping, cheek-slapping, "did they really say that?" statements that make me wonder if I'm living on the same planet as the people whose blogs I read. Comparing New Orleans to Darfur? Why not the Gulag? Or the Holocaust?

I am second to none in my horror of what happened in Katrina, and I too was shocked that such a thing could happen in America. But to compare inept emergency management to a deliberate campaign of raping and killing members of an ethnic minority reveals a moral imagination so beggared as to be useless. And to imply that it happened because George Bush hates black people and cares more about Wal-Mart's stock of televisions than he does about the occupants of the 9th Ward is simply grotesque. There have been colossal screw-ups from the level of the police department all the way up to the head of the Department of Homeland Security, and some of those are Bush's fault for appointing the people he did. But to suggest that this is part of some sort of campaign against the poor, organized or otherwise, is ridiculous. The worst you can say about George Bush's poverty policy is that it is unambitious; despite liberal rhetoric, he done very little at all in the realm of poverty policy, for good or ill.

Many, perhaps even most, of those who died or were stranded amidst the floodwaters suffered because they were poor. But their poverty interacted with the disaster in a complicated, nuanced kind of way--the sort of way that we're constantly being told that left-wing intellectuals are better at understanding than those redneck slobs on the right--not in a simple, "the government doesn't care what happens to the poorer and darker skinned" sort of way. Despite what you may believe about us, when Americans hear that there are thousands and thousands of dead bodies trapped in the attics where they drowned, Americans care enough to scare the bejeesus out of our elected officials, even if the skin on those bodies happens to have more melanin than average.

The (black) mayor of New Orleans did not botch the evacuation plans because he just didn't care whether folks in the 9th ward drowned, nor did the governor of Louisiana and the Feds waste time on a jurisdictional pissing match because they figured that rescuing poor people just wasn't that important. No one was worried about the looters because Americans "prize property above people"; they were worried about the looting because the looters had started to do things like steal hospital generators that were powering the area's sole satellite uplink. If you canvassed the entire country, you would find precious few who think that goods from Target, or even a private home, are more worth protecting than human lives.

Whatever the Bush administration should have done with the levees with the benefit of perfect hindsight, my understanding of the system is that even had Bush entered office day one with strengthening the levees his highest priority, the vagaries of engineering and modern bureaucratic controls means that they wouldn't have even broken ground on the improvements yet. Moreover, it is simply ludicrous to say that Bush's decisions about Army Corps of Engineers funding were made with regard to the income or race of the people who lived in New Orleans. Once again, this is a big country; we don't just have the one city. If Bush, the HHS secretary, or the head of FEMA, even knew that the topology of New Orleans put the poor at greatest risk I would be mightily surprised, as my acquaintances who lived in New Orleans for extended periods of time did not realize that until the flood came. The people who should have known that--Lousiana's (Democratic) congressional delegation--probably didn't think about it either, at least if their decision to grab money from levee improvements for pork-barrel projects can be understood.

And to make gratuitous cracks at the Christian right, when so many of their churches have been the first in line to shelter refugees despite the fact that we all know they hate black people, is just gross ignorance. A few conservatives may have said "There, do you see how these people behave?", but many more of them have opened their wallets and their homes to strangers in need of shelter. That one could even imply such a thing, when the previous record for charity giving before Katrina was held by Americans pouring out donations for the brown-skinned victims of the pacific tsunami . . . well, I'm too much of a lady to respond.

I don't know what sort of poor decision-making process led New Orlean's mayor to draw up an evacuation plan that acknowleged that 100,000 people would fail to evacuate, and leave it at that. But I can be pretty certain that it was a run-of-the-mill decision error of the sort that even the enlightened citizens of Europe might make, such as improperly assessing the risk of a low-probability event, and not a callous calculation that the lives of the poor were irrelevant. Smug Europeans would be well to investigate this possibility, for it is all too easy to look at disasters elsewhere and sigh gratefully that it can't happen here, only to find much too late that it can and did.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Myth "busting"

Hurricane Katrina seems to have triggered a lot of deep revelations to everyone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these deep revelations consisted of . . . reaffirming exactly what they had previously believed. A certain stripe of conservative has learned that poor people are animals who can't be trusted to behave. Passionate Democrats have learned that the main responsibility for disaster planning rests with President Bush, who should be impeached. And European leftists have apparently learned, to their vast dismay, that America is a cruel and gluttonous place, building our so-called economy on cheap oil and the shattered lives of workingmen, whom we kill when they become inconvenient.

