links for 2008-08-13

• Mechanism for Credit Is Still Stuck - NYTimes.com
• An Effective Rebuttal - Capital Gains and Games
• Optimism in Evolution - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
• The Tilting Yard - Thomas Frank - WSJ.com
• Disclosure Is the Best Kind Of Credit Regulation - WSJ.com
• The Fed and Authoritarian Capitalism - Robert Reich
• Trading Down (speculation?) - Ryan Avent
• An Endangered Act - Editorial - NYTimes.com
• Are OECD central banks too transparent? - Vox EU

Comments

[Trust]

"And until that conduit is fixed or replaced, analysts say borrowers will see interest rates continue to rise even as availability worsens for home mortgages, student loans, auto loans and commercial mortgages."

Trust must be earned, and can take time to restore once lost. Savers almost always want to get back at least as much purchasing power as they loaned out. The problem with default, either directly or via inflation/currency exchange rates, is that savers lose confidence that they will get back what they loaned.

A policy of pumping up demand by allowing borrowers to borrow and not pay it all back (Purchasing Power Parity) really does not work out too well in the long run. Domestic savers gave up years ago, and now foreign savers are becoming wary of this very bad deal.

[hari]

*Trading Down (speculation?) Ryan Avent

This is good example of an ignoramus trying to make sense of commodity markets - as they function today - and oil prices in particular. What he doesn't understand is that Futures Market options play is not for physical delivery but can be readily cashed and/or extended based on expiry date.

[anne]

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2008/08/sometimes-it-takes-muslim-woman-to.html

August 7, 2008

Sometimes it takes a Muslim woman to promote stereotypes of Muslim women. "Confidence remains a central issue for Muslim women, said al-Hibri. 'If you look at a woman and she retreats under your gaze, how will she lead?' " *

* http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2027

-- As'ad AbuKhalil

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/us/politics/13book.html?hp&pagewanted=print

August 13, 2008

Book on Obama Hopes to Repeat Anti-Kerry Feat
By JIM RUTENBERG and JULIE BOSMAN

A conservative gadfly who attacked John Kerry’s war record has released a book painting Barack Obama as a stealth radical liberal.

[Answering the false charges made against John Kerry was always important, so too not forgiving Boone Pickens for financing the spread of the false charges, but save for the New York Times the issue of setting truth as truth was all but ignored by the press.]

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/opinion/13judson.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

August 13, 2008

Optimism in Evolution
By OLIVIA JUDSON

LONDON

When the dog days of summer come to an end, one thing we can be sure of is that the school year that follows will see more fights over the teaching of evolution and whether intelligent design, or even Biblical accounts of creation, have a place in America's science classrooms.

In these arguments, evolution is treated as an abstract subject that deals with the age of the earth or how fish first flopped onto land. It's discussed as though it were an optional, quaint and largely irrelevant part of biology. And a common consequence of the arguments is that evolution gets dropped from the curriculum entirely.

This is a travesty.

It is also dangerous.

Evolution should be taught — indeed, it should be central to beginning biology classes — for at least three reasons.

First, it provides a powerful framework for investigating the world we live in. Without evolution, biology is merely a collection of disconnected facts, a set of descriptions. The astonishing variety of nature, from the tree shrew that guzzles vast quantities of alcohol every night to the lichens that grow in the Antarctic wastes, cannot be probed and understood. Add evolution — and it becomes possible to make inferences and predictions and (sometimes) to do experiments to test those predictions. All of a sudden patterns emerge everywhere, and apparently trivial details become interesting.

The second reason for teaching evolution is that the subject is immediately relevant here and now. The impact we are having on the planet is causing other organisms to evolve — and fast. And I'm not talking just about the obvious examples: widespread resistance to pesticides among insects; the evolution of drug resistance in the agents of disease, from malaria to tuberculosis; the possibility that, say, the virus that causes bird flu will evolve into a form that spreads easily from person to person. The impact we are having is much broader.

For instance, we are causing animals to evolve just by hunting them. The North Atlantic cod fishery has caused the evolution of cod that mature smaller and younger than they did 40 years ago. Fishing for grayling in Norwegian lakes has caused a similar pattern in these fish. Human trophy hunting for bighorn rams has caused the population to evolve into one of smaller-horn rams. (All of which, incidentally, is in line with evolutionary predictions.)

