The second was the patriarch of possibly the only obese family in North Korea.  Coming to power after the first dynastic succession in a Communist nation, Kim Jong-Il deepened the impoverishment and isolation of his unfortunate country.  Other than the brainwashed minions, few will mourn him.  Kim Jong-Il was widely reputed to be ailing and earlier this year named his inexperienced son Kim Jong-un as the heir to the crumbling hermit kingdom.  The youngest Kim will probably rule with the help of a regency council designated by his father until/if he ever takes over.

Kim Jong-il could to some extent feed off the mystique of his father Kim Il-sung.  However, by the end of his rule it has been difficult for North Korea to hide the extent of its backwardness and impoverishment from its own people.  Too many South Korean movies and television programs displaying their far healthier and prosperous brethren circulate in North Korea.  Too many North Koreans have crossed back and forth across the Yalu River into China for an information blackout to be absolute.  With little moral authority left it could be difficult for the regime to hang on.

And so a delicate diplomatic dance begins.  South Korea has placed its armies on high alert.  Seoul and Washington must evaluate the diplomatic language to use in responding to the news and conduct a cost-benefit analysis of expressing condolences.  The Chinese, the primary prop for this bankrupt regime, must evaluate whether they should play along with the succession or encourage Jong-un’s fatter brother to seize power.  In the short run it appears that a weaker regime in Pyongyang leans closer to becoming a Chinese satellite.

Yet even presumed Chinese satellites are uncomfortable with the close embrace of the dragon.  Fear of Chinese dominance has pushed an equally paranoid Burmese government to ease its isolation.  How far will the weak regime in Pyongyang resist Beijing’s diktats?  And does this regime have the strength to survive a glasnost?  The next few months will be interesting.

2011 has not been kind to dictators.  Long standing regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were toppled.  Syria and Yemen are tottering.  Bahrain has been shaken to its core.  Even the previously secure corporatist regime of Vladimir Putin has seen cracks appear in the foundation.  Even if the death of Kim Jong-il was not as gory as the video below:

he leaves a shaky regime in the hands of his inexperienced son.  Rot in hell Kim Jong-il.

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And then the hunt for the deposed tyrant began.  The end was pathetic.  As his hometown of Sirte finally fell to his enemies the wounded Gaddafi was dragged from his hiding place (a drain pipe).  As the fallen dictator pleaded for mercy he met his end soon after in murky circumstances.  Cell phone videos of a bleeding Gaddafi are available for anybody willing to conduct a Google search.

The rest of the Gaddafi clan is either captured, dead or has fled (warning gruesome pictures in link).

Apart from one expected quarter, Gaddafi goes to his grave unmourned.  His legacy is broken, factitious oil rich tribal mish-mash bunched under a new/old national flag.   Libya faces an uncertain future once the euphoria over the lynching in Sirte fades.

Also uncertain is the future of NATO.  The French and the British wanted this operation, but soon discovered that they could not sustain a campaign against a fourth rate military without access to the American arsenal.  Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates departed with a well timed salvo at Europe questioning the worth of an alliance where only one country carries the weight.  The solution from Congressional hawks appears to be to bankrupt the United States by continuing to sustain 40% of global military spending alone.  A reappraisal of American military commitments and spending is long overdue.

With the specter of their crazy leader gone, the people of Libya sleep easier tonight.  So do perhaps diplomats in a land of cheese, chocolates and banks.

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There are legitimate privacy concerns about a Google Group using facial recognition software to identify the looters.  Hopefully they turn their sights on these scumbags.

And now a word of derision for the bumbling response of Prime Minister David Cameron’s inept government.  The spark for the riot may have been a suspicious police killing.  There is deep unrest in Britain about the depth of cuts imposed by the current government.  But it was clear early enough that the outrage was hijacked by criminals indulging in looting and burning.

Yet incredibly Home Secretary Theresa May responded to calls to crush the rioters with this nonsense:

The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon. The way we police in Britain is through consent of communities.”

Small wonder that the riots spread beyond London and have tarnished Britain’s reputation around the globe.  It took three days for 16,000 police to descend on London.  I am not a huge fan of scapegoats, but I am willing to make an exception for Ms. May.  There were concerns about Rio’s ability to host a safe Olympics.  It appears that London’s competence must also now be questioned.