As everyone knows, I had hoped that people's attempts to use Katrina to prove that they were right all along would wait until the victims were laid to rest. This suggestion has been roundly ignored by all those who feel that their accusations will have more punch if they are made in the face of the nation's shock and horror.

Still, it would be hoped that the message of "Hey, America, you really suck weasels!!!" could have waited a few weeks. We'll still be here, still hosing up Mustela nivalis, after the dust has settled; plenty of time to chastise us for our horrid, selfish ways then. But apparently, our need to recognize that compared to Europe, we're a bunch of racist rednecks with the moral sensibilities of your average sea louse and the competence of Michael Moore performing "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy" with ankle-weights and a neck brace, was just to urgent to let it go unsaid any longer.

You know, you would think that a large group of people who have all read Guns, Germs and Steel, and taken its message that "geography matters" to heart, would pay just a leetle bit of attention to it when they start chastising America for not being more like Europe.

Item One: The area that was devastated by the hurricane is approximately the size of Great Britain. Tell me again how the EU would have gotten everything under control in a matter of hours had 90% of England, Scotland, and Wales been flattened by an Atlantic storm that also knocked out electricity to Ireland and France.

Item Two: Americans live in a less favourable climate than do Europeans. While I was in London, I was mystified by the number of people who told me "I can't stand it when it gets over 70 degrees fahrenheit!" (well, they said it in celsius, but you get the idea). Having lived through a heat wave in London, I understand it a little better: 78 is kinda brutal if no one has air conditioning. Of course, the reason no one has air conditioning is that it rarely gets above 70. The average temperature in Dublin ranges from 4.8 degrees celsius in January to 15 degrees celsius in July. The average temperature in New York, where I live, which is pretty temperate for America--it doesn't have extremes of either heat or cold--is -1 degrees celsius in January, 25 degrees celsius in July. In other words, while they have a temperature range of about ten degrees, we have a temperature range of about twenty-six degrees. And that's not even a rugged area like Minneapolis (-11 degrees celsius to 24 degrees), Chicago (-6 to 24 degrees), or Kansas City (-5.5 to 24.5).

What does that mean? We use more energy to heat our homes in the winter, and unlike most Europeans, we have to air-condition our homes in the summer. Comparable figures for other major European cities:

London
Paris2.6 to 18.7
Rome7.1 to 24.1
Toronto-6.2 to 20.7
Barcelona9.1 to 24.2
Frankfurt.2 to 19
Stockholm-3.5 to 17.2
Moscow -10.3 to 18.5

As you can see from that list, only in the extreme north do winter temperatures drop below those of temperate New York city, and in those countries; only in Moscow and Toronto have a range bigger than New York. But even in those cities, there is no need to both heat and air condition. This matters, not only because it takes more energy to get your home hot/cold than to keep it there, but because houses can be built to maximize air flow, or maximize heat retention, but not both. That is how Romans get away with not having air conditioning (leaving the city for two months every summer also helps), and New Yorkers can't. And to have someone in Ireland--Ireland!--lecturing us on our energy consumption is just a bit rich. Put me directly in the path of the gulf stream and I won't use all that wasteful energy heating my house either.

Item Three It is a big country, and that means that we don't have the population densities necessary to support rich public transportation networks. Yes, there have also been development choices made, many of which I don't approve of (the interstate highway system, to start with). But Europe hasn't chosen high-density development because of some virtuous public-policy decisions; it has chosen high-density development because Europe, with population densities many times that of the US, doesn't have the land for low-density development. European planners have failed pretty much as miserably as American ones at getting their citizens to choose public transportation over cars.

Moreover, the lesson from America so far is that it is impossible to grow cities with the population densities necessary for successful mass transit from scratch. The only cities where mass transit is successful are the ones that grew around mass transit, notably New York and Chicago, and even in those cities, space constraints (the lake in Chicago, the small size of Manhattan) made a sizeable contribution to supporting the necessary density. Europe has public transportation not because it made the tough moral choices about land-use, but because its cities were largely built up before the car was invented, and because during the fifties, when productivity boosts were putting mass-produced automobiles in the hands of American workers for the first time, Europe's workers were busy recovering from the nasty war they decided to hold in the forties.

As an addendum, I'd like to point out that one of the main problems afflicting those who could not evacuate from New Orleans was that they didn't have a car because New Orleans is one of those old-fashioned walkable cities. (And no, you couldn't evacuate by public transit either . . . especially not if they had to evacuate to France to get out of the path of a hurricane).

Item Four America has a lot more varied terrain, which makes one-size-fits all regulation very tough. Even though most SUV's are undoubtedly driven by chairborne warriors who think it makes them look cool while they haul groceries from the Shoprite, regulators have trouble making a rule that won't force the folks who live in the Wyoming mountains to haul logs up the hillside in a Nissan four-cylinder econobox.

