Any writing I do about Central Asia tends to the more historical and runs away from the contemporary political. Mostly for the reason that the reporting out of the region--I'm not talking about Afghanistan, here--tends to be so bad, so mis- and ill-informed. Take Reuters for example:

Analysts say long-defunct groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan are regaining force in the impoverished region where ethnic tensions have long simmered under the surface.

"They (militants) are preparing the ground for a long, sustained military campaign in Central Asia," said Ahmed Rashid, a leading Pakistan-based expert on Afghanistan and Central Asia.

And then they go on to give this example or 'terrorism:'

First alarm bells rang in Central Asia last year when Uzbek, Tajik and Kyrgyz troops fought gangs they described as terrorist -- around the time when the security situation in northern Afghanistan deteriorated sharply.

"It does not matter who exactly was behind those attacks. It still means instability, that something's going on," said one Western diplomat. "It is certainly something we are watching."

Of course they cite the defunct IMU of Juma Namangani--he who was killed in late 2001 by a US missile. And they raise the phantom of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a millenialist and anti-secular group who aims to reestablish an Islamic Caliphate by peaceful means. HT has never engaged in any form of violence, which is probably why the authorities in the region dislike them so much.

Of course the writer of the story really buries the lede:

"It is the Central Asian regimes that continue terrorising their people," said Taji Mustafa, [the HT] representative in London. "Since the declaration of the West's so-called 'war on terror', Central Asian governments have used it as a convenient umbrella to pursue, arrest and torture their political opponents."

Maybe the media ought to look into that angle?

QOTD:

This brings me to the second telling event of last week when President Obama said, kind of off-hand, apropos of the US economic situation, "You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (of Nevada) was all over Mr. Obama like a cheap suit for that. I'm sorry that the President didn't slam back the craven Mr. Reid and pull his upper lip over the top of his head. Fuck Las Vegas and fuck Nevada, and fuck all the casino operators in every pulsating gambling venue around this country. The last thing we need is to continue believing that it is possible to get something for nothing, or an industry based on that false principle. I'd go a lot further and shut down legalized gambling all over the USA, send it back to the margins, to the alleys, to the berm between the WalMart and the Target Store, to the basement boiler rooms, to the public bathrooms, to wherever it will be identified as indecent, shameful, and not healthy.

I've never been a gambler and opposed the legalization of gambling across the country for one key reason: it is a regressive tax. Those who can least afford it end up paying for it. So, if you want the lottery to fund your schools, as we did in Texas--and seriously, what the hell kind of mixed message do you we send out kids? Then you make the poor pay for it via lottery tickets.

Why bother getting everyone to pay for it fairly?

It's immoral and shameful.

All this gnashing of teeth about the Czar's inner circle is such old news. I wrote about this months ago. But it's certainly easier for Americans to blame the evil advisers of the Czar than accept the fact that the Czar shares their assumptions and ideas.

As I wrote then: "Seriously, this is a narrative trope straight out of Czarist Russia, when the peasants, long oppressed and over-taxed bemoan the fact that their Czar loves them, but is surrounded by evil ministers."

Occam's Razor, the Goodness of Fit, whatever you test you want to use, the bottom line is that Obama's advisers are a reflection of the man. Not the other way around.

As analogies go, it's decent, but I don't think it's a snug fit:

What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.

A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Actually, I think our situation is much more analogous to that of ancient Athens. But that's just me.

Congratulations New Orleans to a championship well earned! And to fans who, after 42 years of futility, finally got what they most deserved!

I remember the early days of the coffee boom, late eighties early nineties when Seattle grunge and the coffee shop atmosphere was all the rage. In San Antonio and Houston a few hip coffee shops popped up. Candlelight in SA and a nice place in the Museum District in Houston. Of course, there was no wifi yet, so they were nice places to order a cup of Joe and curl up with a good book. Or play a video game on my oversized, underpowered laptop with about as much free memory as a gnats brain.

But within a few short years Starbucks stores were popping up on every corner and all the little independent coffee shops were put out of business. The honeymoon with Starbucks actually lasted a long time, considering. But today, I sense the reverse happening. As if there is a large cultural backlash against the mega-corp, no matter how much good they claim to do.

