Remembrance Day, 2012

Remembrance Day.

Armistice Day... and Veteran's Day in the U.S.A.

The list of friends to visit got rather longer this year, but that's how I spent my day.

I still think it is quite the pity that my adopted country (Japan) pays no national recognition to the day, but the bad memories of WW II apparently still outweigh the credit due to the glorious dead of Meiji and Taisho times (1860's~1920's). About the only event I know of is at the "Foreign" Cemetery in Yokohama, which always has a Remembrance Day that notes the Japanese role in WW I and The Siberian Intervention in addition to the recognition of Commonwealth graves at that site... but it's been years since I was down that way.

Ich hatt' einen Kameraden...

***

On a more upbeat note, my best Veteran's Day wishes to:

My BBBAM (Big Brother, by another Mother) who reportedly remains hale and hearty in his retirement. E-8 on his way out the door (a couple of years ago now), but still properly addressed as "Agent", and...

The ol' Misawa hand (another BBAM, but younger) who managed to fit in a whole bunch of non-military fun in between episodes of showing that a few Zoomies sometimes have to get out in the dirt and do a real job.

Both you guys be well and safe... and I'll see you 'Stateside maybe this Spring.

***

Quick reminder before anyone lumps me in again with the heroes that this day honors: I am not formally considered prior-service. The US Army did see to my first years of training (and a couple trots around the block) and the USMC did kindly provide for an Honorable Discharge when it was time to get out of uniformed service. The rest of the party after that doesn't officially count either.

College Insurrection

Longtime readers here know that CompHyp has a good friend in Professor William A. Jacobson, a Clinical Law Professor at Cornell (and in his younger years, quite the Russia expert). We 'blogged together during the Honduras Autogolpe Crisis. Well, his efforts at his shop, Legal Insurrection, have been going swimmingly... Law and Politics, mostly American issues, but all very good work... and now he's expanding the franchise:

Here's his latest effort: College Insurrection. Done in the same flavor as his original work, but focused on presenting issues as seen by conservative and libertarian student writers.

It is another great blow struck against the Established Academic Bias, and I hope it is very successful.

Another good place to read

The Diplomad is back (and has been for a little while).

Here's a recent example of the fine work there.

Written by a been-there-done-that Foreign Service hand.

U.S. Independence Day

I've always considered that one of the best things anyone can do in a civic-minded way each year on Independence Day is to re-read the Declaration of Independence... specifically the enumerated offenses by the Crown against the Colonies. That still holds true, but here's a little special something to think about for the 4th of July this year:

Attributed to Benjamin Franklin, 1787 ~ "A Republic, if you can keep it."

There's some keeping to be doing, fellows. Best get to it.

Sunday Morning Push

And then... and then I was busy. The wrong kind of busy. Not sure it is going to be better tomorrow, either. Stay tuned.

What got missed last week:

. Martin got the handshake. Elizabeth II was in Northern Ireland for part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. That's got to be an Only-Nixon-could-go-to-China moment for the Provos... Hope his own partisans don't hold it against him.

.. John Roberts engaged in one of the great judicial manuevers in the history of the SCOTUS. He was right about one thing, at least: It is not the court's job to save the electorate from bad laws passed by their representatives.

... Syria, Yemen, and Mali are all still hot zones in the Arab Spring (a year later and looking nothing like it did) and the GWOT. No coincidence, that.

.... Egypt elected Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood (yeah, he had a different party name; same difference) as President. SCAF (the Army government) tried to set the table by dissolving Parliament and taking over the new Constitution-writing, but even if that man is just a figurehead... ho boy... he's going to be trouble.

..... and lots more.

OK, your turn. This is an Open topic thread.

The usual rules all apply; most importantly: Play Nice.

As always, thank you All for coming here.

Memorial Day, 2012

Decoration Day.

This one is for the Yanks... the 'mates get their day in November.

h/t to Glenn Reynolds for the following Patton quote:

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived."

As usual, I spent as much of the day as I could with some old friends.

***

Ich hatt' einen Kameraden...

