From Telegraph:
Daewoo Logistics is taking a 99-year lease on 3.2 million acres of land, half the size of Belgium, to grow maize and biofuels, building its own roads and other infrastructure to service the new farms that will be created on currently undeveloped open space.
The amount is almost half the currently farmed land in the country.
The deal is a sign of the concern of many countries, particularly the intensely populated nations of the far east, about ensuring the safety and reliability of food and other supplies in an increasingly competitive world.
Chinese companies have signed similar deals across a number of African nations in recent years, even sending its own workforce to join local residents in working their new estates.
miércoles, 7 de enero de 2009
martes, 6 de enero de 2009
Once revolution is successful, the government needs religion as an opiate to avert new revolutions -Pan Yue, 2001
Francesco Scisci, from AsianTimes:
...The Chinese leaders realized that the much-feared Christian faiths were not so dangerous after all. In 50 years of communist rule, despite ruthless oppression, Christian
Protestants and Catholics had never staged demonstrations in Tienanmen, as Falungong followers had. In 1989, during the Tienanmen demonstrations, then-bishop Zen from Hong Kong told students in Chinese seminars not to get involved with the demonstrations. This created renewed goodwill among the Chinese leadership for traditional religions and made possible official overtures to the Vatican in 2001 for the normalization of ties with China. In 2001, senior party official Pan Yue wrote an article that redefined theoretical concepts.
He argued, essentially, that Karl Marx had said that religion is the opiate of the people, and thus religion is bad for revolution. But once revolution is successful, the government needs religion as an opiate to avert new revolutions.
The reasoning is crude but fitting for Chinese political thought. It also changed the meaning of revolution from the original Marxist one, entailing a total change of political order, to the Chinese geming, a simple traditional Chinese change of political power. This brought the momentous change of 2007.
On December 18, the party's politburo, the highest ruling body in the country, held a plenary collective study session. It was the second one since the 17Th Communist Party Congress that ended in October last year. For the first time in the history of the People's Republic, the party's top echelons met to discuss a once-taboo subject - religion.
(...)
Now religious personalities were invited guests; perhaps, in the not too distant future, they could become fully fledged delegates to the party congress. That is, the party could drop its ban against religious figures joining its ranks.
Indeed, Hu's keynote speech devoted a paragraph to religion . He said religious people, including priests, monks and lay-believers, played a positive role in the social and economic development of China. Furthermore, Hu did not talk about religions as such, thus establishing a form of respect and non-interference in purely religious affairs. That is, the party is not interested in religion per se, but it values the positive social contribution of religious people.
Here's a frontline video abut the momentum religion is gaining in China but also Goverment resistences against independent churches.
...The Chinese leaders realized that the much-feared Christian faiths were not so dangerous after all. In 50 years of communist rule, despite ruthless oppression, Christian
Protestants and Catholics had never staged demonstrations in Tienanmen, as Falungong followers had. In 1989, during the Tienanmen demonstrations, then-bishop Zen from Hong Kong told students in Chinese seminars not to get involved with the demonstrations. This created renewed goodwill among the Chinese leadership for traditional religions and made possible official overtures to the Vatican in 2001 for the normalization of ties with China. In 2001, senior party official Pan Yue wrote an article that redefined theoretical concepts.
He argued, essentially, that Karl Marx had said that religion is the opiate of the people, and thus religion is bad for revolution. But once revolution is successful, the government needs religion as an opiate to avert new revolutions.
The reasoning is crude but fitting for Chinese political thought. It also changed the meaning of revolution from the original Marxist one, entailing a total change of political order, to the Chinese geming, a simple traditional Chinese change of political power. This brought the momentous change of 2007.
On December 18, the party's politburo, the highest ruling body in the country, held a plenary collective study session. It was the second one since the 17Th Communist Party Congress that ended in October last year. For the first time in the history of the People's Republic, the party's top echelons met to discuss a once-taboo subject - religion.
(...)
Now religious personalities were invited guests; perhaps, in the not too distant future, they could become fully fledged delegates to the party congress. That is, the party could drop its ban against religious figures joining its ranks.
Indeed, Hu's keynote speech devoted a paragraph to religion . He said religious people, including priests, monks and lay-believers, played a positive role in the social and economic development of China. Furthermore, Hu did not talk about religions as such, thus establishing a form of respect and non-interference in purely religious affairs. That is, the party is not interested in religion per se, but it values the positive social contribution of religious people.
Here's a frontline video abut the momentum religion is gaining in China but also Goverment resistences against independent churches.
Fertility Rate: What figures-obsessed demographers seems to miss
An old FreeExchange post(still very relevant):
"THIS week's cover story about dealing with low fertility rates is, naturally, a dose of sober good sense. Yet plenty of people are not-so-sensibly panicked these days over thinning national populations with low animal spirits.
Earlier this month in The Times, Melanie McDonagh argued for subsidies and tax breaks for breeders, and even half-jokingly suggested an extra levy on the willfully barren. She's singing a tune similar to Philip Longman's in The Empty Cradle, where he stresses the dependence of economic growth and pay-as-you-go pension systems on steady or rising birthrates. We do not all equally perform our procreative duty to our countrymen, but, as Longman put it in an excerpt from his book:
"All of us benefit hugely from ... parental investment. What could you buy with your Social Security check, or your I.R.A.s for that matter, if everyone else in your generation had simply forgotten to have children or had failed to invest in them? Yet parents do not receive any greater pensions than non-parents for the sacrifices they make to raise and educate the future workers upon whom we will all depend in old age".
