Circling the Wagons

People don’t circle the wagons when they are feeling safe, good about themselves and optimistic about the future. With the exception of the economic impact expected from possible European national defaults and harsh competitive realities with China, and direct safety concerns from Taliban and Taliban-like extremists (even al Qaeda still) against the United States measured against the cost of the war in Afghanistan, Americans seem to have placed foreign policy issues far down the list of priorities. When the Arab-Israeli debacle in Palestine raises its ugly head, the issue may grab headlines for a day or two, but we are back to domestic issues almost instantly.

The underlying momentum is to cut expenditures, and foreign aid – the bribes that have fomented U.S. foreign policy for most of the 20^th century – is considered among the most expendable of our budgetary categories… even humanitarian aid. We have moved from an open and optimistic society to one that is suspicious of foreigners, inhospitable to immigrants and where it’s everyone for themselves. Anything that costs money, even if it may benefit the society at large, is suspect – from Medicare and national healthcare to public education at every level.

Everyone looks at Canada’s national healthcare system and assumes that “liberal Canadians” had an easy time passing the system. In fact, that nation struggled with conservative groups that threw down the gauntlet to reformers who pressed the issue: “In 1935, the United Farmers of Alberta passed a bill creating a provincial insurance program, but they lost office later that year and the Social Credit Party scrapped the plan due to the financial situation in the province. The next year a health insurance bill passed in British Columbia, but its implementation was halted over objections from doctors. William Lyon Mackenzie King promised to introduce such a scheme, but while he created the Department of Health he failed to introduce a national program.” Wikipedia. The Province of Saskatchewan started the ball rolling in 1946, but it was not until 1961 that the national nature of Canadian healthcare was finally approved by all the provinces. Today, there are very, very few Canadians, liberals or conservatives, who would eliminate this government program and no measurable number of Canadians who believe the US. private healthcare system is superior to theirs.

But despite the fact that healthcare costs rose 9% from last year, the fact that massive unemployment also means massive numbers of new uninsured, and the fact that “Obamacare” is still implemented through private plans, reversing any movement towards national healthcare is a prime target of a vast pool of Americans who simply want the government out of their lives. Whatever the issue, America is turning inwards with its back to the rest of the world and creating an internal free-for-all within its own borders. In economically impaired times, this kind of a national reaction seems to be textbook history.

Europe has also circled the wagons, blaming the rogue Wall Street trading and debt practices (adopted by many European financial institutions) for their own demise. Their own practices are focused very heavily on their own goals, and U.S. priorities are seldom given a second glance these days. But the notion of increased desires to return to the past, to eschew any recent shifts to modernity, has also infected nations with spectacular growth and unlimited potential as well. China has been reversing many of its open and liberal policies of late, rapidly returning to a severe centralist government that maintains careful controls – if not direct ownership – of every significant aspect of her citizens’ political and economic institutions.

Forbes (October 9^th) summarizes: “First, [PRC Chairman] Hu [Jintao] has been blocking high-profile foreign acquisitions, especially beginning in 2007 with Microsoft’s attempt to take a stake in Sichuan Changhong Electric and Goldman Sachs’s moves on Midea Electric and Fuyao Group. Carlyle was frustrated in its multi-year pursuit of Xugong Group Construction Machinery late last decade, and the central government used its new anti-monopoly law against Coca-Cola when the American icon tried to buy Huiyuan Juice Group in 2009.

“Second, Hu’s government has been renationalizing the economy for about a half decade. During his tenure, China Investment Corp., the sovereign wealth fund, and the National Social Security Fund went into the Chinese stock markets to buy up shares that were in private hands… But at the end of 2008 the government’s renationalization program really got rolling. Then, Beijing, to avoid a slowing of growth, ramped up investment, now the most important of the three legs of the Chinese economy, with perhaps the largest program of stimulus spending in history. Beijing’s stimulative plan is resulting in a bigger state economy and a smaller private one: about 87% of recent growth is attributable to investment, almost all of it from the state. And state investment is going into the state sector, of course. The state’s stimulus plan is favoring large state enterprises over small and medium-sized private firms and state financial institutions are diverting credit to state-sponsored infrastructure. As they say, ‘the Communist Party is now the economy.’

