Salon Magazine - Yellow Porn

I discovered this article through a comment on Matthew Yglesias' weblog. I find it intriguing because of the way in which it treats an issue most people would rather not talk about.

The idea for Asian-American erotica, or "yellow porn" as Hamamoto calls it, took root in 1998, when he began to ask students in his class on theoretical perspectives in Asian-American studies whom they fantasized about sexually. Invariably, the images were of white, blond-haired beauties, both male and female. What that meant to Hamamoto was that the sexuality of black, brown and yellow bodies had been subjugated. Asian-Americans of both genders didn't view each other as sexual beings. He laid out his thesis for making an Asian-American porn video in an essay titled "The Joy F**K Club" that was published in an academic journal in 1998.

[............]

"Asian-Americans are stereotyped in a negative way," Rick Lee, creator of the porn site Asian-man.com, says in "Masters of the Pillow." "A straight, Asian-American guy is impossible to find in porn. If you find one, he's gay and a bottom."

[............]

The stereotype of the asexual, geeky Asian guy has endured, affecting much more than porn. During the last 30 years, interracial dating has become common in the United States. Asian-American women are among the most likely to date or marry someone of another race, to the dismay of many Asian-American men. According to the 2000 census, Asian-American women married white spouses 3.08 times more often than Asian-American men did. And if the media is any indication, Asian men aren't viewed as sexually desirable by much of American society. This, he says, leads to the conflict between the sexes that Hamamoto said he is trying to quell. (emphasis added)

Internalized racism is a real phenomenon, and nowhere does it reveal itself more awkwardly than in the choices people make with regards to their sexual partners. While I don't think there's anything in the slightest bit wrong about people choosing to cross racial boundaries in seeking mates, one thing I know for a fact is that there's a reason why certain interracial pairings are a lot more common than others, a reason that has little to do with accidents of circumstance, and everything to do with nasty archetypes that are still at work in the world today - the virile black brute ("Mandingo", OJ Simpson), the promiscuous black virago ("welfare mothers driving cadillacs"), the submissive geisha ("Madame Butterfly", "Me love you long time"), the cunning but passive Asian male ("Charlie Chan", "Fu Manchu") ... These notions hardly need spelling out to any adult with more than a passing familiarity with the culture.

Are You an Austrian?

Yet another silly quiz, this time with an economics twist. Hosted by the Ludwig von Mises institute, this quiz attempts to match your views on economic questions to various schools of thought, including the Austrian, the Chicago (Neoclassical), the Keynesian and the Socialist schools. My results for the shorter, 10-question version of the quiz can be obtained via the following link:

Austrian Economics Quiz Results

As is clear, I'm closer to the Neoclassical school of economics in my thinking than I am to the Austrians (though there are actually quite a few points on which I am in agreement with the latter.) For one thing, I find the Austrian focus on the money supply somewhat ... obsessive. For another, I am a firm believer in antitrust, and I think any school of economics that fails to take account the existence of natural monopolies like Microsoft, and the need to rein them in, is one that has lost touch with reality to some degree. Economics isn't set theory, and one can't just pick a set of axioms a la ZFC, and then proceed to build a mighty edifice without any concern for the piddling matter of empirical confirmation. If there's one thing one learns in mathematics, it is that axioms that are "self evidently true" often turn out to be anything but - take Euclid's Parallel Postulate, for instance, or the Axiom of Choice. If economics is to be regarded as anything more than an empty exercise in theoretical system-building, at some point its' predictions must be tested against reality, and this is something the Austrians have shown a marked resistance to doing.

Abysmal Support for the Draft EU Constitution

If the following Telegraph article is to be believed, the current draft of the proposed EU constitution has negligible support amongst the European population, but the question arises - will their political masters listen? The omens aren't good.

EU constitution Faces Defeat

The draft European constitution has failed to inspire Europe's citizens and is likely to be defeated in referendums next year unless rewritten, says a survey.

Support for the 230-page document was negligible among key states certain to hold a vote, falling as low as five per cent in Holland and three per cent in Denmark, said the EU-wide poll yesterday.

Most people with any view on the matter wanted the text "partially" or "radically modified" or abandoned, though most supported the abstract principle of an EU constitution.

Britons were the most hostile, with 35 per cent calling for outright rejection. But citizens in all of the EU's current and future states appeared disdainful of the document.

Support for the draft stands at 11 per cent in Germany followed by France (10 per cent), Spain (seven), Austria (six) and Finland (four).

The survey, published by the European Commission, will bolster calls by the Conservatives and the French opposition parties for a referendum, showing 86 per cent support for a vote in Britain and 92 per cent in France.

It emerged at the weekend that Downing Street has been pleading with Paris to avoid a vote, fearing that it could create unstoppable momentum for Britain to follow suit. President Jacques Chirac is considering the risk of a populist rebellion by French Eurosceptics. (emphasis added)

It's pretty remarkable that the British government should go to such shameful lengths to frustrate the will of its' own population, isn't it? Here we see the entire problem with the whole European project: it is a top-down, elitist, anti-democratic edifice being imposed in the face of indifference or even outright opposition on the part of the peoples who must live under it. If the European Union were merely about free trade and free movement of persons across borders, I would be ardently for it, but Europe's elites aren't content with leaving it at that. Instead they seem to have decided to use the whole structure as a means of succesively stripping their citizens of any choice in the way in which their lives are to be run. All power is to be centralized in Brussels, and an incestuous cadre of Eurocrats and former national politicians (who glide into positions of patronage in a European version of amakudari) will get to set the rules for hundreds of millions as they see fit, free of the silly constraints imposed by elections and the like.

How Long Should Patents Last?

Here is a link to a Cowles Foundation reprint of William Nordhaus' paper on the issue.

William D. Nordhaus - "The Optimum Life of a Patent: Reply", American Economic Review 62, 1972.

Particularly interesting is the following snippet from the concluding section of the paper:

Taking account of all the problems, the following conclusions seem to be justified.

First a fixed patent life is not optimal in theory, although it may be unavoidable in practice. If we are to err on one side, the analysis suggests too long a patent life is better than too short a patent life. For run-of-the-mill inventions, the losses from monopoly are small compared to the gains from invention. The best way to prevent abuse is to ensure that trivial inventions do not receive patents.

Second, the complications arising from risk, drastic inventions, imperfect product markets, and "inventing around" patents generally point to a longer rather than a shorter patent life.

An interesting undertaking would be to reapply the analysis in the context of software patents, and see whether Nordhaus' conclusions still apply. I'm sure somebody has to have done the work already: anybody know where to look?

Why Affirmative Action isn't a Long Term Solution

This NYT article ought to make it clear that as racial boundaries continue to blur in the United States, affirmative action will grow increasingly unworkable.

Patria Rodriguez, an advertising sales director for a women's magazine in New York, takes after her father. With light brown skin and thick, curly hair, she says she resembles the actress Rosie Perez, but some people have asked her if she is Italian, and others have told her she looks like the singer Sade.

Like many Hispanic Americans, Ms. Rodriguez does not think of herself as black or white. "I acknowledge I have both black and white ancestry in me, but I choose to label myself in nonracial terms: Latina. Hispanic. Puerto Rican. Nuyorican," Ms. Rodriguez, 31, said. "I feel that being Latina implies mixed racial heritage, and I wish more people knew that. Why should I have to choose?"

As the Hispanic population booms, the fluid ways that she and other Latinos view their racial identities are drawing more attention and fueling the national debate over racial classifications — what they mean, what they should be and whether they are needed at all.

Now members of the United States' largest minority group, the nation's 38.8 million Hispanics, nearly half of them immigrants, harbor notions of race that are as varied as their Spanish and that often clash with the more bipolar views of many other Americans.

White? Black? Try "moreno," "trigueno" or "indio," terms that indicate skin shades and ancestry and accommodate several hues.

This heterogeneity has stumped the Census Bureau. In its 2000 count, almost half the Hispanic respondents refused to identify themselves by any of the five standard racial categories on the census forms: white, black, Asian, American Indian or Alaska native and a category that includes natives of Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. The agency has since been surveying Hispanics to find a way to pinpoint them racially.

Affirmative action, whatever its' merits as a means of correcting past injustices, cannot and must not be allowed to become an open-ended policy that is institutionalized into American life. Do we really want the re-emergence of a society in which people's rights and opportunities are determined by their racial classification as "mulattoes", "quadroons", "octaroons" and so forth, and government bureaucrats work to ensure that everyone is slotted into the "correct" racial category? That looks to me very much like the apartheid South Africa of old, rather than something to aspire to.

The Economist on Increasing Partisanship in America

This article reads almost as if it were cribbed directly from my own private thoughts, so thoroughly is it in line with what I've long been convinced about the tone of political debate in America nowadays.

With the decline of swing voters, there seems less and less point in running presidential campaigns to appeal to the slim middle. Instead, elections have become contests to mobilise core supporters. The 2000 and 2002 elections were both turn-out races.

The upshot is that politics has become warfare. What matters most is the size and bloodthirstiness of your troops, not winning over neutrals. Politicians take the first opportunity to reach for weapons of mass destruction, such as Bill Clinton's impeachment or the recall of Governor Gray Davis in California. It is no longer possible to agree to disagree. Your enemies must be “Stupid White Men”, guilty of “Treason”, who live in a world of “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” (to quote the titles of three of this year's political bestsellers).

CNN - Turkey 'will not send Iraq troops'

This is extremely good news, even if it might not seem so on the face of it. The notion of sending Turkish troops to police Iraqis always struck me as utterly boneheaded, and more a signal of the Bush administration's desperation than anything else. One shudders on imagining what might have happened if Turkish troops, notorious as they are for brutality in their own country, were given the task of policing Kurdish Iraqis.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey will not send its troops to Iraq to relieve U.S. forces there after plans for a deployment raised sharp opposition from Iraqis, the Anatolia news agency reported Friday.