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Not so surprisingly, the Faux News bobble head does not challenge the absurdity of Paul’s position but moves right on to their pet cause of profiling brown people by race or religion.  Of course it may not have not have flagged the Nigerian born underpants bomber or the half white-half Jamaican shoe bomber Richard Reid.  Right-wing conservatives and Faux News keep on parroting how stupid it is to search 95 year old grandmas or young kids.  Unfortunately, this tragic story from Afghanistan demonstrates how the sadistic bastards we are fighting will work around racist profiling of the sort advocated by Paul.  The Taliban thugs in the article linked above tricked an 8 year old girl into becoming a suicide bomber.

Paul also willfully misstates current policy.  Nothing at present prevents the TSA from searching a “suspicious person.”  Also, as brown-skinned passengers will be happy to inform you racial profiling is still alive and going strong, in violation of current rules.   Personally, I am not surprised that a congressman who stated he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act has a cavalier attitude to discrimination against people who don’t look like him.

I will reluctantly give Paul credit for one item in his diatribe.  The pre-9/11 policy of passengers not resisting was in retrospect a mistake.  It was based on the assumption of sane hijackers who would negotiate.  This mistake was first rectified by the brave passengers of UA Flight 93 and helped stop the shoe bomber and the underpants bomber.  It still does not justify the idiocy of guns on planes.

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The chilling implications on free speech are obvious (and this is in addition to the recent trend in England and Europe to introduce blasphemy prosecutions).  South Park mocked the libel tourism generated by English libel law a few years ago in its episode “Trapped in the Closet”.  For full episode click here.  Clip below:

In response Congress unanimously passed the SPEECH Act making foreign libel judgments that do not comply with the First Amendment unenforceable in the United States.  California, New York, Illinois and Florida have also enacted such statutes.  While American residents can breathe easier, other less fortunate mortals will have to hope they do not offend deep pocketed plaintiffs who can sue in England.  One wonders what will be the tipping point for the country that first gave individuals the freedom of habeus corpus to clean up this assault on free speech.  Unfortunately with the paparazzi out in full force for the royal wedding, it may take some time.

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I particularly miss the George H. W. Bush wing of the Republican party when it comes to foreign policy, given the (sometimes scary) blather that emanates from most Republican presidential hopefuls on the subject these days.  When Bob Gates steps down as Defense Secretary, he will probably be the last senior Bush ’41 foreign policy official to hold public office (though who knew Dick Cheney would morph into the Prince of Darkness).  Even though Gates’ performance as CIA Director at the time was forgettable, his second act as Defense Secretary to the 43rd and 44th Presidents has displayed the pragmatism of Bush ’41 and a refusal to be trapped by rigid and unrealistic ideologies.  Unfortunately the George H.W. Bushes and the Dick Lugars of the Republican Party have increasingly given way to the Jim DeMints, Sarah Palins and the Michele Bachmanns.  Of the younger Senators only Lindsey Graham (from time to time) hearkens back to the Bush ’41 tradition on foreign policy.  Mark Kirk could do so as well if his spine was not made of jelly.

As a result this Blog is willing to renew its nostalgia for the 41st President as he proceeds in his twilight years and is proud that his Presidential Library graces the campus of the author’s alma mater.

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“C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute”

(It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder) – Comment by a Napoleonic official on the judicial murder of the Duc d’Enghien.

“What’s being done to Bradley Manning by my colleagues at the Department of Defense is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” – Soon to be sacked State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley.

By sacking P. J. Crowley shortly after he committed the gaffe above (i.e. spoke the truth), Barack Obama has endorsed the sadistic jollies that Bradley Manning’s jailers receive from torturing him.  Previous winks at torture could somewhat be justified by the need to obtain information.  There is no such excuse here.  Bradley Manning is being subjected to a regimen that appears intended to drive him insane, allegedly because he is a suicide risk.  Then there is the ritualized humiliation of forced nudity and sleep deprivation he is being subjected to.   The media outrage at the treatment of a man not yet convicted of passing classified information to WikiLeaks is growing – see here, here, here, here, here, and here – but will probably have no effect on our ruling class.  At some point this should not be surprising.  On human rights, after the decree to close Guantanamo (which is still open), Obama has been a colossal disappointment and has been unwilling to stand up to the excesses of the national security apparatus.  His administration seems to pursue whistle-blowers more aggressively than the abuses they uncover.

