Author: john

…and some days I want to expand that and say every jurisdiction does. But lets talk China for a moment. Apparently, the Americans are suddenly concerned that China, having gone hot and cold in regional politics, is going cold again:

Hu and Obama met Thursday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, amid increasing regional angst at what the Obama administration and several East Asian countries see as China’s increasingly aggressive and arrogant foreign policy.

Of course, it’s just possible the Chinese have actual reasons for what they’re doing:

There are currently two factions shaping the internal Chinese debate. One could be described as a “status quo” faction that does not seek major changes in the relationship with the United States. It sees the U.S. as a benign power supporting an international system that is conducive to continued Chinese economic, scientific, and cultural development – despite longstanding contentious, but manageable, disagreements on Taiwan, trade, and human rights.

The other faction, which is less cohesive but more bellicose, believes the United States feels threatened by China’s rapid development and that the U.S. is seeking to contain and constrain it in a variety of ways, including aggravating disputes between China and its neighbors and limiting Chinese access to resources, markets, and technology. These diffuse but potentially volatile anxieties are being employed by a variety of anti-status quo political personalities in the broader internal struggle over China’s future – and the future of the Chinese Communist Party – that is animating the upcoming transition to a new Chinese administration.

The split between these factions within the Committee has led to deadlock. Until the Committee comes to a decision, Chinese officials do not have a policy to guide engagement with the United States. So they are in a holding pattern that is reflected in their interactions with their U.S. counterparts.

U.S. officials should not be surprised by the feelings of distrust toward the United States. Over the past several decades the United States pursued policies that some members of the Chinese leadership found threatening.

What’s really rich is hearing US policy makers describe China’s foreign policy as “aggressive and arrogant”. Until China invades an oil-rich state on the pretense of finding weapons of mass destruction, kills more than a million people in the process, and then never finds a single shred of evidence to justify its crimes, I think the US should really STFU about China’s foreign policy.

…and some days I want to expand that and say every jurisdiction does. But lets talk China for a moment. Apparently, the Americans are suddenly concerned that China, having gone hot and cold in regional politics, is going cold again: Hu and Obama met Thursday on the sidelines of the

As long as Axelrod was helping Obama capture the White House, it was easy to assume both men subscribed to the same worldview… The development shattered the tentative understanding between Axelrod and the wonks. Geithner believed that you cease to be an advanced economy once the government starts dissolving contracts.

As long as Axelrod was helping Obama capture the White House, it was easy to assume both men subscribed to the same worldview…

The development shattered the tentative understanding between Axelrod and the wonks. Geithner believed that you cease to be an advanced economy once the government starts dissolving contracts. Axelrod and other senior political aides, like Gibbs, felt the administration had to respond to the country’s legitimate outrage. They began to worry that Geithner’s principled caution, while noble, could bring the administration down. The president was exasperated but ultimately sided with Geithner on the letter of the law.

Politically, it didn’t work. “If you were going to pick a moment when the whole thing turned on Obama,” says a longtime Democratic consultant, “it was the moment the administration saved the AIG bonuses.”

There’s so much that could be said about that quote, from Noam Scheiber’s TNR article on David Axelrod. But two points that I’d really like to focus on:

1) Note what you can and can’t do in an “advanced” economy: the UAW saw their contracts and pension agreements torn up like confetti to save GM and Chrysler, but banker contracts are sacrosanct. This, fundamentally, is Obama’s worldview. (The GM-AIG comparison is entirely fair, because both companies were on government life support at the time.) The difference between how workers of different collars, and colours, were treated is a pretty good indication of the ruling ideology in the west these days.

2) There’s been an argument since, oh, before he was even inaugurated about people being disillusioned with Obama. I’ve chimed in on this more than once, but re-read that first line I quoted again. David Axelrod is probably closer to Barack Obama than all but one or two men not directly related to the President. They spoke several times daily during the campaign, Axelrod knows Obama’s politics better than almost anyone alive.

And even he has faced the same problems of reconciling his expectation of candidate Obama with the reality of President Obama.

That seems worth noting, to me.

Jesus, two weeks without a single post. That’s a new level of suck for me, I think.Apologies. Real life has intervened in a most obtrusive way. Meanwhile, I laughed quite heartily at this. If you’ve been to any university in the last 20 years or so,…

Jesus, two weeks without a single post. That’s a new level of suck for me, I think. Apologies. Real life has intervened in a most obtrusive way. Meanwhile, I laughed quite heartily at this. If you’ve been to any university in the last 20 years or so, I’d wager the

Here’s some news from the UK, from a while back:But documents obtained under the FoI Act seen by the Observer show that a “peak oil workshop” brought together staff from the DECC, the Bank of England and Ministry of Defence among others to discuss the …

Here’s some news from the UK, from a while back: But documents obtained under the FoI Act seen by the Observer show that a “peak oil workshop” brought together staff from the DECC, the Bank of England and Ministry of Defence among others to discuss the issue. A ministry note

This is a very impressive movie:Note especially the change starting in the very late 1990s. It’s like somebody suddenly turned on a light somewhere between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter (Jove is the outermost planet on the margins.)

This is a very impressive movie: Note especially the change starting in the very late 1990s. It’s like somebody suddenly turned on a light somewhere between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter (Jove is the outermost planet on the margins.)

Ugh. Watch as another entirely discredited voice gets free press for belatedly coming to grips with the facts that were in front of his face the entire time. The world’s most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is “undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the

Ugh. Watch as another entirely discredited voice gets free press for belatedly coming to grips with the facts that were in front of his face the entire time.

The world’s most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is “undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today” and “a challenge humanity must confront”, in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby.

Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled “sceptical environmentalist” once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN’s climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.

But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. “Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century,” the book concludes.

So Lomborg is only about twelve years late to the party. This makes him twelve years less credible than, say, Jim Hansen or Joe Romm. He is also a direct analog to the voices who came out against the Iraq War, circa 2006-2007.

Interesting side note: In Canadian English, “Bjorn Lomborg” is properly pronounced “Michael Ignatieff”.

10 years ago today, me and a girl went out on a date. Everything else in my life has followed from that day in my life as surely as night follows day. When Vicki and I started dating, I was what polite company would call “between opportunities” and what impolite