8-29-08

8-29-08--In the first major oil deal Iraq has made with a foreign country since 2003, the Iraqi government and the China National Petroleum Corporatin have signed a contract in Beijinbg that woulc be worth up to $3 billion, Iraqi official said Thursday. NYT A9

thank you GWB

8-27-08--By Bernd Debusmann--REUTERS - At the Beijing Olympics, China trounced the United States in the contest for gold medals. In the Caucasus, Russia inflicted a humiliating military defeat on Georgia, America's closest ally in the region. At home, the U.S. economy is in deep trouble. The misery index, a combination of the rates of inflation and unemployment, stands at its highest in 16 years (11.3 percent in July) and there are forecasts of worse to come. The Olympics marked China's status as a world power and the first time since 1996 that Americans did not win most gold medals. In the Caucasus, Russia showed that it can do as it sees fit in its own backyard, no matter how loudly Washington protests. That includes recognizing as independent states the two breakaway provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, that Georgia claims as its own. In the Great Power game in the region, the score so far is Russia 1, U.S. nil. ... Given the perils of crystal-gazing into the future shape of the world, it is not easy to find an expert willing to hazard a guess on how long American supremacy will last. But there is at least one, Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University who two years ago correctly forecast the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble and the dismal chain of events that followed. At the time, many of his fellow economists snickered. ...One of America's most serious problems, Roubini writes on his website, is the fact that the U.S. is the world's biggest net borrower and net debtor. The countries financing the American deficits are its rivals, China and Russia, and Middle Eastern oil exporters. ...History, he says, provides lessons on the importance of financial prudence. "Empires ... tend to be net lenders, i.e. run current account surpluses. The decline of the British Empire started in World War II when the British fiscal deficits in the war and the current account deficits turned the empire into a net borrower and a net debtor." The British twin deficits were being financed by a rising power that was a net lender and a net creditor - the United States. Whether it will ever return to that state depends, in part, on the competence, or lack of it, of the next U.S. administration. President George W. Bush's team did not set a good example.

late weekend update

8-24-08—“What option do I have?” said Richard Wilson, 82, a Harvard physicist and an expert on nuclear power and environmental risk [at a Global Risk conference in Sicily]. “I could go down to Hilton Head and take a little club and knock a ball around the course, but I don’t find that a very attractive thought.” NYT

8-23/24-08—Now 40% of black students at Ivy League colleges are first- or second- generation immigrants... The growing prominence of black immigrants is prompting some to favor the term “black” as more accurate, and inclusive, than “African-American.” But the growing divresitiy of blacks in America, epitomized by Sen. Obama, also breeds tension. “I have definitely heard parents and friends who are Rwandan tell me, ‘You don’t want to associate with African-Americans. They are lazy. They have bad habits,’” says Mr. Mahirwe, [a] Columbia student. “And I am friends with African-Americans who will say, ‘Look at those Aricans. They take our jobs. They think they are better than us.’” WSJ A4

8-23-08—“The end of an empire is messy at best/And this empire is ending/Like all the rest”—Randy Newman, “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country” [on album Harps and Angels] NYT A25

8-19-08

8-19-08—From the Caspian Sea to South America, Western oil companies are being squeezed out of resource-rich provinces. NYT A1

--Secretary of Stte Condoleezza Rice said Monday that the US would not push for Georgia to be allowed into NATO at an emergency meeting on Tuesday, a tacit admission that America and its European allies lack the stomach for a military fight with Russia ... THE US, bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, has little appetite for an armed confrontation with Russia ... as demonstrated by the swiftness with which the Bush administration ruled out a military response to the Georgia-Russia fighting. NYT A10

--In China, Jocks don’t rule school; but the smart kids, they’re cool. WSJ , A10

Stella!!

August 20-21, 1968. Over 200,000 Soviet troops (eventually 650,000) invade Czechoslovakia.

Aug. 17, 2008--Mr. Stewart has said he is looking forward to the end of the Bush administration “as a comedian, as a person, as a citizen, as a mammal.” NYT, Arts

--“Our biggest financiers are China, Russia and the gulf states,” Roubini noted. “These are rivals, not allies. The US, Roubini noted, will likely muddle through the crisis but will emerge from it a different nation, with a different place in the world. “Once you run current-account deficits, you depend on the kindness of strangers ... This might be the beginning of the end of the American empire.” NYT Mag p. 29

--At Pollster.com, which aggregates polls and gauges the electoral count, Obama as of Friday stood at 284 electoral votes, McCain at 169. That means McCain could win all 85 electoral voters in current toss up states and still lose the election. –Frank Rich

--Mexicans were counted in a separate racial category in the 1920 census, but 10 years later that classification was dropped and the results were revised to count Mexicans as white. (As recently as the 1960s, there was no Hispanic category in the census at all; Asian Indians were classified as white.) A century ago or so ago, the Irish Catholics, Italians, Eastern Europeans and even some Germans who arrived in droves in the US were not universally considered white. (Much earlier, Benjamin Franklin feared that his fellow white Pennsylvanians would be overwhelmed by swarming Germans, who “will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have will not in my opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”) NYT, Nation, 6

Stella!!

August 20-21, 1968. Over 200,000 Soviet troops (eventually 650,000) invade Czechoslovakia.

Aug. 17, 2008--Mr. Stewart has said he is looking forward to the end of the Bush administration “as a comedian, as a person, as a citizen, as a mammal.” NYT, Arts

--“Our biggest financiers are China, Russia and the gulf states,” Roubini noted. “These are rivals, not allies. The US, Roubini noted, will likely muddle through the crisis but will emerge from it a different nation, with a different place in the world. “Once you run current-account deficits, you depend on the kindness of strangers ... This might be the beginning of the end of the American empire.” NYT Mag p. 29

--At Pollster.com, which aggregates polls and gauges the electoral count, Obama as of Friday stood at 284 electoral votes, McCain at 169. That means McCain could win all 85 electoral voters in current toss up states and still lose the election. –Frank Rich

--Mexicans were counted in a separate racial category in the 1920 census, but 10 years later that classification was dropped and the results were revised to count Mexicans as white. (As recently as the 1960s, there was no Hispanic category in the census at all; Asian Indians were classified as white.) A century ago or so ago, the Irish Catholics, Italians, Eastern Europeans and even some Germans who arrived in droves in the US were not universally considered white. (Much earlier, Benjamin Franklin feared that his fellow white Pennsylvanians would be overwhelmed by swarming Germans, who “will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have will not in my opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”) NYT, Nation, 6

all apologies

8-14-08—US [former emperor of the world] GWBush’s implicit threat of financial retaliation against Russia faces a major obstacle: the US and the EU don’t have much economic sway right now over oil-rich Moscow. WSJ A7

--Now energy experts say that the hostilities between Russia and Georgia could threaten USA plans to gain access to more of Central Asia’s energy resources in a year when booming demand in Asia and tight supplies helped push the price of oil to record highs. ... At the very least, the analysts warn, Russia may figure even more prominently in shaping the region’s energy future.—NYT a10

--APOLOGY TO GWBUSH—this humble blogger thought GWB’s major foreign policy achievement would be to break the USA Empire and deliver power to Iran—silly me, Kaiser GW doesn’t woosie around, he gave the world to RUSSIA, not to some silly ass towel heads living off 3000 year old glories from Persia....