Blogging in Iran

I'd long been vaguely aware that a blogging subculture seemed to be thriving in Iran, but I hadn't forced myself to pay it more attention until recently. Now that I have, I must say that what I have seen has been very interesting. Certainly, reading the thoughts of young people from that country helps to make them less of an alien quantity - one comes to appreciate just how important it is to distinguish between the rabid, apocalyptic pronounciations of the Ayatollahs, and the real aspirations of ordinary Iranians for mundane things like intellectual and social freedom.

One thing that comes across clearly, though, is that however much one comes to feel that the young people of Iran are similar to ours in many ways, in yet other ways an unbridgeable gap remains, and is likely to remain whatever changes for the better may occur in that country. On matters like the role of America in the world, and particularly on the issue of Israel's culpability in the Palestinian issue, the general sense one gets is that young Iranians do indeed share the views of their leaders to a great extent.

Alongside the admiration for American culture and technology, there is also a deepseated distrust of American intentions, even when these might seem to unbiased observers to be entirely benign. To a certain extent this attitude is understandable, given the history of Western interference in Iran's internal affairs, usually to the detriment of the country's people. Nevertheless, to empathize is not to justify, and such attitudes are often a great hindrance to those who hold them.

I intend to add a few links to some Iranian bloggers in the near future. One thing I must say I find odd though: with the exception of Salam Pax, there seem to be no Arab bloggers of any note to be found. Doing a Google Search turns up nothing but a single comment, while a variant search comes up with absolutely nothing. Why are there so many Iranian bloggers and so few Arab ones? Is it something political? If so, why aren't any Arabs living abroad involved, in the same manner that Iranian expatriates are? Is there some subtle cultural reason behind the difference?

Zionists Behind Iraqi Cash Claims, Says Galloway

Ah, yes, that explains it all, doesn't it - it's the International Zionist Conspiracy at work again! Damn, these Zionists sure are hard workers! And resourceful too! To think they were able to create and transport all those incriminating documents just in time, and to just the right place, for the Christian Science Monitor and the Daily Telegraph to find them!

As bad this rubbish allegedly spouted by Galloway may be (if it is indeed true), given the man's career, I'm doubtful he really even believes in the worldview he's endorsing. What seems more likely is that he knows his audience well, and he knows that anti-semitic conspiracies are precisely the sort of thing they go in for. At bottom, Galloway is no more than a cheap demagogue, pandering to the basest notions of his audience for personal gain, a George Wallace with a brogue accent.

Pious Irresponsibility - the Baleful Activities of NGOs

I recently came across a piece by Sam Vaknin that makes strong criticisms of the role played by NGOs in determining the fates of many developing countries. In the name of alleviating human suffering, these unelected and unaccountable organizations take it upon themselves to promote all sorts of agendas of doubtful benefit to their intended beneficiaries, even as they undermine the authority of the elected representatives of the nations in which they operate.

It would be too simple to say that everything non-governmental organizations do is detrimental, or even that all such organizations are the same - far from it. Many NGOs do indeed do good work a lot of the time, and many of those who work for these groups are motivated by the purest of intentions. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the old saying is true: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Policy positions advocated by NGOs, and motivated by the most noble ideals, can end up - and indeed, often have ended up - doing far more damage than the ills they are supposed to cure. The campaign against child labor is one glaring instance of this sort of naivete.

What makes matters worse is that for many NGOs, all the pious talk plays at most a marginal role to the true agenda of their participants, which is to propagate some ideologically motivated position with only the most tenuous claim to benefiting anyone other than the advocates themselves. This is particularly true of the environmental, birth control and "fair trade" lobbies, for whom perverse notions of mankind as corrupting of nature, racist fantasies of dark-skinned peoples "breeding like rabbits", or protectionism and marxist anti-capitalism, are the true motivators behind the proclamations of concern.

