Author: Jerome a Paris

This is adapted from the parallel diary on DailyKos, which I hope you’ll go recommend as I do say nice words about BT as well!

It’s been two years today already since European Tribune went live, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to encourage you guys, who have already done so much to make that site exist, to continue to drop by and enjoy one of the highest signal-to-noise ratios of the blogosphere (says, in a typically arrogant European manner, the obviously-unbiased editor of the site!).

It’s just one click away: European Tribune (in case you’ve forgotten about the links in the top bar and the right hand column!)

A few words of thanks and thoughts below.
First of all, credit should go to Martin (Booman) who got BT started just a few months before, and suggested that we build a second site more focused on Europe. He provided the infrastructure, much needed guidance on how to run the site, and a friendly community to write for, as BT already had an international section built in. The two communities have now grown in their own way and have, to a large extent, become independent, but many of you are faithful to both sites and enjoy the different perspective they provide. We always enjoy your presence when you drop by, don’t forget to do at least occasionally, it’s so easy from here on BT!

I’ll add a word of thank here for Welshman, who provided a lot of useful and on-point input during the preparation of the site. He finally chose not to participate to ET and we’ve had our disagreements since then, but he deserves a friendly nod for his early role in this adventure.

Some of the early frontpagers, Soj and Sirocco are no longer with us, but they helped get the site started and provided a lot of excellent content during our first year. As far as I can tell, Soj’s EuroPDB: June 13, 2005 was the first front page story 2 years ago. Colman and Fran, who joined almost from the start, as well as whataboutbob, who joined us a few weeks later, are still with us today, and Fran’s daily Salon – her detailed daily review of the international press – is in many ways the backbone of the site. It provides us every morning of the year with a comprehensive overview of news as seen from many different countries, an excellent base to engage in informed conversation and an easy source for many of our front page stories. Reading the Salon every day allows you to know what’s going on in the world before everybody else – and to tell us what’s going on in YOUR corner of the world.

The current front page crew, which also includes afew, DoDo, Izzy and the stormy present, provides an amazing diversity of viewpoints, as it includes 6 nationalities (American, British, French, Hungarian, Irish, Swiss) and 6 countries of residence (Egypt, France, Hungary, Ireland, Switzerland, US), and even more job qualifications… – numbers which increase dramatically if you take into account our regular diarists and commenters, which include Spaniards, Italians, Bulgarians, Finns, Greeks, Swedes, Dutch, Germans, Canadians, Russians and many others I forget, who tell us about what’s going on in their countries, in their minds and elsewhere.

We were hoping to reach our millionth visitor on this birthday, but it looks like we’ll have to wait for another week or so to celebrate that milestone (unless many of you decide to come over and click here right now!). Whatever the date it happens, it’s still an incredible number of readers – that’s close to 2,000 regular readers each day: an encouraging – and humbling – public. But what’s even more noteworthy is the number of page views: with almost 5 million pages, we have very ‘sticky’ readers, which in fact means that we have very real, and exceedingly interesting conversation taking place in the threads. The wealth of the content of the site comes as much, if not way more, from the commenters than from the frontpagers and the diarists.

If you don’t read ET at all, or if you just read my diaries over at the big orange, and think that, as these often come from European Tribune stories or material, there is no real need to come over to ET and see what else might be on the site, I can only say that you are missing a lot of stuff (including from me!). I know that we all have busy lifes, and way too much to read already, but I will still encourage you to take a peek at the smart conversation on ET. I am constantly amazed by how much I learn on the site, and by the quality, breadth and depth of the collective expertise which shines through.

We’re wonky, and friendly, and nice, a really pleasant combination. Do come over and join the conversation, all new faces are always welcomed and encouraged, and we love to hear about new things.

A number of us will actually be meeting in Paris this week-end; if you’re around, you’re most welcome to come and join the fun; if not, do come to the site and help us make the third year of European Tribune as fun an adventure as the first two were.

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And if you still haven’t clicked over, thinking that you don’t really have the time to worry about what’s going on in Europe and elsewhere when you have a big enough task on your hands at home with Iraq, Bush or the primaries, let me say this, as a long time kossack and early boomer: comparing the parallel experiences of Europe and the US in the past few years is unexpectedly instructive: we see the same ideological forces pitched against us (the rich waging class warfare on the rest of us on the back of the YOYO – you’re on your own – mentality, using fearmongering to distract the population), we have the same overriding problems (global warming, resource depletion, globalisation, our relationship with the rest of the world) but we’re not always at the same stage in these trends (the neo-cons or neocon wannabes have more power in the US than in Europe, but they are not discredited over here and are still on the rise; inequality is not as bad in Europe, but the pressure to follow the deregulation, no-tax religion is growing; political action on the global warming front is a bit ahead in Europe). The comparison is often instructive, allowing us to know what’s at stake because we know where the trends can lead, to focus our political fight on what really matters, and making it possible to create alternative discourse based on experiences from other places.

Energy, sustainability, the fight between economic models favoring the few or the many, the strong or the weak, the growth of netroots-driven policy are at the core of the European Tribune “heart” and we think we are making progress in building a powerful alternative narrative, which we need to bring into the public sphere to fight back the neocon/neolib tide. So your help – in contributing to that debate, and in making the site better known – is vital.

As a kossack and boomer running a spin-off of both, I am most grateful to both communities, which encouraged me to write, helped me sustain the effort over time, and taught me a lot of things. I am sorry that my focus on ET has kept me mostly away from BT lately, but you have a great team of writers of your own in any case!

I’d like to finish with a word of thanks to kos himself, for sticking to a model that gives all of us (even foreigners) incredible freedom of speech and an amazing platform from which to be heard, and for his kind support to European Tribune over the past two years. The same can be said of Martin, who has managed to create and sustain his own platform (a not so easy task in the shadow of the big orange), was kind enough to see potential in my writing back then in early 2005, and has supported ET in every possible way.

Your European cousin salutes you, and hopes to emulate your success in changing how politics are done on our continent.

Now: clic here: European Tribune !

As a companion to Barack Obama’s own article on the topic (which I discussed yesterday on the big orange – with 1,100+ comments…), Foreign Affairs has a parallel text written by Mitt Romney about his vision on foreign policy. Cutting to the chase, I’d say that he raises interesting questions, but provides really, really nasty and scary answers (from my perspective).

Okay, let’s deal quickly with the one thing I liked in Romney’s text: the prominent feature of energy policy, and the (indirect) acknowledgement that it is a foreign policy issue. Of course, he talks only about the dependency aspects, and not abouyt how oil influences US policies (more on this below) and, unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, his proposed remedies that are worse than the problem, i.e. he focuses on the traditional ‘solutions’ of the Republicans: more, more, more, i.e. supply-side crap:

It will also mean increasing our domestic energy production with more drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, more nuclear power, more renewable energy sources, more ethanol, more biodiesel, more solar and wind power, and a fuller exploitation of coal.

ANWR? Coal? Bleh.

The other thing that might have been interesting is his idea that international civilian policies of the USA should be coordinated like the military ones are. But he turns that into a frankly scary idea to create super-prefects to supervise each region of the world:

We need to fundamentally change the cultures of our civilian agencies and create dynamic, flexible, and task-based approaches that focus on results rather than bureaucracy. We need joint strategies and joint operations that go beyond the Goldwater-Nichols Act to mobilize all areas of our national power. Just as the military has divided the world into regional theaters for all of its branches, the work of our civilian agencies should be organized along common geographic boundaries. For every region, one civilian leader should have authority over and responsibility for all the relevant agencies and departments, similar to the single military commander who heads U.S. Central Command. These new leaders should be heavy hitters, with names that are recognized around the world. They should have independent objectives, budgets, and oversight. Their performance should be evaluated according to their success in promoting America’s political, military, diplomatic, and economic interests in their respective regions and building the foundations of freedom, democracy, security, and peace.