“Third, Hu Jintao has been busy shutting out foreign competitors as he has embraced a new economic paradigm of closing the country down. The Chinese government has actively tried to cripple foreign competitors, for instance… Beijing officials, we now know, targeted Google, stole its source code, and then undermined its ability to compete in order to help local search engine Baidu. The Communist Party is attempting to build ‘national champions’ and wants 50 of the world’s 500 largest companies to be Chinese by the middle of this decade. And it is willing to use harsh tactics to achieve this goal, like the indigenous innovation product accreditation rules that force foreign companies to surrender technology.” If you think this is a short term policy, think again. Xi Jinping, thought to be Hu’s heir apparent when the latter steps down at the end of 2012, appears to be firmly committed to this new, inwardly focused China.

With trans-border financial regulations and environmental issues that cannot be resolved at a local level, as the interdependence of nations caught up in a global economy is beyond obvious, the willingness of countries to open up and cooperate with each other appears to be at its lowest point in many decades. Such dangerous trends often result in armed conflict or sustained periods of economic turmoil, even beyond those recessionary elements we currently face. The complete de-prioritization of foreign policy may seem justified to those believing that we have to solve our own problems and the rest of the world be damned. But they need to take a drive in their Canadian-built “American car” powered by imported oil to their local Wal*Mart and walk the aisles looking for American-made products. The link between our economy and foreign policy is too obvious to miss.

I’m Peter Dekom, and impaired economic times requires better cooperative thinking and not knee-jerk reactions that only make the problems worse.

Saudi Duty II

Built from an exceptionally conservative Sunni faith – Wahabbism (an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam developed by an 18^th century cleric) – the Saudi royal family was the product of a successful single tribe that unified the divergent and often-warring tribal factions that populated the Arabian Peninsula in the early 20^th century. They are indeed absolute monarchs whose power stems from the vast wealth accumulated, beginning in the mid-20^th century and continuing into the present, from the largest oil reserves on earth. A consistent ally of the United States and the Western world, Saudi Arabia is caught in a time warp. With literally thousands of Saudi princes, many of whom have received exceptional educations at the best universities on earth, there has been a struggle between extremely old visions of social structure and the pull of the modern world.

Applying some of the most conservative interpretations of Islamic law – Sharia – thieves have their hands sliced off and adulters face death-by-stoning in public ceremonies. Women cannot drive cars or be in public unless accompanied by a male member of their families (and they are covered from head to toe) and until recently, have been unable to vote. But as the Arab Spring brought revolution to other absolute rulers in the region, as regimes toppled, Saudi Arabia faced the push-pull of a move to reform and liberalize to dissuade rebellion, on the one hand, and the desire to crack down (a la Syria) on nascent and perhaps destabilizing liberalizing elements in Saudi society, on the other.

87-year-old King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud has been the relatively moderate balancer of interests in this seemingly anachronistically-governed land. It was Abdullah who brokered the right for women to vote (not yet implemented) and has walked the fine line between reform and holding the party line against liberalization. His named successor, 80-year-old crown prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, was expected to follow in King Abdullah’s path, walking that difficult middle ground, between the pressure to change and the desire to maintain Saudi society in strict adherence to traditional ways.

On October 22^nd, Sultan died while undergoing treatment in New York, and the issue of succession became critical. According to tradition, likely to be followed, the new heir-apparent, Sultan’s half brother, Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud (pictured above), has become the center of attention. But unlike the King and Sultan, Nayef is viewed as anti-reformist and generally as a hardliner: “Nayef, 78, has earned U.S. praise for unleashing the internal security forces against suspected Islamic extremist cells in Saudi Arabia, which was home to 15 of 19 of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Yet he brought blistering rebukes in the West for a 2002 interview that quoted him as saying that ‘Zionists’ — a reference to Jews — benefited from the 9-11 attacks because it turned world opinion against Islam and Arabs.

“Nayef also has expressed displeasure at some of Abdullah’s moves for more openness, saying in 2009 that he saw no need for women to vote or participate in politics. It’s a view shared by many Saudi clerics, who follow a strict brand of Islam known as Wahhabism. Their support gives the Saudi monarchy the legitimacy to rule over a nation holding Islam’s holiest sites.”