Item Five Y'all don't have storms like we have storms. The Dutch have made much of their fantastic flood preparedness compared to us. Might I suggest that if they were threatened by floods every couple of months, 95% of which did basically no damage, it might be a wee bit different? One of the biggest problems with evacuating New Orleans was simply that residents had been evacuated many times before in recent years, and returned to find their homes untouched.

Item Five Y'all apparently don't even need the "natural" part to produce the disaster. A heat wave that wouldn't even make a New Yorker reach across the sofa to turn up the fan killed as many people in France as the worst-case scenario for American losses to Katrina. They were apparently not saved by Europe's admirably high fuel prices, its finer moral sensibilities about the poor, its stronger committment to taking care of its citizens, or [COUGH] its enlightened attitudes on matters of race and ethnicity.

I say all this as someone who thinks that America's fuel taxes should be higher, its committment to undoing the legecy of slavery stronger, its educational system reformed in any number of ways to equalize the opportunities of the poor with the rich. I say it as someone who thinks that many of those who died in New Orleans did so because they were poor, and lacked the resources to go elsewhere. I say this as someone who is ashamed that America couldn't do better by its citizens.

But I also say this as someone who is sickened by the smug response of some Europeans to this tragedy: their gladness that it has taken Bush down a peg, their overweening belief that this somehow happened because Americans just aren't as nice or as smart as Europeans are. Of course, Europeans have no way of knowing how they'd do in such a disaster, because they have no storms like Katrina, no earthquakes like Northridge, no rivers like the Mississippi . . . but somehow that doesn't seem to stop some of them from being sure that the ability of their police to stop 40 or so football yobs from rioting translates perfectly into an ability to handle the displacement of 500,000 people when even the police have no water, food, gas for their cars or power for their radios.

Overall, these sorts of comments seem to come from a simply overwhelming ignorance of what America is about. I mean, Europeans say they know a lot about us, but you don't learn what America is like by watching our sitcoms any more than I can claim to have truly understood Ireland because I've watched Father Ted--or taken the odd week in Dublin to drink at the Stag's Head and visit the Book of Kells. I have no idea whether the author has lived in America, or even travelled here extensively, but I'd be rather surprised to find that she has. When most people visit a place, even one so terrible as America, they generally find their stereotypes replaced with a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of its realities. Yet the author is attempting to debunk "myths" about America by saying that it is exactly the cartoonish redneck nightmare of the European left's imagination. The goal of myth-busting, particularly among academics, is not supposed to be replacing them with new myths of your own devising.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Missed Congeniality

David Warren's most recent column asserts that the Bush administration is attempting to deprive our allies and enemies of the 'weapon' of anti-Americanism by simply raising the stakes:

earlier this week, when the secretary of state, Colin Powell, was asked unambiguously by media whether the U.S. intended to "punish" (their word) France for her recent behaviour over Iraq, and he replied in one word: "Yes."

One had to refer to other officials to gather that this would be done most likely by cutting France out of the consultation process in NATO and among other U.S. allies, and by "disinviting" France to other trans-Atlantic fora, thus isolating the Chirac regime diplomatically even within Europe.

.....For decades foreign powers have been able to influence U.S. policy simply by fomenting anti-American displays. This is what Arab regimes do, to put pressure on the U.S. State Department -- it's called the "Arab Street" -- and what President Chirac did, in touching off a frenzy of anti-Americanism in the "European Street", as a way to pressure President Bush to stand down, and Prime Minister Blair to fall down. The Americans, and British, went into Iraq anyway; and the former at least seem now convinced that anti-Americanism should no longer be either subtly or overtly rewarded. It will instead be subtly ignored, or overtly punished.

Compare Warren's essay with this interview with John Brady Kiesling, former Athens-based diplomat who resigned publically in protest over the administration's conduct prior to the war in Iraq (His resignation letter is all over the internet. Here, for instance).

Kiesling's principled sincerity is attractive, but I think these two pieces highlight some problematic differences about what constitutes "successful" foreign policy.

For Kiesling, probably because of his diplomatic posting, the popularity of the U.S. is a paramount objective. He complains to Terry Gross that the U.S. had been viewed as a "necessary evil" in Europe during the cold war. According to Kiesling, acceptance of the U.S. as a potential partner in progress was growing slowly during the Clinton years and has since fallen off a cliff.