To offer one concrete and egregious example, take this article: not satisfied with the success of their efforts to prevent the distribution of "GM" food aid to starving Zambians, the same ideologues are now at work in Kenya, calling for more "research" into the "risk and impact of contamination of local food, labour and health" before any consideration is given to the acceptance of such aid. What is most worrisome is that they already have some of the local authorities agreeing with them, in this case, Kenyan Assistant Environment Minister Wangari Maathai, who is quoted as saying "those pushing GM food to Africa were exploiting the poverty level of African markets" ... [ farmers need to] "secure and plant their own seedlings to avoid further impoverishment".

Now, I am not surprised by the statement by the good Mr. Maathai, given the notorious tendency of Third World politicians to believe in sinister motivations behind all the actions of Western governments, but one might be forgiven for wondering if people on the edge of starvation might not have more pressing worries than "risk and impact of contamination of local food, labour and health" or the avoidance of "further impoverishment." How much more impoverished than being at starving point is it possible to get? Leaving aside such nonsense, what is truly disgusting is that organizations like Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and the like, run by comfortable Westerners for whom hunger is but an abstraction, should be willing to encourage such paranoia, and thereby to condemn millions of poor people to death, simply to further an anti-biotechnology agenda. These groups love to make a big hue-and-cry about the evils of multinational corporations, and yet their own activities are given an automatic pass by the Western media and public. Why should this be so?

And yet it is so, and is made worse by the semi-official status the NGOs are granted by corporations, and by organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations. It is not permissible for a few vocal lobby groups to be given the power to determine the fates of so many millions who have never voted for them, or even been consulted by them, simply because a few thousand spoilt brats are willing on occasion to take to the streets, faces hidden behind balaclavas, to smash up Starbucks and McDonalds.

Galloway is in Serious Trouble

If this report in the Christian Science Monitor checks out, 'Gorgeous' George Galloway must expect to spend some serious time behind bars.

A fresh set of documents uncovered in a Baghdad house used by Saddam Hussein's son Qusay to hide top-secret files detail multimillion dollar payments to an outspoken British member of parliament, George Galloway.

... (stuff deleted) ...

The leadership of Hussein's special security section and accountants of the President's secretive Republican Guard signed the papers and authorized payments totaling more than $10 million.

The three most recent payment authorizations, beginning on April 4, 2000, and ending on January 14, 2003 are for $3 million each. All three authorizations include statements that show the Iraqi leadership's strong political motivation in paying Galloway for his vociferous opposition to US and British plans to invade Iraq.

The Nigerian Presidential Elections

So, for only the third time in its' history as an independent nation, Nigeria has held elections for a successive term of civilian rule. How did they turn out? Pretty much as I expected they would, and as most African "elections" tend to - chaotic and riddled with fraud. Africapundit has links to more of the details.

As you'll have seen if you followed the link, Somaliland has also been holding elections, and, just as in Nigeria, the losing candidate seems unwilling to accept the electoral results. At least the Somali candidate has the excuse of a wafer-thin margin to fall back on (shades of Gore-Bush 200), which the dour Mr. Buhari does not.

Even with all the irregularities that have occurred in the Nigerian elections, I find it implausible that the race between Buhari and Obasanjo could ever have been in doubt, and I say this as someone who considers Obasanjo's term in office to have been one long series of tragicomic incidents. He may not have achieved very much of value on the economic front, but at least this much must be said for the man - people are free to express themselves, and to criticize authority, as they have rarely been in the history of post-independence Nigeria. The memory of Buhari's harsh and authoritarian rule is too fresh in the minds of too many people for him to have stood a real chance of winning.

Having said all this, one has to ask - if the election results were never really in doubt, why was it necessary for Obasanjo's party to cheat at all, let alone in such a blatant fashion? To a large extent, this can be explained by the fact that the winner-take-all system by which
each of the 36 states are decided for one candidate or another was also the means for deciding the governorships, which are as certain a route to wealth in Nigeria as one can find, short of the presidency itself. Ultimately, all of Nigeria's politics boils down to the scramble for self-enrichment.