The Turkish parliament's decision last month to approve troops for Iraq had been a major victory for the United States, which has pressed hard for Turkey to join peacekeeping efforts. Turkey would be the first major Muslim nation to send troops to bolster the U.S.-led occupation.

But Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council quickly voiced opposition to having troops from Turkey -- or any of Iraq's neighbors -- on its soil. Many Iraqis were suspicious of the Turks, fearing they were seeking to dominate the country or would clash with Kurds in the north.

Forbes: Soros Moscow Premises Raided in Property Dispute

I wonder how many people will continue to argue that Putin is just applying a broom to a nest of gangsters, given this new development. Then again, the usual suspects might just call Soros a parasitical capitalist exploiter thoroughly deserving of "punishment" anyway.

One thing that is striking though - apart from being rich, Soros happens to share in common with Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky and Abramovich one other attribute that Russians have never been particularly fond of, and that is membership in that group that was once known by the euphemism of "rootless cosmopolitans." Why aren't any good old, Orthodox Russian boys being trifled with? Are we to believe that the only rich people who fall foul of Russian laws are the Jewish ones?

MOSCOW, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Men in battle-fatigues raided the Moscow city centre headquarters of billionaire benefactor George Soros taking away all its documents in the climax to a long- running commercial dispute, radio Ekho Moskvy said on Friday.

Yekaterina Geniyeva, president of Soros' Moscow-based Open Society Institute, told the radio station the attackers identified themselves as working for Sektor-1 company, which says it owns the building in the city centre.

"The most terrifying thing was that they took away all our documents. We do not know where," she said, adding that the foundation did not recognise Sektor-1's ownership rights over the building.

She said she did not think there was any direct link between the incident and the arrest of oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which some fear may herald a state crackdown on big business. But she said there might be "some connection". (emphasis added)

Miss Geniyeva's statements are hard to comprehend; if she doesn't think there's "any direct link", why bother stating that there might be "some connection"? It sounds to me like someone trying to stay on the good side of the Putin government while hinting to the world at large about the real state of affairs.

UPDATE: This BBC report has more details on the story. Particularly interesting is the following snippet:

On Tuesday [Soros] warned that Russia "may now be entering a phase of state capitalism, where all the owners of capital realise that they are dependent on the state".

His comments came in an interview with the weekly Moskovskiye Novosti, recently acquired by Mr Khodorkovsky.

He denounced the 25 October arrest of the oil tycoon as "persecution".

This gives me more confidence in stating that there is indeed a connection between this raid and Khodorkovsky's arrest. How fitting it is, given what I've said about Putin in the recent past, that he's now sending goons to shut down the offices of the Open Society Foundation, as an open society is precisely what the man seeks to prevent from emerging.

German General Fired for Backing Slur on Jews

The whole furore aroused by CDU MP Martin Hohmann offers yet one more reason to feel less than sanguine about European antisemitism. At the same time, it is encouraging to see that this General Günzel character was so swiftly fired, even if the CDU has still to disown Hohmann.

BERLIN, Nov. 4 — The commander of a German special forces army unit was dismissed Tuesday after he praised a conservative member of Parliament for a speech that has been widely criticized here as anti-Semitic.

The dismissed officer, Gen. Reinhard Günzel, was relieved of his command by Defense Minister Peter Struck, who called him a "lone, confused general who agreed with an even more confused statement made by a conservative member of Parliament."

"His remarks damaged the Federal Republic of Germany as well as the German Army," Mr. Struck said.

The firing of General Günzel is the latest event in a scandal that has been simmering in Germany in the few days since the disclosure of remarks about Jews made by Martin Hohmann, an otherwise obscure member of the German Parliament who belongs to the opposition Christian Democratic Union.

In his speech, made in early October to local constituents, Mr. Hohmann called Jews "a race of perpetrators." Mr. Hohmann was making the argument that Germans still labor under the burden of responsibility for the crimes of the Nazis, while other people who have committed atrocities present themselves as "innocent lambs."

The Jews, he said, were prominent in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, during which millions were killed.

"Thus one could describe Jews with some justification as a nation of perpetrators," Mr. Hohmann said. "That may sound horrible, but it would follow the same logic with which one describes the Germans as a race of perpetrators."

It's easy to see the appeal that this sort of moral equivalence must have for many Europeans, troubled as they are by the reality of so many of their forefathers having been accomplices in genocide. I don't think it coincidental that it was the Dutch Gretta Duisenberg, wife of the head of the ECB, who saw fit to state that Hitler's troops had been better behaved than those of the Israeli state, "with the exception of the Holocaust" (and what a trifling exception it was too!) How much easier it must be to sleep at night knowing one has shown "those people" to be just as bad as their former persecutors.

The Political Compass

Via Matthew Yglesias. According to the results of the test, my score was as follows:

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: 4.62
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.38

I would have thought it'd be pretty difficult for any sensible person to be much to my right on the economic axis, but going by Tim Lambert's visual chart, it seems I was wrong. What I find most amusing about the results on the chart is that despite being one of those nasty right-wingers Matthew Yglesias' fellow party members love to hate, I am actually quite a bit more "liberal" in my social views than he is! Or, to put things slightly differently, Yglesias has an authoritarian streak to him that I seem to be lacking. The question then arises; if Matthew is neither particularly "liberal" in his social or economic views, why is he so partisan a Democrat?

Words Worth Committing to Memory

I discovered the following quotation, attributed to David Hume, while reading Julie Novak's Public Choice Theory: An Introduction, which I came across while searching for a decent primer for use in enlightening a certain party.

In contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controuls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest. By this interest, we must govern him, and, by means of it, make him, notwithstanding his insatiable avarice and ambition, co-operate to public good. Without this, ... we shall in vain boast of the advantages of any constitution, and shall find, in the end, that we have no security for our liberties or possessions, except the good-will of our rulers; that is, we shall have no security at all (Hume, [1741] (1985): 43).

If you've heard about public choice theory and don't know what the fuss is about, or if you've been witness to some irate liberal's attack on public choice theory as a system of thought, I highly suggest reading Novak's article. Heck, I suggest reading it with an open mind even if you fancy yourself a committed liberal; it is always beneficial, I think, to test one's conceptions against the arguments of others. Nietschze once said "What does not kill me makes me stronger", and in the realm of ideas, at least, he was absolutely right.

A PowerPC Chip for Xbox 2

This story doesn't make sense to me as it stands. It makes neither financial nor technological sense.

Microsoft on Monday said it would use IBM chips in its next generation Xbox game and consumer electronics devices, dealing a blow to Intel and providing a much needed boost for IBM's lossmaking chip business.

The move is part of Microsoft's efforts to try and leapfrog Sony, the Japanese consumer electronics giant, by producing an advanced Xbox that can move beyond games and sit at the heart of consumer home entertainment systems.

"We plan to deliver unprecedented and unparalleled entertainment experiences to consumers while creating new engines of growth for the technology and entertainment industries," said Robbie Bach, senior vice-president of Microsoft's home and entertainment division.

Richard Doherty, head of US research company Envisioneering Group, said the decision was a "significant win for IBM and a loss for Intel" that would give IBM "an important hold in a wide range of consumer electronics products".

The first, and most important, question to ask is "What about backwards compatibility?" Surely Microsoft, of all companies, must realize the importance of the next generation of a platform being able to run all the software available for the previous one, and if Microsoft's own history weren't instructive enough, Sony's success with such a strategy in the Playstation 2 ought to have sent the same message. How does Microsoft expect to be able to emulate a 733 Mhz Pentium III at full speed without opting for a prohibitively expensive PowerPC chip?

The second difficulty I see with this agreement is the fact that, historically speaking, no firm has had the economies of scale to keep up with AMD and Intel in the price/performance race, and there is no obvious reason why this should be about to change. Why go with a platform that is almost certain to give you less bang for the buck than you might have had with an x86 chip? Given that both Sony and Nintendo are apparently committed to staying in the console race for yet one more iteration, Microsoft doesn't really have the luxury to simply dismiss price and performance issues out of hand.

The agreement between Microsoft and IBM only really makes sense to me if seen as part of a larger story, to wit, a divorce between Microsoft and Intel. The Itanium architecture has still to gain serious traction in the server market, and with the release of AMD's Opteron, it seems safe to say that Itanium is doomed to remain at best a niche product. Microsoft, for its' own part, has been actively working over the last three years on moving all Windows development to the .NET Framework, rather than relying on the old Win32 system calls with which most developers have been familiar. One key advantage of this transition will be to confer complete processor-independence on code written to the .NET Framework, as the bytecode produced by Visual Studio .NET will only be converted, on the fly, to native binary code at runtime.

When we combine the aforementioned trends together, the picture that emerges is of a software monopoly intent on maintaining its' independence of the chip manufacturers that are its' economic complementors. Microsoft has long benefited from the incessant competition that has been the rule in the x86 chip business, which has enabled ever more powerful processors to come to market at ever lower prices, even as Microsoft has consistently hiked the price of Windows: the end result of all this has been that an ever greater percentage of a new PC's cost has been attributable to the Microsoft tax, rather than to the cost of the physical parts of the machine. I suspect that the fundamental divergence between the interests of Intel and Microsoft have finally come to a head, and that is what explains a deal that makes so little sense from a strictly technical point of view.

Israel as the Biggest Threat to World Peace?

As sensational a claim as the above headline may seem, it appears to be a widely held belief amongst the European population.

srael has been described as the top threat to world peace, ahead of North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran, by an unpublished European Commission poll of 7,500 Europeans, sparking an international row.