Secondly, Kiesling places a high value on treaty-making. It is clear in the interview that he believes the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was a high water mark in international diplomacy, made possible by the kind of multilateral conciliation that the U.S. has foresworn.

Kiesling's description of anti-American sentiment strike me as mostly accurate. I don't believe we had gained much popularity in the Clinton years. My experience is that America-bashing was as much of a sport as it is now. I asked the radio what happens to "necessary evil" when it is perceived as no longer necessary. I have my own memories of Germany in the 1980s (the good old days of Sauren Reagan). Perhaps a pop culture reference is inappropriate in this sort of post, but whenever this subject comes up I think of this Joe Jackson song from about 1985:

Here in Berlin people line up to get in
To wait for the end, living in glorious sin
They've looked around and now there is no looking back
To when rivers ran red, now it's the sky that grows black
Shadows are cast as two giants roam over the earth
We light a match, but what is that little flame worth?

Once allies danced and sang
But it was forty years ago

Here in D.C. they talk about 'Euro-disease'
And how the French are always so damn hard to please
Motions are passed in Brussels but no-one agrees
And no-one walks tall, but no-one gets down on their knees

Once allies laughed and drank
But it was forty years ago

Where I come from they don't like Americans much
Think they're so loud and so tasteless and so out of touch
Stiff upper lips are curled into permanent sneers
Self-satisfied awaiting the next forty years

Once allies cried and cheered
But it was forty years ago

The U.S. willingness to engage in brinksmanship and our jaded view that diplomacy often degrades into feckless jawboning have never been popular. This is far from new.

I have more critical differences with Kiesling's characterization of the NNPT. Negotiating such a treaty is not an end in itself. It may be a great success of diplomacy but it has not necessarily been a great success for non-proliferation, it's stated goal. I am tempted to observe that it largely binds the behavior of nations whom we would trust to have WMDs and fails to bind those we are most concerned about. Whether North Korea has nukes or not, prior treaty-making clearly means nothing to them now. Where is the "achievement" in that, other than delivering an entirely false sense of security?

In sum, while I understand the utility to local diplomats, I cannot view the achievement of local popularity and treaties as ends in themselves, but rather consider them means . There are many means to a foreign policy/security end, and many more effective than pleasing talks with other powers. The peculiar Western-style martyrdom of repeated diplomatic failures holds scant appeal. We would certainly like certain governments to fear us (Syria and Iran, for instance). Fear rarely serves popularity.

These views need to be balanced. I believe it is entirely appropriate for the administration to work with the "quartet" for a solution for Palestine, especially since some of Bush's initial conditions have been met (not without a parting blow from Arafat and a disturbing loss of face for Abu Mazen, I notice). I also think the administration should be extending an olive branch to the more ambivalent countries that did not join the coalition. Isolation of France, I'm afraid, is entirely appropriate. De Villepin sandbagged Powell and should pay the price.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the interview is Kiesling's comment on Bosnia. Kiesling was an early advocate of military intervention in that case. When Gross asks about the difference between Iraq and Bosnia he claims that the "slaughter was ongoing", essentially implying that the pace of the killing and the lack of damage to our relationship with western powers make the critical difference.

Perhaps I am oversimplifying Kiesling's argument, but I'm having a hard time with that distinction. How are we to define the ratio of atrocities per diem-to-alliance damage that justifies intervention? Is the damage to our diplomatic potential so great as to nullify the end to Hussein's atrocities? I don't deny that we must make such a utilitarian calculation or cost/benefit analysis, but I don't see Saddam Hussein as so much more tolerable than Slobo (whatever history's final reckoning of his death count may be). I cannot escape the feeling that in Kiesling's analysis the entire difference between the two can be attributed to the cost to established alliances.

The lives of State Department professionals, like middle managers during cutbacks, are doubtless less pleasant when they must sell America's reprioritized self-interest. However, this is not a popularity contest and harried diplomats are far from a prohibitive cost where national security and the threat of pan-Arab fantasist/islamic fundamentalists are concerned.

I struggle not to discuss two other topics within this:

1. The subject of the influence of our historic alliances in a post cold-war context. Will they constantly reorganize ad hoc around competing national interests from now on?
   
2. The higher level of tolerance for treaty lip service in other countries. The U.S. is typically unwilling to sign on to a treaty that it will not honor, whereas other powers are more comfortable with greater discrepancy between tatemae and honne.
   (think Maastricht).
   

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Il fait bon dormir

These are the symptoms of sleep deprivation :

If someone is suffering chronic loss of sleep these important functions soon become impaired, overall health is usually affected as is a person’s memory and mood. They become a hazard to themselves and others.