Conversely, hunting animals to extinction may cause evolution in their former prey species. Experiments on guppies have shown that, without predators, these fish evolve more brightly colored scales, mature later, bunch together in shoals less and lose their ability to suddenly swim away from something. Such changes can happen in fewer than five generations. If you then reintroduce some predators, the population typically goes extinct.

Thus, a failure to consider the evolution of other species may result in a failure of our efforts to preserve them. And, perhaps, to preserve ourselves from diseases, pests and food shortages. In short, evolution is far from being a remote and abstract subject. A failure to teach it may leave us unprepared for the challenges ahead.

The third reason to teach evolution is more philosophical. It concerns the development of an attitude toward evidence. In his book, "The Republican War on Science," the journalist Chris Mooney argues persuasively that a contempt for scientific evidence — or indeed, evidence of any kind — has permeated the Bush administration's policies, from climate change to sex education, from drilling for oil to the war in Iraq. A dismissal of evolution is an integral part of this general attitude.

Moreover, since the science classroom is where a contempt for evidence is often first encountered, it is also arguably where it first begins to be cultivated....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/opinion/13dowd.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

August 13, 2008

Yes, She Can
By MAUREEN DOWD

Hillary Clinton feels no guilt about encouraging her supporters to mess up Barack Obama's big moment, thus undermining his odds of beating John McCain.

[The absurdity continues....]

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/magazine/10politics-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=print

August 10, 2008

Is Obama the End of Black Politics?
By MATT BAI

The resistance of the civil rights generation to Barack Obama’s candidacy reveals a generational divide.

[anne]

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=744&Itemid=1

August 13, 2008

New York Times Attempts to Define and Dictate Black Politics
By Glen Ford

The Sunday magazine of the nation's most influential newspaper predicts that Black politics as we know it is headed for extinction, that Barack Obama's "brand of 'race-neutrality' shows Black politics is obsolete, and should be abandoned." Of course, that's wishful thinking from a hostile quarter, based on assumptions that all Black politics is electoral, Blacks are becoming more conservative, and a generational crisis deeply divides Black America - none of which is true. However, Blacks have been set up for a fall. "To the extent that African Americans expect more from Barack Obama than they got from Bill Clinton, they will be devastatingly disappointed."

"Black people are not working themselves into an election year frenzy just to commit political suicide by disbanding as a bloc."

The New York Times, the nation's preeminent corporate mouthpiece, has unabashedly called for the dissolution of independent Black politics in the United States. Although the paper's Sunday magazine cover story may seem at first skim to be simply an overlong paean to Barack Obama, its intent goes way beyond the presidential race, and is embedded in the title: "Is Obama the End of Black Politics?" Author Matt Bai and his employers fervently hope the answer is, Yes.

The wishful headline sits atop a pile of false assumptions and outright untruths about contemporary and historical Black politics. Hardly a cogent set of facts can be found in the entire piece; it is comprised almost wholly of unsubstantiated assertions mixed with non-sequiturs in quotation marks. But the thrust is quite clear: African Americans have not only outgrown group politics, as supposedly proven by Obama's march to - rather than on - the White House, but Obama's brand of "race-neutrality" shows that Black politics is obsolete, and should be abandoned.

To arrive at such a racially presumptuous conclusion, Bai must build on several false or debatable premises that have nevertheless become accepted wisdom among the corporate media:

The only authentic Black politics is electoral politics. Mass movements, direct action and other non-electoral strategies are relics of the past, and rightly so. More Black faces in high places automatically equals Black progress, regardless of the political content of these office-holders' policies. It is an unquestionable sign of general Black progress when African American candidates gain white support.

Black solidarity must decline and ultimately fade away as a political motivator as opportunities for (some) African Americans expand. A growing Black middle class inevitably leads to increased Black political conservatism. Blacks have no legitimate reasons to pursue political solidarity except those directly related to the upward mobility of their class.

A unique and pronounced age gap exists in Black America, that stands in the way of "transition" to a less confrontational, more cooperative society. (Black elders are the bottleneck in this regard.) Young Blacks are politically more mature than older Blacks, since they are further removed from the events of the Sixties and thus are not plagued by disturbing memories.