This is almost naked empire building. Heavy hitters with the control of the full might of the US government, and in charge of “freedom, democracy, security, and peace” in their respective areas of the world? How long before they’d start dictating policies to local governments and attempting to run the countries under their purview? This has been a permanent temptation for American foreign policy in the past half-century, but this would create a formal structure to explicitly do it, and it is unlikely that, after having built the tool, it would remain unused. This is truly megalomaniac stuff.

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I was harsh about Barack Obama’s focus on threats, and his strong words about reinforcing the US military, and his support for American exceptionalism, but it was quite mild compared to Romney’s inclinations in there respects. (As I acknowledged in the comments of yesterday’s diary, I deliberately focused in that diary on what I found to be the worrying aspects of Obama’s text, because, on balance, I found them too strong compared to the less objectionable, or even laudable parts of his article, and the overall proportion left me with a bad impression. I found Obama’s “good bits” insufficient, but at least they were there)

The perception of a threatening world dominates his text, with genocide, Darfur, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and China’s rise adding to the threat from the Middle East. And that last threat is seen as an all-encompassing struggle:

Many still fail to comprehend the extent of the threat posed by radical Islam, specifically by those extremists who promote violent jihad against the United States and the universal values Americans espouse. Understandably, the nation tends to focus on Afghanistan and Iraq, where American men and women are dying. We think in terms of countries because countries were our enemies in the last century’s great conflicts. The congressional debate in Washington has largely, and myopically, focused on whether troops should be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan, as if these were isolated issues. Yet the jihad is much broader than any one nation, or even several nations. It is broader than the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, or that between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Radical Islam has one goal: to replace all modern Islamic states with a worldwide caliphate while destroying the United States and converting all nonbelievers, forcibly if necessary, to Islam. This plan sounds irrational, and it is. But it is no more irrational than the policies pursued by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s and Stalin’s Soviet Union during the Cold War. And the threat is just as real.

So, a worldwide struggle with an ideology as dangerous as nazism and stalinism. And it is a struggle to death, as they want the destruction of the US. And they use evil weapons like clerics, children and the internet. A sneaky, devious enemy. And they want nuclear weapons to attack the US.

And of course, it is Clinton’s fault that this threat was not recognised for what it is, and that the US military was so weak as a result to strike back. I kid you not.

Look at how long it took the U.S. government to confront the reality of jihadism. Extremists bombed our marines in Lebanon. They bombed our embassies in East Africa. They bombed the U.S.S. Cole. They even set off a bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center before we truly saw the threat they posed.

(…)

After President George H. W. Bush left office, in 1993, the Clinton administration began to dismantle the military, taking advantage of what has been called a “peace dividend” from the end of the Cold War. It took a dividend, but we did not get the peace. It seems that our leaders had come to believe that war and security threats were gone forever;

(…)

The equipment and armament gap continues to this day. Even as we have increased defense spending to meet the challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan, our budgets for procurement and modernization have lagged behind. This is a troubling scenario for the future, and it puts our country and our troops — present and future — at risk, as we wring the life out of old and inadequate equipment.

Thus he proposes, not surprisingly, a massive increase in the military budget, and commits “to spending a minimum of four percent of GDP on national defense”, like in the good old days of the cold war.

Beyond the military build up, he proposes “energy independence” as described above via more drilling more coal and more ethanol (neither of which will make a dent in oil consumption, and each of which will create massive additional problems, whether environmental damage, increased carbon emissions or competition with food supplies). He proposes the new imperial prefects I also discussed, and has an additional section on “revitalising alliances” which is essentially a long rant against the UN Human Rights Council (which is indeed mostly a joke, but is not an alliance, and, being part of the UN, is not meant as an interventionist body, and has never been a significant tool of US policy at any time). He mentions the OSCE as an example (suggesting that it was responsible for the peace in Europe after WWII, ignoring that it was created in the 1970s, and, as expected, failing to mention the EU), and quotes neocon (and out-of-power) Spaniard Aznar as to how NATO should be used to kick ass around the world.

Throughout, he peppers his text with references to the “greatest generation”, and the need for similarly strong action and, naturally, on America’s mission:

We are a unique nation, and there is no substitute for our leadership.

Thus the themes that I flagged in Obama’s speech (the perception of threats, the need for more military firepower, and the sense of exceptionalism) are present in an even more exarcerbated fashion. I guess this does not surprise me too much coming from a Republican, which is why I’m using less outraged words, but it’s a toxic combination that scares and alienates me and many around the world.

And of course, no mention of global warming, no mention of ending Guantananmo, no mention of ending torture, no mention that allies might have been alienated by Bush. (I will apologize to Obama supporters on this point: Barack Obama is absolutely unambiguous on all these topics. I guess that I saw it as such a basic requirement that it did not strike me as remarkable – but noting their absolute absence in Romney’s text shows that it is by no means a trivial issue, and thus I salute Obama’s words on this more explicitly today.)

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As a wider point, I’d like to make explicit my positions on a number of issues, which underpin some of my reactions to the proposed foreign policies. Just for the avoidance of doubt, these are personal opinions and I certainly do not claim to represent European or world opinion on these points.

Terrorism

To me, the threat of terrorism is vastly overrated. Terrorism is fundamentally (i) a law enforcement issue, and (ii) a political issue linked to our noxious policies in the region.

Terrorism’s significance is vastly exagerated. With the admittedly big exception of 9/11, its actual impact on our lives is unsignificant (just look at statistices for death and damages from any other cause, whether car accidents, firearms, arson, etc…). Even 9/11, while exceptionally huge, did not have any material impact on the US economy beyond that in our heads. Terrorism works when it makes us change our behavior and become fearful, vengeful or hateful and lose our values in the process. The more we ignore it, the less it will have an actual impact. Terrorism should be treated like car accidents. It’s a tragedy when you’re caught in one, but it’s a statistic for the country. (I’ll get back to nuclear below).

As a law enforcement issue, it does require international action, but not military action at all. The opportunity to push for a much more active international justice was lost (probably for a long time, one of the most terrible legacies of Bush) in the late months of 2001, when many countries hostile to it could have been coerced into it by the USA, as an alternative to all out war, but that does not mean that law enforcement cannot work today. As a basic first step, existing laws should apply to all detainees, and normal legal procedures should apply to terrorism, with minor tweaking, as has been done in a number of countries. We have to uphold the law if the fight against these criminals is to mean anything.

As a political issue, the requirement is to go for the root causes: our support for corrupt, dictatorial regimes in the expectation that this will secure our access to oil. This is silly (Iran has been a reliable supplier and actually is more open to foreign investment than Saudi Arabia), and terribly counterproductive, as whole populations have grown up with the equation dictature = the West and have found, as their only outlet for political action, support for religious movements (which have a strong social role in many countries and thus high on-the-ground legitimacy), and have equated democracy = islam. Our priority should be to let these populations make the democratic choice they want, i.e. accepting that religious leaders gain power in a number of these countries. Again, the contrasting examples of Iran (where they did gain power and would have been kicked out of power by their population, had we not given them the populist opportunity to rally Iranians around the flag – and them – by threatening the country) and Algeria (where Islamists who won elections in the early 90s were forcibly pushed out by the military, with Western support, which led to a bloody civil war and terrorism in Europe) shows that it’s not clear that our preferred solution is really better for us.

As an additional factor, we should reduce on dependence on the oil they produce, which means reducing our demand, not producing more (as that feeds demand and only pushes the problem to a bit later, while making it bigger).