Memorial Day, 2012.

LDG

Door Number Two

When needing to depart an authoritarian country (or any other country with an even remotely competent border control) without permission, there are some things that are basic to the task that have to happen. Because they are so basic, they are also what the authorities watch for (again, presuming competence) as signs one might be about to skip:

Having a place to go. ~ At least the barest of certainty needs to be known as to whether the place you eventually want to end up will let you in and let you stay. Escaping to Malaysia when you are about to be charged for political/religious crimes in Arabia *is not a win move*.

Having something as a gift to your new hosts. ~ Always nice to bring a present when one is about to impose on an acquaintance. Large troves of narco-terrorist documents make a particularly nice gift to American or EU host countries. Caution: While historically, knowing how to build ballistic missiles or make biological weapons was a sure way to get welcomed, these days that all is now rather less appreciated in the USA and Europe. (Might be just the thing if one wants to defect to Iran... but who the heck would...?)

Do see to your family before making travel plans ~ While condemning one's entire family to punishment and/or murder might be a goal in rare cases, most individuals trying to flee a country they reside in are not particularly interested in leaving family behind. It's hard on the family and, given both the brutality involved in authoritarian police states and the harsh work of most counter-espionage/counter-defection practices, it's hard on the defector. Rather than receiving the usual blackmail or simply living with the knowledge that prisoners in North Korean labor camps are not provided for by the state, it is far better to have made sure anyone whose welfare might influence one's serene mood of departure to have already been bundled over the border, at least out of reach of the country of departure's forces in the short term.

Lastly, do chose a country that might actually help you get out, or at least won't sell you out by agreeing to a deal that no reasonable person would believe the other side will stick to. ~ Since you, the would-be defector, are the key person in any defection attempt... unless you can slip the country on officially allowed business and then ditch your minders... you are probably jumping an Embassy wall somewhere in this process. The Americans and the French were time-tested favorites, but times change. Just any foreign embassy simply will not do. You need one that will (1) arrange something to sneak you in, or at least not shoot you when you cross the line; (2) at least make an effort to not mention you are inside said embassy; (3) have some motivation or sense of decency that encourages them to help you out rather than throw you back; and lastly (4) have some competence at actually getting you out of the country, whether by hook, crook, military escort to a waiting plane, or more diplomatic means. Put Canada at the top of that list generally, Republic of Korea is particularly good in Beijing, but several other nations are more than able and have a history of success... but do check the current administration of said country before throwing in with them. In the old days, nothing ruined your otherwise perfect plan to sleep over in Spaso House than discover Gerald Ford was no longer President of the USA. Same applies more generally in recent times.

So, to all of you out there planning on fleeing tyrany's grasp, here's to your successful defection... but do remember all of the above and if your situation changes while you are working up your get away...

... you'd better pick Door Number Two.

The Weekly Item for 30.April, 2012: Shrinking

This post started life as a response/reinterpretation of R. Douthat's "Incredible Shrinking Country" opinion on the NY Times (28th April) Op/Ed page... and yeah, I wasn't going to be very nice about it. Between the fact that his writing is mostly a reaction to N. Eberstadt's far better "Japan Shrinks" and the otherwise annoying lack of understanding by Douthat of most of the anciliary issues he mentions, I'm not going to bother linking to his Op/Ed piece. However...

...while demographics are related to the on-going economic problems in Japan, they aren't uniquely responsible for how poorly things are trending right now.

I'd also note that I see the demographic future here as an opportunity with challenges, which was Eberstadt's general thrust (setting aside off-topics like some of his "random facts" mentioned), rather than the doomsayer-scenarios that similar discussions of Italy and Russia often turn into.