Based on these assumptions, Times readers may conclude that African Americans who struggle for group rights and objectives are behaving like superannuated dodderers in their second childhoods. Matt Bai thinks so. The following sentence gives new meaning to the term, convoluted reasoning:

"For a lot of younger African-Americans, the resistance of the civil rights generation to Obama's candidacy signified the failure of their parents to come to terms, at the dusk of their lives, with the success of their own struggle - to embrace the idea that black politics might now be disappearing into American politics in the same way that the Irish and Italian machines long ago joined the political mainstream." ...

[anne]

Interestingly, having by chance followed the sequence of events from the beginning of continual Georgian shelling of Ossetia in preparation for occupation, Georgia's President has seemingly become incapable of telling the simplest truth. All is distortion, all is propaganda, all in service of an insane military "adventure." Columbia Law School should be proud, though I should not write that.

[anne]

At least Macbeth had a certain fierce flair about him, and Lady Macbeth, I am told was ravishing, but for Georgia the tragedy is all for the Georgians with farce for the leaders. Interesting sort of democracy too, where a President can just order up a war. "General, smash Ossetia," and Ossetia will be smashed, which likely explains Georgians wandering about Iraq all these years for sake of Georgian democracy.

Tomorrow and tomorrow, or something....

[anne]

Where is Lady Saakashvili, who could at least be suitably blamed?

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/Tragedy/macbeth/macbeth.1.5.html

1605

The Tragedy of Macbeth
By William Shakespeare

Act I. Scene V.

Inverness. Macbeth's castle.

MACBETH

My dearest love,
Duncan comes here to-night.

LADY MACBETH

And when goes hence?

MACBETH

To-morrow, as he purposes.

LADY MACBETH

O, never
Shall sun that morrow see!
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't. He that's coming
Must be provided for: and you shall put
This night's great business into my dispatch;
Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

MACBETH

We will speak further.

LADY MACBETH

Only look up clear;
To alter favour ever is to fear:
Leave all the rest to me.

Exeunt

[anne]

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/Tragedy/macbeth/macbeth.5.5.html

1605

The Tragedy of Macbeth
By William Shakespeare

Act V. Scene V.

Dunsinane. Within the castle.

Enter MACBETH, SEYTON, and Soldiers, with drum and colours

MACBETH

Hang out our banners on the outward walls;
The cry is still 'They come:' our castle's strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie
Till famine and the ague eat them up:
Were they not forced with those that should be ours,
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home.

A cry of women within

What is that noise?

SEYTON

It is the cry of women, my good lord.

Exit

MACBETH

I have almost forgot the taste of fears;
The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
Cannot once start me.

Re-enter SEYTON

Wherefore was that cry?

SEYTON

The queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Enter a Messenger

Thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.

Messenger
Gracious my lord,
I should report that which I say I saw,
But know not how to do it.

MACBETH

Well, say, sir.

Messenger

As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.

MACBETH

Liar and slave!

Messenger

Let me endure your wrath, if't be not so:
Within this three mile may you see it coming;
I say, a moving grove.

MACBETH

If thou speak'st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,
I care not if thou dost for me as much.
I pull in resolution, and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth: 'Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane:' and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!
If this which he avouches does appear,
There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
I gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back.

Exeunt

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/world/europe/14saakashvili.html?hp&pagewanted=print

August 14, 2008

Georgian President’s Accusations Grow
By MITCHELL L. BLUMENTHAL

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, who has appeared repeatedly on Western television during the days of conflict with Russia, made frantic and apparently overstated warnings on Wednesday that Russian troops were poised to enter the Georgian capital, Tbilisi....

“We will protect our capital with our last drop of our blood,” he said. “We will never surrender.” ...

[Macbeth? I don't think so.]

[hari]

Well...at least you found my favourite quotation from Macbeth which I even played on stage in high school... Can never forget that stanza.

*....Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow ...to the last syllable of recordd time...and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death...It's tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.*

Can you imagine what a gem that is! How many books have dedicated themselves to that sound and fury? Incredible.

In a sense, we have to pay little or no homage to the insane idea of politicians that they are saviors of our universe and...that less mortals must follow them...step by step.

My admonition to them is avoid the tale of sound and fury....