Unlike some of my friends I do not condone Bradley Manning’s alleged leaking.  But he has not yet been convicted of his crime.  And even if he were, his treatment would still be unjustified.  The last decade has seen the Executive and Judicial branches wink at the abuse of prisoners.  Congress, which is particularly prone to jingoistic populism, is also useless.  Large sections of the Fourth Estate have also condoned torture because of the unsympathetic nature of people being tortured and the fears of terrorism.  This is a disgrace, as is Obama’s reaction to the news of Manning’s treatment:

“With respect to Private Manning, you know, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assured me that they are.”

Gee..the alleged abusers have assured him that the treatment is appropriate.  End of inquiry.  How heartwarming.

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Generally my feelings are largely negative.  Coming from an upper middle class background where almost everybody I know is on the side of management I was not reared in pro-union lore.  Then there is the downside of politically militant trade unions, the frankly crappy record of unions on race and gender issues, the ease by which they were suborned by organized crime and how some unions became sinecures for corrupt fat cats.  Add to that the inefficiency unions can cause, notably in the auto industry.  Friends who have had the misfortune of working with UAW have regaled me with rants about the difficulty of working with the union.

But unions did not arise in a vacuum.  If employers had treated workers fairly and provided safe working conditions, unions may have been cut off at birth (for that matter we would not have needed regulations like OSHA).  Also as public company CEOs have shown in the last decade that there is no limit for their greed, it has become harder for me to begrudge a man for making a middle class wage  based on the objections of a multi-millionaire.

Yet my feelings on the subject are still mixed.  It is in essence the age old problem of worker safety and fair benefits versus efficiency and competitiveness.  How to find the balance will depend on your own personal experiences and prejudices.  Ezra Klein of the Washington Post asked his readers who belonged to a union to post on their experiences.  Since the management perspective dominates the media narrative in recent years, it can be useful to read the other side.  This is obviously not a representative sampling (and there are a few anti-union posts), but still makes an interesting read.  One that stuck out to me is quoted below:

When I was a little younger I had the privilege of working for UPS and Fed Ex at the same time. Fed Ex will fire you if they find out that you work for UPS, but they never did. UPS is of course a union job (Teamsters) and Fed Ex is not. The difference was night and day.

At UPS I got a decent hourly wage, thousands of dollars yearly as a tuition benefit, good health insurance, and a pension. At Fed Ex I got the same hourly wage (a little bit more to be honest) and jack squat for benefits (literally nothing).

At UPS I got treated with a lot of respect, even though I was just a dockworker. If I felt sick or had something else I needed to attend to, I’d give the office a call and they wouldn’t even ask me why I was missing work. They just told me to do what I needed to do. At Fed Ex calling in sick was treated like treachery. They let you know that you were an at-will employee and treated you like it.

And safety? Holy toledo. When I got hired at UPS they put me through a week of classes where they taught me proper lifting practices, how to safely and efficiently perform virtually every task I could possibly be asked to do, how to deal with hazardous materials, etc. When I showed up at Fed Ex they pointed to a trailer and said “empty it”. They didn’t even bother to give me the customary “don’t lift with your back”. UPS performed routine safe practices evaluations where a supervisor would watch you working for a little bit and give advice on how you could be safer and less likely to injure yourself. Fed Ex didn’t bother. I ended up teaching proper lifting mechanics to a lot of guys I worked with there simply because I was worried about their health. Fed Ex didn’t give a rat’s ass if they blew out their backs, but I kind of liked the guys I worked with so I did what I could.

Twice while I was working at Fed Ex I nearly got crushed by heavy equipment due to the incompetence of the supervisors there. Both times I saved myself with a little running dive but it was close. The accidents were easily preventable but nobody cared and so they kept happening. After the second near-miss I didn’t show up for work the next day and didn’t bother to come back.

I don’t work at UPS or Fed Ex anymore. I’ve got a good union job in a different line of work these days (thank the Lord for college!), but I know what difference a good union makes

With rising economic uncertainty, stagnant middle class incomes, exploding salaries for upper management and corporations cutting benefits at a time of rising profits we could face some labor unrest in coming years.  Whether that leads to a revival of labor unions is still an open question.