“‘Nayef is more religious, and is closer to the Saudi groups who are very critical of the king’s decisions regarding women and other steps he’s taken to balance out the rigid religious practices in society,’ said Ali Fakhro, a political analyst and commentator in Bahrain… But it remains doubtful that Nayef — if ever made king — would outright annul Abdullah’s reforms, which include the establishment of a coed university where both genders can mix. More likely, Nayef would put any further changes on hold, said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political affairs professor at Emirates University.” New York Times, October 22^nd. If Nayef survives to succession, always a question given the ages of the incumbent high-level princes, will he rise to the occasion and seek that middle ground, inching slowly into modernity, or will he gradually stop the progressive clock, perhaps even moving the hands of time backwards? Only time will tell, but in the volatile Middle East, all such changes are relevant.

I’m Peter Dekom, and what may seem like a small story from a distant land could have significant repercussions to the United States, both vis-à-vis defense against Muslim extremists and pricing of precious oil.

Little Luxuries

Spending in a recession, for those who have any ability to do so, seems to be a process of prioritization and an instinct that feels more like an evening with a big fork indulging in comfort food. Children always should and generally do come first, and combining being with children and sharing the experience with a parent is an easy explanation why Hollywood is having such success with its family entertainment (not children’s fare, but what we call “age 8 to 80” films). Ladle in imagery, moments and storylines that make adults cry or laugh, and you get Up, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Toy Story and Despicable Me. After all, in Despicable Me, an animated film from Universal Pictures, was the image of the Bank of Evil with the caption “Formerly Known as Lehman Bros.” ever intended for a child? In 2010, eight of the top ten U.S. box office films (and the actual top four films) in release in the United States fit this 8-80 paradigm. While box office maybe flat for most titles, this category is doing quite well, thank you.

In shopping, where perhaps we aren’t getting that new car or buying the next level house or moving to a better apartment – where big tickets items, particularly those with continuing payments attached, remain only dreams – the thought of a little luxury seems to replace an otherwise insatiable craving to buy. That U.S. credit card debt is creeping back up to unsustainable levels of borrowing (hey, banks aren’t lending, so use the credit card!) is a sign that folks are spending in little ways that are beginning to aggregate into a bigger push within the economy… not enough to turn the tide, but enough to confuse the best economists as to whether or not this recession is double-dipping.

Stopping by for a sinful Baskin Robbins ice cream cone or a sumptuous Starbucks blended mocha fall into this category, but discount sites with luxury brands are barely able to keep up with demand. “[Recently], a crush of shoppers hoping to buy a cheaper line of [Italian clothing designer] Missoni fashions at Target brought down the retailer’s Web site for the better part of a day… ‘When the crisis hit and people really started to feel a pinch in their pocketbooks, they started to spend less across the board, especially in discretionary kinds of things,’ said Vicki G. Morwitz, a professor of marketing at the Stern School of Business at New York University. ‘But it’s difficult, I think, for people to do that for a long time, even when they need to.’” New York Times, September 23^rd.

Consumers have already stocked up on basics “just in case,” and pent-up frustration is moving the buying needle: “Consumers at all income levels have been splurging on indulgences while paring many humdrum household expenses, according to industry data for the last year. Many retailers also report that while fripperies like purses and perfumes are best sellers, they cannot get shoppers interested in basics like diapers, socks and vacuum bags… Consumer psychologists say that in this uncertain economy — coming after one of the worst recessions in generations — it is just too hard being good all the time.

“‘People have a limited supply of energy to put toward controlling their urges,’ Kathleen D. Vohs, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota, said in an e-mail. Ms. Vohs studies spending behavior at the university’s Carlson School of Management… Many of the products selling briskly are not high-priced, but they could be on a party supply list: premixed cocktails and coolers, cheesecake, cosmetics and wine. Meanwhile, sales of staples like batteries, bleach and fertilizer have declined sharply.” NY Times. Meanwhile, the mega-rich have set aside any semblance of feigned frugality, and products from Channel and Louis Vuitton and BMWs, Porsches and Bentleys are selling like hotcakes. Wouldn’t it be strange if these irresistible shopping urges saved our economy?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I feeling like a nice slice of cheesecake flown in from New York right now.

Alone Again, Naturally

While the Western World has deep concerns over terrorist cells operating in its midst, threatening London as much as New York, the American perspective – still known as “America’s war on terror” despite efforts to change that name – appears to be a directive that the rest of the world is stepping away from. Europeans, who definitely have militant Islamists in their midst, are desperately reliant on oil shipments from the Middle East, notwithstanding oil reserves in the North Sea. They are happy that the United States is running around killing “terrorists,” alienating Arab neighbors, absorbing the blame, but they equally grateful that they can shrug their shoulders and say, “not me.”