[hari]

Bush sending Rice to (Sarkosy) - Tbilisi is height of folly and political arrogance - but not Moscow. What's going on in the NSC - since he played (!) beach volleyball in Peking?

*Today EU/FMs decided to send peace keepers to Georgia to enforce the ceasefire. However they're reportedly not united.
Baltic States/Sweden/Poland pulling on one side of the rope with UK and the others following Germany/France to steady the ship of state.

*Friday Merkel meets Medvedev in Black Sea. Sarkosy has already carved his ceasefire - so what will she do?

*Georgia is not going to become a member of NATO as long as the enclaves remain a thorn on its sovereignty.

*Russia doesn't want Georgian forces to be included again in any peacekeeping mandate - so UN/SC will be asked to decide
on way forward (ie. Russian veto!).

*Berlin Radio conducted a roundtable discussion - including a Russian expert - the outcome was not clear. Russia considers Georgia the *aggressor* in this crisis/war.

[anne]

While I do not understand what has actually happened strategically, because we seem not to have recognized what was happening militarily from the onset, I have the sense this was a crushing bad diplomatic mistake by us and possibly by the European Union. The lack of strategic clarity shows how ill prepared Secretary Rice was, though I have no sense why.

What was our State Department doing as events must have been seen as unfolding? Who was analyzing? There are Americans all over Georgia, were there no cell phones? What did our monitoring pick up in the way of Georgian preparations? Does Rice have phone service?

[anne]

Hello, Condi, guy over here is ordering tanks to the woods of Ossetia. There are like Russians in Ossetia. Condi, you know, Russians, not drinks, people, not bears, people. This is not like messing around in Mauritania, this is like the Russian border we're talkin' about.

I know there's the Olympics, but they're not in Moscow this year.

Call the guy, tell 'em to cool it and you'll order something.

Condi? Hello?

[anne]

I would guess that diplomacy with Russia has just about doubled in difficulty from now on. Say, 3.7 to 7.1 or so. Russia now has a sort of Monroe-via Doctrine. We had better be nice, nice to China.

[hari]

Richard Holebroke says Condi assigned a third-ranking officer to Georgia Desk - he was sent out to liaise after the event while Kuchner was already there in Tbilisi....So, the strategic thinking must have known Olympic time was a good time to attack the enclaves and remove the OS troops.
There is no other plausible explanation. Saak's couldn't have braved the attack/aggression without official consent of Rice & Co.

Georgia was always a tool in Bush hands to pin prick Putin whenever he desired to get his accord on something else, I think. Afterall, Saak's is a (US) law graduate and even practiced law in NY, I'm told. He's good political conncetions with GOP side.

[Barkley Rosser]

anne,

Needless to say, you have done those estimable passages from Macbeth here before.

Your point regarding the Bush administration being asleep at the wheel here is fully valid. I think I mentioned it over on Econospeak and not here, but Richard Holbrooke has had a couple of columns over the last several months in WaPo in which he had warned that a very dangerous situation was brewing that could easily turn into a shooting war over South Ossetia between the Georgians and the Russians/South Ossetians, with the South Ossetian paramilitaries attacking Georgia proper, with Russian planes flying over Georgia proper, while the Georgians were in turn making attacks into South Ossetia against them (and trying to shoot down Russian planes as well). One of the clearly unknown loose ends in all this is just who was doing more of the escalating in all this, although supposedly both were according to those earlier reports by Holbrooke, and I have heard that some of the South Ossetian paramilitaries are still blasting away in Georgia proper, despite the official ceasefire, which apparently the Russians are more or less keeping, although they appear to still have some troops inside Georgia proper.

In any case, Holbrooke expressed concern in those earlier columns about the fact that Rice and the rest of them seemed not to be doing anything about this worsening situation, which would not redound to any good for the US. So, they appear to have been (again) incompetent, and indeed, for those who think the Georgian invasion of S.O. was a US plot, there has so far been no evidence of any direct "green light" from the US (more like ignorant silence), and indeed one upshot of this has been Georgia removing its troops from Iraq, which certainly does not seem like anything the Bushies would want at all. More generally they seem to be able to think about only one thing at a time, and most recently that seems to have been Iran, which is why they have been so much friendlier to the Russians than McCain claims he would be.

