With several European states, including Iceland and Germany frantically shoring up their own financial sectors, Ronald Bailey wonders if the great “de-regulation boogeyman” is really to blame for the current economic woes after all:

Who knew that Europe, of all places, was so under-regulated? Or maybe de-regulation is not the chief cause for the outbreak of financial chaos? Just wondering. 

Good point.

You have found a Wand of Hope and Change, +3 to Overblown Rhetoric:

Clearly, if the next US president were to be Barack Obama, the colour of his skin would do a great deal to change radically the image of America in the world. 

…

Suddenly America would move from a culture dominated by fear to a culture dominated by hope, at a time when Europeans would still be deeply immersed in a culture of fear.

What the hell does stuff like that even mean?

In an era when we can’t stop hearing about food prices rising at the fastest rate on record, useless environmentalists have come up with yet another way to stick it to the poor: embedding computer chips in food packaging to connect consumers to an online “sustainable food guide” via cell phones!

The guides would help consumers navigate their way through the ethical and ecological decisions about what they eat, the proponents argue.

…

Information on socio-economic and environmental criteria could be presented simply through “food flowers” – diagrams where each petal represents a different impact, with the shaded area of a petal showing how highly a food item scores.

The more detailed information could be accessed from a website and uploaded from food packaging to our mobile phones.

I wonder if anyone has bothered to think about how much the price of food is going to go up when the government starts requiring that microchips be embedded in every food package, how much it’s going to cost set up and run the infrastructure necessary to store information about countless kinds of food products and pay for bandwidth and electricity to run servers, or how much silicon and other precious minerals will have to be dug out of the ground in poor African countries, shipped across the world, dipped in all sorts of appalling chemicals at a chip-making facility, and then shipped off to food producers/distributors to make this asinine scheme work.

As with the corn-based biofuel fad, this feel-good green scheme looks like a shockingly bad idea that accomplishes nothing whatsoever, costs a lot of money, and sticks it to poor people while making affluent yuppie types feel good about saving the planet.

Here’s hoping the UK government has enough sense to flatly reject this absurd plan.

I don’t have too much to say about this except that it’s easily one of the most informative things I’ve read about the conflict in Georgia, bar none. Read it.

Via Harry’s Place, a piece at the Z-Word blog examining centrifugal nationalist forces in Belgium. Quoting Ian Buruma:

“Belgium is in danger of falling apart. For more than six months, the country has been unable to form a government that is able to unite the French-speaking Walloons (32%) and Dutch-speaking Flemish (58%). The Belgian monarch is desperately trying to stop his subjects from breaking up the state.”

More interesting than the potential split-up of Belgium, however, are the insights they have about how “pan-European post-nationalism” has possibly had the unintended effect of promoting ethnic separatism:

Buruma argues that during the 18th and 19th centuries, when nation-states were formed, cultural, linguistic and national differences were frequently transcended in order to promote “common interests.” That was as true of Britain and Italy as it was of Belgium.

The EU has changed all that. As Buruma puts it, using another example of nationalist revival in supposedly post-national Europe, “[W]hy rely on London, say the Scots, if Brussels offers greater advantages?”

The Scottish example is one that I’ve been aware of for awhile now, but I’d never quite thought of it in the context of European unity. Whether or not it (and other cases, like Belgium) are really unintended byproducts of the EU I can’t say for certain. I’m sure there are those out there who are more informed than I am on the issue who might be able to offer some insight into the dynamics at play. That being said, it makes a certain amount of sense, at least superficially.

Finally, the author uses the case of Belgium as comparison for the situation in Israel/Palestine:

Whether or not Belgium actually breaks up, the current strife there will have demonstrated beyond doubt that the notion of a “post-national” Europe is wishful thinking. Yet many advocates of the single-state “solution” in Israel and Palestine base their thinking on precisely this premise.

…

Belgium is held up as the inspiration for a one-state solution in the Middle East at precisely the time when significant numbers of Flemish and Walloons are militating for a two-state solution in their own domain.

It is here, I think, that the argument gets simultaneously stronger and more far-fetched. On the one hand, the situation in Belgium versus what’s happening in Israel are extremely dissimilar — Belgium has historically been a pretty peaceful sort of place and the forces that seem to be jeopardizing its existence are rooted in economics that happen to be correlated to ethnicity (Wallonia is much poorer than Flanders), whereas the Israel/Palestine conflict, while undeniably posessing an economic element, carries with it the burden of religion, decades of bloodshed, a sense among Palestinians that their land was taken from them, and the prevalence of violent, hard-line parties on both sides, none of which are all that prevalent in Belgian politics, from what I can tell.

On the other hand, I think all of these extreme dissimilarities actually strengthen the argument that Belgium serves as a useful “canary in the coal mine” for any potential unified state comprised of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Given that I think few would deny that the Walloons and the Flemish probably have more in common with one another than Israelis and Palestinians, it’s hard to see how the “one-state solution” could have any chance of succeeding.