In fact, sleep deprivation is said to mimic Attention Deficit Disorder:

The surprising news is that partial, or low-level, sleep deprivation has a bigger effect on behavior than either the short or long-term complete sleep deprivation experienced by residents (Sleep, May 1996). Until recently, the effects of partial sleep deprivation have been seriously underestimated.

We know, based on common sense, that inadequate sleep makes kids more moody, more impulsive, and less able to concentrate. We've known for more than 20 years that sleep deprivation makes it difficult to learn (Journal of Experimental Psychology, Mar 1975).
Recent research has verified that chronic poor sleep results in daytime tiredness, difficulties with focused attention, low threshold to express negative emotion (irritability and easy frustration), and difficulty modulating impulses and emotions (Seminars in Pediatric Neurology, Mar 1996). These are the same symptoms that can earn kids the diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, popularly known as ADD).

From today's New York Times Magazine:

France's foreign minister is the Energizer bunny of diplomacy, a hyperactive force who sleeps no more than four and a half hours a night, enjoys waking up aides to discuss matters of state, runs marathons by day and writes poetry by night.

..While Mr. de Villepin, 49, runs at high speed, it is sometimes difficult to know where he going. Even some of his closest aides call him brilliant or a bit crazy or both, and some diplomats have taken to calling him "Zorro."

Asked in a television interview in January about his perpetual motion, he replied: "It is crucial because the urgency is there. The urgency of great international questions. Terrorism. Proliferation. The rise of fundamentalism. The multiplicity of crises which have an impact on the lives of all of us. Today, you can't put a veil over your face."

If Mr. de Villepin has a vision, it is to revive the greatness of France — a romantic view he articulated in his book, "The Hundred Days," the first published volume of a biography of Napoleon that tells the story of the emperor's return from exile, his triumphant march across France and his final defeat at Waterloo.

Describing Napoleon's philosophy as "Victory or death, but glory whatever happens," Mr. de Villepin added, "There is not a day that goes by without me feeling the imperious need to remember so as not to yield in the face of indifference, laughter or gibes" in order to "advance further in the name of a French ambition."

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

A Reminder

James Woolsey strikes a conciliatory note on euro-bashing:

Internet messages mocking French courage and denying that the French have ever successfully defended Paris not only should be beneath us but are quite false--the drafters of this nonsense should consult, among other things, the history of the Battle of the Marne in September 1914. Gen. Gallieni's mobilization of the taxis of Paris to rush reinforcements to the front and save the city is as famous in France as Washington's crossing the Delaware is to Americans. We diminish ourselves and our arguments by denying the noble side of these nations' history and slandering their national honor. Yes, the Germans had the Nazis and the French the Reign of Terror and Vichy. And we had slavery. We have both had our villains and our heroes--we have had our Audie Murphys, they their Ewald von Kleists and Jeannie Clarenses.

Believe it or not, I have a French cousin (by marriage) who fought in the Resistance, so I feel I know one of these folks.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

No Soap, Radio!

The most primitive technique for impressing others with one's own sophistication is to assert a deep and subtle understanding that defies logical explanation. If one's logic proves opaque to the audience, one can just call them simplistic and rush off to be king of one's own little dunghill.

This transoceanic nose-thumbing from Regis Debray is appalling. No arguments are proffered, no alternatives proposed, merely an assertion that the French are now all grown up and we in the United States are fundamentalist children driven by puritan absolutism. The French "get it", we do not. For good measure, he throws in the "they have training as satellite states" insult, aimed at Eastern Europe.

The "U.S. is fundamentally fundamentalist" argument is one I hear a lot, with little explanation other than reference to the occasional publicly religious President (such as Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush and even continental favorite William J. Clinton). It strikes me as some version of "a pox on both your houses" (or worse, an Ad Talibanum fallacy), likening us to our enemy in order to pretend one is above the fray.

I am off with the kids and may not return to this until tonight. In the meantime, I'm sure other bloggers will point out that Mr. Debray, for all his assertions of continental worldliness, is ignorant of us and the art of persuasion.

UPDATE: Done. Money quote:

Oh, cram it down the croissant hatch, Chanticleer. If we were a Puritan nation Courtney Love would be arrested on the Slattern Act and forced into the stocks, and we’d all put on our big black buckled hats and head to the square to throw rotten fruit at her head. Puritans don’t show up for church in sweatpants.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Curious Server Errors

I tried to take This Guardian Poll asking " Did Colin Powell present a convincing case for military action against Iraq?", but it won't accept my "Yes" vote. Hmmm.