The survey, conducted in October, of 500 people from each of the EU's member nations included a list of 15 countries with the question, 'tell me if in your opinion it presents or not a threat to peace in the world'. Israel was reportedly picked by 59 per cent of those interviewed.

[............]

'This poll is an indication that Europeans have bought in, "hook, line and sinker", to the vilification and demonisation campaign directed against the state of Israel and her supporters by European leaders and media,' said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Centre's founder.

'This shocking result that Israel is the greatest threat to world peace, bigger than North Korea and Iran, defies logic and is a racist flight of fantasy that only shows that anti-semitism is deeply embedded within European society, more then at any other period since the end of the war,' he added.

I find these numbers simply astonishing. This is the sort of thing that makes you wonder how well you really understand the people you think you know; how can 3 in 5 Europeans possibly believe that Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the world?

Even keeping in mind what I've said here in the past about breezily equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, I must with the greatest reluctance agree with Rabbi Hier's remarks. There is plenty to dislike about Israel's policies, not least being the insistence on the continued expansion of settlements regardless of the state of negotiations, but to buy into the notion that Israel, which has been on the receiving end of Arab aggression throughout its' existence, is a greater danger to peace than Iran or North Korea - that is simply prejudice talking, rather than any sort of considered opinion.

Justice Delayed in Belgium

Here's a question I'd like to know the answer to: why is it that Belgian pedophile and alleged murderer Marc Dutroux is still awaiting trial 7 years after he was initially arrested? The only possible explanations that spring to mind are that this is either a symptom of extreme juridicial incompetence, or the result of intentional foot-dragging by officials who would rather that the man never be brought to trial. Of course, it could even be a combination of both factors, but whatever the real reasons for the extreme tardiness of justice may be, it all speaks extremely poorly of Belgium's legal system.

Panem et Circenses, or Japan Bashing as Therapy

The Chinese government has long found it convenient to play upon Japanese misdeeds in the earlier part of this century whenever a suitable occasion has arisen, conveniently ignoring the reality that no body of people has inflicted more suffering on the Chinese people over the last hundred years than those belonging to the Chinese Communist Party itself. Nevertheless, it appears that the Chinese populace can always be counted on to fall for the bait.

In the history of comical flops, few pranks can have gone down quite so badly as the fake-genital skit performed by three Japanese students in China's Northwest University.

Camping it up in red bras and knickers bulging with paper cups, the performers must have been expecting guffaws or at least shy giggles from the freshmen and faculty they were entertaining at a welcoming party for new students.

Instead, they sparked an anti-Japanese demonstration by thousands of fellow students, internet death threats, and articles in the national media accusing them of attempting to humiliate China and its people.

The outcry sparked by the innocuous display of student humour this week is the latest and most bizarre in a series of public demonstrations against anything Japanese - one of the few issues on which the Chinese government appears ready to tolerate large-scale protests.

According to the state-run news service Xinhua, the performance at the party for foreign language students in Xian, western China, included three Japanese students and a teacher wearing brassieres and false genitals made from paper cups hanging from their waists. They danced "obscenely" and threw scraps of paper pulled from their underwear at the audience.

The audience of conservative students and professors called a stop to the high jinks. If the performers had been Chinese, Russian or European, that would probably have been the end of the matter. But the fact that they were Japanese turned a cultural misunderstanding into an international incident.

Several thousand Chinese students gathered in front of the university's foreign students' dormitory on Thursday to demand that the Japanese offenders apologise. Yesterday hundreds continued to protest, shouting anti-Japanese slogans and waving banners, according to witnesses.

Officially sanctioned Japan-bashing serves the same purpose in China as anti-Americanism and antisemitism do in the Middle East: they give the population an easy out for all the frustrations they experience in their daily lives, while sparing both the populace and the authorities who misrule them the burden of undergoing any real introspection as to the true sources of their difficulties. The Japan of today is about as different a society from that of the pre-war era as it is possible to get, and the Japanese are even more averse to the use of force in international relations than the Germans are. To pretend that every faux-pas the Japanese make must be a sign of ill-will, as the Chinese love to do, is nothing more than an outrageous self-deception, and one which I suspect those engaging in it must themselves be aware of at some level - hence the outsized histrionics. Methinks the Chinese doth protest a tad too much to be entirely genuine in their outrage.

TIME - Joe Klein - How the Unions Killed a Dream

How can anyone read this and tell me that Democratic Party opposition to any meaningful educational reform (by which I mean something other than just spending more money), let alone school choice, has anything to do with principle? The teachers' unions are perfectly willing to obstruct any initiative that offers inner-city children a chance of escaping from their clutches, if it threatens in any way "the critical mass of students who remained in our traditional schools," Since when have schoolchildren become mere resources like uranium, to be spoken about in terms of "critical mass" and so forth? That is what it all comes down to in the end, students as mere means for the creation of well paying teachers' jobs, rather than as ends in themselves to be served by the educational system.

In 1999, an unassuming Michigan road builder named Bob Thompson sold his construction company for $442 million, an amount he and his wife Ellen believed was far more than they needed for retirement. His first act, which received national attention, was to distribute $128 million to his employees; about 80 became instant millionaires. Then Thompson decided to donate most of the rest of his money to public education, preferably in Detroit. After doing some research, he offered $200 million to build 15 small, independent public high schools in the inner city. A few weeks ago, Thompson withdrew his offer after the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) led a furious, and scurrilous, campaign against his generosity. The philanthropist is in seclusion now—friends say he is stunned and distressed—but his is a story that deserves telling.

Thompson's research led him to Doug Ross, founder of University Preparatory Academy in Detroit. Ross is a prominent New Democrat policy wonk who served in Bill Clinton's Labor Department, then went home to Michigan and ran unsuccessfully for Governor in 1998. "I learned during the campaign there was one overpowering issue for inner-city parents: to get their kids a college education," Ross told me. "I was tired of theoretical policy junk; I wanted to do something that really mattered. It was clear that urban kids were not responding to the industrial-age assembly-line education model—and there were people around the country who had figured out how to educate kids in a more humane, customized way."

[............]

Ross decided to tackle the toughest education problem: middle school. He started in 2000 with 112 sixth-graders and has added a new grade each year. He had been in business two years when Thompson came to visit. "I had him sit in on some classes," Ross says. "He liked what he saw and asked how he could help. I asked him to build me a high school. He said he'd build one to my specifications and lease it to me for $1 per year—but there had to be accountability. How would he know if I was succeeding or not? I told him my goals—a 90% graduation rate and 90% of graduates going on to college. If I didn't meet those bench marks after three graduating classes, he could take the school away and let someone else give it a try."

This was, essentially, the deal that Thompson offered Detroit. He didn't specify curriculum or who should run the 15 independent charter schools. Theoretically, any organization—including the teachers' union—was eligible to propose its own system if it presented a plausible plan for a 500-student campus and agreed to Thompson's 90-90 yardstick. New state legislation would be needed to establish the schools. But both Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Governor Jennifer Granholm were thrilled by Thompson's offer—at least until the Detroit Federation of Teachers made plain its opposition. On Sept. 25 the DFT held a work stoppage, which closed the public schools, and staged a rally at the state capitol in Lansing. The mayor withdrew his support, and Thompson withdrew his offer soon after.

"The Thompson schools would devastate the critical mass of students who remained in our traditional schools," Janna Garrison, president of the DFT, told me last week. She was referring to the $7,100 per pupil that would travel with each student who chose to go to a charter school (although the state offered the Detroit schools $15 million to compensate for the lost funds). This is a familiar union song—similar to the argument against school vouchers—that grows less powerful as urban schools grow worse. The fact that charter-school teachers in Detroit are not union members probably had something to do with the union's stand too (Ross said he would accept a union if his teachers wanted one). But Garrison took the argument a step further: "If someone from the outside came to Bob Thompson's suburban town and said, ‘I'm gonna give you a lot of money for education, but we spend it my way,' they just wouldn't tolerate it."

This was thinly veiled racial politics. "You've got a lot of poison in the air," Mayor Kilpatrick told me. "People here are sensitive about white people bossing them around." Kilpatrick insisted he wasn't opposed to more charter schools; his own children go to one. And he was not pleased by the union's role, even though he's a former teacher. "The teachers' union once was a progressive force, but that day has passed," he says. "And it's not coming back until the union realizes that we're going to have to make dramatic changes to improve education here." (emphasis added)

The nicest touch is the way in which Kilpatrick manages to reach for the race card in lieu of a real argument, when the truth of the matter is that he and the unions he supports are doing more than anyone else to keep black and Hispanic children in inferior schools. It's a neat trick to use accusations of racism to defend a racially inequitable status quo.

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Comment | The real Putin

You know Putin's in serious trouble when even the editorial staff of the Guardian, that scourge of capitalist exploiters everywhere, finds his actions difficult to stomach:

Who does Vladimir Putin think he is? Is he the autocratic former KGB man or the would-be reformer and liberaliser of Russia? Is he the westward leaning ally of President Bush and Tony Blair, or someone whose real affection is for the bad old days of the Soviet Union? In the aftermath of the Yukos affair and the arrest of Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the question needs answering. Now is crunch-time for Mr Putin. He must decide who he wants to be.

[............]

Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, has said of Mr Putin that he has 'two distinct strands' to his personality and political ambitions. A harsher assessment is that the more authoritarian strand has always triumphed and that the reformist side shown to the likes of Tony Blair and George Bush is just a plausible front displayed by an effective spy. On the evidence of last week, the real Mr Putin is that of the brutal Chechen war, a man who greeted the sinking of the Kursk without emotion, and who has kept a stranglehold on Russia's media freedoms.