I'm in San Antonio for the day. I pulled up Yelp to see if there were any independents in town. San Antonio is kind of a cultural laggard, but also somewhat of a bell-weather, in the sense that when something happens in San Antonio, it's already happened everywhere else. (I don't notice these things in Austin, as Austin is usually years ahead of San Antonio.) And so, I was very surprised to see a long list of independent coffee houses here. I'm sitting in a pretty classy joint right now. The wifi is free--unlike Starbucks--and the coffee is good. It's a clean, modern looking place, in a kind of anti-Starbucks vein. It's nice to see.

Anyone else notice this happening in your town?

From I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay.:

This is how it’s supposed to work. A well-run bank is a machine for making money. The basic principle of banking is to pay a low rate of interest to the people who lend money and charge a higher rate to the people who borrow it. The bank borrows at 3 percent (say), and lends at 6 percent, and as long as it keeps the two amounts in line and makes sure that it lends money only to people who will be able to pay it back, it will reliably make money forever.

Reliably make money forever! Instead the banksters got greedy, decided that a return on equity of anything less than 25% per annum was unacceptable began their binge of serial acquisitions and soon we all crashed headlong into a crisis.

Me? I'd rather make money reliably forever. Boring is good. Singles win championships and all that. But hey, I'm not a greedy, megalomaniacal, ego-centered fucktard.

From tonight's Nelson Report:

SUMMARY: preceding the President's talk to US business persons about the pressing need for China to allow the RMB to be revalued, Treasury Secretary Geithner called his Chinese counterpart, Wang Qishen.

Content of the call? Two versions: from the US, Geithner warned Wang that patience here has expired, and that if China does not launch a solid move toward rebalancing by the end of March, Obama will authorize Treasury to "cite" the PRC for currency manipulation in the twice-annual report to Congress, first due in April.

Chinese version: Wang told Geithner where he could put it, and seemingly threatened a pullback on T-bill purchases, and retaliation on US exports to China.

Discussion, below.

More after the jump.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Synoia makes the right connections:

It's only a short step to [defining] a terrorist as someone who is seen by our government as opposed to it.

That's the real fear of this whole issue. That's the key takeaway. That's the whole point by calling it a slippery slope. It is only a matter of time before our government uses these powers against anyone, American or not, they see as opposing the government. Period.

Due process was explicitly included in the Constitution for a reason. As the Fifth Amendment States:

No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

The bureaucratic power of signing a death warrant without any due process or at the very minimum, judicial oversight, is giving the government far too much power.

If you don't think a government run amok cannot happen here, you clearly have not read your history. Sure, nothing is inevitable, but nothing, absolutely nothing is impossible, either.

It's time to have a pretty serious talk about Iran and nuclear weapons. The day is fast approaching where Iran will have the capability to manufacture high quality fissile material. I remember writing about Iran back in 2005 and the projections for said capability were somewhere in the time-frame of 2010-12. We're getting close. Bush missed the opportunity of the century to cut a deal with Iran and Obama didn't have much of a chance. He started out well, but then the election and subsequent protests in Iran changed the calculus of the regime in Tehran and the opportunity was pretty much lost. Who's fault? Everyone's and no one's, basically. But, as I said, the time is coming when Iran will have a break out capacity.

Now, I'm generally opposed to proliferation. I think it's a bad idea for new nations to acquire nuclear weapons and think the wisest course is for the current nuclear powers to do their best to put the genie back in the bottle. (Dream on, right?) At the same time, I'm realistic enough to realize that Iran is going to do what Iran is going to do. Iran has its own national interest and its own defense logic. And if it were only about Iran and the US, then I think I'd be okay with Iran having the bomb. As someone else wrote in a place I cannot find on the internet, acquiring the bomb tends to make nations much more circumspect in their foreign policy. And I think it would have a moderating influence on Iran. After all, they would have to know that if they attempted to nuke the US or its European allies the result would be a glass wasteland from the Zagros to the Dasht-i-Kavir. It would also give the US pause in its dealings with Iran, as any attack on Iran would have frightful consequences to our interests in the region as well, and quite possibly at home. That's all well and good. But if you read between the lines you'll see a faulty assumption at work here. Or, rather a sin of omission: Israel. Israel is the wild-card when it comes to Iran. And at a time when Israel is much less easier to be reigned in by American actions, Israel has a lot more freedom of action, relatively speaking. Not only is Israel a wildcard--it's also a regional spoiler on multiple levels. And I for one, don't know how to square that circle. I am sure there is a way--but I haven't heard it yet.