The real problem, likely dominant politically for the rest of this decade, is that the generation born in or just around 1980 is now ~10 years into what was supposed to be their careers and yet a stunning number have found they are "capped off" from any meaningful career opportunities by the combination of a no-growth economy and a slug-in-the-pipeline effect of a vast number of unpromotable middle-aged desk occupiers just half a generation older than them. If that sounds rather like the situation faced by Americans coming into the workforce just after 1980, well, there are some similarities. What allowed the U.S. workforce to at least in part shake that off was the long, mostly steady, rise in the U.S. economy from ~1984 to the turn of the century (arguably a bit beyond that, even). New enterprises and expansion of existing businesses spread the demand for experienced employees and opened new pathways of advancement. Japan, today, sees little or nothing of that sort of opportunity. But given a chance, it could.

Here's the rub: Japan is faced with a pair of nasty problems that as a set run contrary to the solution of either problem.

Problem One: Any hope of shaking off the shackles of low growth has to come by creating a positive business environment, and we're currently going backwards on that, not forward. Roughly 30% of electric power generation capability is off-line or going to be allowed to restart on a very limited basis... those would be our nuclear power stations. Insufficient or unreliable electric power supply is doom to manufacturing and nearly as damning to any modern urban office activity. Starting up or even expanding an existing company is still a process of red-tape-wrestling frustration for anything more complex than a neighborhood ramen shop. While direct corporate taxation was somewhat reformed during the Koizumi administration, the combination of direct corporate taxation, indirect mandated expenses and a virtual penalty for making any worker a "regular" employee rather than a contract or temp worker remains burdensome. Add to that the fact that no real recovery of the job losses in contract and temp employment in the wake of last year's disaster panic has happened and you are looking at a real unemployment/underemployment for the born-around-1980 generation that remains absurdly higher than the official workforce unemployment rate (By some measures, over 20% vs under 5%). Having the domestic part of the economy rebound would help that a lot, but even with the need to rebuild from last year's disaster we are only seeing GDP growth in the low 2% range (Broken Window Fallacy, but it is a demand). Schemes of the current administration to raise the Consumption (Sales) Tax will prove even more damaging to domestic demand after a brief pre-implementation bubble. Lastly, as Export remains a prime driver in the Japanese economy (roughly 30% of all activity, until recently), there is the possibility of getting growth going by export... except... the en (Yen; JPY) is at an all-time high against pretty much every other currency in the world.

Problem Two: The short-term efforts needed to shore up electric power generation (barely) by massive imports of fossil fuels and the import needs for rebuilding both play hobb with Japan's balance of trade. Without the purchasing power of a super-strong JPY, the cost might likely be unaffordable. But the same super-strong JPY makes imports of a wide array of consumer demands cheaper than domestic-origin goods. In the short run that's a necessary evil; in the long run it may well permanently stunt the already-feeble production of goods for the domestic market. Since full-on Merchantilism and WTO membership are incompatible (for a good reason! cf. PRChina), there's no way to slam that door and little benefit even if there was a way.

Those are the horns we are stuck on: Need a weaker JPY to restore Export and preserve an opportunity for long-term domestic growth; Need a strong JPY to pay for rebuilding after the disaster and to paper over our fears and inablities in providing electric power.


Hypothesis Time:

Lacking any sign of ロナルド・レーガン reborn as a Japanese politician, the odds of having a "Morning in Japan" moment seem pretty long. Bringing down the bunch of DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) amateurs and Finance Ministry draftees that make up our current government would be a very fine start, however. There are a few folks left in the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party; the old guard now in opposition) that could do some good, and there is hope that the YP (lit. "Everyone's Party" but commonly rendered as Your Party) may someday grow into a proper limited-government party that could take on most of the issues in Problem One, above. Neither are really ready, but either are head-and-shoulders more able than the current crew. For that to happen, it will be necessary to hang on the current administration all the blame they deserve and for the electorate of Japan to realize how horrible the situation actually is. Faced with a sense of "we can't be broke; I still have cheques!" upper middle class, that's going to take some educating... but it is possible. One can undermine all the DPJ ploys of offering grants to families with children by making general prosperity and less burdensome government the promise; financially secure citizens make commitments that the fearful do not.

