Matthew wants to know why I hadn’t blogged the US election results. I did in fact make a mental blog this evening, as I was wandering through a downtown Stockholm bookstore with more quality English language books than your average New York Barnes & Noble (a whole wall with black-spined Penguin Classics, for example). But then I decided it wasn’t interesting enough to post. Imagine if I blogged everything that came to mind. No, don’t. But now Matthew’s asked for it.

I was thinking once again of the quality of life in Stockholm, of how stupendously high it is, and how it has been achieved through economic policies that are very different from the US model, which undeniably also generates a high standard of living (but only a stellar quality of life if you happen to live in NYC). And it got me thinking in ways which I know Charles Kenny will approve of.

Perhaps government policy on the economy and a whole range of social issues does not figure at all in the ultimate success or failure of a society to maximize utility. And so elections would be mostly irrelevant (including US ones). What then does matter?

I decided that levels of corruption are the main deteminant of social and economic development. Corrupt societies are never wealthy. And, tellingly, there are no politicians campaigning for more graft. Also, there are no politicians campaigning against property rights (anymore). But since politicians can still practice graft or theft, perhaps voters should value integrity above all else and ignore opinions completely (This last sentence was for John/Eurof).

The upshot of all this: In two years, vote McCain for president and put in office a man of character who works tirelessly to reduce the opportunities for corruption in American society, first and foremost with his campaign finance reform bill.

This blog was paid for by Citizens for Matthew Rose.

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The Belgian ambassador to Israel gave an interview to an Arab-Israeli newspaper, and it has been garnering some attention these past few days.

Supporters of the Palestinian cause have been lauding the reported comments, while the Israeli government has fiercely criticized them. But according to extremely well placed sources familiar with the situation, both sides are evaluating a bastardized rendition of what was actually said. I think I know someone who needs a personal digital voice recorder for Christmas. And who needs to stop assuming journalists are not scum. Of course they are scum, unless proven otherwise.

First point: If an ambassador were to say that Sharon’s Infrastructure Minister Effi Eitam is a fascist, such a statement would indeed constitute an interference in the internal affairs of Israel. In any case, I’m not sure that such a statement would be true, strictly speaking: Eitam is certainly a bigot and a racist in favor of transferring the Palestinians out of the West Bank. Simply put, he propounds ethnic cleansing as collective punishment. Fascism, on the other hand, was primarily a socio-economic organizing principle advocating the subordination of the individual to a totalitarian state. It is true that typically, fascist dictatorships pursued a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism, but these are not usually considered the defining attributes of the movement.

Nevertheless, the term ‘fascist’ remains as an insult among the left-leaning. Fair enough.

What was actually said to the reporter regarding Eitam, on background, was that if a politician in Europe were to promote a policy of “transferring” ethnic groups, he would undoubtedly be labeled a fascist. Le Pen in his early days would rant about sending back the immigrants where they came from. And he was labeled a fascist for it. (Of late, Europe’s xenophobic parties have had a hard time deciding whether to be first and foremost anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim. It’s a problem you only get if you hate too much: The enemies of your enemies are still your enemies.)

But it’s time to put on our parsing hats. The reported comment explicitly states Eitam is a fascist. The actual comment implied many in Europe label him a fascist. And this happens to be true, regardless of whether the label is accurate. The difference is there, and it is a diplomat’s job to utter the kind of comment that was actually uttered, not the kind that was reported.

Second point: When asked about the recent comment by the British Ambassador to an Israeli General that the West Bank is the “largest detention camp in the world,” the Belgian Ambassador said that on his own recent travels in the West Bank he had seen little or no traffic between Palestinian towns, and that the people there were in a “state of collective depression.” A reporter might infer from this that the two ambassadors are essentially in agreement. But a reporter may not, as a result of such an inference, freely interchange quote attributions between the two individuals. Like I said, journalists are scum.

There is a larger point to make, however. Nuance is the first casualty of any propaganda war. All shades of gray are reclassified as either black or white. Another case in point:

When I was in Israel this summer, a Belgian court was deciding whether or not it had jurisdiction in a suit brought against Israeli PM Sharon by a Belgian-Lebanese group for his role in the Sabra and Shatila camp massacre in 1982. A few years earlier Belgium had passed a law which allowed citizens to indict sitting heads of state for gross human rights violations. All the world’s heads of state, that is, except the Belgian Prime Minister and the Belgian King, because they enjoy immunity from Belgian laws. Which made this law extremely stupid, not to mention a tad hypocritical. But that’s not the point of this paragraph. The point of this paragraph (and I will get to it, I assure you) is that this whole episode was completely misconstrued by both sides, and consequently simultaneously applauded or denounced for the same, wrong, reason. The suit was brought by a citizen, not the government, and thus it did not reflect government policy. But this did not stop the Arab press from lauding Belgium’s brave stand against Israel, and Israel’s press from lamenting another European government’s lurch towards anti-semitism.