Bottom line is that some kind of crisis is coming and it's no longer in the medium term. I expect it'll arrive in the next year or two, at the most.

We live in a time of less and less privacy: less privacy of action and apparently, less of thought. If you think for a moment that your digital life is firewalled because of anonymity or can be compartmentalized, think again. There is literally no expectation of privacy for anything you do.

Granted, Twitter feeds are public, by their very nature. But thinking you can read someone's Twitter feed and people aren't looking at who you are reading? C'mon, how stupid are you?

Sure, you can attempt to firewall yourself by creating an anonymous avatar. But that will only get you so far. So, my suggestion is this. It's a kind of corollary to an old letter writing chestnut my father says, "son, don't write it down unless you are absolutely certain you can live with it, forever."

Same goes for the internet. Don't write something down unless you are absolutely certain you can live with the consequences. I speak from personal experience.

What is a terrorist? Is it necessarily Islamic? How about someone who is working against American interests in a place like Bolivia? Or perhaps a Christian Fundamentalist who fled the US for killing an abortion provider and is now rabble-rousing against the godless American liberals in some country, has a cult following and plans on sending many of them back to American to protest and possible firebomb abortion clinics? Perhaps even radical environmentalists? The list is not short. And every one of these categories has, within the last several years, been investigated domestically under terrorist statutes.

The slope is slippery.

And that is why this is literally terrifying:

In a striking admission from the Obama Administration's top intelligence officer, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair announced Wednesday that the United States may target its own citizens abroad for death if it believes they are associated with terrorist groups.

"We take direct action against terrorists in the intelligence community," Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee. He said US counter-terrorism officials may try to kill American citizens embroiled in extremist groups overseas with "specific permission" from higher up.

Who decides what a terrorist is? Who decides who a terrorist is? Apparently it is now nameless and faceless bureaucrats in our national security apparatus. Americans overseas no longer have due process.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

The populist winds are definitely a-blowing:

Bradbury, who served as the Oregon Secretary of State after many years in the state legislature, said that in the third quarter of 2009, the state put $330 million in taxpayer money into large national banks such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank, and Bank of the West. "We sent $330 million to them and didn't get any benefit in terms of real lending activity with our medium and small businesses."

$330,000,000 is not chump change. Proposals like this will certainly get the banksters' attention.

I got an email from someone very upset with the things I have said about India. Here's the email in question, my reply is below:

Mr Kelley: I would appreciate it if you could let me know how long you spent in India and if you made any friends there. Looking at the photos of your trip you obviously enjoyed it-Lions of Gir, Rajasthan an' all that but your observations as per your subsequent writings showed that you did not really like India or Indians.. To me you are like the 'alternate' who goes to Kolkata, looks around for a hotel for $4 a night, eats at the roadside eatery, gets hash cheaply, dresses like an Indian with Kurta and/or Dhoti and then heads off to Benares or Rishikesh or wherever for a 'Spiritual Experience' After the great trip, which is duly notched up against a claim that will be made in the future "I have been 'Everywhere' etc" . On your return to America, after seeing emaciated rickshaw pullers, it would have been comforting to see the well fed obese compatriots and was time to jot down those memories, while still fresh, of observations like the 'shitty' hotel you stayed in (no mention of room price) lack of hot water-rats-cockroaches-pavement dwellers-corruption - on and on and on ad nauseam.

More after the jump.

I wrote an ongoing review of Andrew Ross Sorkin's tale of the financial crisis a few weeks back. My big complaint was that he didn't really bring any analysis to the table:

In the end, that's all the book is: a giant book filled with gossip. The narrative of the Banking Crisis is just a device giving Sorkin the chance to show us all how foul mouthed those bankers are. (As if we didn't know this already?) The real weakness is this, however: Sorkin had a chance to really analyze what went wrong but fails. He's not Lowenstein nor is he Eichenwald. Having read Sorkin at The New York Times for a few years, this makes sense. Sorkin is about access, not about analyzing and challenging the conventional wisdom.