Iran

I consider that the tension with Iran is mostly generated by the USA. Sure, they are hostile to Israel, sure they have a crazy (but mostly powerless) president. Sure they are trying to get nukes.

But look at it from their perspective: the US has already invaded two of their (non-nuclear armed) neighbors, has troops in a couple other neighbors (Turkey and Azerbaijan) and keeps hinting that it want to do the same to them. The US is also strangely inactive towards countries that do have nuclear weapons (North Korea and Pakistan). Put two and tow together: nuclear weapons protect you from the proven threat of US invasion and occupation.

And remember that the humiliation of 1979 was preceded, in Iranian minds, by the US-backed coup of 1953, when their democratically elected leader was pushed out in favor of a nasty US-friendly dictator.

It’s time for Americans to put the embassy crisis behind them, and to commit to peace with Iran. They want it – they’ve made the diplomatic moves; they’ll get it via a nuclear weapon otherwise, it’s hard to blame them for it – and it’s hard to see that as a danger. Just as India and Pakistan going officially nuclear has actually calmed things down between them, it’s very much likely that the same would happen with Israel, as both countries face the responsibility of MAD. Iran has a long history as a country, and its leaders are just as pragmatic and keen to remain in power as elsewhere. A nuclear attack against a country with several hundred nukes (and a close ally of the US) is unlikely to lead to any of that. Nuclear weapons in the hands of states are not offensive weapons – they cannot be – the only people deluded enough to think that are US neocons. and a State giving nuclear weapons to terrorists will easily be identified, and treated as if it had used the weapon. I cannot imagine that Iranian leaders would want to take that risk with fundamentally uncontrollable groups.

Which leaves us with nuclear proliferation, and the risk of a terrorist attack using a nuclear device. quite frankly, that riks does not come from Iran or Iraq. If it exists at all, it comes from the former Soviet Union (ignored by Romney but addressed by Obama) or Pakistan (ignored by both). It can only be solved by close international cooperation between police and spies from various countries. That requires trust, and it requires give-and-take, not diktats and threats.

In the meantime, again, terrorism’s main effect is on *our* behavior. If we drop our values, treat all Others as enemies or even go to war, terrorists have won without even needing to blow up any bomb. The “war on terror” can only be won in our heads.

US leadership

I’m often told that Europeans had it easy, and had the luxury of going about cooperating and using soft power because they were protected by US military might. Besides the fact that this overlooks the fact that we were meant to be the battlefield in any war with the Soviets, and had a stake in protecting our homes (and thus did contribute to the military effort), I’m not sure how that argument works today. Who is the US protecting us from today?

The only thing that I see here is the protection of sea lanes for trade, mostly, if implicitly, done by the US Navy all over the world. Naturally, that includes oil trade, which brings us to energy policy (*We need to use less oil*. Reduce demand. Think conservation rather than looking for more supply. Etc, etc…), but beyond this?

Actual US leadership came from undisputed economic power, bringing goods, business practices, investment and technology around the world. Today? It’s spreading around Goods (and demand for commodities) come from China. Standards come from Europe (just look at REACH, the EU directive on chemical products coming into force today, which imposes high health and safety standards that will apply in Europe but will become de fact oworld standards as they are the toughest around). Engineers come from India. Capital comes from all over and is loyal to no country.

So what’s the claim to leadership today, beyond the ability to invade countries at will? Might makes right is unlikely to work very long in today’s world. Thus my wariness at proposals to reinforce the military, and my dismay at Romney’s package.

Tomorrow is the first round of the French presidential election, which will see the two candidates with the most ballots (out of 12) go to the second round in two weeks’ time.

First, some background:

• In an introduction to France’s political system, I described the basic institutions of power in France, the power of the President vs Parliament and the main political parties;
• in French Presidential Candidates (with poll), afew listed the 12 candidates in the first round, with a brief description of their programmes, and links to their websites
• This 5 days to French election – linky goodness was posted a few days ago on DailyKos and provides links to all the diaries on European Tribune about the French election campaign over the past year (including the socialist primary).

From the European Tribune, where we’ll have threads throughout the week-end and live-blogging of the results tomorrow (first estimates expected at 1pm EST)

Now, if you’ve been following the French campaign from far away, you’ve probably heard that this is pretty important election for France, as it supposedly struggles with a stagnant economy, an overbearing State, poorly integrated and riotous Muslims in the suburbs, and a somber mood. A new generation is coming to power, offering a glimmer of hope of “reform” and finally bringing France into the globalised, English-speaking and market-friendly 21st century.

More recently, you’ve probably sensed disappointment with Ségolène Royal. She had shaken up the Socialist party with her modern campaign style and had created hopes of a “Blairist style modernisation” of the French left (she even had nice words about Tony Blair’s policies, never mind that she was praising the fact that the UK has been increasing State spending on education and healthcare, and critical words about the 35-hour week, never mind that it was to criticize it for being too favorable to companies). But alas, pundits noted that her programme, unveiled in February, was actually on the left, something clearly unacceptable; they thus decreed that her campaign was flawed, flailing and failing, and that has been the buzz ever since. François Bayrou, the leader of the center-right and pro-European UDF party stepped into the breach and became seen as the proper “leftwing” alternative to Sarkozy.

Sarkozy himself has been seen as the great big hope “for” France. The New York Times‘ “straight-talking, America-loving, Israel-favoring son and grandson of immigrants whose electoral acrobatics are most transparently a short-term contrivance” has been described everywhere serious as the man most able to get the French back to work, French diplomacy appropriately friendly to the USA, and Europe to further liberalise as is (or so say the conventional wisdom of these serious people) so sorely needed. As the above wording from the NYT suggests, Sarkozy has not been altogether consistent in his support of reform, and his discourse (and earlier acts while Minister) have a distinct intereventionist and Statist streak, but hey, he’s French, what else can one expect form these people – but at least he’s not a socialist, let alone an unreconstructed one or the more exotic varieties of extremist lefties that you can find in that sorry country.

Throughout, the dominant theme is that of a country in dire straits, which urgently needs its reformist medecine. As the WSJ puts it, “[t]he recipe isn’t complicated: Lower taxes to reduce wage costs, tighten rules government benefits, loosen up employment protection laws, for starters.” The story is simple: it needs to lower taxes and wages so that cheaper jobs can be created (for the poor excluded Muslims who otherwise riot and burn cars); If entrepreneurs and profits are no longer taxed, they will no longer need to flee to London or other similar havens of liberty; If France stops its antics, national industrial champions can be killed, reform can take place at the EU level and full liberalisation of all markets can ensure prosperity for all (the haves and the have mores).

Though not perfect (well, what can one expect, he is French, after all), Sarkozy has been branded, through sheer, mindless repetition, as the champion of that painful, but necessary, “reform” agenda, and his victory in this election will be interpreted as the belated acknowledgement of the French that they have to bow to the reality of the globlization and embrace it. It will be seen as a green light for policies focused on profits and on the needs of the rich. Conversely, his loss to Royal (or even to Bayrou) will be seen as a “head in the sand” moment and France will continue to be pilloried for its supposedly sclerotic economic performance.

Now that might not matter too much; after all, we know what the WSJ Op-Ed crowd et al. think of these things, and very little short of total elimination of any tax will ever make them think that the rich (I mean,  the economy) are not needlessly oppressed.

But it does matter in terms of perceptions of the inevitability of “reform”, and the orientation of EU policies, both internally and externally.