UPDATE: Despite the experiences of others in the comments, I still get this "Sorry" page when I try.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Fahrverboten

I've been looking at replacements for the Dreckmobile. I drive almost 20,000 miles a year, so I like a comfortable car with a good sound system and a low noise floor. And I want it to last 100,000 miles without turning into a shivering, creaking disaster.

Several of my prior cars have been of German make. I have never owned a French car, and can't think of a reason why I should, purely on the merits of the product. German cars, however, are often attractive and fun to drive, although not as reliable as the Japanese competition.*

Now I'm considering ruling out German makes as well.

"Consultation" with NATO allies always meant permission, and permission was never forthcoming. It's funny that the Germans and French lecture the U.S. about the wisdom of heeding them and keeping them happy. They're willing to tolerate all sort of misbehavior by others without repercussion, so why do they think we might worry about consequences of our decision on Iraq? (Well, they might accuse us of being "inappropriate" or call someone a [expletive deleted])

My actions are, of course, inconsequential (and Germans are virtually certain not to listen to a person named "Dreck"). However, if public sentiment here were to move heavily against Germany it would certainly be economically devastating for Europe. France and Germany's actions could provoke a backlash in a way that Japan never did. People will grasp these events much more firmly than previous boycott justifications such as dumping, cheap labor or Europe's ridiculous phobia about genetically engineered crops.

Furthermore, if it's shown and publicized that France and Germany have been selling weapons-related equipment to Iraq, as Steven Den Beste speculates, I expect many Americans to react viscerally.

Cessation of trade wouldn't be good for us either, but perhaps it would constitute the magical "sacrifice" everyone's been looking for.

* One thing the Germans can't do is ergonomics. Thousands of tiny cryptic (and beautifully machined) buttons stashed all over the cockpit make selecting a radio station more like adjusting a polygraph. Try to hit the blinker and reset your cruise control. Design by Committee.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Happy New Year Indeed

Between physical therapy for my shoulder and an amazing rush of stuff at work, I haven't had time even to check my email.

Up until now, and now I wish I had not. Here's a trans-atlantic sniff from my British friend Ted:

Dear (Dreck),
Happy New Year to you and yours. No, I'm not on the Julian calendar. It is just that until now, I had nothing much to say.

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. He went on to say that there is very little coverage of foreign news, as indeed we have found on our travels in the US. In 1980, we were once in a motel in South Dakota and found on the TV a news programme. It was all South Dakotan news but a modest little notice appeared saying "Foreign News". It had only one item, a train derailment in Kentucky. A bit extreme no doubt but Kentucky is about 1000 miles away. I came back convinced that there were only two American foreign policies, either isolationism or a crusade.

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. The sheer size of the USA makes it entirely understandable that most Americans are not only ignorant about but also indifferent to the rest of the world . I hope to get the Bobbitt (the other Bobbitt I hasten to add) from the library soon.

Meanwhile, the Israelis are still digging themselves deeper into the hole they are in although they do show some slight signs of realizing it.

Yours

Ted

My current draft reply reads:

Good lord, you were saving it up and that’s what you came up with?

BY ALL MEANS, do keep assuming that all Americans are ignorant bumpkins if it is convenient for you. I’m sure every coal miner in the North of England is well versed in our constitution. Don’t let the fact that we’re actually FROM all over the world get in the way of your convenient stereotypes.

I suppose I should forgive you this view if the column discussed here is representative of the attitude and competency of the British press you are reading. Are you even aware that foreign correspondents, particularly condescending Brits, insist on judging us by inspecting our equivalent of Page 3 in your tabloids? Seek and ye shall find. I believe our correspondence began when I reminded you of the behavior of English soccer fans while the world was watching. Shall we judge you by that?

At any rate, how wonderful is it that you find our ignorance "understandable". 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".

And the Israeli situation is entirely due to that infernal Jewish 'digging'. Indeed, having reacted less violently to terrorists on their doorstep than any other regime in history (including, notably, their neighbors such as even Jordan), why can't they come out of their 'hole' and be wiped off the face of the earth like gentlemen?

How nice it must be to assume that one knows is all that needs to be known, and that justice must reside with the cause that is least troublesome – or at least the one that assuages one’s post-colonial guilt most effectively.

Happy New Year to you as well. I hope it brings better than this.

Jump ball, folks. I have to go stretch (and put the damn red meat back in the fridge). I'll decide whether to send it in the A.M.

UPDATE: Not sent yet (see comments). Here's another take on private foreign aid that suggests ours is ten times higher than the figures cited above:

International giving by U.S. foundations totals $1.5 billion per year, according to the latest figures. Even this shortchanges the "mega-donors" such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, because its biggest outlays came after the latest figures were tabulated [see here - Ed.].