If Belgium is as on the rocks as it’s made out to be (and I have my doubts, personally), it’s hard to see how a united Israel/Palestine could hold itself together, given that the situation there is on the order of magnitudes more extreme than anything we’ve witnessed in Brussels.

Seumus Milne — “thick as a post”:

And now they’re reduced to writing Chin Up, Lads memoranda to the Taliban in the pages of the Guardian, and pretending it’s journalism, all the while reiterating the same vile, stupid, reactionary position they began with, all those years ago, as Milne does, even now: “The only way to end the war is the withdrawal of foreign troops as part of a political settlement negotiated with all the significant players in the country, including the Taliban, and guaranteed by the regional powers and neighbouring states.”

Which is to say: 1. Cut a deal with the the slaughterers of the Afghan people. 2. Veil your foetid complicity in lies. 3. Cover your tracks with the footfalls of like-minded despots and cowards from Afghanistan’s “neighbouring states.” 4. Run away. 5. Run away. 6. Run away.

[EDIT]

Incidentally, I’ve seen numerous references to Milne supposedly having supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the pages of the journal Straight Left, for whom he served as a Business Manager. However, I have not been able to verify this, as Straight Left doesn’t appear in JSTOR or have any other online archives that I can find.

Point.

Counterpoint.

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has resigned after almost ten years of military rule over the state. It was about time. Pakistan won’t miss Musharraf. But our government certainly will miss one of our staunchest allies in both Pakistan and the entire region.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia on Friday has been illustrative in a number of ways:

First, it’s now clear that Putin’s Russia is undeniably set upon a course of regaining at least de facto control over its former satellites, some of which have been resisting Russian and Soviet expansion for centuries.

Second, NATO’s almost complete irrelevance has been laid bare. If the member states’ reluctance to contribute combat troops in Afghanistan weren’t enough, NATO’s dithering on admitting Georgia because of Russian security concerns means that Russia basically has unofficial veto power over NATO decisions.

Third, and related to the above point, Europe’s commitment to resisting Russian expansionism can probably no longer be counted on in any serious way, given that the economies of Europe are heavily dependent on Russian oil and natural gas exports. Standing up against Russian aggression, especially if Russia establishes control over Georgian pipelines, would be economically hazardous for the rest of Europe. It’s likely that the most we can expect is a few sternly-worded expressions of “concern” and efforts to “resolve” any conflicts involving Russia, which the Russians would be more-or-less free to ignore unless they were generally favorable to their interests.

Finally, the essentially anti-American and anti-Israeli character of the so-called “anti-imperialist” crowd has been confirmed. There have been few expressions of “solidarity” with Georgia and none of the lionization we’ve seen heaped upon “the resistance” in Iraq and elsewhere (remember “We are all Hizb’Allah now!“?).

(more…)

In case you’ve somehow missed it, August 9th was the inaugural day of the Orwell Diaries. From now until sometime in 2012, Orwell’s diaries will be posted online 70 years to the day from when they were originally written:

The Orwell Prize is delighted to announce that, to mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war in real time. The diaries end in 1942, three years into the conflict.

The International Olympic Committee, after long discussion, has decided to designate China as the permanent host for all Beijing Olympics to come. Emmanuelle Moreau, an International Olympic Committee spokeswoman, said, “This was a difficult decision to make. Many other countries had applied and were great candidates for future Beijing Olympics. But ultimately, we did not feel that Japan or Saudi Arabia would be able to do the Beijing Olympics justice as China could.” Impressed by the spectacular opening show and the country’s determination to dominate the Medal count, the Committee felt that the only country that could pull off the Beijing Olympics in years to come would indeed be China itself.

China was disappointed that the first Gold Medal awarded (for 10 m Air Rifle) during this Beijing Olympics was not to a member of the Chinese team,  but a Chinese spokesman said that, “China will be sure to win the first Gold Medal at the next Beijing Olympics. With Japan and Saudi Arabia out of the contention, nothing will stand in the way of our goal of being the masters of the Beijing Olympics for all eternity.”

Yo, what up. This Big Snoop Dogg. Represent the Punjabi. Aye ya, hit em with this.

So goes Snoop Dogg’s intro to a song he recorded and filmed for a Bollywood movie he’s appearing in.

The end times are nigh.

One of the titans of 20th Century literature has died, aged 89.

Reading The Gulag Archipelago, which I picked up for 50 cents at the local library in my home town, was really the first time I started to grasp the full enormity of the horror of the Soviet Union. While Solzhenitysn in his later years transformed himself into something resembling a hardcore Russian nationalist with a nasty religious bent, most people, myself included, will remember him as a brave dissident and a writer who helped inoculate many of us against collectivist thinking.

[EDIT 08/04]

Some thoughtful comments from Ilya Somin.

Plus, BBC’s “Life in Pictures“.

And more from Hitchens.

The Russians want to ban “emo”. 

You know, I hear St. Petersburg is nice this time of year…

Inhabitants of the island of Lesbos have failed in their campaign to ban the use of the word “lesbian” to refer to female homosexuals, calling the use of the word a “violation of their human rights.”