Al Qaeda’s extreme views lost virtually all of its popular support in the Middle East with its seemingly indiscriminate murderous agenda. It killed a whole lot more Muslims than “Western foreign devils” in its determination to impose a global Sunni theocracy. The American focus on al Qaeda, killing off its leadership at every turn, has also helped pushed it out of most Middle Eastern countries, although they are hoping to reignite in places like Yemen and Nigeria.

Reacting to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recent statements at the U.N. on September 11^th that the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11 was part of a self-inflicted American plot to provide justification for its forays into Iraq and Afghanistan, al Qaeda – which takes pride in having orchestrated these attacks – responded in its English language magazine: “‘The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al-Qaida was behind 9/11 but rather, the US government,’ the article said, according to Iranian media. ‘So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?’” The Guardian, September 28^th. Sunni al Qaeda is indeed hostile to Shiite Iran. Al Qaeda struggles to sustain its identity in a world that increasingly has marginalized their existence.

When American drones attacked a Yemeni convoy and killed American born Muslim cleric and al Qaeda troublemaker/propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki on September 30^th, this local reaction was typical: “‘I don’t know why he was important, except that he was a terrorist,’ said Belal Masood, who works in a restaurant in Sana’s [Yemen’s capital] old city. ‘But maybe this will create a problem for us Yemenis, because when you strike Al Qaeda they normally strike back larger. Really, we wish they could have killed him in another country.’

“Another man, Walid Seneb, who was sitting on a street curb with three friends on Friday night, said, ‘We don’t like these terrorists who make problems for us. Mr. Seneb was the only one of the four men who had heard of the cleric’s death… ‘But right now there are worse problems,’ he said. ‘Our national crisis is the biggest problem. There is no water, electricity, everything from the government stopped.’” New York Times, September 30^th. With a war-torn civil war pitting a rebel commander against an unpopular dictator/ President Ali Abdulleh Saleh tearing the country apart, the fact that Saleh’s forces provided the relevant information to the CIA to enable the attack was perceived by many as America’s siding with this failing incumbent.

Al Qaeda’s festering unpopularity is particularly evident in a country with an estimated 150 million Muslims (out of 1.2 billion), India. Regionally surrounded by al Qaeda and Taliban forces in neighboring Pakistan and nearby Afghanistan, there has never been a single documented connection between any Indian Muslim and al Qaeda. Yet, notwithstanding a strong and very positive relationship with the United States, India also has good relations with Iran, and is not particularly sympathetic to American efforts to contain that nation’s nuclear program. India has been attacked by Muslim terrorists many times, but apparently entire at the behest of its traditional enemy to the north, Pakistan, and not from internal “al Qaeda” sources. Their “live and let live” philosophy is the driving force in their foreign policy, as opposed to the American “if you are not with us, you are against us” mentality.

Our obsession with the seemingly self-extinguishing flame known as al Qaeda is a sign of weakness to the rest of the world. We have to take our shoes off when we walk through airport checkpoints; almost no one else does. The ban on liquids is not uniformly imposed in all international venues outside the U.S. While we do have to be vigilant against rogue extremists who mean to do us harm, we have altered our way of life, restricted our own travel preferences, spent half a billion dollars on the Department of Homeland Security, spent a deficit-crushing $1.2 trillion plus military benefits that will be paid for decades on two wars that have inflicted massive collateral damage, suborned torture (e.g., water boarding, which we considered torture when we sentenced a Japanese guard for using the technique during WWII), altered our view of personal freedom under the Patriot Act (many provisions of which have been deemed to be unconstitutional), handed the effective political control of Iraq to an Iran-friendly Shiite majority government and alienated more people all over the world by appearing to be a bullying superpower.