Corporate philanthropy has also become a significant part of the total. Once disallowed by U.S. courts, charitable giving by U.S. businesses now comes to at least $2.8 billion annually. And cooperation between corporations and foundations has become common: When Merck gave $50 million for an HIV/AIDS program in Botswana, it was matched by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

This doesn't begin to touch the work of America's NGOs, whose missions help the needy around the world. Groups like Catholic Relief Services and Save the Children give a whopping $6.6 billion in grants, goods and volunteers. Religious overseas ministries contribute $3.4 billion, including health care, literacy training, relief and development. Even the $1.3 billion U.S. colleges give in scholarships to foreign students is more than Australia, Belgium, Norway, or Switzerland gave in total foreign assistance in 2000.

There's another way that the U.S. contributes as well, one that speaks volumes about this country's real gift to the world. As Mexican President Vicente Fox says, the "real heroes" are immigrants who send money to families back home. Personal remittances from the U.S. to developing countries came to $18 billion in 2000 and provide, in Mexico for example, the third largest source of foreign exchange. U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin, who sends money to her aunt in Mexico, calls remittances "one of the most important transactions between our two countries."

Population (or GDP)-adjust that!

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Flexible Criticism

'Theodore Dalrymple' decries the rise of violent crime in Britain in the Wall Street Journal:

Britain is now the world leader in very little, with the single possible exception of crime.

Recent figures published by the U.N. show that Britain is now among the most crime-ridden countries in the world: Its citizens are much more likely to be attacked or robbed on the street, or have their houses burgled, than their counterparts in, say, Russia or South Africa, let alone the U.S. Everyday experience in Britain is quite sufficient to establish that we now live in a deeply criminalized society.

He goes on to describe the problem in terms that have a certain...universal ring, I think:

In the war against civility, the savages have it all their own way....

...The response of the British liberal intelligentsia and the political class to the crime wave that has engulfed our society makes a jellyfish look solid. Witness the British middle class in full retreat. Every conceivable argument has been used to avoid acknowledging the painful reality of what we have so heedlessly wrought over so short a period. Some try to suggest that crime hasn't really increased, but that it is just more fully reported now than ever before. Others venture that there is more theft because people have more possessions (the first time wealth rather than poverty has been blamed for crime). And so on, ad infinitum.

As the politicians dither and bicker, I am reminded of the Romanian peasant proverb: The whole village is on fire, but grandmother wants to finish combing her hair.

At the root of the British inability to confront the problem is snobbery. There is a reluctance on the part of the upper echelons of society to believe that the lower echelons are fully human, and therefore responsible for their own acts and decisions. No discussion with a British liberal about the growing incivility, criminality and violence of British life is complete without reference to Hogarth's Gin Lane, the implication being that 'twas ever thus. This, of course, is nonsense. But it does establish that the British liberal intelligentsia believes the lower classes are genetically and irredeemably, utter scum.

To coin a phrase, indeed.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

In Dinosaurs We Trust

Steven Den Beste has prompted dialogue from various corners of the Blogosphere about the competitiveness of Europe. This is one of the nice things about the blog world - Steven discusses technology competitiveness, Derek Lowe chimes in about Life Sciences, one of Steven's readers writes in about manufacturing, etc. If the meme continues, we'll have an interesting cross-section of working experience reflecting on the topic.

My own experience with European vs. U.S. business competitiveness comes from two sources: Earlier in my life I worked with a number of buyout groups. Two of these groups had European funding and sought to make investments in Europe as well as North America. This was the heyday of LBOs in the United States. While both groups recorded mixed results on their buyouts here, not one European investment (covering primarily France and Germany) survived. In every case, the group sought to restructure the underlying company but was unable to do so because of local labor laws. They simply couldn't replace any employees, and they found they had little ability to obtain permits for capital improvements without actually worsening the employment problem. I spoke to one of these old clients recently, and they have narrowed their focus to Switzerland.

Working in financial services, I am also struck by the acquisitions European companies have made in the industry that somehow have not been additive. It's interesting just to list the predecessor organizations included in a few European-owned behemoths:

Deutsche Bank:

• Bankers Trust
  
• Scudder Investment Management
  
• Kemper Investment Management
  
• Alex Brown
  
• C.J. Lawrence
  
• Morgan Grenfell
  
• James D. Wolfensohn
  

UBS:

• S.G. Warburg
  
• Dillon Read
  
• Swiss Bank
  
• Paine Webber
  
• Global Asset Management
  
• Brinson Asset Management
  

What strikes me looking over these two lists is the number of formerly significant competitors among them - Scudder, BT, Alex Brown, Dillon Read and Brinson could all lay claim, at one point or another, to being among the most productive and profitable in their market segments. The merged institutions don't even approach the sum of the former market presence of the individual acquirees. "Two dinosaurs mating doesn't make a gazelle", goes the old saying about mergers. It's also pretty clear that when a Dinosaur eats a gazelle it's still a dinosaur.