Longman and McDonagh seem to envision breeding and child rearing as a sort of public good likely to be underprovided if individuals are left to their own selfish devices. Those of us who decline to yield future workers are free riding off all that "human capital" produced by altruistic pram-pushers. But, as always, there is too little altruism to go around. So we should go for the next best thing: tax incentives.
There is something inherently repellant about a social vision in which wombs and their fruits are conceived primarily in terms of future labor productivity and tax receipts. But you don't have to be repelled to see that the "kids as public goods" picture doesn't add up.
First, it should be obvious that nations don't have to have pension systems highly sensitive to worker-to-retiree ratios. A shift to a system of mandatory personal retirement accounts immediately solves that problem. And then there are substitutes to native-born children. People born in other countries can also work and pay taxes. Indeed, if yours is a rich country, billions of less-rich people would like to come there. So let more of them come. And then there is technological progress, which allows machines to do some formerly human jobs, and increases the productivity of remaining human labour.
There is no reason a nation with a shrinking population cannot maintain steady rates of GDP per capita growth if mechanization and labour productivity gains keep up a good pace. Indeed, George Mason economist Robin Hanson argues that soon enough robots will be doing almost all the jobs anyway. So it is easy enough to imagine a country that maintains a high standard of living as the population eventually shrinks to ... nothing. People differ rather vehemently on this issue, but I see nothing wrong with a population dwindling away entirely, as long as living conditions remain high. All individual lives come to an end, but they are not therefore worthless. Societies don't last forever either, and neither do nation-states. A society that fades away in high style might count as a spectacular human triumph, not a failure. Where's the underprovided public good in steady-growth population decline?
There are more questionable assumptions lurking behind the "kids as public goods" argument. For one thing, some people produce neither an economic nor fiscal benefit to society. Some children will end up as free-riders, consuming more than they create. This runs us into the incendiary issue of child quality. If, for example, high IQ children tend to become more economically productive, creating more value to consumers in addition to paying more taxes into the system, while low IQ children tend to become markedly less productive and a net drain on the treasury, then natalist policy logic pushes toward eugenics. The logic of the argument also implies that highly capable people who choose lives of quiet contemplation are free riding, too, since they could be producing more economic output and tax revenue, but aren't--just as some of us could be creating future output and taxes in the form of children, but aren't. Should we have to pay extra taxes for time spent in acting school?
Blogger Randall Parker grasps both terrifying nettles in what I hope is a satirical post advocating the filtering of both the slackers and the unintelligent from the gene pool. I'm afraid his reasoning is valid, even if his assumptions are unsound. "I do not recognize a basic right to reproduce," Parker explains. "How can an act that creates huge external costs be a right?" If we insist, as Longman-style natalists tend to do, that each human life be viewed as a nexus of effects on the national interest, then how indeed? But then there goes your right to choose your own career and your right to consume what you like--choices that can also have large effects on others. I suggest rejecting the premise".
"THIS week's cover story about dealing with low fertility rates is, naturally, a dose of sober good sense. Yet plenty of people are not-so-sensibly panicked these days over thinning national populations with low animal spirits.
Earlier this month in The Times, Melanie McDonagh argued for subsidies and tax breaks for breeders, and even half-jokingly suggested an extra levy on the willfully barren. She's singing a tune similar to Philip Longman's in The Empty Cradle, where he stresses the dependence of economic growth and pay-as-you-go pension systems on steady or rising birthrates. We do not all equally perform our procreative duty to our countrymen, but, as Longman put it in an excerpt from his book:
"All of us benefit hugely from ... parental investment. What could you buy with your Social Security check, or your I.R.A.s for that matter, if everyone else in your generation had simply forgotten to have children or had failed to invest in them? Yet parents do not receive any greater pensions than non-parents for the sacrifices they make to raise and educate the future workers upon whom we will all depend in old age".
Longman and McDonagh seem to envision breeding and child rearing as a sort of public good likely to be underprovided if individuals are left to their own selfish devices. Those of us who decline to yield future workers are free riding off all that "human capital" produced by altruistic pram-pushers. But, as always, there is too little altruism to go around. So we should go for the next best thing: tax incentives.
There is something inherently repellant about a social vision in which wombs and their fruits are conceived primarily in terms of future labor productivity and tax receipts. But you don't have to be repelled to see that the "kids as public goods" picture doesn't add up.
First, it should be obvious that nations don't have to have pension systems highly sensitive to worker-to-retiree ratios. A shift to a system of mandatory personal retirement accounts immediately solves that problem. And then there are substitutes to native-born children. People born in other countries can also work and pay taxes. Indeed, if yours is a rich country, billions of less-rich people would like to come there. So let more of them come. And then there is technological progress, which allows machines to do some formerly human jobs, and increases the productivity of remaining human labour.
There is no reason a nation with a shrinking population cannot maintain steady rates of GDP per capita growth if mechanization and labour productivity gains keep up a good pace. Indeed, George Mason economist Robin Hanson argues that soon enough robots will be doing almost all the jobs anyway. So it is easy enough to imagine a country that maintains a high standard of living as the population eventually shrinks to ... nothing. People differ rather vehemently on this issue, but I see nothing wrong with a population dwindling away entirely, as long as living conditions remain high. All individual lives come to an end, but they are not therefore worthless. Societies don't last forever either, and neither do nation-states. A society that fades away in high style might count as a spectacular human triumph, not a failure. Where's the underprovided public good in steady-growth population decline?