As we crossed into Egypt, for example, all the border guards, upon noticing our passports, went out of their way to welcome us especially and let us know that they liked us. Refusing to take credit for something the Belgian government did not do proved quite futile. In Israel, I took great pains to explain the nuances of of the Belgian mess to Israeli friends, but as far as your average mainstream press article or op-ed piece was concerned, it was a clear-cut case of an anti-Israeli policy.

An then, the Belgian court decided it did not have jurisdiction. The Lebanese decided Belgium had caved in to Israeli pressure, and Israel decided Belgium had caved in to Israeli pressure, when all along it was a Belgian court that had caved in to common sense and decided to interpret a stupid law extremely narrowly in order to save Belgium further embarrassment.

But it’s still kind of sad that the only time we Belgians force people to sit up and take notice of our opinions is when they are fabricated by somebody else.

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Good for you, Tony. Blair’s told Jacques Chirac what we all know: That the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a hypocritical, selfish disgrace. According to the Guardian, last friday,

Mr Blair had bluntly told Mr Chirac that the oft-stated French concern for Africa would sound hollow if it blocked further CAP reform, keeping EU markets closed to developing countries and preventing an effective new round of World Trade Organisation talks at Doha.

Mr Blair passionately expressed his view that the west had a responsibility to open the developed markets of Europe, which would require major reform of the CAP and an end to production subsidies.

And Chirac gets offended: “You have been very rude, and I have never been spoken to like this before,” he said, according to the Guardian. Not the wittiest of comebacks.

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I think Andrew Sullivan’s secret is that he wishes he were Christopher Hitchens. But Hitchens is smarter than Sullivan—the former is anti-religious, the latter Catholic, of all things; the former chooses targets on their merits (Kissinger, Mother Theresa, Clinton, Iraq), the latter chooses targets according to party line (Clinton, Iraq, Krugman, The New York Times); the former writes a book about George Orwell in which he observes that Orwell is all things to all people, the latter obligingly sees all sorts of things in Orwell:

One key shift toward totalitarianism in the novel comes when the old hymn “Beasts of England” gets replaced by Napoleon (the chief pig and Stalin figure) to a more generic song praising “Animal Farm.” Orwell’s point, I think, is that patriotism is, for all its faults, far more humane and progressive than its opposite. Today’s left would do well to remember that, I think.

So let me get that straight–Stalin was not a patriot? And what is the opposite of patriotism anyway? Buying Japanese cars? Going on holiday in France? And aren’t Saddam Hussein’s bodyguards true patriots? Should we perhaps reinstate that verse in the German national anthem? Hitchens, of course, has a more nuanced apologia for the hard line on Iraq, one that steers well clear of tests for patriotism and instead homes in on the concept of the West’s role being that of choosing the lesser evil. But there is more Orwell fun from Sullivan:

I was also struck by the sense that the apotheosis of Animal Farm makes it no worse than its human-run neighbors. Orwell’s distrust of capitalism was as intense as his loathing of Stalinism. I think he was wrong there – and guilty of moral equivalence. But I also think that it does no justice to him, as Hitchens argues, to ignore this and co-opt him for the right – even the neo-liberal right of today.

So Krugman doesn’t stand a chance, if even Orwell’s cautious approach to a received wisdom is painted with the broad brush of partisanship. Question the Catholic Church’s excesses, as Sullivan allows himself, and that is a moral duty; but question capitalism’s excesses, and that is a moral flaw.

At the risk of starting a whole new tangent, it’s a funny thing, this predilection among the conservative religious in America to equate capitalism with morality. Jesus was if anything the opposite of capitalist–indeed, the way in which the Old Testament God interfered with the affairs of us humans is as far away from laissez-faire as you can get, and a darn good blue-print for enlightened despotism.

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An extremely silly opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal argues against the legalization of soft drugs such as ecstasy on the grounds that–get this–new studies show it may be bad for you if you take a lot of it.

Yep, taking an overdose of ecstasy not only leads to a whole lot of euphoria in the user, but possibly an increased likelihood of depression and Parkinson’s disease in later life. Here is the damning nut graph:

Unlike cocaine or heroin, ecstasy isn’t at the heart of street crime, gangs or Third World drug cartels, but that doesn’t make it safe.

OK, stop laughing. What this amounts to is a wonderful argument for banning smoking and drinking.

First off, lung cancer and liver cirrhosis have much higher levels of mortality than a bout of not remembering that you’re feeling sorry for yourself. Second, second-hand ecstasy is much safer than either alcohol or cigarettes: whereas all that an ecstasy user wants to do is hug you, a drunkard will just as likely hit you. And whether or not it causes cancer, second-hand smoke does gets in your eyes; all that ecstasy users cause is is longer queues at nightclubs.

A more cynical view of the rhetorical public health policy question that is asked (“Are we spawning a new generation of people who will struggle with depression over their lifetime?”) is that the problem with ecstasy is precisely that it doesn’t kill you. Smoke too many cigarettes and you get lung cancer, die and stop bothering society. But take ecstasy, get depressed and live till 90; now that’s selfish of you.