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Talk about timing…barely 30 minutes after blogging about Mubarak refusing to go, the tired old dictator leaves. An inspiring moment for Egypt and the World. Hopefully this does not signify an attempt to perpetuate the Nasserite military dictatorship. Suleiman can help by keeping his promise to repeal the 30 year emergency law and not running for reelection. May the Ayatollahs be next.

Suleiman on whom the Obama administration has placed its wishful hopes for a transition to democracy the proceeded to rile the crowd by asking the protesters to go home.  The Egyptian army which has played a two faced role in this crisis has endorsed Mubarak’s plan, and Mubarak does seem to have handed some powers over to Suleiman.

So what now?  Nobody knows.  The White House was evidently blindsided by Mubarak’s defiance and has limited leverage on the situation.  Ultimately this is a crisis that must be resolved by the Egyptians.  Washington’s efforts should be focussed on preventing the army from initiating the type of bloody crackdown that crushed Iran’s Green Revolution two years ago.

With no obvious opposition candidate in the wings, Egypt faces a period of prolonged uncertainty and probably instability. A big concern in Egypt is a silent military coup, of the type that may have overcome Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution.   Suleiman is deeply tied to Mubarak’s repressive regime and in his 70s is unlikely to be a long term solution in any case.

Concerns have been raised that elections could result in the Muslim Brotherhood to power.  If the United States truly believes its pretensions of being the “defender of the free world”, it needs to come to grips with the reality that democracy can result in unfriendly governments.  For too long Washington has supported autocrats like Mubarak who provided “stability” in the form of stagnation and decay of their countries institutions, economies and societies.  After some hesitancy the Obama administration seems to be veering towards support for a democratic transition.  Here’s hoping that the Egyptians can pull it off (and by their example reignite Iran’s Green Revolution).

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The extremely impoverished new nation (whose name has not been formalized) faces a daunting task ahead.  It is riven with feuds, has almost no infrastructure and the desire to be free from Khartoum appears to have been the only glue that held its warring factions together.  It is blessed and cursed with an abundance of natural resources (and oil).  Mineral wealth has generally been the bane of developing countries.  Getting it out of the ground creates few jobs but generates a lot of revenue for venal kleptocrats to siphon into Swiss bank accounts.   Revenue sharing arrangements with the North have to still be negotiated and Khartoum will be eager to exploit any rifts that appear.

The creation of South Sudan could provide added impetus to secessionist movements across Africa.  The African Union has avoided opening up the Pandora’s box of redrawing colonial borders.  The sole exception to the rule, Eritrea could claim that it had been a separate Italian colony before being annexed by Ethiopia after World War II.  Now the genie is out of the bottle and secessionist claims in places like (oil rich) Southern Nigeria could re-emerge.

Maybe my pessimism is unjustified.  Having midwifed the creation of the new country (with the active encouragement of right-wing evangelical groups) it is likely that the United States will remain involved in the region and discourage mischief.  Equally or more likely the combination of a weak resource rich state surrounded by unscrupulous resource poor neighbors could result in another Congo.

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Duke University is in an uproar when a “f**k list” created by a recent grad (who facetiously referred to it as her senior thesis) went viral.  It brings back memories of former congressional staffer Jessica Cutler and it is still unclear whether the author will face similar lawsuits for invasion of privacy.  It has been almost a decade since the first case (that I recall) of a viral email spreading way beyond its intended audience.  There is at least one Chicago large law firm partner whose legal prowess will have a hard time overcoming his association with an unfortunate voice-mail that was not supposed to go viral.  But yet people naively email items that should never be committed to paper.  It will be just a matter of time before the next such embarrassing exchange that was supposed to “just be between friends.”

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Even though the Chinese constitution grants a broad array of human rights (speech, assembly, religion, etc.) these are often overruled by other provisions regarding public order.  It is one of the myriad hypocrisies of communist states around the world that they fail to respect rights of their citizens just like the totalitarian regimes that preceded them.  Liu Xiaobo is the latest Nobel laureate honored for his refusal to submit to an authoritarian regime.  Unfortunately the award is largely symbolic and will not change the way China treats its citizens.  But for a brief moment the world spotlight shines back on China’s abysmal human rights record, a glow Beijing does not care to bask in.