There are more questionable assumptions lurking behind the "kids as public goods" argument. For one thing, some people produce neither an economic nor fiscal benefit to society. Some children will end up as free-riders, consuming more than they create. This runs us into the incendiary issue of child quality. If, for example, high IQ children tend to become more economically productive, creating more value to consumers in addition to paying more taxes into the system, while low IQ children tend to become markedly less productive and a net drain on the treasury, then natalist policy logic pushes toward eugenics. The logic of the argument also implies that highly capable people who choose lives of quiet contemplation are free riding, too, since they could be producing more economic output and tax revenue, but aren't--just as some of us could be creating future output and taxes in the form of children, but aren't. Should we have to pay extra taxes for time spent in acting school?
Blogger Randall Parker grasps both terrifying nettles in what I hope is a satirical post advocating the filtering of both the slackers and the unintelligent from the gene pool. I'm afraid his reasoning is valid, even if his assumptions are unsound. "I do not recognize a basic right to reproduce," Parker explains. "How can an act that creates huge external costs be a right?" If we insist, as Longman-style natalists tend to do, that each human life be viewed as a nexus of effects on the national interest, then how indeed? But then there goes your right to choose your own career and your right to consume what you like--choices that can also have large effects on others. I suggest rejecting the premise".
lunes, 5 de enero de 2009
Guardian front page: Ofsted's new mission - to get rid of boring teachers
here's the link:
Ofsted(Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) is to launch a crackdown on "boring" teaching in response to concerns that children's behaviour is deteriorating because they are not being stimulated enough in class.
Inspectors will be told to give more finely tuned advice to struggling schools on what is going wrong in their lessons and why pupils are not paying attention, the chief inspector of schools, Christine Gilbert, said.
She told the Guardian the changes in the inspections would amount to a "crackdown" on boring teaching. "I think that it should do that. When I was a [local authority] director of education I wanted to know if there was a link between boredom and achievement. We did a piece of work on it and there was strong evidence that a lot of it was boredom."
Teaching unions said the chief inspector was unfairly portraying the profession.
The inspectorate's latest annual report, published in November, warned of "pedestrian" teaching in primary schools, and said pupils in secondary schools were too often set tasks that are not demanding enough of them.
(...)
Gilbert said: "People divorce teaching from behaviour. I think they are really, really linked and I think students behave much better if the teaching is good, they are engaged in what they are doing and it's appropriate to them.(...)
She said that a focus on improving schools through the introduction of better and stronger management and head teachers "isn't enough" to make every lesson good - schools should be improving the quality of teaching too. She said reforms to the inspection process would make a difference.
"One of the things that we've been concerned to do in the new inspection framework is to really emphasise the importance of teaching and learning. One of the things we really felt it was important to do is to give much clearer information about what schools should do.
"I read every special measures report every week. Every single one. Too often they say you've got to improve teaching and learning and literacy and numeracy. The school isn't left with enough information. There's been a dialogue in the school but often, particularly in special measures, they don't take it in at the time. I think we need to be much clearer in our recommendations of what schools need to do in terms of their teaching and learning."
The consultation on the new Ofsted inspection regime suggested that inspectors would spend more time in classrooms observing the quality of lessons.
Teachers' leaders reacted angrily to the comments. Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said: "The fact is that every chief inspector seems to get infected with a virus that makes them say schools are full of teachers who aren't good enough despite the fact that their own evidence shows the standards of teacher is good. With comments like that, the chief inspector fuels the view that every lesson of every day for every minute has got to be packed with excitement. Quite frankly life isn't like that and education isn't like that. Comments like this make teachers fair game for everyone, including pupils."
Margaret Morrissey, a former school inspector and founder of the parental campaigning group Parents Outloud, said: "There's always been the odd teacher who some children will find boring, but in life what turns off one child will turn on another. We'll never live in a utopia where every teacher fascinates every child."
John Bangs, the head of education at the National Union of Teachers, said: "The quality of teaching over the last 10-15 years is the best it's ever been. I wish she would present her findings in a way that reflects reality. It would be helpful if inspectors gave schools more information on how to improve - they need a two-way conversation about what's going on when they are put into special measures." A strong focus on teaching and learning in inspections would be welcomed, Bangs added.
Ofsted(Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) is to launch a crackdown on "boring" teaching in response to concerns that children's behaviour is deteriorating because they are not being stimulated enough in class.
Inspectors will be told to give more finely tuned advice to struggling schools on what is going wrong in their lessons and why pupils are not paying attention, the chief inspector of schools, Christine Gilbert, said.
She told the Guardian the changes in the inspections would amount to a "crackdown" on boring teaching. "I think that it should do that. When I was a [local authority] director of education I wanted to know if there was a link between boredom and achievement. We did a piece of work on it and there was strong evidence that a lot of it was boredom."
Teaching unions said the chief inspector was unfairly portraying the profession.
The inspectorate's latest annual report, published in November, warned of "pedestrian" teaching in primary schools, and said pupils in secondary schools were too often set tasks that are not demanding enough of them.
(...)
Gilbert said: "People divorce teaching from behaviour. I think they are really, really linked and I think students behave much better if the teaching is good, they are engaged in what they are doing and it's appropriate to them.(...)
She said that a focus on improving schools through the introduction of better and stronger management and head teachers "isn't enough" to make every lesson good - schools should be improving the quality of teaching too. She said reforms to the inspection process would make a difference.
"One of the things that we've been concerned to do in the new inspection framework is to really emphasise the importance of teaching and learning. One of the things we really felt it was important to do is to give much clearer information about what schools should do.
