The feet of one of three Palestinian siblings from the Al-samoni family, killed by an Israeli tank shell, are seen in the mortuary of Al-Shifa hospital, on January 5, 2009 in Gaza City. Seven members from the Al-samoni family were killed including the mother, three children and a baby, when an Israeli shell struck their house south of Gaza city. (Abid Katib/Getty Images, boston.com)

Marc Ambinder writes

Many a friend has asked me what I think of the Israeli invasion. I have some private thoughts on the subject, but they're not particularly interesting. I've studied enough, prayed enough, spent enough time in Israel to get the hang of why the conflict appears so tragic and intractable...

and tries to recruit some thoughts from Jeff Goldberg, an Israeli reporter. Jeff writes that

...nothing works for very long in the Middle East. Gaza is where dreams of reconciliation go to die. Gaza is where the dream of Palestinian statehood goes to die; Gaza is where the Zionist dream might yet die. [...] My paralysis isn't an analytical paralysis. It's the paralysis that comes from thinking that maybe there's no way out. Not out of Gaza, out of the whole thing."

Here, journalists on the ground in Gaza talk to a Current Vanguard reporter:

What has happened in Gaza is/was, as far as I can tell, cruel, pointless, and another example of how little we know as human beings about how not to totally fuck everything up. It is nauseating to watch the father lamenting the death of his daughter, alive just two hours before. I feel that I have to respond, but in the face of this overwhelming suffering and with such overwhelming problems, is that the right way to be thinking? The above smart people who have actually been there, etc., sound like they are stating the truth of the situation to me; for my own actions, that is where I would leave it (with thanks that U.S. role in the region will probably be a lot different with Obama). But I have been prompted by other people to do more to protest the obscene amounts of innocent death in Gaza, through small gestures like groups on Facebook or marching in protests with signs. It feels wrong and weirdly beside the point to me, but a lot of people feel strongly about it, so here goes.

As best I can tell, whatever solutions can be found to change, even in small ways, the situation will come not from protests or activism. Everyone who is at all directly connected to the conflict is desperately aware what everyone thinks, and has their own idea of justice worked out. Protests have become background noise, even at a large scale; a hundred million Europeans protesting couldn't stop Bush from invading Iraq. Politics has changed a great deal, and needs new tactics. (I have some ideas about that, but most people seem to be protesters, cynics, or oblivious, so I have some issues with finding someone who gives a shit.) Protest may be better than doing nothing, but that is about all it is. Like Marc, I am aware of how beside the point my own judgments and needs for action are, yet keep trying to create some activity, find something to do to push away the horror as it unfolds.

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This is a good time to think about the identity of Barack Obama. Right now he's a blank screen that many different groups are projecting their wishes on to. He's not from any of their constituencies really, though it's clear he has his proclivities. When he came to Chicago, he was more "mutt" than anything else, searching for a sense of belonging. He pretty much made a choice to join black culture, to inhabit the identity and the role, just like he chose to go to an elite school and become a community organizer. But he did all that while staying removed from the visceral nature of some of the old crappy American fights (race, class, culture), a remove that let him see those fights more clearly (as his speech on race in Philadelphia attests).
So he's pretty much free of attachment to the old clashes, though he understands them. He can choose more intellectually what he wants to do. That could be dangerous (Robert McNamara was surely one of the smartest, most methodical people in the U.S. while he dragged the country into Viet Nam), but right now it is such a relief to have a president that doesn't seem trapped in any one corner.

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Look at the pictures on Boston.com

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Beautiful maps from the New York Times (Times Digital) team!

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Recently many commentators have blamed the current financial crisis on a law enacted under the Carter and Clinton administrations, the Community Reinvestment Act. They say that the law forced banks to issue loans to lower income an minority applicants that could not afford them. Usually there is some grain of truth to these things, but far as I can tell, not this time:

• The Community Reinvestment Act applies only to depository banks.
• 67% of 'subprime' mortgages were issued by non-depository investment banks or other firms that were not regulated by the CRA, not depository banks, which were.
• Of those issued by depository banks, only 54% were 'subprime.' That means that, according to a CATO study, only 17.4% of 'subprime' loans, or 2.3% of all mortgages issued in the U.S.
• Collateralized Debt securities (the drop in value of which caused the collapse of Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, AIG, etc. and the present uncertainty about credit) were created by combining regular and 'subprime' mortgages. These securities were issued only by investment banks. Doing the math, that means that about 89% of all the securities issued had no CRA-covered loans in them.