Mr Putin can no longer have it both ways. His arrest of the one remaining oligarch to retain political ambitions, and democratic ones at that, presents a challenge to countries such as the US and the UK which have received and feted him as a reformer while quietly ignoring his troops' excesses in Chechnya. If Mr Putin opts for the authoritarian path, then it is time for London and Washington to reassess relations.

Russia is a Lawless Country

This depressing New York Times article confirms my view that Russia is a country where due process is no more than a fiction.

OSCOW, Oct. 31 — Anton V. Drel arrived at the grim Mastrosskaya Tishina prison here last Saturday and signed the papers declaring him the official counsel of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest tycoon. Then a prosecutor presented Mr. Drel with a summons to be questioned as a witness.

"Even in the Soviet Union, that never happened," he said.

The jailhouse summons, which prompted an outcry from Russia's bar, was the latest in a series of aggressive and, lawyers say, illegal tactics in an investigation lasting months into Mr. Khodorkovsky and others connected with his company, Yukos Oil.

Whether Mr. Khodorkovsky is guilty of the fraud and forgery alleged by prosecutors is much debated here and abroad, particularly given the murky nature of most big business in Russia. The real question, however, is whether he has any chance of due process or, should it ever come to it, a fair and open trial.

Few here believe he does — even the deputy chairman of President Vladimir V. Putin's advisory committee on the judiciary, Sergei E. Vitsin. "I would say there are more features of political games here than of justice," he said in an interview.

[............]

Masked agents seized Mr. Khodorkovsky on a Siberian runway last Saturday after prosecutors accused him of ignoring a summons that, Mr. Drel said, he never received. His partner, Platon Lebedev, has been in jail since July and has not yet appeared in an open court hearing. He, like Mr. Khodorkovsky, has been ordered held until at least Dec. 30.

Agents of the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor to the K.G.B., even appeared at the public school of Mr. Khodorkovsky's daughter, demanding a list of her classmates. Mr. Drel called the visit a naked act of intimidation.

On Oct. 9, investigators raided Mr. Drel's own law office — without a warrant and without his presence, he said — and seized his mobile phone, electronic notebook and files involving business deals with international companies. As for the summons, Mr. Drel refused to appear as ordered. After the public outcry, the prosecutors withdrew it.

"Some dangerous precedents are being created in this case," Mr. Drel said in an interview this week at Yukos's headquarters in Moscow. "If this is the way they treat the richest and one of the most influential men in Russia, then they can confiscate an apartment or a kiosk from any small-rent trader," he said. "And if they treat the lawyer of the richest man in Russia like this, how will they treat ordinary lawyers in, say, small Siberian towns who represent ordinary businessmen?" (emphasis added)

When you have agents of the state going to harass a man's daughter at her school, you know you're dealing with a thugocracy. Everything Putin has said and done in his time in office leads me to believe that he is nothing more than a power-hungry thug. He speaks like a thug, being ever ready to spew forth vulgarities, and he certainly acts like one, be it in Chechnya or in his dealings with the Russian press and opposition.

Putin is willing to frighten away potential investors and encourage capital flight from a country that had been seeming on the mend, all for what, exactly? All the indications were that Khodorkovsky posed no real threat to him politically in the upcoming elections, so just what is to be achieved at such a horrendous cost? The whole thing only makes sense if one regards Putin as a man so afraid of the slightest opposition, and so unwilling to allow alternative centres of power to exist in Russian life, that he is determined to do whatever he can to ensure that he and his allies alone have a voice, whatever the price the rest of Russia must pay.

Wicked Scandinavians

An interesting tidbit, via Marginal Revolution:

It is commonly known that Sweden and Norway stand among the top five nations for foreign aid per capita.

It is less commonly known that, in per capita terms, they are among the top five arms exporters in the world.

I've long known that Sweden was a major arms manufacturer, what with Saab and Bofors of gunmaking fame (now owned by Saab, by the way), but Norway as a big-time arms exporter? What could the Norwegians be selling on such a large scale? What makes the prominence of Sweden and Norway in the arms business particularly interesting is the highly sanctimonious tone both countries like to take about the foreign dealings of other nations; one rarely hears the trite phrase "merchants of death" applied to the Scandinavians.

Boom Times in Turkey

Edward Hugh has an intriguing post up about an acceleration in productivity growth in Turkey; the figures quotes seem nothing short of phenomenal, and, I have to say, entirely unexpected, with the total factor productivity numbers being particularly encouraging. What has changed in the Turkish economy that has enabled such sterling performance, I wonder?

There is a discernible improvement in Turkey’s rate of productivity growth the single most important indicator of any nation’s economic performance. Output per worker has increased by 25.8% after the 2001 crisis, and total factor productivity, which reflects increases in productivity due to technological improvements, accelerated from an average of 0.5% in the 1990s to 4.7% in the last two years. In our view, the growth of labour productivity, which surged from less than 4% a year over the previous decade to an annual rate of 8.5%, is a case in point that the Turkish economy is gradually entering a new era with a higher potential growth rate.
Source: Serhan Cevik, MS Global Economic Forum

Lunacy in Kenya

Sometimes I can't help despairing for a continent that has been cursed with so many awful leaders.

Thousands of Britons expelled by Kenya

By Adrian Blomfield in Nairobi
(Filed: 29/10/2003)

Thousands of Britons are facing banishment from Kenya following the announcement by President Mwai Kibaki's government yesterday that it would expel two-thirds of the country's expatriate workforce.

British businessmen and economists denounced the decision, which will force out more than 16,000 of Kenya's 25,352 working expatriates, along with their families.

Between 30,000 and 50,000 Britons live in Kenya, more than half of whom are thought to be British Asians, prompting comparisons with Idi Amin's expulsion of Asians from Uganda in 1972.

"This is a racist and economically suicidal move by the government," one British businessman said. "What is the difference between this and what Idi Amin did or what Robert Mugabe is doing?"

Aware of the damaging publicity a mass exodus would cause, the government said the expulsion would be implemented over the next two years.

"It will not be a blanket removal," said Ali Mwakwere, the labour minister. "The process has already begun, but we are honouring existing work permits until they expire."

Mr Mwakwere said he would target skilled and semi-skilled foreigners in the manufacturing industry, many of whom are Asians from Britain and the Indian sub-continent.

Asian-dominated commerce is also in the sights of the minister, whose ruling will be welcomed by poor, nationalist Kenyans. "Quite possibly British Asians and Asians in general are the target," a British High Commission official said. "We are watching the situation closely."

Non-Asian Britons are likely to be forced out too, as Mr Mwakwere said the clearout would sweep through the hospitality and tourism sectors.

"We are looking at anywhere where a foreigner is doing a job a Kenyan could be doing," he said. "We have well-qualified tour guides and so on who are out of a job."

This kind of populist nativism would be economically ill-advised even if it were to occur in a wealthy country, but for a country as lacking in human resources as Kenya, it is nothing short of madness. Why do development economists bother to root around for subtle explanations for economic failure when blatant misrule of this sort is so frequently on display? I mean, it isn't as if people are exactly clamoring to abandon the developed world to live in Kenya, is it?

Polio and Religious Paranoia

This is in today's edition of the British Times:

Nigerian Muslims block polio injections

By Michael Dynes, Africa Correspondent

MUSLIM fundamentalists in Nigeria are blocking emergency efforts to contain an outbreak of polio, claiming that vaccines are part of an American conspiracy to spread HIV-Aids and make Muslims infertile.

Resistance to the £6 million anti-polio drive that began on Wednesday is putting the health and lives of millions of children at risk and undermining international efforts to eradicate the disease across the world, according to health experts.

Kano, Kaduna and Zamfara, three predominantly Muslim states in northern Nigeria, have delayed or refused permission for the World Health Organisation (WHO) vaccination drive, demanding proof that the vaccination is “safe”.

While Christian and Muslim families in the south of Africa’s most populous country are co-operating with international efforts to stamp out the polio outbreak, Muslims in the conservative north insist that they will not allow their children to be vaccinated against the disease.

“The Western world has never wished Muslims well,” Yakubu Husseini, a 20-year-old teacher, said. “Why should they expect us to believe that vaccinations they make these days are not another frontier to wage war against the Muslims?”

Health officials estimate that the recent outbreak spreading from Nigeria to neighbouring countries could put as many as 15 million children at risk. “Polio continues to spread within Nigeria to areas which were polio-free, and to neighbouring countries,” David Heyman, the head of the WHO’s campaign to stamp out the disease, said.

To be fair, though, there is a bit more to the story, as the following excerpt from the same article makes clear.

Nigerian Muslims have been suspicious of Western vaccinations since 1996, when families in Kano accused the New York-based Pfizer pharmaceutical firm of using an experimental meningitis drug on patients without informing them of the risks. Pfizer denied wrongdoing in the American courts, but the case is continuing.

Still, reading on also makes clear that this does go beyond the limits of rational scepticism:

Datti Ahmed, a respected Nigerian doctor who leads an Islamic fundamentalist pressure group, added to Muslim fears earlier this year when he accused the WHO of covertly spreading anti- fertility drugs, a claim that the Nigerian Government and the United Nations dismissed as unfounded.

What is striking about this story is the resemblance Ahmed's theory displays to rumors that have long made the rounds of the Middle East about "Zionist" chewing gum designed to either sexually corrupt Arab youth, or render Arab manhood impotent, depending on which rumor one chooses to listen to. There really is a cancer working its' way through the Islamic world, and as both Africapundit and Mahathir's recent outburst make clear, the problems extend far beyond the Middle-Eastern arena with which most of the West seems to be currently preoccupied.