"I read every special measures report every week. Every single one. Too often they say you've got to improve teaching and learning and literacy and numeracy. The school isn't left with enough information. There's been a dialogue in the school but often, particularly in special measures, they don't take it in at the time. I think we need to be much clearer in our recommendations of what schools need to do in terms of their teaching and learning."
The consultation on the new Ofsted inspection regime suggested that inspectors would spend more time in classrooms observing the quality of lessons.
Teachers' leaders reacted angrily to the comments. Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said: "The fact is that every chief inspector seems to get infected with a virus that makes them say schools are full of teachers who aren't good enough despite the fact that their own evidence shows the standards of teacher is good. With comments like that, the chief inspector fuels the view that every lesson of every day for every minute has got to be packed with excitement. Quite frankly life isn't like that and education isn't like that. Comments like this make teachers fair game for everyone, including pupils."
Margaret Morrissey, a former school inspector and founder of the parental campaigning group Parents Outloud, said: "There's always been the odd teacher who some children will find boring, but in life what turns off one child will turn on another. We'll never live in a utopia where every teacher fascinates every child."
John Bangs, the head of education at the National Union of Teachers, said: "The quality of teaching over the last 10-15 years is the best it's ever been. I wish she would present her findings in a way that reflects reality. It would be helpful if inspectors gave schools more information on how to improve - they need a two-way conversation about what's going on when they are put into special measures." A strong focus on teaching and learning in inspections would be welcomed, Bangs added.
domingo, 4 de enero de 2009
Israel's crisis of leadership: Neither Labor, Likud, Kadima nor Meretz offers clear political certainties.
I've found this mid-december Benny Morris' article in the LATimes.
Israel is in the throes of a grave crisis of leadership. General elections are scheduled for Feb. 10, and there is no widely respected or overwhelmingly popular leader in sight. Even with the existential threat of a nuclear Iran looming over the country, the candidates and party lists are unattractive, the political landscape bleak.
Ehud Olmert, the caretaker prime minister who has been running the country since 2006, is on his way to a corruption trial. Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, the heads, respectively, of the Labor Party and the Likud Party, are both discredited ex-prime ministers. Barak's back story is that he offered the Palestinians too many concessions in 2000 and garnered only a resounding "no" (along with an unprecedented wave of terrorism). Netanyahu, who was prime minister from 1996 to 1999, did nothing at all to further the peace process.
The third major candidate in February's elections is Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who heads the centrist Kadima party (founded in 2005) and who is a relative novice with no real experience in the crucial realm of security. And she lacks charisma.
How have we gotten to this point? For one thing, the Labor Party, which led the Zionist movement to statehood and headed Israel's governments from 1948 (when David Ben-Gurion became prime minister) to 1977, is on the ropes. Last week, polls predicted that Labor would emerge with only 12 seats in the 120-member Knesset in the coming elections, down from 19 in 2006. In 1951, Labor won 45 seats and, in 1969, 56. During the last few years the party has suffered major defections, including the 85-year-old president of Israel, Shimon Peres, who is now in Kadima, as well as Yossi Beilin, the astute dove who has abandoned politics altogether, and Avraham Burg, a longtime Knesset member turned businessman. Likud, to be sure, emerged from the primary season with something of a face-lift, with the addition of Moshe Ya'alon, an ex-Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, and the return to its ranks of hard-liner Benny Begin, a former minister and son of party founder Menachem Begin, and Dan Meridor, a liberal former justice minister. But the voters' selection of religious extremist Moshe Feiglin and some of his supporters for the party list of Knesset candidates means that Netanyahu, if he becomes the next prime minister (as seems likely, according to the polls), will be severely hobbled in any effort to negotiate with the Palestinians or with the Arab states. No clear policy can emerge from this mishmash.
Kadima, made up in equal measure of defectors from the right and left, offers no political certainties either, though it no doubt will figure large in any future coalition government. The left-wing Meretz party is back in the news after the recent mobilization of some of the country's leading intellectuals, including novelists Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman, on its behalf. But the polls show that the expanded party will not win more than 6% to 7% of the electorate.
All of this is a far cry from Zionism's first 100 years, when there was ideological certainty and single-mindedness, and when dedicated men were at the helm.
During Israel's first existential crisis, in 1948, when the emergent Jewish state (population 650,000) was attacked by the Arabs, Ben-Gurion presided with a sure hand and firmly steered Israel to victory and international recognition. (Compare that with Olmert's thickheaded, hesitant leadership during the 2006 Lebanon war). Ideological yet pragmatic, Ben-Gurion labored around the clock (his children barely saw or knew him) and accrued no personal wealth (he died in a hut in the desert kibbutz of Sde Boker).
His immediate successors, whatever their shortcomings, were similarly fueled by Zionist ardor and public-mindedness. Moshe Sharett (Labor), Levi Eshkol (Labor), Golda Meir (Labor) and Menachem Begin (Likud) did not become wealthy in their jobs, and they all died, in their various ways, broken, crushed by the weight of terrible office and unforgiving circumstances. Ariel Sharon, the Likudnik turned Kadima founder who was prime minister from 2001 to 2005, and who has been in a stroke-induced coma since 2006, also was a hardheaded true believer.
The current set are a wholly different breed. Olmert, Netanyahu and Barak have all spent years amassing personal wealth, hugely helped by their years and connections in office. (Livni, in this respect, is an exception. Colleagues testify to her clean hands and austere personality.)