The CRA was a very minor player in the financial crisis, issuing a small percentage of all loans. It did not apply to any of the banks that issued about 89% of the risky mortgages in the U.S. The CRA was irrelevant to the investment banks and other firms that issued risky loans.

"There has been a tendency to conflate the current problems in the subprime market with CRA-motivated lending, or with lending to low-income families in general. I believe it is very important to make a distinction between the two. Most of the loans made by depository institutions examined under the CRA have not been higher-priced loans,16 and studies have shown that the CRA has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households." -- Janet L. Yellen* President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, March 31, 2008.

The markets that collapsed had almost no regulation. In fact, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 explicitly barred their regulation; the law was written by Republicans and signed by Clinton -- there is plenty of blame to go around. One of the very few completely unregulated markets in the world stopped "functioning properly" (in Bush's words). I can't see why anyone would look further for the cause than that uncontroversial statement.

UPDATE: My brother Michael Clemens, a Harvard economics Ph.D, says no major mistakes! Whew. He also says to keep in mind that the "very simple fact is that no one completely understands the roots of the financial crisis, because it is a complex, emergent, chaotic phenomenon" (hope it was okay to quote you Michael). That is for sure.

*Some have said that as a Clinton appointee, Yellen is biased. She was appointed after his first choices were rejected by the Republican congress; Yellen was cited as a nominee the Senate Finance Committee could support, and they ratified her appointment unanimously.

Posted by ben at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

New laws are limiting very old protections that individuals have had: not to be held indefinitely without trial or access to a lawyer, no warrantless searches, no torture, the right to a fair trial. Where is the crisis that justifies these changes? Even if terrorists attack again and again and kill thousands more, which they surely will, they cannot threaten the existence of any Western country. This is not World War II. No matter how fervent, they are small groups of desperate people that can be hunted down and killed, not entire states (crazy as they are, Iran and North Korea would cut deals with the US under the right conditions). Why are people acting as though these terrorists have such huge power? Why are they willingly giving away the rights and protections that everyone says is the good part of the West? Why are people choosing to live in fear instead of calling bullshit?

Posted by ben at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I work at Yahoo!, but I have a small role and no influence on or knowledge of corporate decisions or policies about China, or any contact (beyond a couple of meetings of fellow employees at a conference) with Yahoo!'s Chinese business partners. This post is personal opinion only.

The way that Yahoo! has handled the jailing of four Chinese dissidents (based on personal information handed over by Yahoo! to the Chinese government) has so far been to say that it is powerless to change the political reality and laws in China, and this is surely true. In hearings about the issue at the U.S. Congress, Yahoo! has focused on sort of asking the U.S. government to pass laws (like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as Bill Gates pointed out) that would give companies like Yahoo! guidance on what business practices were acceptable in countries outside the U.S. (so that, presumably, it would have some cover in negotiations with the Chinese government over its practices in China).

It's clear from the legalistic language that Yahoo!'s public representatives use that the company is in a real bind: if they withhold information from the Chinese government, they are likely to lose the ability to do business in China and inflict major damage on their business. People in China are better off overall if companies like Yahoo! are investing there; they get jobs, investment in other supporting local businesses, and a lot of knowledge transfer from American experts (every Chinese citizen I've talked to believes that U.S. companies should stay in China, though of course the people I've talked with have been mostly the beneficiaries of investment). But that benefit doesn't excuse any actions that contribute to putting political prisoners in jail; that goes beyond being a business decision. Yahoo! can't change its public position without consequences from the arbitrary Chinese government, but groups like Reporters Without Borders will continue to effectively publicize the consequences of Yahoo!'s compliance with Chinese law. For the people who have to make these difficult decisions, it is surely a no-win situation.