It is time to show some serious fortitude and either fish or cut bait about the national electricity supply: Either go through an upheaval in the Utility sector that turns the regulators of the nuclear industry into bulldogs (rather than the lap dogs they are currently seen to be) and then go all-in on building *lots* of the newest model and safest nuclear power stations... yes that would be the order required; the Japanese public is prone to panic and nuclear power after Fukushima Daiichi is pretty much top of the panic scale... Or dive in with whole heart into the brave new world of Natural Gas as a generator fuel of choice and spend the money now while the JPY is so strong to lock in opportunities in any of the many places where shale gas production is remaking the world energy market. Don't let various Carbon-reduction schemes further injure the economy, or go spending or encouraging any deeper moves into any of the new "green" tech power generation ideas unless they make stand-alone economic good sense right now. Both of those are luxuries, and until Japan is back on the course of wealth (if then), they need be ignored.

Realize a strong JPY is needed this week or month, but not necessarily much after that. This is a risky one... Devalue. The fact so far is that the BoJ (Nippon Ginkou; Bank of Japan) has been persistently engaged in monetary expansion trying to stem the JPY rise for years as well as bail out the Government's awful budget choices and has done rather little of any use in the process. Changing the course of a currency isn't a nice thing to do (cf. the intentional destruction of the value of the US$) and only the most powerful central banks (cf. US Federal Reserve System) can hope to get away with doing it without severe reprisals. That said, as cited in the article linked above, the current government bond situation in Japan is totally dependent on unsustainably low interest rates (~1% on a 10-year note) and a move by bonds to a historically low twice that much would destroy the government's finances... and analysts are seeing a devaluation risk in order to get out from under that sword. How much? Try a JPY40 devaluation vs. the US$. Wham. Welcome back to the "natural" ~115Y/$ trading range of the last two decades. Fair question, though: Can they get away with it? Triggering a full-on currency war helps no one in the end. If a race for the floor doesn't happen, then there is still the reputation damage with foreigners holding the currency (that would be PRChina, for one). It has to happen all at once, too, or foreign exchage speculation can undermine much of the hoped-for gain. Debasing the currency has lots of other risks internally too. But something needs to happen and "easing" isn't getting the job done.

There is certainly more to each of these items, above, and I encourage discussion in the comments about them.

There are certainly other things that will have to play out as well. Like Europe and the USA, Japan has an absurd Higher Education bubble that while not the burden on taxpayers and loan-demanding students that those cases are, is a spectacular expense that generates remarkably little benefit in applicable workforce skills. The conundrum of rising medical demand and yet not enough students willing to train to be doctors is also in the mix. If you have thoughts on what else is in play, do feel free to discuss that as well.

But, to wrap up the hypothesis, I offer you this: A Japan of declining population is a wonderful opportunity to make a better lifestyle and to remove some of the pressure our overcrowded civilization has placed on our limited land. If that meant a hundred years from now Japan is a rich population of 50 million people with the financial means to restore much of what has been changed to support 120 million, *and* rich enough to engage in the luxury of chosing appropriate technologies rather than only necessary ones, that would be fine... Or we might see a hundred year swing of the demographic pendulum back toward 80~90 million as the population regains confidence that there will be enough wealth and opportunity for generations of people to thrive... But we aren't going to get there if we can't get a handle on economic growth sufficent to generate the wealth that either offering requires.

The problem of the economy and the social conditions it creates is the place our focus need be directed. The rest, as they say, will follow.

presented without further comment

CYA.

Not unrelated

From the "must read" files for the day:

O'Grady: The Argentine Way of Business (Mary Anastasia O'Grady), and...

The pain in Spain could hit worldwide economy (Robert J. Samuelson).

The effects of these two things are not unrelated.

Old and New

...media, that is.

As we do mostly World Affairs here, both of these mentioned are related to that.

First, an example of the good a major network can do by sending (or allowing to go on their own) a well-known journalist (or reporter, or presenter) out to cover an out-of-way and frankly difficult story:

Greta Van Sustren in the Nuba Mountains. Lots of related posts up and down her 'blog.

h/t to CompHyp friend Adam Housley (who, like GVS, is at FOXNews)

and...