I note that Holbrooke is high on most people's short lists for being an Obama Sec of State, and it appears that he was behind Obama's originally nuanced statement, although the heat of political pressure from McCain pushed him to make a more anti-Russian/pro-Georgian statement later. At least he is not calling for tossing Russia out of the G-8 the way McCain is. McCain's position is seriously incoherent, although it sounds tough and principaled on the campaign trail, unfortunately (although maybe not so unfortunately if what one really wants is Hillary running against him in 2012).

Saakashvili screwed up, but the Russian/South Ossetian overreaction may have allowed him to achieve a near term political victory. The Russians have liked to point out that he was nearly removed from office not too long ago and has not been all that popular in Georgia. They were clearly hoping for "regime change," but their overreaction has played into his hands, and the reports are now that despite their humiliating military defeat, Georgian popular opinion is moving sharply in Saakashvili's favor, at least for now. So, the only way to have gotten that regime change would indeed have been to go all the way to Tbilisi.

In WaPo yesterday Gorbachev argued that a deeper origin of this mess was the move back in 1991 by the Georgians to end the autonomous status of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia. I think he is right on that one, and it was this move to end their autonomy that led them to revolt against Georgian rule in the first place, drawing on support from Russia. Most accounts have it that this original conflict back in 1991-92 was very bloody with serious atrocities on both sides, although most of the world was distracted with other matters at the time to notice particularly.

[hari]

Besides the 2000 troops transported from Iraq to OS front of battle, Putin said, there are 00's of US military advisors, in Georgia, with the objective of upgrading their military forces. I don't know if the US advisors were directly known to be involved in the attack on OS on 7-8 Aug.

Today Gori - Stalin's birthplace - was ransacked by Russian forces. They are reported to be marching towards Tbilisi.
So, if Bush speaks about regime change in parts of Islamic World, Putin is formenting regime change in Tbilisi.

[anne]

Sure, sure, but where was our intelligence? The French, though I am critical, seem to have understood quickly how serious the problem was, if uncertain just how to proceed at least Kouchner flew to Georgia, then Sarkozy to Russia. Have we no independent intelligence, so that even if Rice loses her way the President can immediately be reached?

[Mikheil Saakashvili went to Columbia law school, and was supposedly a white-shoe American lawyer before finding booted worlds to conquer. We have been building Georgia's military and intelligence capability, seemingly along with Israel. Does anyone know how to use a phone?]

[hari]

Israeli/IDF have also been invloved with US military in Georgia - as well as training georgian forces.

Interesting tit bit came out of UN/SC debate when US tried to label *Russian aggression* against the sovereignty of Georgia - France demurred and argued you can't solve diplomatic bottlenecks by passing such resolutions. It did not get further, as I notice it.

[anne]

Richard Holbrooke, as adviser, Samantha Power being otherwise indisposed, still another reason to wonder about whether Obama knows anything about anything on foreign affairs. Obama was predictably belligerent and wrong on Georgia, as is so often the case with Obama and foreign affairs.

Holbrooke, as Secretary of State? I always thought the Hal Holbrooke made a wonderful Mark Twain, but he knew all about the Mississippi, and this is Georgia. Someone call, Obama.

[hari]

Haretz paper in Jerusalem wrote about IDF involvement with Georgian forces today.

[hari]

Anthony Lake will not even see the backside of Holbrooke - and they're old friends and I understand Richard is God Father of lakes kids too!

Richard sounds diplomatic in public. He's a rough-kneck when confronted by belligerency. I recall when he was US Ambassador in Bonn - long time ago. The guy is much better qualified than Lake and/or Rice for the job. But he won't get it - as long as Lake is by BO!

[hari]

May be BO shld appoint me as his tutor - so I can remove all his cobwebs. If you understand what I mean -> diplomacy is war by peaceufl means.

[anne]

http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Twa2Tom.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1

1876

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
By Mark twain

"TOM!"

No answer.

"TOM!"

No answer.

"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!"

No answer.

The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service -- she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:

"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll -- "

She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.

"I never did see the beat of that boy!"

She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and shouted:

"Y-o-u-u Tom!"

There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.

"There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in there?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What is that truck?"

"I don't know, aunt."

"Well, I know. It's jam -- that's what it is. Forty times I've said if you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch."

The switch hovered in the air -- the peril was desperate --

"My! Look behind you, aunt!"