Troubling Developments in Russia

This is bad news, very bad news.

MOSCOW, Oct. 27 — Russia lurched toward a political and economic crisis on Monday as the country's stocks, bonds and currency plummeted after the weekend arrest of Russia's richest man, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky.

President Vladimir V. Putin, speaking publicly about the arrest for the first time, called for an end to "hysteria and speculations," which reached a new fervor in the two days since masked agents seized Mr. Khodorkovsky, the chairman of Yukos Oil, aboard his corporate jet during a refueling stop in Siberia.

The remarks by Mr. Putin did little to calm fears about his policy or financial jitters during one of the most frenzied days on Russia's stock markets since the financial collapse in 1998. Leading market indexes plunged sharply, dragged down by Yukos, which quickly lost a fifth of its value before recovering slightly.

Mr. Putin has sought to portray the investigation as an isolated criminal matter in the hands of independent prosecutors.

But he faces parliamentary elections in December and a presidential election in March, and Russian newspapers as well as analysts and some prominent politicians depicted the arrest as a politically motivated assault on an outspoken opponent. There were unusually dark warnings of a return of Soviet-like power clutched in Mr. Putin's steely fist.

The pretence on Putin's part that this is some sort of independent judicial investigation is preposterous. Khodorkovsky is almost certainly a crook, but then again, so is pretty much every other public figure in Russian life. To single him out like this sends a clear message to investors: that Russia is a country where the rule of law simply doesn't hold, and in which one's life and property are safe only for as long as the powers that be feel like it. Far from being a mark of "hysteria", the turmoil in Russia's financial markets is perfectly rational, and I'd say that one would have to be a fool not to pull one's assets out of that country with the greatest possible haste. No, what would be irrational would to heed Putin's calls for calm.

UPDATE: The British Times also has something to say about Khodorkovsky's arrest.

FOR President Putin, this is a rare mistake, destructive of Russia’s potential prosperity and, possibly, of his own political future.

It was no surprise that the Russian stock market plunged more than 14 per cent on opening yesterday, after the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of the oil giant Yukos and Russia’s richest man. That brought a juddering halt to the year’s threefold rise, which has made Russia the darling of the fashionable “emerging markets” branch of finance.

That fall is a sensible — and overdue — response to the questions that hang over Russia, symbolised by the arrest but not caused by it. Has Putin been hijacked by hardliners, his old KGB colleagues, whom he brought into government? Is the climate for investment chillier than it has seemed?

At this point, the answer to both looks like “yes”.

It is not that Khodorkovsky has a lot of fans, in high or low places. In fact, that was part of his problem. Within the Kremlin, he had aligned himself with neither the hawkish “St Petersburg” faction, which includes many former KGB men, nor the more liberal camp created under President Yeltsin.

For ordinary Russians, particularly older and poorer ones, he was dubbed a thief, another oligarch who made his wealth from fast, shady privatisations.

Yet in liberal, commercial, Western-orientated circles, he had come to stand for something different: the hope that the Russian Government was making good on its promises of economic reform and that Russia was now a place where you could invest safely.

Yesterday, liberals, businessmen and investors were appalled. They fear that the arrest shows that the Kremlin is prepared to bend the law to its own advantage.

[............]

Under Russian law, now that charges have been brought, nothing has to happen for 60 days — until a fortnight after the elections. But if this was Putin’s motive, it may prove counter-productive. Before the arrest, the opposition parties were not expected to have much impact; now they might, fuelled by anti-Kremlin outrage.

More seriously, the arrest — and the fall in the market itself — may check the appetite for investment. The rise of the market has been driven both by foreigners and by Russians’ repatriation of capital. The attractions were already looking overblown; the World Bank, in a shrewd analysis last month, said that the economy was vulnerable to a fall in the oil price.

Incited by Kremlin hawks, with their exaggerated fears of the threat posed by Khodorkovsky, Putin may have underestimated the impact on Russia’s image in the West and among investors. It may prove a move that truly shakes the pillars of his presidency.

Life is Not a Movie

I'm a bit late to this story, but I can't help laughing at the sheer presumption of this couple:

Bill Clinton failed, Tony Blair drew a blank and Kofi Annan made little progress. But now a team of Hollywood film stars is about to visit the Middle East on a private peace mission, in the belief that their charms will work magic on the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Brad Pitt, his wife, Jennifer Aniston, and Danny DeVito are among the stars who aim to succeed where world statesmen have stumbled.

"The past few years of conflict mean that yet another generation of Israelis and Palestinians will grow up in hatred," reads a statement from Pitt and Aniston. "We cannot allow that to happen."

Quite how they intend to stop it is not entirely clear. The logic behind their mission, planned to take place before the end of the year, is not especially sophisticated.

Pitt and Aniston believe that most people in the region want a negotiated settlement with an end to violence, and imagine that by appealing directly to "ordinary folk", they can bring the warring parties together.

In a region suffering from peace initiative fatigue, however, Israelis and Palestinians have greeted news of the Hollywood initiative with bemusement and incredulity.

I suppose one of the dangers of living in the Hollywood milieu, with all its' groupies, sycophants and glad-handers, is that one might start buying into the belief that one really is as special, as talented and as significant as one is continously being told one is. Do these clowns really imagine that the likes of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his acolytes stay up at night to watch the latest episode of Friends?

Schwarzenegger might have been elected governor of California, but he at least has a long-standing interest in politics, as well as a coherent philosophy to go with it. Nothing I've seen or heard leads me to believe that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt have ever given much deep thought to the major issues of the day, much less sought out the likes of Milton Friedman as Schwarzenegger actually did. This is the sort of ignorant do-goodism that gives well-meaning activists a bad name.

The Easterbrook Flap, and Imaginary Antisemitism

I don't really have much to say about this whole sordid business that hasn't been said elsewhere. I didn't believe for an instant that Easterbrook was an anti-semite, or even that what he had to say was particularly anti-semitic; would there have been comparable outrage if he had been writing about greedy black record executives irresponsibly promoting racial polarization and violence? One thing I do think needs saying is that the blogosphere reaction to Easterbrook's column, and his subsequent firing from ESPN as a result, illustrate that the American Jewish community is not without it's own share of overly sensitive types who are ever on the lookout for acts or statements that can be construed as antisemitic, however imaginary.

In particular, I think no truer statement has ever been made about one high-profile female blogger (who I refuse to link to here, as a matter of principle) than that she is a "Jewish Al Sharpton." Her perpetual overreaction to events, her shrillness of tone, which makes Paul Krugman seem like a Golden Retriever on marijuana, and her inability to even contemplate the notion of a dialogue with the other side make her, as far as I am concerned, a malign influence in the blogging world. Said blogger, as well as a certain high-profile site which I also won't link to (hint: its' name starts with "L", and has a "G" followed by an "F") are to my mind nothing other than the blogosphere equivalents of the Ann Coulters of this world, so shrill and so eager to see the worst in those who disagree with them that one feels a sense of shame at being allied with them over any issue whatsoever.

Anti-semitism does still exist in the world, and, as the Mahathir speech has shown us, it is still pervasive amongst large numbers of people, but there is a danger in the use of the charge of "anti-semitism" as a cudgel against all critics of either Jews or Israel, and it is the same risk that those who reflexively reach for the "racism" charge run: that after crying wolf too many times, these terms will have lost all their power, so that when a truly troubling incident does come along, few people will be willing to take them seriously. Part of being a member of an often persecuted minority is frequently having to wonder whether an unpleasant interaction or an inexplicably unsuccessful initiative is due to prejudice, and this is understandable in as far as such suspicions often end up being correct, but one must nevertheless guard against reducing every setback or unpleasantness to this single factor, not just to preserve one's credibility, but also to maintain one's sanity. Neither America nor today's Western Europe are Nazi Germany or the Jim-Crow South, and sometimes people either misspeak (as with Easterbrook), or are merely political opportunists (as with Chirac on Mahathir); it is also true that sometimes an asshole is just an asshole, not a racist or an anti-semite.

A Telling Statistic

The legacy of Labour Party rule: Britain's tax take as percentage of GDP is now virtually indistiguishable from Germany's, and higher than Spain's. What a shame it is that the Conservative Party is in such a sorry state.

Realism About Iran in the Strangest of Places

I never thought I'd see the day when an article as hard-headed as this one would appear on the opinion pages of the New York Times. What is going on in that august journalistic establishment? At this rate, we might even get an admission that Walter Duranty was an apologist for mass murder some day ...

The Mullahs and the Bomb

By GARY MILHOLLIN
Published: October 23, 2003

WASHINGTON — With much fanfare, and the reluctant endorsement of the Bush administration, Iran has vowed to suspend its controversial effort to produce enriched uranium — which can be used as fuel in nuclear weapons — and to clear up a host of suspicions about its nuclear program. In exchange, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany promised new "cooperation" — meaning trade — in high technology with Tehran. While perhaps getting any concessions out of the mullahs should be seen as a step forward, this particular deal won't prevent Iran from making the bomb. It also risks having the same outcome as the deal North Korea made in 1994 and later violated, and threatens to drive a wedge between the United States and its European allies on Iran policy.

The suspicions about Iran's nuclear aims are well founded. Leaving aside the question whether such an oil-rich country even needs nuclear power plants, America has long questioned why Iran is building a factory to enrich uranium, material for which there is no reasonable need in Iran's civilian power program.

Iran also plans to produce plutonium, another fuel for nuclear weapons, by building a 40-megawatt heavy water reactor at Arak. This type of reactor, too small for electricity and larger than needed for research, is now providing the fuel for atomic weapons programs in India, Israel and Pakistan. And Iran is developing a fleet of long-range missiles, which don't make sense as a way to deliver conventional warheads. The only logical purpose of such missiles is to carry nuclear ones.