If Sarkozy wins, this will be seen as the knock out blow to any kind of progressive policies in Europe. The 3 biggest countries of Europe will be invariably described as led by “reformers” (Merkel, because she is from the right wing CDU, despite her lack of enthusiasm for actual “reform”, and Blair or Brown because they are the quintessential “reformers” in the eyes of commenters, even if that’s a lot more true of their discourse than of their acts); the EU will thus be in a position to liberalise markets that have not yet been so freed, and will be able to conduct a nicely pro-American foreign policy, with 3 designated friends in power. Expect a lot of noise about energy markets (and containment of a resurgent Russia), toughness against Iran and probably China, acceleration of postal and railway liberalisation, attempts to “reform” pensions towards the City (London’s Wall Street), and a mini-treaty on EU institutions meant not to be subject to referenda. It will be described the triumph of the right, and of the Atlanticists, and Europe will do nothing to oppose Bush. As to France itself, expect rude attempts to “reform” by Sarkozy, leading to massive demonstrations and strikes, unrest, and a very uncertain outcome.

If Sarkozy loses, the 5 biggest European countries will actually have parties of the left in power. Italy and Spain, with their undoubtedly leftwing governments will suddenly be remembered; people will focus on the fact that the SPD is part of the coalition in power in Germany, and that it is formally a Labor government in London. The momentum for “reform” will be very different. I expect that the EU will suddenly try to spend more time on a new version of the Constitution, sticking closely to the version that was rejected in 2005, but adding some sort of social declaration to make it palatable to the French in a new referendum. I also expect a new dynamic as Royal and Zapatero work closely, and, hopefully, bring Prodi and Merkel on board for a new start of the EU. Maybe (one can dream), the Europeans will grow a spine and finally find the needed courage to tell Bush that his insane international policies are, well, insane, and they will stop playing along dutifully. We’ll see sour grapes in France, continued hostility to Royal and I imagine an unrelenting focus on her (mostly imagined) “gaffes”, but the country will, somehow, mysteriously, not collapse.

I do think that the result matters elsewhere in Europe, as well as in America, as it is a vote, in effect, on the inevitability of “reform” and on the (strangely Hegelian and Marxist) sense that history is on the side of the neoliberals and neocons, with unregulated English-speaking capitalism the (proper and desirable) end of history.

A Sarkozy victory will be spinned as a sign that “even the French get it”, and an encouragement to push further; a Royal victory, after the strong message of the 2006 midterm elections in the US, will be (even if it is spinned otherwise) a sign that sanity is slowly returning to the world after several crazy years, and that, with adults in charge, we can actually go about tackling the real issues that we face.

Not the war on terror, but global warming and peak oil. Not immigration, but the fair repartition of wealth between the rich and the others. Not geopolitical instability in the Middle East, but the domination over our foreign policies by corporate interests. Not oligopolistic liberalisation of public services, but focus on fairness and the common good.

So yes, I root for Ségolène, and I am optimistic.

It may appear callous to write this on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11, but it is the date when it needs to be said: terrorism is an insignificant threat to our lives, and we are giving up way too much in the process.

I’ve been thinking for a while about why our societies tend to overreact to some events while absorbing the impact of others, which have, under any possible measuring standard, similar or smaller impact on our lives.

In the first category comes terrorism, or things like  drugs, bus accidents and tobacco. In the second you can put things like car accidents, death by firearms, suicide or alcoholism. Not only do we exagerate the importance of things we react to , but the very policies that are used to fight the supposed problem tend to make things worse and have a very real cost for us.

There are two main differences between the two kinds of events:

i) one kind cannot easily be blamed on something or somebody specific, thus requiring long term plans that work statistically over the long run,  instead of scapegoating;

ii) one kind cannot easily be blamed on somebody “different”, thus preventing cowardly politicians from evoking their responsibility instead of ours.

What the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, or the vilification of smokers have in common is that a (very real) problem is blown out of proportion, or is turned into a problem it is not by the policies meant to “solve” it, which are really at heart populist power grabs.

Drugs
Drugs are a healthcare problem for the relatively small number of hard drug addicts, and it is a quite large crime problem (people attacked by drug users who need the money to pay for their addiction, and large scale – and violent – criminal networks that corrupt our borders and take control of the streets).

The simplest solution would be to decriminalize drugs, and make them legally accessible. You’d eliminate 90% of petty crime, cut the prison population by the same, and destroy the main source of profits for most gangs. Against that is the healthcare issue of possibly increased addiction, which could easily be solved by investing only a small fraction of the law enforcement money saved into treatment and care for the genuinely addicted (i.e. not the casual marijuana smokers).

The War on Drugs, of course, takes the opposite tack, by criminalising drugs and drug use, and striking ferociously against all involved. It makes the drug business immensely profitable (and a terrible temptation for those that are not given other opportunities in society), it creates the need for petty crime by addicts and it feeds a huge prison-enforcement industrial complex with a vested interest in the pursuit of the same “tough” policies.

Undelying this, of course, is the fact that the issue (and the blame) can conveniently be shifted away from drug users and onto drug providers. It’s a supply problem, not a demand problem. It ignores that casual demand from the middle classes drives the business, and it ignores the real victims, hard drug addicts, which mostly come from lower classes. So, problems of the poor are left to fester, while the responsibility of the average citizen is conveniently forgotten.

Cigarette
Cigarettes kill. But they mostly kill those that use them. Second hand smoke is real, but a minor health issue. The cost to society of cigarette deaths is minor as the extra healthcare costs and the lost “productive” years are more than “compensated” (from the public purse’s perspective) by the significantly lower pension payments to smokers, who die before they can claim them after having chipped in most of their lives.

Again, the simple solution is to treat cigarette smoke like what it is, i.e. a dangerous long term poison for smokers and a stinking nuisance for others. Protect non smokers from smoke as much as possible, and let smokers do their thing so long as they know it’s dangerous (and most do, today).

Current policies tend to focus on the death toll, which, as pointed above cynically, is not a financial problem for public authorities, but more of a moral crusade. Racketeering the tobacco companies appears unseemly to me (and I write this as a virulent non-smoker who hates smoke and finds careless smokers  to be the rudest people on earth).

Again, it’s easier to blame evil tobacco manufacturers, grab money from them, and infantilise the public by taking all responsibility away from them.

Terror
9/11 was a staggeringly successful and spectacular terrorist attack, but even that most deadly event is not enough to make terrorism anything more than a minor nuisance to our societies. This is not meant to diminish the pain of those that lost loved ones or were otherwise struck by that event, but it’s a fact.

Even in that year, which towers over all others in terms of numbers of victims and damage caused, terrorism should be put in its rightful place.

Using the most recent available, i.e. 2003 CDC data (pdf, see summary pp. 8-11 or table 10), one can note the following numbers:

There were 2.48 million deaths in that year, of which 109,277 accidents and 17,732 homicides. 9/11 caused less than 0.1% of American deaths in 2001, 2% of accidental deaths and 15% of homicides – in one year. Over a ten year period, the rates are correspondingly divided by 10.

Of course that does not make these death less important, and it does not mean that no reaction is needed. But it does mean that a sense of proportion is required. You do not spend 2 trillion dollars, sacrifice another couple thousand lives of soldiers, kill tens of thousands of Iraqis, ditch 60 years of diplomacy and 200 years of constitutional rights for something that can be compared to:

– malnutrition (3,153 deaths in 2003)) [Yes, believe it – see items E40-E46 in table 10]
– asthma (4,099)
– drowing (3,306)
– fire (3,369)
– falls (2,306 – only Americans under 55)
– injuries at work (5,025)
– pneumonias (4,097 – only Americans under 55)
– heart disease (3,250 – only Americans aged 25-34)

or, more obviously

– alcohol induced (20,687)
– drug-induced (28,723)
– poisoning (28,700)
– motor-vehicle accidents (43,340)
– suicides (31,484)
– murder with firearms (11,920)

Again, these death numbers are for one year, and were similar and will be similar in past and future years; they are not one-time events.