In a sense these self-serving, affluent leaders are an apt reflection of the development and character of Israeli society over the last few decades: a shift from the idea of the collective to the cult of individualism, from socialism to capitalism, from lean youth to middle-aged paunch.
In Israel's case, the leadership crisis also has much to do with its over-democratic electoral system of proportional representation, in which a multiplicity of small parties in the Knesset and the inevitability of weak coalition governments guarantee a relative inability to govern (or to govern for long). The mismanagement of the 2006 Lebanon war -- the politicians and generals afraid to incur too many Israeli casualties out of fear of the wrath of the electorate, or to inflict too many on the Lebanese for fear of international and internal condemnation -- was emblematic.
The last decades' steady erosion of the Zionist ethos has an unusual if in some ways apt representative in Avraham Burg. With him, the erosion has not merely followed the route from public service to private enterprise but also to well-publicized anti-Zionist posturing. This from a man who was chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization (1995-1999) and speaker of the Knesset (1999-2003) -- a veritable embodiment of Zionism.
But in his new book, "The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes," which describes his intellectual evolution, Burg argues that Israel is a sick society, "a ghetto of belligerent colonialism," "paranoid" and "schizophrenic," mostly as a result of the Holocaust. The Shoah, he writes, wields an "absolute monopoly" over "every aspect of" Israeli life. It explains, according to Burg, why Israel has been unable to make peace with the Arab world, and the Palestinians in particular, and why Israel is the "neighborhood bully."
Last I heard, Burg was trying to make a comeback by joining the expanded Meretz party, though party stalwarts and the recently mobilized intellectuals are trying to keep him at arm's length. But given its size, Meretz is irrelevant today.
Much more worrisome is the broader leadership crisis, which means that Israel after Feb. 10 will be confronting Iran, with its nuclear ambitions, and Iran's neighborhood proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, with no firm hand on the tiller and with no widely respected figure at the helm. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for is an Israel governed during the next four years by a Netanyahu-Livni-Barak triumvirate. Without doubt, this only adds one more troubling variable for President-elect Barack Obama as he gloomily scans the Middle East for some ray of hope.
Israel is in the throes of a grave crisis of leadership. General elections are scheduled for Feb. 10, and there is no widely respected or overwhelmingly popular leader in sight. Even with the existential threat of a nuclear Iran looming over the country, the candidates and party lists are unattractive, the political landscape bleak.
Ehud Olmert, the caretaker prime minister who has been running the country since 2006, is on his way to a corruption trial. Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, the heads, respectively, of the Labor Party and the Likud Party, are both discredited ex-prime ministers. Barak's back story is that he offered the Palestinians too many concessions in 2000 and garnered only a resounding "no" (along with an unprecedented wave of terrorism). Netanyahu, who was prime minister from 1996 to 1999, did nothing at all to further the peace process.
The third major candidate in February's elections is Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who heads the centrist Kadima party (founded in 2005) and who is a relative novice with no real experience in the crucial realm of security. And she lacks charisma.
How have we gotten to this point? For one thing, the Labor Party, which led the Zionist movement to statehood and headed Israel's governments from 1948 (when David Ben-Gurion became prime minister) to 1977, is on the ropes. Last week, polls predicted that Labor would emerge with only 12 seats in the 120-member Knesset in the coming elections, down from 19 in 2006. In 1951, Labor won 45 seats and, in 1969, 56. During the last few years the party has suffered major defections, including the 85-year-old president of Israel, Shimon Peres, who is now in Kadima, as well as Yossi Beilin, the astute dove who has abandoned politics altogether, and Avraham Burg, a longtime Knesset member turned businessman. Likud, to be sure, emerged from the primary season with something of a face-lift, with the addition of Moshe Ya'alon, an ex-Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, and the return to its ranks of hard-liner Benny Begin, a former minister and son of party founder Menachem Begin, and Dan Meridor, a liberal former justice minister. But the voters' selection of religious extremist Moshe Feiglin and some of his supporters for the party list of Knesset candidates means that Netanyahu, if he becomes the next prime minister (as seems likely, according to the polls), will be severely hobbled in any effort to negotiate with the Palestinians or with the Arab states. No clear policy can emerge from this mishmash.
Kadima, made up in equal measure of defectors from the right and left, offers no political certainties either, though it no doubt will figure large in any future coalition government. The left-wing Meretz party is back in the news after the recent mobilization of some of the country's leading intellectuals, including novelists Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman, on its behalf. But the polls show that the expanded party will not win more than 6% to 7% of the electorate.
All of this is a far cry from Zionism's first 100 years, when there was ideological certainty and single-mindedness, and when dedicated men were at the helm.
During Israel's first existential crisis, in 1948, when the emergent Jewish state (population 650,000) was attacked by the Arabs, Ben-Gurion presided with a sure hand and firmly steered Israel to victory and international recognition. (Compare that with Olmert's thickheaded, hesitant leadership during the 2006 Lebanon war). Ideological yet pragmatic, Ben-Gurion labored around the clock (his children barely saw or knew him) and accrued no personal wealth (he died in a hut in the desert kibbutz of Sde Boker).
His immediate successors, whatever their shortcomings, were similarly fueled by Zionist ardor and public-mindedness. Moshe Sharett (Labor), Levi Eshkol (Labor), Golda Meir (Labor) and Menachem Begin (Likud) did not become wealthy in their jobs, and they all died, in their various ways, broken, crushed by the weight of terrible office and unforgiving circumstances. Ariel Sharon, the Likudnik turned Kadima founder who was prime minister from 2001 to 2005, and who has been in a stroke-induced coma since 2006, also was a hardheaded true believer.