Then, an absolutely wonderful telling of the good done by New Media assets... individuals or acting in concert... to help a cause succeed. 'Fighting Keyboardists' if you will, but not in model of the old (joking about) 'Chairborne Infantry'. Again, these are people who either got out there or got connected with those out there and provided invaluable information support:

People Power 2.0, How civilians helped win the Libyan information war.

Over the years we've seen some amazing individual efforts by 'bloggers working and communicating with efforts far from home to try and do some good. Jane Novak's awesome efforts about Yemen over the years come to mind (although she's been off-line this last month; hope she is well). The cooperation we got here at CompHyp from other folks during the Honduras autogolpe was another example.

With a bit of luck, we'll be doing more for the good, soon.

The ol' one-two

Here we go again: NorKs being NorKs.

North Korea has moved its "satellite launcher" ballistic missile test into launch position, on track for a launch between 12 and 16.April.

North Korea is also reported to be likely in the final stages of preparing a third nuclear test explosion at the same site as previous fizzles... er... tests.

OK, to quote another thread, so much for negotiations.

Open question to the UNSC, the United Nations Command in Korea, and to the governments of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States: So what are you going to do about it?

Further open question to Russia and the PRChinese: What are you going to do about it, or will you let this get hung on you for aiding and abetting?

and a cautionary note

Since the announcement of the sentencing of Viktor Bout earlier, the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation (MID) has out out a statement to the press about how they do not see the matter resolved. *NOTE: Statement was apparently a press statement and is not as of yet available on the MID site in English.*

Sky News UK, just to pick one of the reports out there, has it like this:

"The Russian foreign ministry views the US court verdict sentencing Viktor Bout to 25 years in prison as baseless and biased," the ministry said in a statement.

"(We will make) all possible efforts to return Viktor Bout to the Motherland, using for this all the existing international legal mechanisms."

Noble of them, standing up for a citizen of their republic; wish more countries had done so when Westerners got left to take the fall in places like Angola and Equatorial Guinea back in the day... but...

...the honest observation is that Viktor Bout was doing what he was doing with the help of a lot of powerful interests. They want him home and back to work, or at least in a place where he isn't pressured to say what he knows.

The most legitimate observation is that the MID will, through legal challenges and diplomatic linkage, try to get Bout sent to "serve his time" back in Russia.

Less sporting of them would be to make certain that one or more Americans working in Russia is "caught doing something bad".

Of course, from the point of view of any post-Soviet 'crime' interests that Bout was hooked up with, he is and has been since his arrest simply a detail that needs to be eliminated, but that is a danger really only to Viktor Bout right now.

Consider the second above a cautionary note, friends who are working in and with Russian interests: That deal that just broke your way that looks too good to be true... probably is. Watch yourselves.

five and twenty

Note to CompHyp Friend Will...

...it looks like pre-sentencing gamemanship was for 'naught. Viktor Bout gets 25 years.

Congratulations to Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara.

Congrats as well to the DEA-and-friends team that pulled the original sting.

Hell, as long as we are waving around the 'at-a-boy's, congratulations to Journalists and Investigators Douglas Farah and Stephan Braun, whose 2007 work publicized the role of Bout as a modern "Merchant of Death", and who have waited a very long time for this day to come.

Drink up, gents. Now let's go get some more bad guys.

A Dry Subject

It's one of those things I look at in passing in the process of some other, more specific, search... the Baltic Dry Index, or BDI. That's the market analyst's index of the cost of ship hires for bulk solid cargoes. What makes it valuable is that it is a very good leading indicator of heavy industrial activity as a whole across the world. As it measures the current bid prices for hiring certain size ships, it is also a direct indicator of profitability in the bulk cargo trade... and right now, it is pretty darn weak. Here's what I mean by that:

Over the twenty-plus years of the Index's history, it has demonstrated some amazing swings, hitting 10,000+ values in the 2007~2008 bubble boom and falling to the 600's in the collapse by the end of 2008... but what does that all mean? Well, the first level you should look at is the roughly 1,000 value as that happens to correlate fairly closely with break-even costs for owning and operating the ships. Generally speaking, this means that at over a thousand, shipping firms can make a profit; under a thousand, they are losing money.