The simple solution to terrorism is, quite simply, to ignore it. Not, of course, ignore the crime, but treat it like a crime –  yes, a law-enforcement matter -and not dignify it with a “War”. The enemy are gangsters with grievances. Catch, sentence and imprison the gangster, and think about the grievances. That may require adjustments to laws and law enforcement procedures, and new forms of international cooperation and even diplomacy, and certainly some additional security procedures in public places and other vulnerable structures, but no fearmongering.

Even today you are more likely to win the lottery than to be hurt in a terrorist attack, even if you take the NY or London metro every day. Look at the Washington sniper back in 2001 – the chances that you were going to be hit were essentially nil, and yet everybody was terrified for a number of days – because the few victims were doing things that all of us do (buying gas, etc) and can identify with.

And yet current policies are to wage war in remote countries (which only creates more potential gangsters with grievances) at high cost in treasury and life, to create highly visible, but mostly pointless and very  burdensome pseudo security procedures, to give unprecedented powers to law enforcement communities at the extent of basic individual rights, and to designate small groups in the population as suspicious and “pre-treasonous”, fostering a climate of fear, suspicion, division and hate on which thrive the most populist.

Again, the price paid appears overwhelming in comparison to the practical threat that terrorists can create. We are doing their job by being terrorised and forgetting our laws. The price pais is high, and the results invisible, but the most important is there: the appearance of action, and very real power and money grabs in the name of that most righteous fight.

Motor Vehicles
I’ll bring in again car accidents, which are the logical item to bring up. A motor vehicle accident is just as deadly for its victims, or traumatising for the survivors, as any bomb attack. It’s senseless, random, and highly disruptive if not deadly. And yet we casually victim numbers orders of magnitude higher than from terrorism without declaring a “War on motoring”. Why is that?

i) one argument is that terrorists intend to kill, whereas other drivers don’t, which changes the underlying motive and brings in an element of pure evil. I’d retort that a driving while drunk, to me, is pretty damn close to wanting to randomly kill; I’d also argue that the core argument here is that we think that we are in control of us and others in our cars, and therefore feel safe, whereas terrorism makes us helpless (thus the similar overreaction to bus, train and plane accidents, which are much safer transport modes but whose accidents seem to scare us a lot more than car accidents). Also, terrorists want to kill us “because of our freedom” – they question our very existence, whereas other drivers do not deny our existence (nah, they just obliterate it anyway, just as randomly, if more frequently).

ii) the second argument is linked to the perception of the pure randomness in terror attacks vs the more “calculated risk” nature of taking one’s car. Driving (or walking on sidewalks) is something we do all the time and which, most of the time, brings us no harm. Terrorism appears only once in a while, but when it does, it is each time very deadly and nasty. All studies show that we have a really bad perception or risk, and an even worse understanding of statistics, and thus we have a tendancy to over exagerate our fear of such rare, but highly visible events (note the similar fears about child kidnappings, something extraordinarily rare, in fact).

:: ::

This brings me back to my intial point:

– some problems appear to have a solution when you can blame someone else. Arab terrorists, South American drug dealers and urban gangs, tobacco manufacturers. Politicians can be seen to act when they take discriminatory or retaliatory action against these groups. Problem solved. If it persists (as it will), hit them harder.

– some problems can only be blamed on ourselves, and thus are better ignored. I did not discuss firearms, and I avoided bringing in this diary the energy crisis but, like tobacco and car accidents, firearm deaths and energy prices have root causes in our own behavior and preferences, and our inability to give up our “God-given” rights for paltry reasons.

We’re perfectly able to rationalise pretty high levels of risk taking for things that we care about. Why don’t we do the same about our freedoms, and tolerate a few ugly terrorist attacks (supposing they will even be attempted, or yet succeed) as the lowish price for our freedoms?

Do we really care more about cars and guns and casual drugs than about liberty? What a shame.

Crossposted from DailyKos, where your support is always appreciated.

Adapted from the European Tribune

The Economist, which used to be a smart and transparently biased magazine, and has become in the past few years a sycophantic propaganda organ parrotting the Republican lines, has 5 pages this week on the 5th anniversary of 9/11, including a 2-page editorial which, strangely enough is not on the front page of their website and which is only available to subscribers. In a very real sense, this document is the official line of the Republican establishment on the War on Terra.

an honest tally of the record since September 11th has to conclude that the number of jihadists and their sympathisers has probably multiplied many times since then. It has multiplied, moreover, partly as a result of the way America responded.

In it, the Economist goes through heavy contorsions to admit the reality of the failure of the “War on Terra”, they note the fact that US policies are a cause for such failure, but try throughout to find excuses.

Even though Mr bin Laden himself eluded America’s forces in Afghanistan, the invasion deprived al-Qaeda of a haven for planning and training. This achievement, however, was cancelled out by the consequences of Mr Bush’s second war: the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. There, three and a half years on, fighting and terrorism kill hundreds every month, providing the jihadists with both a banner around which to recruit and a live arena in which to sharpen their military skills.

They still see the invasion of Afghanistan as a success (because the warlords “cannot topple the government n Kabul”) but, for the first time, they use unambiguously strong words about Iraq: invasion, jihad arena, etc… They still blame it on “Rumsfeldan incompetence”, though. They blithely note that ben Laden “eluded” American forces – showing once again their mastery of the language and their shameless willingness to use it to obsfuscate the truth.

Mr Bush and Tony Blair tried and failed to win a clear United Nations mandate for war. By invading without one, they made themselves vulnerable to the charge that the war was unlawful. The quarrel in the Security Council widened a rift between America and Britain on one hand and France, Germany and Russia on the other. But this would have counted for much less if the weapons of mass destruction had existed. When it transpired that they did not, Muslims–and many others–began to assume that they had been just a pretext.

(…)

There were those (such as this newspaper) who supported the Iraq war solely because of the danger that a Saddam Hussein with a biological or atomic bomb would indeed have posed. But Mr Bush and Mr Blair refused after the war to be embarrassed by the absence of the weapons that had so alarmed them beforehand. They stressed instead all the other reasons why it had been a good idea to overthrow Mr Hussein.

Are they finally, finally, getting a bit miffed at having been lied to and played for dunces, repeatedly? And just a bit ashamed of themselves for having supported those lies for so long and arguing all along that the invasion was a good idea but botched?

It’s not clear. Their article is furiously ambiguous, alternating criticism of the situation on the ground, the execution, and the motivations with semi-lame justifications and heavy reliance on indirect sentences to hide behind third parties (“Muslims began to assume it was just a pretext” – seriously, how much more weaselly can you get?). But the simple fact that France is not blamed in any way in this article speaks volumes (to me anyway). It was just a “quarrel” at the United Nations. Right… We’re kindly asked to forget about “freedom fries” and the much less symbolic campaign of hate against the French and others who dared warn against the war in Iraq, and have been proved completely right.

If it was all about dictatorship, what about the dictatorship the West continues to embrace in Saudi Arabia, and the quasi-dictatorship in Pakistan? If it was about helping Islam’s moderates against its reactionaries, what is so clever about stepping in to someone else’s civil war?

(…)

By what right do you invade someone else’s country in order to impose a pattern of government?

Indeed? Good of them to ask these questions, but a clear and unambiguous reply would have been appropriate at this point. Nah. But still, suggesting that spreading democracy was just a pretext sounds dangerously treasonous and anti-American to my sensitive ears, don’t you agree?

Some curtailing of freedoms was inevitable. Yet Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, the torture memos and extraordinary rendition have not just been unAmerican and morally wrong but also hugely counter-productive. In a battle that is largely about ideas, America seems to many to have abandoned the moral high ground and so won more recruits for the jihadists.