I believe that there should immediately be some quiet modification of the way that U.S. companies gather personal information on their Chinese sites (that is, gather as little as possible and keep almost nothing), without waiting for U.S. laws to be passed (from what I can tell, there will be bills introduced that U.S. companies will have to follow like the FCPA, most likely next year). Despite all the equivocating, the enabling of Chinese repression can't continue and will change, if without publicity (companies and governments don't like to make difficult decisions publicly unless they have to). But with no company willing to be a leader on the issue, improvement will be hard to come by and will take longer and will be more complex than anyone will be happy with.

Technorati Tags: china, politics, technology

Posted by ben at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

David Kay (the director of the U.S.-sponsored search for weapons of mass destruction [W.M.D.] in Iraq) has now stated clearly what has been apparent for some time: there were not in fact W.M.D. in the hands of the Iraqi government before the U.S. went to war in 2003. In the U.S. unfortunately, stating this simple fact is not simple at all: it is not based on a complete search yet, or it shows that Bush lied, or it isn't the real issue, or it is tantamount to appeasing a murderous dictator, etc. Aside from the hyperbole, though, it is in fact actually, genuinely true that the absence of W.M.D. means that the rationale for the war was wrong. It was a mistake, and mistakes will happen even when everyone is very smart and starts out with good intentions. It is only a tragedy if it is not learned from, yet the cultural dynamics of politics in the U.S. will make it almost impossible to gain something from this misjudgment. Invading Iraq was predicated on preventing terrorism, either directly (through stopping the proliferation of W.M.D.) or indirectly (by developing a strong, friendly presence in the region). The invasion has not accomplished either of those aims: there are no W.M.D. to find, and the establishment of a friendly presence in Iraq has been an uneasy, rocky project. As one senior member of the Coalition Provisional Authority said, "I'd be happy if we just got out of here without them hating us." For now, as president Bush has noted, Iraq has become a "dangerous place" that attracts "terrorists and members of al Qaeda." In _The Fog of War_ Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense for presidents Kennedy and Johnson, says that the stakes of modern nuclear conflict are impossibly high: if a mistake is made, "nations are destroyed." He was not speaking of terrorism, but he may well have been. The costs for not preventling terrorism, for not accomplishing the Iraq war's aims, could be very high, yet the public discussion of the war is driven by partisan ideology completely. Those who question the war's justification are said to be not "supporting the troops"; while those who support the war are said to be "liars" and "traitors." When the stakes are so high, it should be possible to learn from experience, change one's mind, or alter the approach, then figure out the best way to protect people in the U.S. If not, we are all in a lot of trouble.

Posted by ben at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

The difficult political problems that the U.S. faces are unlike any in recent history. Yet the response to these problems has been not new approaches, but reliance on familiar ideologies. This has had the effect of cutting political discourse off from the real world and making it more and more partisan. To take one example, the response by the left and right to the threat of Islamic-fundamentalist terrorism against the West: • The right (and the current administration) has tried to solve the problem by treating the threat as if it were the geopolitics of the cold war; the projection of American power and culture as the answer. But this has only made more real the claims of the terrorists, that the U.S. is an imperialist bully. Bizzarely, it is claimed that our war on Iraq protects our freedom, but no military victory is possible against a culture of terror. [11/20: George Will himself provides a example of this thinking in a speech to the Manhattan Institute (as reported by Mickey Kaus); "In the Q & A session following his talk, he said his solution [to the threat of terrorists possessing weapons of mass distruction] was to restore the traditional monopoly of sovereign nations over the means of violence, and then to respect those sovereign nations."] • The left, uncomfortable with the application of power, has come up empty, besides vague hopes of addressing root causes of terror. It seems to believe that principled opposition is enough, and has no plan that will ensure the security of Americans. The left is certainly very well meaning and would be unlikely to make the mistakes of the current administration, but it presents no alternative plan for addressing the treacherous situations that the U.S. alone faces. Reading the newspapers and watching the TV, partisans for either side ignore either the failure of the Iraq war to make us safer (and call any such claim 'treason') or the emptiness of Democratic politics, which seems to boil down to hoping that things go badly in Iraq and in the U.S. economy, then complaining about it (that, and calling the president a 'terrorist'). The rhetoric on both sides has become so strident because it no longer needs to be connected to facts or solutions, only to perceived tactical advantage. Partisans can yell and scream and call each other liars, because pretty much everything that is said is not going to solve any actual problems anyway. Technorati Tags: politics

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