Our over-zealous pursuit of al Qaeda, literally forcing many other nations in the world to lose aid or favored trading status unless they joined the effort, has deflated our ability to generate international policies that might help us. We have moved ourselves into a perception as a lone cowboy unable to work in true partnership with other nations to solve global problems. While we must protect ourselves from such attacks and respond accordingly, we have long since lost sufficient credibility to get the rest of the world to join in our efforts. We have forgotten how to motivate other nations to help us, believing somehow that American “righteousness” gives us the right to demand and require it. And as result, American foreign policy is literally at its lowest level of effectiveness since World War II. If we want to cut back on unsustainable military expenditures that are concomitant with going it alone (which could destroy our economic ability to survive as a nation), we need to learn how to work with other nations as a partner. Or we can simply let al Qaeda gloat that whatever happens to them, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams of forcing Americans to inflict vastly more damage on themselves that al Qaeda could ever have wished. They honestly believe that they tipped the first domino towards our total destruction and could not be more delighted with how we amplified their initial efforts towards our own purported demise.

I’m Peter Dekom, and each American really needs to ask him or herself if unilateral American action in this foreign policy excess has really generated the kind of national safety that makes us stronger and more successful.

Forest Dump

I’m going change my format a little bit to provide U.S. government-collected data (by our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – NOAA) to dispel, in the simplest possible scientific method I can think of, that the current bout of climate change is definitely and unequivocally linked to man-made sources. There is no known source of the massive build-up of carbon dioxide (CO₂₎ and other greenhouse gasses other than man’s rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels. None. However, once that cycle began, the increased use of carbon dioxide, etc. has triggered warming trends that have further unlocked naturally occurring greenhouse gasses that otherwise were locked in frozen and inaccessible areas on earth. Look at these U.S. government charts carefully.

Global average temperature since 1880. This graph from NOAA shows the annual trend in average global air temperature in degrees Celsius, through December 2010. For each year, the range of uncertainty is indicated by the gray vertical bars. The blue line tracks the changes in the trend over time. (Image courtesy NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.)

Monthly mean atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii

The carbon dioxide data (red curve), measured as the mole fraction in dry air, on Mauna Loa constitute the longest record of direct measurements of CO₂ in the atmosphere. They were started by C. David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in March of 1958 at a facility of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [Keeling, 1976]. NOAA started its own CO₂ measurements in May of 1974, and they have run in parallel with those made by Scripps since then [Thoning, 1989]. The black curve represents the seasonally corrected data.

Data are reported as a dry mole fraction defined as the number of molecules of carbon dioxide divided by the number of molecules of dry air multiplied by one million (ppm).

The massive construction of thousands of new coal-fired plants and the rapid acceleration of consumer-owned cars and trucks began to spread from the traditional sources in the United States and Europe into the growing nations in Africa and Asia… in post WWII world of the 1950s and 60s. CO₂ has been building up since we began constructing and operating massive numbers of industrial plants in the late 19^th century; there are graphs based on indirect evidence – looking at tree rings and carbon build-up – that CO₂ was on the rise with the industrial revolution, but the most recent data was directly and accurately measured starting in 1958. Look at the impact of massive increases in industrial output triggered by the military demands of World War II in the first chart.

It’s an accelerating vicious cycle. As average temperatures rise, ice packs and glaciers melt, and the white reflectiveness of ice is replaced by the darker heat absorptive colors of the underlying water and land, pulling and retaining more heat to accelerate further melting ice. The once frozen Siberian tundra is also melting and releasing a gas (methane) that is 23 times denser and hence more of a greenhouse sealant than mere carbon dioxide.

And the ability of forests to absorb excess CO₂ and turn it into breathable and life-sustaining oxygen is dwindling rapidly: “The trees spanning many of the mountainsides of western Montana glow an earthy red, like a broadleaf forest at the beginning of autumn. But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in part by bitterly cold winters. As the climate warms, scientists say, that control is no longer happening. Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days. From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state’s spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water. The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two ‘once a century’ droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.” Levine Breaking News, October 1^st.

So for the “skeptics” that hold that linkage between man-made greenhouse gasses and global climate change is unproven “theory,” let the generations that will struggle with these catastrophic quality of life changes revile them in history books forever. Politicians unwilling to confront these issues and attempt to minimize the death, destruction and decimation that climate change is and will continue to cause – yes, Rick Perry, particularly in dought-and-fire-infested Texas these days – are most certainly unfit to lead a nation in the 21^st century. This is most certainly not a partisan issue, but the lives of future generations depend heavily on what we do about this problem in the coming years.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes idiotic, un-researched opinions can be exceptionally detrimental to your health.