That’s an issue they’ve been somewhat more consistent all along, and have criticised the administration to some extent, so I won’t complain here. I’ll simply note once again that this was part of the “the war was a good idea but poorly executed” mindset which was prevalent amongst too many until very recently.

not every Islamist movement is inspired by the ideas that animate al-Qaeda. In Palestine Hamas is a pious (and vicious) version of a national-liberation movement with local goals, not another front in a global fight. Ditto, more or less, Hizbullah, except that it is also a tool of Iran. And Iran itself is better understood as an assertive rising (and dangerous) power that happens to have a theocratic constitution than as an ally of al-Qaeda, whose ideas come from a separate strand of Islam.

Ooh. Nuances… Local politics… Complexity… showing understanding of the enemy… hmm….

Actually, the Economist has actually always been excellent at writing deep background stories about such multi-layered stories, bringing in the motivations of the parties in a pretty even handed way. And they’ve kept on doing it in the past few years, which is one of the reasons why I still read them (the other being – you have to know what your opponents think). This paragraph is itself a pretty good summary of what they can write at their best.

Pity that the editorial crowd of the Economist stopped reading what the journalists of the Economist wrote – or deliberately chose to ignore it.

Al-Qaeda did not invent terrorism. In its Baader-Meinhof or Shining Path or Irish or Basque or Palestinian guise, terrorism was the background noise of the second half of the 20th century. But September 11th seemed to portend something new. There was something different in the sheer epic malevolence of the thing: more than 3,000 dead, with destruction sliding out of a clear blue sky, all captured on live TV. Most previous terror organisations had negotiable demands and therefore exercised a measure of restraint. Al-Qaeda’s fantastic aims–sweeping away regimes, reversing history and restoring the caliphate–are married to an appetite for killing that knows no limits.

They are still struggling with the stupid idea that “everything is different now”. All rational arguments – which they now bring to the table – show that it’s not so different. Al-Qaeda did not invent terrorism. But their ideological blinders (starting with their knee-jerk support for American exceptionalism) and the emotional impact of the 9/11 attack (promptly cultivated and abused by the Bush administration) won’t let them admit it unambiguously.

So, we see that the Establishment is finally admitting the total, absolute failure of the invasion of Iraq, and beginning to recognise that the “War on Terror” needs to be fought differently – i.e. that it is a law enforcement issue.

But what the article still misses is the bigger picture.

• First of all, there is not a single mention of the topic of oil, which is frankly the only reason why our politicians and pundits care about in any way about the Arab world. They are sitting on most of the planet’s remaining oil (“our oil”, as the not-a-joke joke goes), and thus we have to keep them stable and happy enough to pump the oil and sell it to us. That background is not evedn acknowledged.

  Worse, the vicious circle that has fed terrorism is totally ignored. It goes like this: being dependent on Arab oil, we prop up “friendly” (but deeply corrupt) regimes; local opponents’ voices are suppressed and turn their grievances into hate for the West which steals their resources and supports their oppressors; organised Islam, tolerated by all the local regimes, becomes the only outlet for social and political action and easily takes extremist forms; eventually it breeds terrorism against the West and against the local regimes; the “War on Terra”, as conducted,  links us to them even more, thus feeding the discontent of the population.

• Then, of course, there is not a single mention of the damage made to the rule of law and to the emerging bodu of international law (which has built up over the past 60 years thanks to the USA’s constant, if not always consistent, support). We now have to live with the terrible fact that the precedents of pre-emptive strikes, wars of choice and all out war on concepts have been handed to as a great future excuse for unscrupulous regimes around the world. The whole concept of the rule of law has been dealt a terrible blow by the Bush administration’s open contempt for any kind of law-imposed restriction on their actions, domestic or international.
• There is not a single mention of the fundamental breach that has appeared between Europe and the USA. The “West” has been shattered in a probably irremediable way. For now, the Bush administration can watch content while its divide and rule policies in Europe has reinforced the naturally quarrelsome relations between European countries and kept Europe divided and thus powerless, but it makes it more likely that any European unity will have a anti-American backbone in the future.
• and, finally, there is not a word on what could have been. In September 2001, all the governments of the planet wanted to support the USA, and would have done a lot of things not to get in its way. A massive push to close offshore financial havens, impose an international court with teeth, and real enforcement capacity for the UN would have been supported with little resistance. At home, a massive effort to change energy use patterns, and to launche a crash investment programme into sustainable energy sources would have been enthusiastically supported. None of this happened. Those that warned about the USA going beserk and hoping for a more thought out approach were mocked, but have been proved tragically right.

But no, the Economist is trying to justify its unflinching support for Bush’s Iraq folly, and looking at the bigger picture would only serve to make them look even more foolish. The problem was not Rumsfeld incompetence, it was the perception that Al Qaida was a civilisational threat rather than gangsters with grievances, and the abuse of that perception by a power-hungry crowd in the White House, supported by shameless sycophants in the heart of what then were our more respectable papers and magazines.

So, no, the Economist, you won’t get off the hook so easily.

An influential ‘X’

As a Polytechnique alumni, he works on investment projects in a big French bank in Paris. As an expert, he contributes to the energy section of DailyKos, the most popular political blog in the US. A star writer amongst the Democrats.

They’ve never heard of Polytechnique, but they know “Jerome a Paris”. That’s the name Jérôme Guillet, from the Polytechnique class of 89, uses on the most popular political blog in the US, DailyKos, which has between 500,000 and a million readers each day.

Article by Corine Lesnes (there’s also a picture by Mona Brooks). My translation. All errors mine. I have tried to translate what was written, not necessarily how I’d have written it (thankfully, there isn’t much difference)

In real life, Jerome finances energy projects in a big French bank, whose name he keeps silent (“but you can just Google it”). In the blogosphere, he contributes to the energy section of DailyKos. Every day, he has tens of thousands of readers. He was in Las Vegas on June 8-10 for the first convention of the bloggers of the left wing of the Democratic party. A Frenchy amongst the “Kossacks” as the participants to the DailyKos website are called.

In the corridors of the conference, Jerome has his fans, like nyceve, aka Eve Gittelson, from New York. She writes on social protection. “I’ve suggested to make him an honorary US citizen”, she says. With his friendly attitude and his square face, the polytechnicien reminds us of Al Gore. “I am part of the – between quotes – technocratic elite”, he admits. And as a good technocrat, he defends the State. “On healthcare, energy, regulation of corporations, we need to manage the externalities that the markets are unable to control, such as pollution or climate change”.

Jérôme Guillet presented the energy plan of DailyKos on Friday (June 9) during a workshop in Las Vegas with Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico and Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of Energy. “Je suis enchanté d’être ici” jokes the Governor in perfect French. The plan was created after electronic consultation between bloggers who had never met. Nobody seems surprised that a Frenchman contributes to the creation of a programme meant to influence the US Democratic party. “It’s the good side of technology: it allows to break down national barriers”, explains Markos Moulitsas, 34, aka “Kos”, the founder of the site to which he lent his name. “It would be strange if a French person intervened in US politics, but on energy, it’s not an issue. Solutions should be international anyway”.

It all came about spontaneously, as often in the blogosphere. Jérôme started writing on his area of expertise, after noticing how political commenters are “ignorant about energy”. It was back in 2002. Bloggers were accusing the USA of intervening in Afghanistan to control the Turkmenistan-Pakistan pipeline, a project that “will never happen”, he claims. “I started proposing ideas, readers sifted through them, I did a second version. We find out the power of the site by using it”.