The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and disappeared over it.

His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle laugh.....

[No, Hal Holbrook(e) will not do as Secretary of State....]

[hari]

Bush/Rice are trying to isolate Russia now...Iran will smile at the fate of US-Russian cooperation against their nucelar programme. Recall the Iranian nuclear plant is being built by Russian transfer of technology.

US-Russia foreign policy is bankrupt short-terminism -> to facilitate McCains push to Oval Office.

[anne]

Hari may even be right by now, though we both would have proceeded otherwise before.

Russia has already gained so much, that all we have is bluff from here. So frame the sequence against Russia publicly, and tough out a compromise. That means publicly distorting the sequence of events though, and that is dangerous. Darn. Beyond stupid.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/world/europe/14georgia.html?hp&Pagewanted=print

"The conflict boiled over when Mr. Saakashvili decided to send in troops to the Russian-friendly breakaway enclave of South Ossetia...."

No; I happened to be watching and watched as Georgia fired rockets on Ossetia for hours. Then the Georgia troops entered and occupied Ossetia. At least the American press should tell the story properly, even if our State Department has to distort.

[Barkley Rosser]

hari,

Why do you believe that Anthony Lake has some inside track to see Holbrooke's backside? I would say that Holbrooke did a pretty decent job negotiating the Dayton Accord. I would suggest that one of the reasons Holbrooke has been more on top of this situation than others (has Lake been on top of it, excuse me?), has been exactly his experience in the Balkans, which is linked and similar in several ways. What the hell has Lake ever done to put him ahead of Holbrooke in this consideration?

All the reports I have seen have said that the number of US advisers in Georgia is about 130-150. I do not know how many IDF ones there are. Although now lots of people are saying they were there to poke the Russian bear, given the monomaniacal obsessiveness of the Bushies, the focus has pretty clearly been on training the Georgians for Iraq and maybe Iran, places both the US and Israel are a lot more worked up about than Russia. Heck, that is why the Bushies have been so reluctant to really come out too hard against the Russians, although they have been pushed to do so by the overreaction the Russians pulled there (are they really advancing on Tbilisi???).

BTW, a more serious charge that is floating around in some circles, reported over on daily kos, involves McCain's foreign policy adviser Schueneman, Georgia's chief rep in the US until recently. Some are now claiming he put the Georgians up to it to provide a nicer foreign policy issue for McCain to run on. Most think that Saakashvili would not be particularly swayed by that and was probably just doing his own thing. But it does seem to be working out for McCain that way, even though dear anne keeps going on about how "belligerent" Obama supposedly is, when the public rap is going to be that he is the rootless wimp on Russia and Georgia, despite tilting to a harder line more recently.

Again, anne, what would you have a Dem candidate say? If Hillary were running, what would you have her say, please? If she were running, would you have kept silence if she called for the obliteration of Russia the way she did with respect to Iran?

[Julio]

“We will protect our capital with our last drop of our blood,” he said. “We will never surrender.” ...

[Macbeth? I don't think so.]

Paulson?

[anne]

What would be nice, so nice, would be to have a Presidential candidate capable of being truthful in describing what happened in Ossetia, but evidently truth failed to reach Hawaii. Like Secretary Rice, no phone.

Me, I never think about Hillary Clinton on foreign policy, since she is not a candidate for President, actually I would prefer never to think about Clinton at all since she is not a candidate, but Clinton fiends simply are beyond obsession and must always be finding ways to slander her. Amazing.

[anne]

Me, I could care less about figuring out foreign policy according to the policy that might be most attractive to voters, as opposed to being fair in policy formation and teaching voters of what fairness means and hoping there is a capability of perceiving fairness.

What I gather however is that we are to have foreign policy according to the same notions that have carried us to the current fiascoes that pass for even sane policy. I get it, and count on more mutual distortion which will add to the fiascoes.

[anne]

Secretary Rice, for want of a cell phone, since cords will not reach Ossetia, has made a drastic mistake and distorted the sequence of events leading to the routing of Georgina forces in Ossetia and Abkhazia. The distortion will haunt us, for re-creating sad or nutty stereotypes about Russia, making foreign policy more difficult from here.

Enter the Hamlet or Hamlet's ghost really to reinforce Rice's stereotypes. So goes change we can believe in.