There is a simple repeating pattern on Wall Street. Innovative finance minds build up a reputation and a franchise. (see Eric Gleacher, Bruce Wasserstein, etc.) and sell it to a large institution. These buyers have been Japanese (Nomura), American commercial banks (Nationsbank/BofA) and, of course European (Deutsche and UBS, as well as Credit Suisse). The real talent usually leaves and does it again somewhere else.

What these new firms have is Capital. Gobs and gobs of it. That's typical of the European presence on Wall Street. They tend to be most competitive where large amounts of capital make a difference. This is partly because they appear to demand a lower return on that capital, probably due to a less demanding shareholder base.

In all the cases above, both the aquiree and local management of the acquiror are largely American. I tend to take this as a lesson about size rather than nationality. Very few large institutions generate exceptional profits. Typically, the smaller shops such as the old Wasserstein Perella, Dillon Read, James D. Wolfensohn and Alex Brown generate most of the exceptional profitability. But this in itself appears to be a difference in outlook. Europeans (British possibly accepted) seem to take great comfort in the size of an institution. These larger entities take are often viewed as a public trust, a phrase viewed with less suspicion elsewhere around the globe.

Public trusts have lots of capital, but they keep getting taken by the entrepreneurs.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Fresh out of "Jewish Fundamentalism"

Here's a bit of correspondence from my British friend Ted:

I really do want to see the Middle East at peace and hope that the Israelis will at last understand that while they can win battles, they cannot win the war so the best thing would be to call it off. I detest religious fundamentalism of every stripe and believe it has been responsible for much human misery. But that goes for fundamentalist Jews as much as it does for ditto Muslims.

I wrote back very quickly to contrast the numbers of people suffering under "fundamentalist Islam" with other fundamentalism, but I've been chewing on that phrase "fundamentalist Jews" for my entire vacation. What is he on about? I suppose I could get upset about fundamentalist Quakers as well, but it would be a theoretical exercise, I haven't run into any. They are as scarce as "gruntled" employees.

I suppose he means certain of the settlers and other elements of the hard right in Israel. They have produced a terrorist nutjob or two, but it strikes me they are more territorial nationalists than religious fundamentalists. And one of the admirable things about Judaism is it's non-proselytizing nature and the way it doesn't...damn non-believers to eternal hellfire and preach Jihad (or crusade, if you like). Furthermore, Judaism has no equivalent I know of to the infamous Muslim four categories - Muslim man, woman, slave and non-believer/infidel (in that order!), with the latter three enjoying little to no rights whatsoever.

I'm leaning towards "ridiculous moral equivalence drivel" as my categorization of Ted's thoughts here. As no big fan of organized religion, I'm willing to listen if anyone would care to provide example of any "Jewish Fundamentalist" equivalent to the pure hatred preached by so many thugocrats in the Middle East.

UPDATE: I've been reading Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong. He suggests that "fundamentalism" is the wrong word for militant, radical and theocratic ideas exploding in the arab world. He rejects the idea that wahabiism or Iranian thugocracy are in any way associated with the root traditions of Islam as practiced in the religion's more laudable past. He's right, the real question is who is seeking to proselytize their religion (either through conversion or oppression of infidels) with violence? Answer - overwhelmingly radical Islam.

Diane E. suggests that Jewish fundamentalism is a difficult concept given that Judaism is based on talmudic method of interpretation , which is more akin to the loose way we Anglicans interpret the bible than the brittle encoding of religious law in the Sharia.

Here's an on-line assertion of Jewish Fundementalism.

Also, Jane Galt and Bill Hessson comment below.

More comments on the appropriateness of the "fundamentalism" label in "Religious militants are anything but true to their faith".

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Gone Fish and Chipping

I'm off to London to celebrate my 15th wedding anniversary. This is a laptop-free trip. I'll be back Sunday night.

The post on why Dominic Basulto hasn't considered the long arm of securities regulation will have to wait.*

Cheers.

* As I said over on the right, an investment blogger would have to disclose his own holdings, create a compliance infrastructure to vet his blog, which would be both research and an advertisement, and he would be vulnerable to touting accusations a la Jonathan Lebed.