Between the third and fourth versions of the plan, an intense debate took place on how to finance it. Jérôme the European was favorable to a gasoline tax. In two days, he received 2,000 comments. Some bloggers, however progressive, reacted ferociously. “Jerome is wrong”. A compromise was found. Rather than a gas tax, Kossacks propose a penalty on the purchase of low-MPG cars. “In an election year, a tax was not viable. For the Democrats, the priority is to win back Congress in November”, says Jérôme. “Measures that are acceptable to the car industry in Detroit are needed.”

The other topic that drew heated comments is nuclear energy. Environmentalists don’t want to hear about it as long as the issue of waste has not been solved. On this as well, a compromise was found. The plan recommends the construction of a single demonstration plant. The most important thing is, in any case, in the process that allows the base to give its opinion. “This is the first energy plan to be created by citizens, without lobbyists or politicians”, states George Karayannis, aka “Doolittle Sothere” who left California and its brownouts to live in Amish country in Ohio.

Jérôme Guillet was voted amongst the top two writers by the readers of DailyKos in 2005. The blog can be compared to Polytechnique: each comment will be rated and dicussed. “It’s a meritocracy. I was recognised”, he states without false modesty. “Jérôme writes very well in English”, says Adam Siegel, a regular commenter. “He wrote about his son’s sickness. He shared how the French healthcare system works”. A father of 3, Jérôme has managed to speak to the DailyKos community of something that he could not mention during the interview: his 4-year old son’s brain tumor. Let’s not talk about it either. Bartholomé has finished his chemiotherapy. He’s doing better.

Jérôme has noticed “remarkably little hostility” [on the site] to  his being French. He grew up in Strasbourg, with his Venezualan mother and a father teaching at the university. When he came to Paris to study, he felt like he had changed countries: “I was in Europe, I arrived in France.” Beyond his contribution to DailyKos, he has built a European website to answer to Anglo-Saxon media, where, according to him, a “real demonisation” of France, “the country which still defends the role of the State” exists. “The Anglo-Saxons cannot admit that electricity, in Europe, works thanks to the French spare capacities, which were planned by the French State”.

Why write in the US? “That’s where the debate is, and where tools of cooperative dialog (read: the blogs) were invented”, he answers. “And it’s not silly for a foreigner to try to influence the US debate”. He is depressed by the France of the “non” but notes with interest that Ségolène Royal borrows methods from the Kossacks when she asks citizen-readers to make their proposals.

If he were to be involved in politics, Jérôme Guillet would be an advocate of the French model, that poor model which is “no longer argued for in an audible way” even though it has “real arguments” which thousands of US bloggers find interesting.

As we all bask in the memories and the glow of the extraordinary energy of the just ended YearlyKos, I have one additional reason to celebrate today, as it is the first anniversary of European Tribune, my attempt, with Martin at creating a European version of DailyKos or Booman Tribune.

I’d like to reflect on this past year, indicate my hopes for the future, and give special thanks to all kossacks and bootribbers, as you all helped make this site become what it is.
With just above 2 million page views in the past year, and currently about 1,500 unique viewers and 8,000 page views per day, we are about one hundredth of the size of dKos, but we have built an extraordinary and tightly-knit community – so mush so that we actually held our first community get-together – all of 25 people – a couple of weeks back.

The site’s relatively small size is appreciated by many, as it gives it a homely feel, and allows for incredibly smart and civil conversations, but I’ve never hidden my intention to make this site the closest approximation to a European version of DailyKos, at least in terms of influence.

We do not have a unified European political debate, as national politics still dominate; we have the obstacle of language which inevitable excludes many; and we do not have the overwhelming motivation of a catastrophic administration à la Bush.

But we know there are a number of things that are decided at the European level, and that there is a common wisdom amongst our elites which is increasingly shaped by the English language business press, and which we all feel is to a large extent misguided, at least in its trends.

Thus, my goal is to make the site an audible voice in pan-European policy debates. To do this, we must (i) have content, and (ii) have visibility, and create the virtuous circle that would make the site an aggregator of lefty bloggers like DailyKos has become

We’ve done amazingly well on the content side, and I see us slowly bulding a coherent body of thought, even if we have some deep disagreements on a number things – but these help enrich and inform the debate. We will soon reach the point where we can get started on policy papers à la Energize America – provided that some of us take the initiative and have the time and energy to pushe it forward.

On the visibility side, we are slowly being noticed in various places, but we are still very small and outside of the usual European debating circles. My hope is to change this in the coming year, with the help of the lefty blogosphere, either because you are European, or based in Europe, or simply as interested readers. As I’ve argued in various posts here over the past, many of the topics of debate are the same in the USA and in Europe – the increasing dominance of the corpocratic model of capitalism, the proliferation of astroturf “thnk tanks”, the prevailing common wisdom against decent wages, unions and the very idea of good government – all of which are detrimental to what we all think fair and responsible societies should be.

One thing that seems obvious to me is that both the content creation and its dissemination require a lot of time and effort, which means that European Tribune needs to grow more in order to have enough eurotribbers that can contribute to either or both of these activities, draft position papers, write letters to their local papers, link to ET on their blogs, talk about the site to friends, representatives or media, etc… – and ultimately to get involved in local or European politics (although this is not the overriding goal of ET as it is of dKos).

So what I’m hoping for in the near future is (i) more diaries and (ii) more letters to major papers or institutions in Europe based on our discussions here. While the focus is European, it is also international and we care deeply about what’s going on in America, and Americans are absolutely welcome to participate – and one of the nice things of ET is that many do indeed, briging their different perspectives, questions and friendly prodding. We need more of that.

In any case, I am incredibly grateful to all of you that have joined me in this adventure, amazed by your individual and collective wisdom, and hopeful that this is just a start. I’d like to add that European Tribune exists thanks to both dKos and Booman Tribune – it is only through my notoriety on DailyKos that ET could be launched with a sufficient base of readers to create a real community, and it is thanks to Martin’s trust in my writing that this actually took off, and I will always have a special thought for all my American firends who first welcomed me on the internets, encouraged me to write more, and supported my diaries on dKos, BT and later on eurotrib.

So thanks to all, double thanks to Martin, and here’s hoping for more success in the near future, following the trailblazing example of the US blogosphere, led by DKos.

:: ::

Some significant stories of the past year.

(I am only posting stories that I wrote – not as way to brag, but because I really don’t want to be the one to be picking favorites. Add your favorites in comments, whether yours or written by others).

Letters published in the Financial Times:
I’m published in the FT! (on EDF prices being too low)
The FT publishes me again (on Gazprom vs Blair)

My article in the WSJ:
Can Do France

The 4 I consider to be the most significant:
Ukraine vs Russia: Tales of pipelines and dependence
The real cost of electricity – some numbers
Paris ‘riots’: My aunt’s building burned yesterday night
Facts about the French labor market

I will be posting the full presentation of Energize America in the next few days, in several instalments. We will also post diaries on how we intend to move the plan forward – and how you can help.

Today, the first part of the presentation, which is an overview of the energy situation.

Both the plan and the full presentation can be downloaded in pdf format from www.ea2020.org.

First of all, a photograph of the panel, with Bill Richardson (Governor of New Mexico and Secretary of Energy under Bill Clinton) surrounded by the Energize America team: from left to right: Mark Sumner (devilstower), Jérôme Guillet (Jerome a Paris), Gov. Richardson, George Karayannis (Doolittle Sothere), Adam Siegel (A Siegel).