[anne]

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/Tragedy/hamlet/hamlet.1.4.html

1601

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
By William Shakespeare

Act I. Scene IV.

Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

Enter Ghost

HAMLET

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?

Ghost beckons HAMLET

[anne]

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/Tragedy/hamlet/hamlet.1.5.html

1601

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
By William Shakespeare

Act I. Scene V.

Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

Enter GHOST and HAMLET

HAMLET

Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I'll go no further.

Ghost

Mark me.

HAMLET

I will.

Ghost

My hour is almost come,
When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

HAMLET

Alas, poor ghost!

Ghost

Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET

Speak; I am bound to hear.

Ghost

So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

HAMLET

What?

Ghost

I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love--

[anne]

Now this is proper story telling:

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/Tragedy/hamlet/hamlet.1.1.html

1601

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
By William Shakespeare

Act I. Scene I.

Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

MARCELLUS

Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is't that can inform me?

HORATIO

That can I;
At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet--
For so this side of our known world esteem'd him--
Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
And carriage of the article design'd,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't; which is no other--
As it doth well appear unto our state--
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

[Julio]

MARCELLUS:
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is't that can inform me?

HORATIO:
The Americans don't know yet, they're just proposing to enlarge the army, they'll come up with some use for it later.

Nahhh.

[hari]

@ Barkley Rosser -

Anthony Lake is controlling national security issues for BO.
Holbrooke is not *inside* the advisory group. And as long as they can't get along (Lake-Holbrooke), BO can't force the issue for the moment. May be when the election is over we shall see some changes depending on how serious this paradigm shift (again!) with Russia dictates policy configuration.

Remember inside EU Rice is formenting clash of confidence with Russia, as I indicated, CarlBildt has successfully pushed thru his view that Russian aggression in OS must be recognized - Germany and France didn't see how you could get further down the road of policy cooperation with Russia with such a policy stand right now.

Lady Merkel (not Lady Macbeth!) is off to Black Sea to see what she can do with the younger Medvedev to bring the Russian bear out from the cold, sort of. If anyone can do it, she can with her fluency in Russian idiomatic language as well.

Bush has escalated the conflict with Russia by using Marine and other military contingency forces to supply humanitarian aid to Georgia. Why do you think Bush is directing Pentagon to take charge of the humanitarian supply?

The gameplan is manifestly clear - ie. to clear Russian blockade of Black Sea ports of Georgia, as well as, to do some security reconnesance of the battlefield formation of Russian forces in the Caucusus. This is a very dangerous game plan, if true, because Russian national interest is closely identified with the Caucasus for centuries of historical developments.

Germany/France are in a position to tell Bush what is feasible and what not given the factual evidence of Georgian military aggression inside OS, to start with. Facts are important for EU/FM deliberations at security level. American ideological preponderence and whatnot is not the menu from which EU/FM decisions are made.

Geographically EU is concerned about security in Central Europe and Caucasus, as reflected by its new members from former Soviet Union. That's why US missile defenses and whatnot are not the stuff which are preferred preferences for EU policy makers - they can't understand/accept US stand on the matter.

[Barkley Rosser]

hari,

The Lake/Holbrooke huffings and puffings will work themselves out one way or the other. Lake may be more inside for now, but I would prefer to see Holbrooke. If he had been SecState for a Pres. Kerry, we might have had some action in the last couple of months by the US to tamp down what was apparently an escalating conflict, with Russia engaging in major cyberwar against Georgia, prior to Georgia's attack on South Ossetia.

As it has been, the Bush administration apparently did nothing, too fixated on other things and let this get too far along before doing anything, and I do not think the US (or Israel) put the Georgians up to this. This was Saakashvili getting arms from them on a "I am going to help you all in Iraq/Iran," and then pursuing his own hardline nationalist agenda against South Ossetia.

Merkel's conversations with Medvedev are irrelevant. He is irrelevant. Putin is in charge, and he is pushing the hard line, presumably the line that in fact demands regime change, or at least leader change, in Georgia.

I have no problem with the US providing humanitarian aid to Georgia in the current circumstances. As for it being provided by the DOD, that is no big deal. They are the only entity in the US that can do it on a large scale, as in Indonesia after the tsunami hit, for example.