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28 August 2008

Arab Failure to Support Palestine

It was reported in August, 2008 on the Internet newsletter of the Development Gateway Foundation that the Iraqi government has launched a registration process for Palestinian refugees who arrived between 1948 and 1967 - and their descendants - to help ensure they benefit from government aid programs. Apparently, the new Iraqi government has decided to devote part of its oil revenue windfall to alleviating the hardships of the Palestinians on its soil who were displaced by the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As generous as they have been to individual victims of the establishment and expansion of the Jewish state, wealthy Arab governments have never really effectively helped Palestinian Arabs as a group to recover from bearing the brunt of the West’s expiation of anti-Semitism over the centuries. Yes, that atonement came at the expense of Arabs in Palestine, not of the perpetrators of pogroms and the Holocaust.

The Arab states neighboring Israel and the West Bank, however, treated the founding of Israel as the centerpiece of a zero-sum game; they sought to avenge its injustice by striking at the Jewish state, not at its puppet-masters in the West. When they tried to target the West by imposing an oil embargo in the 1970s, they found they paid just as dearly themselves for that futile action. In the meantime, Palestinian Arabs have languished under leadership that pursued terrorism against Israel and its sympathizers with the financial support of misguided patrons in the Mideast oil patch. Instead, they could have been enabled to redeem their future by investment in their own enterprises and public works from their Arab brothers.

This pathway to Palestinian dignity is still possible, assisted particularly by booming oil prices. It demands, however, the suspension of Arab suspicion towards their Palestinian brothers. Using oil revenues to provide refugee aid is laudable; but it demeans a nation of entrepreneurial individuals whom other Arabs regard as potential threats to their own regional dominance. This jealousness has historically been a detriment to Arab advancement. If it is abandoned, it could also help lead the rest of the world away from the dismal expectation of constant conflict in the Middle East.

24 August 2008

Democracy Is Not an Implicit Right

In their article on American Interest Online, “The Right Side of the Law,” Peter Ackerman and Michael J. Glennon attempt to justify non-violent intervention in the political affairs of other nations when the motive is to weaken authoritarian rule. They seem to assume that “Jeffersonian Democracy” will naturally emerge in the ensuing power vacuum.

While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was correct to denote as implicit the right of men to participate in their government, it was a victim of its times to designate free and fair elections as the only permitted vehicle for that participation. (Besides, many of the states that have signed the Declaration are governed, no doubt, by virtually authoritarian regimes.) The advance of information technology has made archaic participation through the election of representatives. It has become possible for an autocratic regime to anticipate the desires of the public, through intelligent use of polling, communications monitoring, even direct solicitation of preferences, and to govern freely while securing the welfare of the general populace.

Whether states have the right to engage in democracy promotion around the world is an entirely separate question. It is incorrect to justify non-violent intervention by claiming that the adoption of the intervening agency’s prescriptions serves the general public benefit. Human rights may require that information be freely available from foreign evangelists of democracy, not that the host nation adopt their principles of government. The host nationals may freely prefer abdicating responsibility for governance to a benevolent dictator.

Mr. Ackerman and Mr. Glennon make a strong argument for allowing foundations such as Freedom House to support advocates for democratic change in authoritarian regimes around the world. Nevertheless, they do not convince us that social systems that produce such advocates are the best ones for everyone to live in. Nor is the emergence of many electoral democracies over the last twenty years sufficient to establish as illegal under human rights law an alternative system of civil order that fulfills its people’s aspirations.

18 August 2008

Obama Is Not Culturally African-American

Jesse Jackson’s infamous rage against Senator Barack Obama and the resentment of other old-line black leaders presented by Matt Bai in his 17 August 2008 NYT Magazine article are attributable, at least in part, to the fact that they and Obama do not share the experience of descent from enslaved ancestors. It also reflects the privileged circumstances of the Democratic presidential candidate’s education and perspective.

The first of these distinctions explains much of the laggard support that Obama has received from African-American leaders. They probably feel that they have more in common with Nelson Mandela than with Obama. The second distinction, however, is upsetting to those in the white community for whom the natural order of things is that privileges like intelligence and Ivy League anointment come primarily to their own social group. A beneficiary from another group is considered a usurper—life is a zero-sum game.

Of course, as Mr. Bai points out, the “post-racial” generation of black leaders profess that both of these distinctions are now irrelevant. It is unfortunate, however, that the national standard-bearer for that transformation of American politics is a unique individual. His success may not redound to the benefit of most blacks in our society. On the other hand, it is a strength of our political system that a person with such exceptional qualities will indeed be selected for an important civic position. It would be ironic if such qualities somehow handicapped his rise to the top.

09 August 2008

The Media and Politicians Are Just Doing a Job

It’s ironic that the news media hold political candidates and elected officials to a standard of behavior that is higher than the one to which they hold themselves. After all, they are both just doing their jobs, and protecting their financial futures.

Professionalism has destroyed the purity of purpose in these and other callings. Political leaders were once amateurs who graduated from economically productive roles in society to lending their judgment and experience for service to the common welfare. They have been captured by the need to make a living and build a celebrity enterprise. Their public acts are determined by what helps them fill that need, rather than what fulfills the common good.

Likewise, the “main stream media” are compelled to report the news that will bring viewers, listeners and readers to their content and earn advertising revenues based on access to all those eyes and ears. A destructive mutual dependency relates the MSM to government officials. Their symbiosis was recognized years ago, of course, by Marshall McLuhan. Nowhere outside politics is it more true that the medium is the message.

It’s not the substance of a politician’s policies that matters most to his success. It’s how he presents them, to his constituents as well as to his fellow officials. That, after all, is the skill for which he wins elections. It is also the skill that determines the success of any MSM organization. Criticizing a politician for acting in the interest of continuing in office is tantamount to challenging the news media for attending to the entertainment preferences of its advertisers’ target customers. Politicians are under as much pressure to make their constituents feel good as advertisers are with regard to their customers.

06 August 2008

Paper Oil and Wet Oil

It used to be that oil futures, like grain futures, were related to the risk that producers and users sustained in planning their deliveries in coming months. Those expectations, expressed in paper representing prices that would clear supply and demand when needed, determined the vagaries of the market. Now it is the other way around.

Of course, the market will never run out of paper (or electronic bits). But the negative feedback in the real market to the high prices caused by hedge fund speculation in the futures market has begun to worry the policemen on the hedge fund beat—the credit officers of those hedge funds and their banks. Liquidity and mutual trust are essential to smooth operation of the futures market. Fear of a collapse looms over the possibility that contracts will mature without sufficient wet oil to balance the expectations of buyers and sellers.

Hedge funds are little more than cosmetically sophisticated gambling schemes. They have distorted futures markets through the impact of the immense quantities of capital at their disposal. Perhaps limiting use of the futures market to the ultimate buyers and sellers of wet oil would help to dampen the volatility caused by financial speculation; but you know that smart speculators will always be able to find a way around such regulation. A slow shrinkage of the distance between oil products consumers (purchasers of gasoline, heating oil, etc.), grain consumers (everyone who eats)—the ultimate consumers of all commodities--will eventually result from the development of information technology. Until then, we will have a bumpy ride.

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