(Warning: many pics)

• US oil consumption is growing, while production is going down, and the current trends are expected to continue in the future
• The evolution of median wages in the US in the past 40 years is surprisingly similar to that of energy consumption. Any energy crisis will have an impact on living standards unless that link between energy consumption and prosperity is finally broken (and not the way the Bush administration appears to be doing it, i.e. increasing consumption and stagnating wages…)

• After great years for oil discovery, these have become rarer, and for the past 20 years, we have been burning more oil than we discover – every year.
• With Indian and Chinese demand set to increase massively, this can only get worse

• We’ve all noticed gas price increases. They have doubled in the US in the past 2-3 years
• But what is more interesting is that markets have changed brutally in the past two years with respect to their expectation for long term prices. For the past 20 years, the expectation was that, whatever the short term price, it would revert to 20$/bl in the medium term. No longer. The markets now expect prices to remain at their current levels for the foreseeable future.
• This implies major changes in investment decisions in a number of economic sectors.

And yet consumers have yet to change their behavior. Gasoline consumption is still increasing year on year.

• Most of our energy use still takes the form of burning hydrocarbons. Wood in the past, then coal, and now coal, oil and natural gas. This generates carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere
• And worries about today’s emissions levels are nothing compared to what is expected in the near future, with significant increases in the USa and even more massive increases from China.

Carbon emissions and energy consumption per capita are directly connected to economic development, with small variations. The USA, as the largest country, consumes the most energy and emits the most greenhouse gases, but others are catching up as they grow.

Greenhouse gas emissions are now undoubtedly associated with global warming and climate change, and events like stronger hurricanes are linked to these with less and less doubt, and with the consequences we know.

• Previous oil crises were linked to temporary demand shocks.
• Today’s crisis comes from the relentless growth in demand, pushed by storng world economic growth.
• Demand is expected to go up worldwide just as supply increasingly appears to be constrained and to have toruble keeping up.
• These two conflicting trends cannot continue and will not continue.

Solutions will have to come on the demand side, with conservation and efficiency required to curb demand.

It is vital for the USA to take the lead in changing energy consumption patterns.

Most people still don’t know what fistula is, even though it affects so many. During prolonged labour, soft tissues of the pelvis are compressed between the descending baby’s head and the mother’s pelvic bone, a specialist explained.

The lack of blood flow causes tissue to die, creating a hole between the mother’s vagina and the bladder, or between the vagina and the rectum, or both.

The result is the leaking of urine or faeces or both.

Left untreated, fistula can lead to frequent ulceration and infections, kidney disease and even death.

Some women drink as little as possible to avoid leakage and become dehydrated. Damage to the nerves in the legs leaves some women with fistula unable to walk, and after treatment they may need extensive physical rehabilitation.

Affected women are often abandoned or neglected by their husbands and family and ostracised by their communities. Without treatment, their prospects for work and family life are greatly diminished and they are often left to rely on charity.

“When I could no longer stay dry and control my faeces, my husband told me that he would not take me anywhere. My husband does not give me food.”

from the same article

In Ghana, the exact prevalence of fistula is not known, but it is estimated that the condition affects a minimum of two or three per 1,000 expectant women, meaning an annual incidence of between 100,000 and 150,000 patients.

The condition occurs all across the country but it has been found to be more prominent among communities which practise female genital mutilation, particularly in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions.

Female genital mutilation sometimes leaves big scars which cause the vulva to close, leaving a small hole for the passage of urine.

This makes child bearing impossible without aid and any excessive pressure on the bladder by the baby’s head could easily rapture it, resulting in vaginal fistula.

[JURIST] Kenya’s  National Assembly has unanimously approved a sex-crimes law after a month of heated debate over several controversial provisions, most of which were dropped in order to pass the bill. Legislators dropped provisions criminalizing marital rape and female genital mutilation, as well as a provision shifting the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused.

The World Health Organization said Friday that female genital mutilation is a form of “torture” that must be stamped out, even if t is performed by trained medical personnel.

The “medicalization” of female genital mutilation _ often called female circumcision and also known as FGM _ fails to prevent innocent girls from being permanently scarred by the procedure, threatening them as adults when giving birth and endangering the lives of their newborn babies, WHO said in unveiling a report on genital mutilation’s maternal health effects.

Women with FGM are significantly more likely than those without FGM to have adverse obstetric outcomes. Risks seem to be greater with more extensive FGM.

FGM consists of all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whether for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons.1 It is common in several countries, predominantly in Africa, and more than 100 million women and girls are estimated to have had FGM worldwide. Whether obstetric outcomes differ between women who have and those who have not had FGM is unclear, since previous studies have been small and methodologically limited, so have been unable to provide reliable evidence, especially in relation to important outcomes, such as perinatal death.

Via Elise in the dKos thread on the same topic,  and Oprah, here’s the link to one charity that works on this: the Fistula Foundation

This is not very new, but an article in the Atlantic Monthly is flagging this month and it is certainly worth noting.

The “Starve the Beast” assertion is inconsistent with the facts, at least since 1980.  My study finds that there was a strong negative relation between the federal spending percent of GDP and the federal revenue percent of GDP from 1981 through 2005, even controlling for the unemployment rate.

An increased belief in the “Starve the Beast” assertion has substantially reduced the traditional Republican concern for fiscal responsibility – leading to a pattern of tax cuts, increased spending, and increased deficits. This pattern has been strongest during the current Bush administration, primarily because the Republicans control both the administration and a majority of both houses of Congress.

This comes from William Niskanen, the chairman of the Cato Institute, as posted on their quasi-blog.
This is not the first time he writes about this (pdf, 1 page, from 2004):

In a professional paper published in 2002, I presented evidence that the relative level of federal spending over the period 1981 through 2000 was coincident with the relative level of the federal tax burden in the opposite direction; in other words, there was a strong negative relation between the relative level of federal spending and tax revenues. Controlling for the unemployment rate, federal spending increased by about one-half percent of GDP for each one percentage point decline in the relative level of federal tax revenues. Although not included in the sample for this test, the first three years of the current Bush administration were wholly consistent with this relation.

The theory behind this, as explained in the Atlantic Monthly, is simple:

Even during the Reagan years, Niskanen was suspicious of Starve the Beast. He thought it more likely that tax cuts, when unmatched with spending cuts, would reduce the apparent cost of government, thus stimulating rather than stunting Washington’s growth. “You make government look cheaper than it would otherwise be,” he said recently.

Suppose the federal budget is balanced at $1 trillion. Now suppose Congress reduces taxes by $200 billion without reducing spending. One result is a $200 billion deficit. Another result is that voters pay for only 80 percent of what government actually costs. Think of this as a 20 percent discount on government. As everyone knows, when you put something on sale, people buy more of it. Logically, then, tax cuts might increase the demand for government instead of reducing the supply of it. Or they might do some of each.

(…)

Again looking at 1981 to 2005, Niskanen then asked at what level taxes neither increase nor decrease spending. The answer: about 19 percent of the GDP. In other words, taxation above that level shrinks government, and taxation below it makes government grow. Thanks to the Bush tax cuts, revenues have been well below 19 percent since 2002 (17.8 percent last year). Perhaps not surprisingly, government spending has risen under Bush.

(…)

conservatives who are serious about halting or reversing the dizzying Bush-era expansion of government–if there are any such conservatives, something of an open question these days–should stop defending Bush’s tax cuts. Instead, they should be talking about raising taxes to at least 19 percent of the GDP. Voters will not shrink Big Government until they feel the pinch of its true cost.

And that’s exactly what he advocates in the two papers I linked to above.

This graph, which I have used before, and which represents all public spending and income (recettes = income, dépenses = spending, both as % of GDP), not just federal numbers, shows this very clearly: under Clinton, the tax take increased and spending decreased. Under W., the opposite happened.

The conclusion of the Atlantic Monthly is damning:

By turning a limited-government movement into an anti-tax movement, conservatism has effectively gone into business with the Big Government that it claims to oppose. It is not starving the beast. It is fueling the beast’s appetite. And the beast has a credit card.