Porphyrogenitus has interesting things to say about the Franco-Russian interest in maintaining the sanctions on Iraqi oil, even though the rationale for their existence is no longer present. He also makes a few points about the liberty and self-government, and how they relate to the Anti-American protests emanating from Baghdad that we've been hearing so much about.

Mbeki and AIDS Denial

Some might have been skeptical when I claimed that Thabo Mbeki was paranoid. The fact is that Mbeki has been claiming since 2000 that there is a (get this) CIA Conspiracy [TM] to smear his good name because of the challenge posed by his unorthodox opinions to the profits of American Big Pharma [TM]. As this link shows, he hasn't exactly had a genuine change of heart in the years since. When the president of a nation of 40 million people can say with a straight face that there is a CIA conspiracy to undermine him by linking HIV to AIDS, one has to doubt his sanity.

How to Wage the Peace

Fareed Zakaria's been making a lot of the same points about oil wealth, democracy and nation-building that I have here (see the link above), which I find eerily coincidental. Also of interest is an item posted by Brad DeLong, about a paper by William Easterly and Ross Levine, called "Africa's Great Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions". I've made some comments in the accompanying discussion area; hopefully others will make interesting contributions of their own.

The Curse of Oil Wealth

Daniel Pipes was amazingly prescient in seeing as long ago as 1982 that the presence of oil can be more of a curse for a nation than any sort of blessing. On the face of it, one would think there'd be no downside to having oil in abundance, as it would obviate the need for governments to carry out large-scale borrowing to finance infrastructure development or investment in human capital.

So much for the theory - in practice, oil windfalls have almost always had a negative impact over the long term. No windfall ever lasts, however large, but while the boom is in progress, it sets in motion developments that end up redounding to the harm of its' beneficiaries. Massive fortunes are rapidly made, with no real effort required on the part of those lucky enough to be sitting at the government till, enfusing an entire society with a "get-rich-quick" mentality, and making any sort of effort to prosper by sheer toil come to seem foolish. Government revenues rise to dizzying and unsustainable heights, and large sums are expended on all kinds of white elephants and grandiose schemes. People come to rely on government largesse, while the government is freed from all accountability to a citizenry from which it recieves no taxes.

For a short while, all these problems can be covered up by the ever-rising gusher of oil revenue, but when the gusher subsides, the return to reality can be extremely painful. None of the OPEC countries can be said to be anywhere nearly as prosperous today as they were at the height of the second oil boom (Algeria excepted), and in point of fact, most are much worse off than they were before it; per capita GDP in Nigeria today is about the same as it was in 1965, while in Saudi Arabia it has fallen from $28,600 in 1982 to about $6,500 today, and is still falling. Even Algeria has seen a steady decline in GDP per capita since 1990. The only middle-eastern country that has seen a real rise in its' standard of living over the last 20 years is Israel, which has no mineral resources of great commercial value.

How does all of this tie into current affairs? Most obviously, it suggests that Iraq's gigantic oil reserves are no guarantee of anything; to the converse, they are more likely to hinder the country's prospects than to boost them. For the country to have a chance, the oil revenues must be kept, to the greatest extent possible, away from the reach of its' politicians, or the temptation to regard high office as a means to quick riches will likely prove too great.

What would be ideal would be a scheme along the same lines as the one in Alaska. Such a scheme would have the benefit of keeping the revenues out of the grasp of politicians, lest they be tempted to mischief, while clearly benefiting the entire population of Iraq. An Iraqi government unable to rely on easy access to oil money for revenues would be more likely to pay attention to those tasks that would boost the earning power, and therefore the taxability, of its' citizens.

The War in Quotes

This article in the Weekly Standard takes an amusing look at the misuse of "scare quotes" (or, as some might say, "sneer quotes") by journalists wishing to cast doubt on the views of their subjects, without actually coming out and saying "I don't believe what's been said!" As might be expected, the two most egregious examples of this practice come journalists working for the two looniest of the left -wing British broadsheets, Robert Fisk of the Independent, and Mary Riddell of the Guardian.