I propose giving ecstasy users subsidized cigarettes. Studies show that nicotine alleviates depression and helps prevent the onset of Parkinson’s. And they’d die sooner.

What will actually happen, I can almost guarantee it, is that next year you will see ecstasy/nicotine combo pills on the market. In fact I think I might go look for some VC funding.

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I was never really sure until this weekend whether Al Qaeda had it in for Americans or for the West. I have always suspected that Bin Laden is anti-Western (for want of a better word) rather than anti-American. It’s a distinction that has so far been lost on many Europeans, who have found it easier to compartmentalize what happened in New York as a kind of pay-back (deserved or not) for the perceived arrogance of the US as a superpower.

It was possible, I thought, that Osama Bin Laden was naive or insane enough not to know the difference between anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism. Or perhaps he is “just” anti-American, but showed a serious lack of judgment (in addition, if that’s possible, to the lack of judgment displayed by engaging in terrorism in the first place) in targeting New York, the world’s most international city. He managed to kill scores of nationalities, and the outrage in capitals around the world led to a wave of sympathy for the initial phase of the US’ response.

The question was, had this been intentional? Because there are two possible goals for Osama Bin Laden: engage the US, or engage the entire Western world. Either work towards building a cleavage between the US and its traditional allies over the differences in their approach to the Muslim world (including their stance vis-a-vis Israel), or look to pick a fight with everything that is not pure Muslim, in his eyes.

His rhetoric has always implied the former goal. And it is echoed even today. But Al Qaeda’s actions over the past week point to a grander ambition. By bombing a French oil tanker and by attacking tourists in Bali, the group is helping diminish what hesitance there may be on the part of the non-US West.

This will turn the tide of opinion in Europe towards a harder line against terrorism, and it will help harden the line against Iraq. This time, I am sure it’s what Al Qaeda wants.

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The past few months have seen some fascinating new cleavages emerge in the post-September 11 policy community. I hadn’t chronicled them here through sheer being on vacation-ness, but it’s time to catch up. I expect all future fellow disputants in matters political to have read up.

The most recent was the very public split between Christopher Hitchens and The Nation. Hitch is his usual articulate self as to the reasons why, but by being relatively polite by his own standards, he is actually trumped by this piece in the New York Observer by Ron Rosenbaum.

Rosenbaum did not need to bring up Enron and Bush’s intelligence, in part because lefties do have a point in both cases, albeit an irrelevant one in the context of how to act post-September 11. These are diversions from an otherwise excellent polemic; the piece makes me wish I had had a subscription to the New York Observer when I lived there. I suspect it and the New York Review of Books are two publications I will slowly ease into over the coming years.

The must-read foreign policy article of the summer was Robert Kagan’s piece in Policy Review. Fareed Zakaria issues a rebuttal of sorts in the New Yorker, but with the American left too much in disarray to offer a credible contribution to the debate, the disagreements that are left are more about degree than kind.

If anybody has any other candidates for must-read policy articles from past few months, especially from the left (European or American), I’d love to hear about them. I’m still digesting the implications of the conclusions these articles draw.

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The World Health Organization put out its first annual World Report on Violence and Health last week. Reuters used the data annex to construct this “graphic”. Take a good look at it. How many things wrong with it can you find?

First off, the statistics in the upper half of the graphic are not per 100,000 deaths, but per 100,000 people, per year.

Second, comparing the European region to the region of the Americas might lead you to conclude that Europe and America have similar rates of violent death. But if you read the report you’ll find that the statistics for the European region include all of the former Soviet Union, while the Americas includes all of Latin America.

What are the statistics for the US vs. Western Europe, then? The WHO does not break down the figures according to region, but according to income, into high and low/middle subgroups. The high income subgroup for the Americas includes only The Bahamas, Canada and the US–basically, the US. The high income subgroup for Europe is pretty much just Western Europe.

Suicide in the rich Europe stood at 10.5 per 100,000 people per year, vs. 10.6 in rich Americas. On the graphic, it appears that a lot more Europeans than Americans are offing themselves. Apparently, this is because in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe it’s the done thing. In South America, however, a strongly Catholic ethic against preempting the Lord seems to prevail. This explains the discrepancy.

Regarding homicides, rich Europe killed at a rate of 1.0 per 100,000 people per year, vs. 6.5 in the US. The rest of Europe murdered at a rate of 14.8/100,000/yr, while the rest of the Americas shed blood at the rate of 27.5/100,000/yr.

Combined figures how that in the US 17.2/100,000/yr die through “intentional injury”, vs. 11.5 in Western Europe. (Deaths caused by war were negligible in both regions).

So here is some news you can use: You are 50% more likely to die a violent death in the US than in Western Europe. However, if you do kill someone in Western Europe, the victim is 10 times more likely to be you than somebody else. Now that’s civilized.

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