[............]

North Korea faced worldwide condemnation and a possible war with the United States after violating its inspection agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. By agreeing to suspend its effort to produce plutonium, North Korea avoided censure and got economic benefits from the West, and yet it preserved its nuclear potential intact. North Korea's 8,000 fuel rods — containing five bombs' worth of plutonium — never left the country. Like a sword poised over the world's head, they remained only months away from being converted into bomb fuel — something that the North Koreans say was finally done this summer. The North Korean bomb program only shifted into neutral; now it is back in gear.

Under Tuesday's deal Iran, too, will shift into neutral, while keeping its nuclear potential intact. It won't — for the time being — operate its newly constructed centrifuges, which are needed to enrich uranium to weapon grade. But the deal won't stop Iran from building more centrifuges to augment the limited number it now has, thus adding to its future ability to enrich uranium. Nor does the agreement bar Iran from completing the factory that produces the uranium gas that goes into the centrifuges. Nor does it prevent the building of the heavy water reactor or, indeed, the resumption of enrichment in the future. Thus the agreement could insulate Iran from international censure without hampering its nuclear progress in any way.

These defects won't be cured by Iran's acceptance of more rigorous inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The inspectors' new rights are still weaker than those that were enjoyed by their counterparts in Iraq — and we all know that the Iraqis repeatedly foiled those efforts with delays and obfuscation.

Milhollin appears to believe that economic sanctions can be successfully utilized to pressure Iran into giving up its' nuclear ambitions, but I am not so sanguine. I am completely convinced that the only long term solution is a military one; it isn't something I'm looking forward to by any means, but it will have to be done.

UPDATE: Sebastian Holsclaw has a summary of bien-pensant reaction in European newspapers to the agreement concluded with Iran. Let there be no doubt on the reality behind all of this: were it not for the threat of American military action, Iran wouldn't have agreed to even the sort of toothless agreement that it did. European "soft power" did absolutely nothing to bring this (frankly, worse than useless) promise of "cooperation" about.

The European Union at its' Worst

This is insane! In which pencil-pushing Enarque or Beamter's head did this ridiculous proposal originate?
Employers fear proposed EU merger rules

British companies taking part in cross-border mergers could be forced to adopt German-style union consultation and boardroom representation under European rules due to be proposed next month.

Business leaders are to mount a lobbying campaign against what they say is a creeping extension of the principle of co-determination, which grants employees a powerful voice in the running of companies in countries such as Germany.

But European Commission officials are determined to press ahead. After considering less divisive options they concluded that wider reforms of company law, designed to encourage cross-border consolidation, would otherwise be impossible.

[............]

n a letter seen by the FT, Frits Bolkestein, the EU commissioner for the internal market, told a European business leader that "the only solution" in a cross-border merger which would balance employee rights and be politically acceptable is for the more extensive form of worker representation to take precedence.

Under the proposed 10th and 14th company law directives, a minority of employees could insist that two European companies joining forces must adopt this principle.

The CBI fears this will deter consolidation among companies, with directors reluctant to adopt what they consider to be the more interventionist governance standards.

This is just the sort of nonsensical idea that makes the idea of Europe as more than a free-market so unattractive. If the choice is to be between a politically fragmented Europe and a Europe in which the lowest common denominator is forced on all member states, then far better that the former should come to pass than the latter. Why should German voters have the power to force their own economic rigidities on British citizens?

John Kay on The Lure of Amateur Economics

A very nice article. As I like to say, there are only two fields in which people have no compunctions about expounding their views vigorously, in spite of having virtually no knowledge of the contents of the subjects: evolutionary biology and economics.

Samuel Brittan calls it businessmen's economics. David Henderson, long an international civil servant, prefers DIY economics. Both refer to propositions that people who have practical knowledge but no qualifications in economics hold to be self-evident, but which are false. Countries would do better to export more and import less. New technology destroys jobs, and public spending on my projects not only helps me but also creates jobs. Manufacturing is more important than other forms of economic activity. Business would benefit from lower interest rates.

People who would pause before expressing opinions on quantum mechanics or undertaking brain surgery have no hesitation in pronouncing on the economic consequences of the euro.

I highly suggest reading the rest of the article; it isn't very long.

Who Remembers the Ukrainians?

This has long been overdue, but will there be any movement now that the NYT's own historian is urging for it to happen?

NEW YORK (AP) -- A 1932 Pulitzer Prize awarded to The New York Times should be revoked, according to a historian hired by the newspaper to review the winning work, which has been questioned for years.

A subcommittee of the Pulitzer Board has been reviewing the prize won by writer Walter Duranty for his series on Russia. The review was sparked by complaints that Duranty deliberately ignored in later coverage the forced famine in the Ukraine that killed millions of people.

Mark von Hagen, a Columbia University history professor, said in his report to the Times that Duranty ``frequently writes in the enthusiastically propagandistic language of his sources,'' and that ``there is a serious lack of balance in his writing.''

``For the sake of The New York Times' honor, they should take the prize away,'' von Hagen said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press. The New York Sun first reported the professor's recommendation.

The Times has reviewed von Hagen's report and forwarded it to the Pulitzer Board with a recommendation from Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who declined comment on Wednesday.

It hardly needs pointing out that if Duranty's award were for propagandizing on behalf of Nazi Germany, it would certainly have been rescinded long ago; but there is something about communism that makes supposedly decent people go all mushy, as if the loss of life under it was of lesser consequence. More Ukrainians lost their lives under a famine that was intentionally engineered by Stalin than did Jews under Hitler, but certain acts of genocide are evidently less equal than others in the eyes of the world.

Absurdity in Iran

I think this piece speaks for itself:

TEHRAN - A group of clerics and theology students from Iran's clerical centre of Qom have hit out at the Nobel Peace Prize win of women's rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi saying it was part of a Western conspiracy against Islam.

In a statement carried by the hardline Jomhuri Eslami newspaper, the group from Qom's main seminary said: "The decision by the Western oppressive societies to award the prize to Ebadi was done in order to ridicule Islam."

The paper did not say how many people signed the statement, which also lamented that a "serious revolutionary confrontation with the tribe of infidels" had not yet taken place.

As for the "infidels", it voiced hope for their "tongues to be cut from their mouths and the poisonous pens broken in their hearts".

Keeping up its stiff criticism of Ebadi, the paper also quoted Mousa Qorbani - a prominent conservative MP - as comparing the Nobel laureate to British author Salman Rushdie, who was sentenced to death by Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for writing "The Satanic Verses".

"Awarding the Nobel Prize to Ebadi is like rewarding Salmam Rushdie, the Zionist regime and US leaders," he was quoted as saying. (emphasis added)

It seems my prediction about the Iranian response to this award has been fully borne out. "Western oppressive societies" my a**! It takes a warped mind to see something "oppressive" in the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a peaceful advocate of the rights of women and children. Anyone who thinks it is possible, let alone desirable, to have some sort of "dialogue" with this awful regime, is living in a dream world.

Megan McArdle on Social Security Reform

A very nice piece, which makes the same points I've been making for quite some time now: that no amount of tinkering can abolish the difficulty with any scheme that is predicated on an ever increasing support base of workers. Increasing the retirement age, decreasing payouts, means testing, even increasing the birth rate as well as immigration quotas - none of these things will suffice to eradicate the threat posed to the solvency of Social Security by ever increasing longevity.

Any lasting solution to the problem will have to combine all of the above measures with one tactic that is abhorrent to many on the left today, but is nonetheless crucial, namely the privatization of social security. The importance of this measure lies in the potential it has to divert large amounts of savings from the sorts of largely wasteful government expenditure to which they are currently directed, to investments that will boost worker productivity in the long run, some of the gains from which can then be used to pay the benefits of retirees. What I like about McArdle's post is that she recognizes, as I too have pointed out elsewhere, that increased productivity is the real key to solving the pensions problem.

Celera, Hype and the Human Genome Project

A few weeks ago, in the context of discussing the dog genome announcement, I mentioned that Celera's contribution to the Human Genome Project was less awe-inspiring than it appeared at first glance, leaning heavily as it did on the freely available work of the Human Genome Consortium for the assembly of the fragments Celera had collected using shotgun sequencing. In light of the aforementioned post, I think this PNAS analysis by Robert Watson, Eric Lander and John Sulston well worth reading, as well as this response by Craig Venter, Eugene Myers and others on the Celera sequencing team. The following paragraph from the Waterston/Lander/Sulston critique sums up the reality of the situation, in my view:

The international Human Genome Project (HGP) and Celera Genomics published articles last year on the sequence of the human genome (1, 2). In a recent article (3), we analyzed aspects of the Celera article.

We noted that the article did not report an assembly of Celera's own data but rather reported only joint assemblies based on a data set that included the assembled genome sequence of the HGP. Approximately 60% of the underlying sequence data and 100% of the mapping data used in Celera's analysis came from the HGP, and the HGP genome assembly itself contained 90% of the euchromatic sequence of the human genome. We also noted that Celera used various approaches for using the HGP data (referred to as perfect tiling, gap filling,¶ and compartmentalized assembly; see Fig. 1) that implicitly preserved much of the HGP assembly information. We concluded that Celera's assemblies made extensive and inextricable use of the HGP genome information and thus were not an independent assembly of the human genome.

[............]

Our report elicited two commentaries. One, by Green (4), concurred with our analysis. The other, by Myers et al. (five of the Celera authors), raised certain issues about our analysis (5). Specifically, they acknowledge that their approaches preserved the HGP assembly to some extent, but they contend that the role of the HGP data in the Celera joint assemblies was minor.