The current set are a wholly different breed. Olmert, Netanyahu and Barak have all spent years amassing personal wealth, hugely helped by their years and connections in office. (Livni, in this respect, is an exception. Colleagues testify to her clean hands and austere personality.)
In a sense these self-serving, affluent leaders are an apt reflection of the development and character of Israeli society over the last few decades: a shift from the idea of the collective to the cult of individualism, from socialism to capitalism, from lean youth to middle-aged paunch.
In Israel's case, the leadership crisis also has much to do with its over-democratic electoral system of proportional representation, in which a multiplicity of small parties in the Knesset and the inevitability of weak coalition governments guarantee a relative inability to govern (or to govern for long). The mismanagement of the 2006 Lebanon war -- the politicians and generals afraid to incur too many Israeli casualties out of fear of the wrath of the electorate, or to inflict too many on the Lebanese for fear of international and internal condemnation -- was emblematic.
The last decades' steady erosion of the Zionist ethos has an unusual if in some ways apt representative in Avraham Burg. With him, the erosion has not merely followed the route from public service to private enterprise but also to well-publicized anti-Zionist posturing. This from a man who was chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization (1995-1999) and speaker of the Knesset (1999-2003) -- a veritable embodiment of Zionism.
But in his new book, "The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes," which describes his intellectual evolution, Burg argues that Israel is a sick society, "a ghetto of belligerent colonialism," "paranoid" and "schizophrenic," mostly as a result of the Holocaust. The Shoah, he writes, wields an "absolute monopoly" over "every aspect of" Israeli life. It explains, according to Burg, why Israel has been unable to make peace with the Arab world, and the Palestinians in particular, and why Israel is the "neighborhood bully."
Last I heard, Burg was trying to make a comeback by joining the expanded Meretz party, though party stalwarts and the recently mobilized intellectuals are trying to keep him at arm's length. But given its size, Meretz is irrelevant today.
Much more worrisome is the broader leadership crisis, which means that Israel after Feb. 10 will be confronting Iran, with its nuclear ambitions, and Iran's neighborhood proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, with no firm hand on the tiller and with no widely respected figure at the helm. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for is an Israel governed during the next four years by a Netanyahu-Livni-Barak triumvirate. Without doubt, this only adds one more troubling variable for President-elect Barack Obama as he gloomily scans the Middle East for some ray of hope.
Chain of Syllogisms
From E.K.Hunt (History of Economic Thought: A Critical Perspective) via Mark Thoma:
If, when reading Veblen's critique of John Bates Clark, the reader thought that Veblen's mocking example (in which "a gang of Aleutian Islanders slushing about in the wrack and surf with rakes and magical incantations" could be understood as harmonious neoclassical maximizers) was a little extreme, then one should read Alchian and Allen, or anyone of the writers of the Austrian or Chicago schools who piously announce the universality of their value-free science.
Their science applies everywhere because it applies nowhere. Most theorizing by these schools is purely tautological. The argument goes like this:
1. All human behavior involves choice.
2. In any choice situation, whichever alternative is chosen involves gains and costs (whether explicit costs or implicit "opportunity" costs).
3. Therefore, all human behavior involves exchange, since it involves acquiring gains in exchange for costs.
4. All human beings choose rationally; that is, they exchange in such a manner as to maximize the excess of the utility of the gain over the disutility of the cost (or the utility forgone in the opportunity cost).
5. Therefore, all choices are rational and represent the best possible alternatives among those available in the exchange process (the utilitarian neoclassicists have always avoided facing the issue of how capitalist society gives some individuals so many alternatives and others so few) .
6. Since all choices, or exchanges (they amount to the same thing), are rational and maximize each chooser's or exchanger's utility, then total utility is always maximized .
7. Therefore, free exchange in a capitalist society harmonizes all interests, maximizes utility, results in rational prices, results in efficient resource allocation, and, in general, automatically creates the best of all possible worlds.
8. Furthermore, since all human activity is in reality exchange, each and every aspect of a capitalist society is rational and blissful.
If, when reading Veblen's critique of John Bates Clark, the reader thought that Veblen's mocking example (in which "a gang of Aleutian Islanders slushing about in the wrack and surf with rakes and magical incantations" could be understood as harmonious neoclassical maximizers) was a little extreme, then one should read Alchian and Allen, or anyone of the writers of the Austrian or Chicago schools who piously announce the universality of their value-free science.
Their science applies everywhere because it applies nowhere. Most theorizing by these schools is purely tautological. The argument goes like this:
1. All human behavior involves choice.
2. In any choice situation, whichever alternative is chosen involves gains and costs (whether explicit costs or implicit "opportunity" costs).
3. Therefore, all human behavior involves exchange, since it involves acquiring gains in exchange for costs.
4. All human beings choose rationally; that is, they exchange in such a manner as to maximize the excess of the utility of the gain over the disutility of the cost (or the utility forgone in the opportunity cost).
5. Therefore, all choices are rational and represent the best possible alternatives among those available in the exchange process (the utilitarian neoclassicists have always avoided facing the issue of how capitalist society gives some individuals so many alternatives and others so few) .
6. Since all choices, or exchanges (they amount to the same thing), are rational and maximize each chooser's or exchanger's utility, then total utility is always maximized .
7. Therefore, free exchange in a capitalist society harmonizes all interests, maximizes utility, results in rational prices, results in efficient resource allocation, and, in general, automatically creates the best of all possible worlds.