But the second meaning, that as a leading indicator of manufacturing activity, is what gives the Baltic Dry its real utility because that speaks in a large way about the profitability of entire economies, not just shipping firms. That comes from the situation that prosperous economies consume (more), and the eventual end of that consumption is material possessions, and even in this day of software, media and financial instruments the main things that are consumed are *things*... and those are mostly manufactured. If you see an Index of a healthy couple-three thousand, you can rest assured that manufacturing firms believe that in some months ahead (say 3~6) they will be able to sell what they make, so they are buying the raw materials they need now and hiring ships to get those raw materials soon.

All good with that?

Right then, here's the problem: On February 2nd, 2012, the BDI went through its all-time floor to 662 (eventually falling to 647 in the next days). That article linked discusses a lot of the why.

As of the latest, March 27th 2012, the BDI is at 917, trending very slightly upward. For the curious, and later day readers, one can see the latest BDI here without subscribing to the Baltic Exchange.

Frankly, this isn't good. All the talk based on Stock Market and Financials speaking of how the economies of the major nations are on some pace of rebound *is just talk* for at least the next quarter or two.

And that means lots of things: continued increases in instability in the developing manufacturing exporters; little job growth in the established manufacturing economies, and; poor overall consumption growth in the consumer economies. The first could lead to problems that spill over (even more social instability in PRChina is particularly dangerous) and the latter two both imply poor-at-best GNP growth in places like the U.S.A., Europe and Japan... combine that with the national budget problems in those places and more bad things loom.

However... if those consumer economies can avoid making any more mistakes (Pick an example: GovJapan is still talking about raising the sales tax rate two-fold, which will certainly bubble consumption in the period between announcement and implementation and then crater demand thereafter... just about the worst thing a country can do when consumption is already depressed), and roll back some of the mistakes they've already made, you'll see a steady rise in the BDI *before* those economies really get going again.

This makes the Baltic Dry Index one of the things you may never have heard of that you should pay some attention to, and I remain amazed that it is not one of the commonly cited leading economic indicators in this interconnected world we live in.

Speaking to the walls

Saw all the reports on U.S. President B. Obama's various appearances in South Korea in prelude to and at the Nuclear Security Summit... actually watched the so-called "special lecture" at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies...

...the man's reaction after going up to Observation Point Ouellette overlooking the DMZ

Earlier Sunday, Obama paid his first visit to the tense Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea, speaking briefly at the U.S. military camp located just outside the 2.5-mile-wide zone. What he saw from the border, Obama said, underscored the degree to which the North has suffered under a battery of sanctions aimed at punishing Pyongyang for its continued provocations.

"It's like you're in a time warp," he said. "It's like you're looking across 50 years into a country that has missed 40 years or 50 years of progress."

and so on about how backwards North Korea is. No kidding. He actually sounded surprised. That either demonstrated a jarring reassessment of his world view or was simply his saying the words he and his speechwriters thought he should say at the time. Your choice which.

...and then the usual summit "hot mic" moment, where B. Obama says something when he thinks the press isn't watching.* Those often do one of three things: insult Americans; insult an American ally, or; promise to accommodate a rival, but on terms personally favorable to B. Obama. This was no exception.

...gave a speech disguised as a "special lecture" that was vapid, self-absorbed and directed at someone other than the audience (students... who seemed rather tired of being spoken past rather than to...):

In remarks made at a university in Seoul earlier in the day, Obama sent a pointed warning to North Korea.

"Here in Korea, I want to speak directly to leaders in Pyongyang," Obama said during the special lecture at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul. "Have the courage to pursue peace and give a better life to the people of North Korea."

I should note the brevity of the quote above does no justice to the long-winded and disconnected speech as a whole. It was... um... he said "um" a lot... uninspired to say the least. There was applause at times, but I can only imagine it occurred when some not-seen-on-the-video-feed indication was signalled to the audience except for that at the conclusion. That was probably a statement of relief.