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Which begs the question why are inflated CEO salaries any different?  At least one columnist has noted the similarities to the Bell city officials now being pilloried.  CEO salaries have exploded in the past 20 years as cartels (called compensation committees) have skewed the market for compensation.  American CEOs earn far more than their counterparts abroad.  When their incompetence can no longer be masked, they depart with golden parachutes.  It begs the question, particularly in a time of rising income inequality, why has the open misappropriation of corporate assets (a cause of action in its own right) been essentially legitimized?

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I bring up Crassus, because he would have looked at this story from Tennessee with some regret as a lost business opportunity.  Rome did not have a public firefighting force until the reign of Augustus.  Crassus was notorious for appearing on the scene of a burning building and buying it and the surrounding buildings for a significantly reduced price.

Which brings us to the unfortunate Mr. Cranick.  Obion County, Tennessee does not have a fire department but has outsourced it out to the city of South Fulton.  Since he did not live within city limits Mr. Cranick was required to pay $75 if he wanted the service.  This he did not do and must have rued this lapse as he watched his home (along with 3 dogs and cat) burn down.  Since he had not paid the requisite fee the fire department declined to show up on the scene until the fire spread to the property of a neighbor who had paid the fee.

Conservative commentators have applauded the fire department for sticking to a policy and sending a lesson to free loaders.  Liberal ones have been furious at the seeming callous manner the fire department watched the house burn down.  This begs the question, why are such critical services offered ala carte in the year 2010?

A fire emergency hardly seems to be the time to check if a fire bill was paid.  I assume Firefighting 101 calls for containing or eliminating a fire before it does more harm.  By failing to extinguish the fire on Mr. Cranick’s property it was allowed to spread to a neighbors property and could have spread out of control as some western states have discovered.  While this county has outsourced fire fighting to only one provider, if other fire fighting entities become involved additional logistical and ethical issues could arise.  Also, would the county have held rigid to its policy if an individual (as opposed to pets who are treated as chattel under the law) was trapped in the burning house?

These issues could have been avoided with a simple solution.  If the county does not have the resources to field independent fire departments and the work can be done by the fire departments maintained in its cities, wouldn’t it make more sense to outsource the work and collect the surcharge to pay for such services from property taxes?  This would avoid the free loading scenario and make sure that all houses in rural areas are protected.   In this scenario the tax increase would have been a mere 0.13 cents for each household.  This case also highlights why the Affordable Health Care Act included a mandate to avoid freeloaders from seeking insurance after they fell sick.

South Fulton appears to have made its point against free loading.  A relative of Mr. Cranick appears to have made his displeasure felt with his fists.  Now it is time for the county to revise a flawed policy to prevent a recurrence of such tragedies.

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The mosque was built on the orders of the first Mughal Emperor Babur on the site of either an old or existing Hindu temple that Hindus believed marked the birthplace of one of their prominent deities Ram.  The original British solution was to give both sides access to the site for worship.  Ninety years after the first attempt at a Solomonic compromise the issue flared up again in 1949 when idols were smuggled into the mosque  resulting in Indian government sealing the site.  The dispute picked up steam in 1984 and burst into Indian national consciousness when the Bharatiya Janata Party seized the issue to highlight simmering grievances of the Hindu majority.  The mosque was destroyed by a mob in 1992 resulting in riots across India.

Today’s decision split the site among three litigants (2 Hindu and 1 Muslim) and dismissed a couple of other cases.  The Sunni Waqf Board (which recieved the Muslim portion) has indicated it will appeal.  Given the political consensus rallying around this verdict it is likely that the Indian Supreme Court will uphold the decision.  With the troubled Commonwealth Games about to start, the Indian government must be breathing a sigh of relief at the calm that has greeted the verdict.  Oddly enough the street protests are occurring in neighboring Pakistan whose militants will add this to their litany of perceived grievances at the hands of India.

I am not surprised by the verdict.  It was the only way to resolve an intractable dispute.  But splitting the baby is not the solution for all such disputes in India in the future.  The Babri Masjid was not the only mosque built on the ruins of a Hindu temple.  However, the length of the dispute, the fact that the rights of Hindus to worship on the site had essentially been conceded in 1859, and the mosque being unused since 1949 were all special circumstances that made this verdict possible.  This will not be the case in other disputes.  At some point there has to be a statute of limitations for resolving medieval wrongs.  Hopefully with this verdict the statute has now run out.

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