8. Furthermore, since all human activity is in reality exchange, each and every aspect of a capitalist society is rational and blissful.
Certi leader statunitensi dovrebbero pensarci bene prima di definirsi eredi di Churchill
Paul Kennedy:
Facendo delle ricerche per un libro sulla seconda guerra mondiale, ho scoperto molte cose sui viaggi dei due leader degli Alleati, Franklin Delano Roosevelt e Winston Churchill.Costretto su una sedia a rotelle dalla poliomielite, Roosevelt era il meno mobile dei due, ma quando il conflitto con l'Asse si intensificò fece tre importanti viaggi all'estero per consultarsi con sovietici, britannici e comandanti militari come Eisenhower.Winston Churchill, invece, rientrava in una categoria a parte: era di costituzione robusta e molto interessato a tutti gli aspetti della guerra. Oltre a partecipare alle grandi conferenze degli Alleati, insisteva per visitare i campi di battaglia. Era difficile tenerlo lontano dal fronte. Una famosa fotografia del luglio del 1944 lo ritrae con il sigaro in bocca nel bel mezzo della battaglia di Normandia, mentre guarda le bombe che esplodono sulle postazioni tedesche.Se parlo di questi due grandi leader è perché mi viene in mente un altro comandante in capo, quasi arrivato alla fine dei suoi otto anni di presidenza. Fare un confronto tra l'attuale amministrazione Bush e i governi di Roosevelt e Churchill non è scorretto, se non altro perché la stessa Casa Bianca ha evocato spesso quell'epoca e il ricordo della "generazione dei grandi".Per la maggior parte dei membri dell'amministrazione – e per tutti i neoconservatori statunitensi – Churchill è un'icona, l'incarnazione di quello che loro stessi hanno cercato di fare con la guerra globale. Può essere quindi istruttivo – e a mio parere allarmante – ricordare il numero e la durata delle visite del presidente Bush nei vari teatri di guerra da quando è cominciata l'invasione dell'Afghanistan e dell'Iraq, cioè a partire dal 2001.Ecco l'elenco delle sue presenze in Iraq: 27 novembre 2003, due ore e mezzo per un pranzo del Ringraziamento con le truppe, senza mai lasciare la base americana nell'aeroporto internazionale di Baghdad; 3 giugno 2006, cinque o sei ore nella Zona verde fortificata di Baghdad; 3 settembre 2007, cinque o sei ore per visitare la base aerea di Al Asad, la fortezza americana nella provincia occidentale di Anbar.In pratica Bush, in più di cinque anni di conflitto, non ha passato neanche un giorno intero in Iraq. Impressionante. Chi dubita dell'esperienza e della conoscenza del mondo di Barack Obama forse dimentica che, durante la sua visita in Iraq del gennaio 2006, il candidato ha passato due intere giornate "lontano dalla sicurezza della Zona verde per incontrare gli americani e i comandanti militari che operavano sul territorio", come ha riferito Abc News.Il presidente è stato in Afghanistan una sola volta. Ha passato cinque ore a Kabul il 1 marzo 2006, quando la situazione era abbastanza tranquilla. Viene da chiedersi perché c'è andato.Come può un leader scatenare una guerra lunga e disastrosa come quella in Iraq, continuare a chiedere centinaia di miliardi di dollari per finanziarla, invitare gli americani a tenere duro, senza passare un po' di tempo sul campo? Un vero comandante in capo dovrebbe essere molto preoccupato per quello che succede alle truppe ai suoi ordini.Anche se la guerra in Iraq sarà probabilmente l'eredità principale che ci lascerà l'amministrazione Bush, il presidente non si è mostrato mai entusiasta all'idea di vederla da vicino. A questo punto è inevitabile trarre due conclusioni spiacevoli. La prima è che, a livello emotivo, questo presidente ha difficoltà a guardare troppo da vicino le conseguenze di un disastro, che si tratti dei danni causati dall'uragano Katrina, delle strade devastate delle città irachene, o delle macerie del World trade center dopo l'11 settembre.Sarebbe già qualcosa se il signor Bush si fosse fatto vedere a fianco del combattivo sindaco Rudolph Giuliani mentre dirigeva le operazioni di soccorso dopo l'attentato.In secondo luogo, non accetto l'idea che, per evitare altri episodi come l'assassinio di Kennedy, il presidente degli Stati Uniti debba essere tenuto al riparo da qualsiasi pericolo. È malsano proteggere l'uomo che prende le decisioni più importanti del mondo da tutto ciò che è spiacevole, come si faceva con gli ultimi zar della Russia imperiale.È malsano che le conferenze stampa del presidente siano sempre più prefabbricate e prive di contraddittorio, come è malsano che non esista un luogo dove il capo del governo è costretto a confrontarsi con i suoi critici. Infine, è malsana l'insistenza dei "guardiani" del presidente nel dire che non deve correre neanche il minimo rischio.Nel gennaio del 1943, dopo aver detto addio al suo grande amico Roosevelt a Casablanca, il sessantottenne Winston Churchill salì su un aereo che sorvolò la Tunisia occupata dai tedeschi per andare a visitare le truppe britanniche in Egitto.Prese un treno per risalire la costa siriana e andare a incontrare il presidente turco, volò a Tripoli, dormì in un camion dell'esercito e pranzò con il generale Montgomery mentre i cannoni della contraerea tenevano a bada un aereo da ricognizione tedesco. Poi si preparò a tornare a casa, quattro settimane dopo aver lasciato Londra. Certi leader statunitensi dovrebbero pensarci bene prima di definirsi churchilliani.