Here we address the technical issues raised by Myers et al. We show that the analysis of Myers et al. underestimates the role of the HGP genome assembly in their work because they focus on only one of the ways in which the HGP data were used. Moreover, we note that the major role of the HGP sequence can be directly seen from the properties of the Celera assembly.

If there's one conclusion that can be drawn from all of this, it is that private does not automatically mean better, which is not to say that this ought to be taken as a defense of all government endeavors. The key thing to take into account, whether or not one is dealing with public or private entities, is whether or not they face competition: without the impetus provided by the threat of Celera patenting the completed genome, the Human Genome Consortium would still be making slow progress at its' task today, and even perhaps two years from now.

There is one other, extremely important, lesson that I feel is worth drawing from the Human Genome Project, and it is one that will probably go down badly with most hard-core libertarians, and that is the importance of publicly funded research. There are very strong positive externalities in scientific research that make measures like patent protection and trade secrecy inadequate for promoting the public good, and a tremendous amount of important work currently being carried out would simply not be possible under a system in which private companies had 20-year monopolies on research into various portions of humanity's genetic inheritance. One can argue that government-run institutes might not be the best way to encourage scientific investigation, but that such investigation ought to be officially encouraged, rather than left entirely to the market, is something I believe to be indisputable.

Revisiting Electricity Deregulation

Was the electricity fiasco in California inevitable? Does electricity deregulation require so much legislative finesse as to be infeasible in practice? Here's an interesting experimental economics paper that seems to suggest otherwise.

In this article we report an experiment that examines how demand-side bidding can discipline generators in a market for electric power. First we develop a treatment without demand-side bidding; two large firms are allocated baseload and intermediate cost generators such that either firm might unilaterally withhold the capacity of its intermediate cost generators from the market to benefit from the supracompetitive prices that would result from only selling its baseload units. In a converse treatment, ownership of some of the intermediate cost generators is transferred from each of these firms to two other firms such that no one firm could unilaterally restrict output to spawn supracompetitive prices. Having established a well controlled data set with price spikes paralleling those observed in the naturally occurring economy, we also extend the design to include demand-side bidding. We find that demand-side bidding completely neutralizes the exercise of market power and eliminates price spikes even in the presence of structural market power. (emphasis added)

By Their Fruits Shall Ye Know Them

If it may have seemed at times that my criticisms of French foreign policy were somewhat one-sided, I offer the following article as evidence on my behalf:
Mahathir Thanks Chirac for Support

MALAYSIAN Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has thanked French President Jacques Chirac for blocking a European Union declaration condemning his comments last week that Jews "rule the world by proxy," news reports said today.

Chirac, backed by Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, stopped the EU from ending a summit on Friday with a harshly worded statement deploring Mahathir's speech, which also included suggestions that Jews get "others to fight and die for them."

A French diplomat, who asked not to be named, said while Chirac disagreed with Mahathir's strident views, he argued that an EU summit declaration "would not have been appropriate."

Malaysian newspapers said Mahathir had expressed his gratitude to Chirac for his "understanding" of the speech he made at the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world's largest Muslim grouping, in Malaysia last Thursday.

[............]

"I never thought the Europeans would be against me," [Hmm, I wonder why he'd have thought that ...] the New Sunday Times quoted him as saying. "I can't understand them. I'm glad that Chirac at least understands. I would like to thank him publicly." (emphasis added)

What an understanding fellow this Chirac is, isn't he? For Chirac is an honourable man, as are Mahathir and all the rest of the OIC leaders; so are they all, all honourable men ...

Bayesian Spam Filtering for Movable Type

James Song has provided an elegant solution to the spam commenting problem, by adapting the SpamBayes engine to detect bogus comments. Song's solution seems rather more robust and scalable to me than the MT-Blacklist option, as blocking entire IP ranges and word-based filtering are rather blunt instruments for detecting undesirable comments; what if one were to bring up Nabokov's Lolita in the context of a discussion on literature?

An additional, unforeseen benefit of Song's filter would be to eliminate the sort of insult-riddled nonsense that passes for argument in the eyes of many of the less intelligent commentators on popular weblogs (for copious examples of which, see this Calpundit post, and look out for posts by an individual called "Adam in MA"). Some people need to learn that calling others "fucks", "idiots", and copiously using terms like "fucking", "shit", "ass" and the like are not acceptable in civilized company. The anonymity provided by the Internet tends to bring out the worst tendencies in a lot of people, and this plugin just might be the ticket for reining in some of these unhelpful tendencies - assuming, of course, that bloggers like Kevin Drum do actually wish to see the worst of their cheerleaders restrained.

Bob Herbert Says Something Sensible

I don't know what's happening to Bob Herbert. Usually he's very careful to stay firmly within the boundaries of orthodox liberal opinion on the issues, but this is the second time in the space of 6 months that he's had something to say that isn't the same old trite nonsense one expects coming from him:

Ghettopoly is a board game, based on Monopoly, and it has a lot of people fired up.

Marches and protests by people denouncing the game as racist have distributors running for cover. Yahoo and eBay have blocked the sale of the game on their sites, and the Urban Outfitters chain has stopped selling it in stores.

People are outraged — outraged! — that a game would portray inner-city blacks as pimps and hustlers and ho's.

Kweisi Mfume, president of the N.A.A.C.P., has threatened to boycott sellers of Ghettopoly, which he described as "demeaning, repugnant and reprehensible, to say the least."

For the record: Ghettopoly is without question an ugly game that promotes disgusting racial stereotypes. It presents blacks as murderous, thieving, dope-dealing, carjacking degenerates. Instead of the familiar Monopoly pieces, like top hats and thimbles, Ghettopoly players get to move around the board as pimps, machine guns and rocks of crack cocaine.

So I'm not feeling sorry for David Chang, the game's beleaguered 28-year-old creator. What I'd like to know is why all this outrage is springing up over a board game when so little is heard in the way of protest about the outlandishly self-destructive behavior that gives rise to a game like Ghettopoly, and which is burying any chance of a viable future for extraordinary numbers of young black men and women, and their children.

How can you march against a game and not march against the real-life slaughter on the streets and in the homes of inner cities across America? Violent crime, ignorance and disease are carving the very heart out of America's black population.

The president of the Los Angeles Council of Churches, the Rev. Leonard Jackson, told me last spring about the long line of funerals he's had to conduct for young black men and women, and boys and girls. He seemed on the verge of tears. "The young people have more of a chance of dying here in South Central than in a military combat zone," he said.

Instead of using their influence to help stop the slaughter, certain truly twisted elements of the hip-hop culture encourage it, celebrating it in songs that not only glorify murderous violence, but also degrade black people to a degree that should leave any sensible person stupefied.

"We dangerous," says one song. "Bitches pay a fee just to hang with us."

Trust me, we've got some problems that are bigger than Ghettopoly. We've got insane young men who take their heavy armament into the street and shoot up the neighborhood, and then go back inside to listen to music that celebrates the act of shooting up the neighborhood. That is not a sign of a healthy culture.

[............]

Ghettopoly is a stupid and offensive game. But its reach is nowhere near as vast or as dangerous as the "Lord of the Flies" street culture that is seducing one generation after another of black children, and producing freakish entertainers like Nelly and 50 Cent.

We learned last month that Nelly, a male rapper from St. Louis, was marketing a new drink called Pimp Juice — aimed, I suppose, at niggaz and ho's. The drink was a follow-up to Nelly's hit song of the same name, a song with such immortal lines as "You ain't from Russia, so bitch why you Russian?"

50 Cent has the top album of the year, and one of the hit songs is "P.I.M.P." He brags in the song that he'll have his ho "stripping in the street." Of one of his women, he says, "The last nigga she was with put stitches in her head."

That's not entertainment. That's a symptom.

I suppose it takes a black ultra-liberal to say something like this and get away with it, but this does need saying. Not all of the problems that befall blacks can be laid at the door of white racism, and there's something seriously messed up about the glorification of violence, thuggery and misogyny that is so prevalent in hip-hop culture. What is the world coming to when "black culture" is identified with gangsterism and poverty, and "keepin' it real" is interpreted as rejecting higher aspirations or "white" cultural values? It seems to me that those who buy into this rubbish are suffering from internalized racism - they are convinced that to be black is to be second-rate, and that to have ambitions beyond the ordinary is to entertain ideas above one's station.

For more on the problematic identification of "black culture" with "gangsta" rap, see this post by Cobb.

CNN - Malaysian "Regret" Over Jew Remarks

You can't make this stuff up:

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia -- Malaysia's foreign minister has apologized for what he described as any misunderstandings over Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's assertion that Jews "rule the world", saying no offence from the remarks was intended.

Fighting to reign in a surge of international outrage that followed the Malaysian leader's comments Thursday, Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Friday that Mahathir had been misunderstood.

[............]

In his wide-ranging speech to the Organization of Islamic Conference, the often-controversial Mahathir launched a blistering attack on Jews and Israel saying, "Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

[............]

"I'm sorry that they have misunderstood the whole thing," Syed Hamid told The Associated Press. "The intention is not to create controversy. His intention is to show that if you ponder and sit down to think, you can be very powerful."

"Please forget about anti-Semitism," Syed Hamid told reporters. "Islam has never advocated being anti anybody including theJews."

"The only problem with the Jews is when the State of Israel was created," he said, adding that Jews worked and were welcomed in Malaysia.

"The PM's message is to stop violence, which is not the answer for us to succeed in our struggle. People may not be very happy but this is the reality: the Jews are very powerful."

[............]

[Mahathir] told leaders from 57 Islamic nations at the conference -- the biggest gathering of Muslim leaders since the September 11, 2001 -- that the Muslim world had achieved "nothing" in its 50 years struggle against Israel.