All in all, a remarkable display of why November 2012 (U.S. Presidential Election) and January 2013 (Inauguration of the next U.S. administration) can not come too soon.

Hopefully something useful actually is going on behind the scenes at this summit. I think there is, but little chance of there actually being a report on any of that. Politics and Posturing are soooo much more important.

***

note * : That link is to Hot Air, a political site, commenting on the original article. The original citation is linked therein to abcgo 'blog by Jake Tapper at ABC News (USA). The direct link is unreliable in some browser/security software combinations.

...working with him, yeah, that's it.

While enduring the BBC World's Impact news program this evening, I once again had the infuriating experience, eh hem, pleasure of watching one of the world's great front-men for his bosses' policies, Russian Foreign Minister S. V. Lavrov. When asked at a press conference about the situation in and regarding Syria, he fielded it in terms of Arab League and United Nations Special Envoy Kofi Annan (yes, former UNSecGen) 's presentation of the results of his 'peace plan' to the UNSC, due today... Lavrov said:

"...we are working with him every day."

Call me a biased opinion, but my first reaction was "SO? You've been working with him every day for decades. Russia and UN apparatchiks..."

Catch the drift of what I'm saying?

Good.

***

As long as we are at least tangentially on a Freedom for Syria topic, I would be remiss to not mention the superb back-and-forth between Michael Ledeen and Andrew C. McCarthy yesterday on what to do or not do about Syria. If you make the time to read it all, and I hope you do, please make the effort to backtrack from M. Ledeen's last pronunciamenti to the very first link in their chain of discussion. Two very, very sharp gents taking a very civil difference of opinion about the way forward about Syria and running it to ground in one of the best considered analyses-by-competition I've read in a long while.

I'm impressed.

Experience changes a person. Sometimes for worse, but more often for the far-better:

"But I have more important questions for Irish artists. What happened to the notion of the artist as a free thinking individual? Why have Irish artists surrendered to group-think on Israel? Could it be due to something as crude as career-advancement?

"Artistic leadership comes from the top. Aosdana, Ireland's State-sponsored affiliation of creative artists, has also signed the boycott. Aosdana is a big player. Its members populate Arts Council funding panels.

"Some artists could assume that if their name is on the same boycott sheet as the people assessing their applications, it can hardly hurt their chances. No doubt Aosdana would dispute this assumption. But the perception of a preconceived position on Israel is hard to avoid."

A rare occurance that shouldn't be so rare. In a world where an Irish city considers a statue honoring an enemy of freedom and Hollywood rich folk are "proud" to stand with the likes of Hugo Chavez, seeing one person overcome their environment and see the real world for what it is tis a joy to behold.

Please read the whole article.

All input...

...no output.

At least for now, my regrets.

Just got back in here after more than a few days functionally AFK. Hope you All are well, and looking forward to your choice of winter holiday. We're on track to get a nice New Year's time here, but...

... almost all my cards, gifts, and such to friends went out late. Or are still going out. At least family got covered in time this year.

Sheesh. Proper Planning and all that.

***

I've been toying with the idea of a year end wrap up of favorite topics here at CompHyp. I mean, other than Hugo and I'maDinnerJacket, the list of usual suspect out there is getting a little slim. I mean, when the fountain of 'blog content that was Kim Jong-Il has passed from this mortal coil, it may be time to tell one last telling of the tales of the old villains and go back into the analysis mines to see what new disasters await unearthing in the coming year.

Hmm....

Remembrance Day

Armistice Day.

Veteran's Day in the U.S.A.

The hope that some day peace will come.

The assurance that the only way that will ever happen is to be prepared for war.

The thanks for and remembrance of those that have paid the tax of blood and service.

As is my way, I spent the day with some old friends.

I hope they noticed.

***

Afterthought: While I've seen it in years before, I have to say it was particularly meaningful to me to see every single news reader and reporter working for BBC World (cable and satellite TV) wearing a poppy clasp this last week. Yes, the Beeb; even with all their oft-demonstrated bias. Would that others showed the same respect...