Facendo delle ricerche per un libro sulla seconda guerra mondiale, ho scoperto molte cose sui viaggi dei due leader degli Alleati, Franklin Delano Roosevelt e Winston Churchill.Costretto su una sedia a rotelle dalla poliomielite, Roosevelt era il meno mobile dei due, ma quando il conflitto con l'Asse si intensificò fece tre importanti viaggi all'estero per consultarsi con sovietici, britannici e comandanti militari come Eisenhower.Winston Churchill, invece, rientrava in una categoria a parte: era di costituzione robusta e molto interessato a tutti gli aspetti della guerra. Oltre a partecipare alle grandi conferenze degli Alleati, insisteva per visitare i campi di battaglia. Era difficile tenerlo lontano dal fronte. Una famosa fotografia del luglio del 1944 lo ritrae con il sigaro in bocca nel bel mezzo della battaglia di Normandia, mentre guarda le bombe che esplodono sulle postazioni tedesche.Se parlo di questi due grandi leader è perché mi viene in mente un altro comandante in capo, quasi arrivato alla fine dei suoi otto anni di presidenza. Fare un confronto tra l'attuale amministrazione Bush e i governi di Roosevelt e Churchill non è scorretto, se non altro perché la stessa Casa Bianca ha evocato spesso quell'epoca e il ricordo della "generazione dei grandi".Per la maggior parte dei membri dell'amministrazione – e per tutti i neoconservatori statunitensi – Churchill è un'icona, l'incarnazione di quello che loro stessi hanno cercato di fare con la guerra globale. Può essere quindi istruttivo – e a mio parere allarmante – ricordare il numero e la durata delle visite del presidente Bush nei vari teatri di guerra da quando è cominciata l'invasione dell'Afghanistan e dell'Iraq, cioè a partire dal 2001.Ecco l'elenco delle sue presenze in Iraq: 27 novembre 2003, due ore e mezzo per un pranzo del Ringraziamento con le truppe, senza mai lasciare la base americana nell'aeroporto internazionale di Baghdad; 3 giugno 2006, cinque o sei ore nella Zona verde fortificata di Baghdad; 3 settembre 2007, cinque o sei ore per visitare la base aerea di Al Asad, la fortezza americana nella provincia occidentale di Anbar.In pratica Bush, in più di cinque anni di conflitto, non ha passato neanche un giorno intero in Iraq. Impressionante. Chi dubita dell'esperienza e della conoscenza del mondo di Barack Obama forse dimentica che, durante la sua visita in Iraq del gennaio 2006, il candidato ha passato due intere giornate "lontano dalla sicurezza della Zona verde per incontrare gli americani e i comandanti militari che operavano sul territorio", come ha riferito Abc News.Il presidente è stato in Afghanistan una sola volta. Ha passato cinque ore a Kabul il 1 marzo 2006, quando la situazione era abbastanza tranquilla. Viene da chiedersi perché c'è andato.Come può un leader scatenare una guerra lunga e disastrosa come quella in Iraq, continuare a chiedere centinaia di miliardi di dollari per finanziarla, invitare gli americani a tenere duro, senza passare un po' di tempo sul campo? Un vero comandante in capo dovrebbe essere molto preoccupato per quello che succede alle truppe ai suoi ordini.Anche se la guerra in Iraq sarà probabilmente l'eredità principale che ci lascerà l'amministrazione Bush, il presidente non si è mostrato mai entusiasta all'idea di vederla da vicino. A questo punto è inevitabile trarre due conclusioni spiacevoli. La prima è che, a livello emotivo, questo presidente ha difficoltà a guardare troppo da vicino le conseguenze di un disastro, che si tratti dei danni causati dall'uragano Katrina, delle strade devastate delle città irachene, o delle macerie del World trade center dopo l'11 settembre.Sarebbe già qualcosa se il signor Bush si fosse fatto vedere a fianco del combattivo sindaco Rudolph Giuliani mentre dirigeva le operazioni di soccorso dopo l'attentato.In secondo luogo, non accetto l'idea che, per evitare altri episodi come l'assassinio di Kennedy, il presidente degli Stati Uniti debba essere tenuto al riparo da qualsiasi pericolo. È malsano proteggere l'uomo che prende le decisioni più importanti del mondo da tutto ciò che è spiacevole, come si faceva con gli ultimi zar della Russia imperiale.È malsano che le conferenze stampa del presidente siano sempre più prefabbricate e prive di contraddittorio, come è malsano che non esista un luogo dove il capo del governo è costretto a confrontarsi con i suoi critici. Infine, è malsana l'insistenza dei "guardiani" del presidente nel dire che non deve correre neanche il minimo rischio.Nel gennaio del 1943, dopo aver detto addio al suo grande amico Roosevelt a Casablanca, il sessantottenne Winston Churchill salì su un aereo che sorvolò la Tunisia occupata dai tedeschi per andare a visitare le truppe britanniche in Egitto.Prese un treno per risalire la costa siriana e andare a incontrare il presidente turco, volò a Tripoli, dormì in un camion dell'esercito e pranzò con il generale Montgomery mentre i cannoni della contraerea tenevano a bada un aereo da ricognizione tedesco. Poi si preparò a tornare a casa, quattro settimane dopo aver lasciato Londra. Certi leader statunitensi dovrebbero pensarci bene prima di definirsi churchilliani.
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