He called on Muslims to emulate the Jewish response to oppression, arguing the Jewish people had "survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking."

Mahathir said, "They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy, so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can enjoy equal rights with others.

"With these they have gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power.

"We cannot fight them through brawn alone, we must use our brains, also."

Mahathir said the world's "1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews," but suggested the use of political and economic tactics, not violence, to achieve what he called a "final victory." (emphasis added)

So, Dr. Mahathir, how do you really feel about the Jews? And as for talk of a "final victory" - well, that smacks too much of Nazism, with it's prophecies of an "endsieg" over "international Jewry", to be merely coincidental, coming as it does from a man as well-read as Mahathir.

Detroit Schools Push Away $200 Million

Via a discussion about school vouchers on Brad DeLong's blog, I discovered yet another development on the American educational front that illustrates the way in which teachers' unions go about sabotaging the opportunities of their supposed wards:

Thanks to the poisonous atmosphere created by a hostile Detroit public school establishment, philanthropist Robert Thompson has decided, with deep regret, that it is impossible for him to donate a $200 million gift to the city's schoolchildren.

The gift would have come in the form of 15 new charter high schools that would have guaranteed a graduation rate of 90 percent. The city's current graduation rate is 67.2 percent, according to the School Evaluation Services Web site created by the financial ratings firm Standard & Poor's.

After seeking legislative authorization for his schools for almost a year, Thompson threw in the towel after the Detroit teachers union threw what can only be described as a tantrum at the prospect of having to compete with charter schools.

On hearing that Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm had made a deal with the Republican Legislature on a comprehensive charter school expansion package that would have included the Thompson academies, Detroit teachers shut down the schools with a one-day walkout Sept. 25. Instead of teaching on that school day, 3,000 of these primary beneficiaries of the government school status quo held a mass demonstration at the state Capitol.

In response to this pressure from the public school establishment, both the governor and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick walked away from the Thompson gift and from the broader charter deal, which also withdrew governance of the city's school district from the state-imposed reform board and returned it to a locally elected school board with strong mayoral input.

If this doesn't convince doubters that the real issue is the teachers' unions' interest in self-preservation, I don't know that anything will.

From Gangster's Mole to Prince's Bride? (German Language Article)

I've just learnt from the above article that Mabel Wisse Smit, who is engaged to the Prince Friso of the Netherlands, seems to have a real affinity for seeking out criminals as lovers. As if it weren't bad enough that she was a lot more deeply involved with a one-time drug-lord than she has been willing to let on, it now emerges that she also had a "friendship" with a certain (married, with children) Mohammed Sacirbey, who is currently sitting in prison for embezzling UN funds. A drug baron, an embezzler, and now a crown prince? That's some career progress, I must say. As I've said elsewhere, Miss Wisse-Smit does seem to be one for the highlife, and I have to wonder just how much "love" has to do with her engagement to the apparently lovestruck (or should that be p***ywhipped?) prince.

Still, if these developments prove one thing, it is that the house of Windsor isn't peculiarly prone to scandal as European royal families go.

Iraqi Official Urges Caution on Imposing Free Market

Why is this economic illiterate serving as Iraq's "interim trade minister"?

SINGAPORE, Oct. 13 - Iraq's interim trade minister warned on Monday against forcing his nation's economy to mold itself rapidly into a free-market system, saying that a swift change would fuel unemployment and heighten political instability.

"We suffered through the economic theories of socialism, Marxism and then cronyism," the official, Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi, said in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's East Asia Economic Summit meeting here. "Now we face the prospect of free-market fundamentalism."

A lively debate is taking place within the Bush administration and the Iraqi government on how quickly Iraq should move toward a free-market economy. In some quarters, sweeping economic change along the lines of Eastern Europe's rapid reorganization is advocated.

According to Mr. Allawi, imposing a similar reorganization on Iraq would represent a "flawed logic that ignores history."

"The economies of Eastern Europe collapsed due to internal problems," Mr. Allawi said. "Our situation is very different since the changes came in the form of very welcome help from outside."

"These things are not yet being thrust down our throat," he added, "but I strongly disagree with the call for fast and radical change."

[............]

Many in the governments of Iraq and the United States have advocated a wholesale sell-off of state owned enterprises. Mr. Allawi said the international pressure to privatize immediately, and to eliminate subsidies, was too great.

"By no means should we preserve all state-owned enterprises," Mr. Allawi said. "But there are some sectors that are more natural for government involvement or rehabilitation." He urged the quick closing of companies holding monopolies on car sales and construction contracts.

Mir Abdul-Amir Allawi is talking nonsense. The problem in Eastern Europe wasn't "free-market fundamentalism", but the weakness of the rule of law, and flawed privatization processes that ignored the fact that competition is even more important than private-sector involvement - a point, I might add, that was emphasized long ago by Joseph Stiglitz, in his book Whither Socialism? And just what sectors of the economy are "more natural for government involvement or rehabilitation" anyway?

This man strikes me as being your typical middle-eastern Nasserist, an individual so immersed in a culture of dirigiste state planning that he simply is unable to contemplate the prospect of a government that doesn't try to micromanage the economy in all sorts of petty ways. In reality, all that such government interference enables is more opportunities for graft and political favoritism on the part of the powerful and the well-placed.

Do free markets by themselves guarantee success? Not at all - they can achieve little without transparent institutions, due process, and a general sense of stability and order in a society; but then again, it isn't as if any other sort of economic system thrives without these requirements either. America needs to get the security situation under control as soon as possible, and this Mr. Abdul-Amir Allawi fellow ought to be fired.

South Korea - Roh Should Go

An excellent piece in the Financial Times, courtesy of the NYT:

If Roh is to go, now is the time

By Aidan Foster-Carter

Last December, a narrow majority of (mainly younger) voters chose Roh Moo-hyun as South Korea's president. A political outsider and untried provincial populist, Mr Roh was a striking change from the suave elite figures who had hitherto dominated politics in Seoul.

Supporters saw him as a new broom, someone who would clean up a political culture mired in corruption and regional animosities, and stand up to an overweening US. Critics feared that he would sharpen divisions, including those with Washington, at a time when the North Korean nuclear crisis demanded careful handling of South Korea's uneasy core alliance.

Eight months into his five-year term, one must sadly say that the detractors seem vindicated. One of the world's most important economies and security flashpoints, at a critical point in its history, is led by a man who confesses he does not feel up to the job. It is hard to disagree with him.

On every front, Mr Roh is floundering. Cave-ins to militant trade unions encouraged others to follow suit, in a summer of strikes that has alarmed foreign investors and will hurt competitiveness. On corporate reform, there is no discernable policy. Last week the founding family at SK, the third-largest chaebol, brazenly won back control of the group, despite being convicted of a $1.1bn fraud earlier this year. The cleaner corporate governance pushed by Kim Dae-jung, Mr Roh's bold predecessor, is now in jeopardy.

Being rudderless at home is bad enough, but with a nuclear North Korea next door, it is positively alarming. To be fair, Mr Roh's Pollyanna pacifism echoes a large swath of South Korean opinion, which obstinately refuses to see evil or risk in its northern backyard. The idea that just being nicer to Kim Jong-il will mellow him is absurdly wishful thinking.

To this dismal record, Mr Roh has now added gratuitous political turbulence. Despite lacking a parliamentary majority - the national assembly is controlled by the rightwing opposition Grand National Party - he has let his supporters acrimoniously split the ruling Millennium Democratic Party, to create a new reformist group that hopes to win parliamentary elections due next April. Yet rather than join the new party, Mr Roh confusingly professes to remain above these squabbles.

Last Friday he added to the confusion by announcing that he wanted to seek a fresh popular mandate via a referendum; yesterday he set December 15 as the date. If he loses, he says he will step down in February, and presidential elections will accompany those for parliament.

The new waves of worry stirred by this quixotic gesture are the last thing South Korea needs right now. As Mr Roh admits, it is not clear if this is even constitutional; it is certainly quite unprecedented. Far from restoring calm, political in-fighting will get worse, distracting from sound policy.

Abroad, meanwhile, Mr Roh has made himself an even lamer duck than he already was. In North Korea and the US alike, a leader who might be out of office four months hence will be seen as having scant clout or mandate. This can only weaken South Korea in the six-party nuclear talks, if they ever reconvene, and in the delicate task of trying to trade sending South Korean troops to Iraq, as Washington wants, for greater US willingness to engage with North Korea.

Mr Roh's announcement looks like a last-ditch gamble to revive the "Roh wave" that saw him come from behind twice before: winning first primary elections, and then the presidency, despite lagging in the polls. But that will be a hard trick to pull off a third time. Though initial surveys suggest a majority might back him, this support could quickly erode. Before his announcement, his ratings had fallen below 30 per cent, unprecedentedly low at such an early stage of a Korean presidency.

South Korea cannot afford four more years like this. At least Mr Roh grasps that. Yet his latest gesture ensures continued short-term turbulence - with no guarantee, in a society whose divisions are hard-fought and run deep, that such an improvised test of opinion will deliver a clear-cut, acceptable verdict.

There is a better way. Candid to a fault, a risky virtue in high office, Mr Roh has more than once said he cannot do the job. Full candour requires one further step: to admit that the main problem is not ill-luck or prejudice, but rather that his own temperament and talents are simply not up to the demands of a position that he probably never expected to win.

He does not like the job; he is no good at the job. Then he should stand down, now; and let South Korean voters choose a new president who, whatever his or her ideology, at least shows signs of being able to stand the heat. That way, Roh Moo-hyun may yet earn his people's gratitude.

The writer is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University, UK