Well, I stumbled upon a book a few days ago by John Lanchester, who usually writes for the London Review of Books. You might remember him, as I posted a comment of his about two years ago noting that it was by far the best take on the crisis so far.

He has a new book out called I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's an easy read. Human but analytical. A macro treatment of the banking crisis but interspersed with lots of very revealing anecdotes. Buy this book. You will not be disappointed.

Let's see if people finally change their minds about taxes when the lights go out:

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

This to me is one of the larger failures of the progressives and Democrats in general: we never talk about what it is your tax dollars do for you! It's never explained in simple, easy to understand terms like, picking up the trash, keeping your streets safe, providing security and health care in your old age. We never talk about the benefits. It's always some kind of abstract, statistical gobbledey-gook. It's very similar to repeated Democratic failure when it comes to income taxes. Instead of saying, "we're going to raise taxes on people who make more than $300,000 a year, they always default to "we're going to raise taxes on the top 3% of earners." It's stupid. Most people in America really believe they are in that percentage.

Progressives and Democrats have ideas that consistently poll above those of the Republicans. But the Democrats fail to enact good policy and fail to communicate it in an easy and understandable way. Instead falling into technocrat speak. And this is what happens.

You've been punked. And you've been pwned! Now, bend over!

This is my kind of job. And he uses Windows, too!

There is a reason Americans detest lawyers. But the reasons to include the bankers in this category keep growing. Take today for example and a conversation I had at a local BofA branch.

"I'd like to cash this check," I said to the teller.

"Do you have an account with us," he asked.

"No."

"Why not? Would you like one?"

"No thank you. BofA is too big for me. I prefer local." (What I was really thinking was a long string of four letter words.)

"Okay, can you sign here. And put your thumbprint here," he said. (I've long since given up trying to protest the thumb print thing. But it is an odious practice.)

"That'll be a six dollar charge by the way."

"Excuse me?"

"Six dollars."

"When did you start charging people $6 for cashing a check drawn on your bank? What, do you think you're check cashing place now? Talk about cheezy and underhanded. Trying to cheat Americans out of every last penny they earn?"

"It's bank policy, sir," he said.

"You're bank policy is a joke. You receive billions from TARP and even more from the Fed in zero interest loans and you wonder why Americans hate you?"

So, I grabbed my check and walked out the door. I motored over to my bank and asked them if they had the same policy:

"No, we don't. Any check drawn on this bank is free to cash."

When did banks start charging a fee to cash checks drawn on that self-same bank? We really are through the looking glass here. Of course, the people who are hurt here are the poor--people who don't have a bank account, or another bank, like I had, to go too.

Bankers really are the new gangsters.

In case anyone was wondering, this is why single payer is the best option. Pay for healthcare via taxes, not a mandate that forces people to buy a substandard product, or a mandate that the most reactionary elements of our politics can reject state by state, as they will most certainly do.

I cannot find it today, but about a year ago I found one of those tag cloud thingies that took keywords from speeches from elections past. (I know, horrible syntax.) Anyway, one of the remarkable things about it was that the word constitution was the most commonly uttered word in campaigns until the 1952 presidential election. I can only derive from this fact that our politicians up to that time were relatively well acquainted with the Constitution and what it meant.

Today? Not so much. Seems the Constitution is nothing but a piece of paper the Senate and Congress and the President can wipe their collective arses with. Sad, no?

That might make a good name for a third party: the Constitutional party. What an idea? Like, you know, adhering to it? Who knew?

A little bathroom humor from Guadaljara. And no, it's not what you think.

Leave it to Republican pollster Frank Luntz to try and reframe the debate using nothing but lies and chutzpah:

If there is one thing we can all agree on, it's that the bad decisions and harmful policies by Washington bureaucrats that in many ways led to the economic crash must never be repeated," Luntz wrote. "This is your critical advantage. Washington's incompetence is the common ground on which you can build support."

Last time I checked, it was the banksters themselves and the intense risks they took which led directly to the Banking Crisis of 2008. But hey, what do I know, I just live in reality, I don't make it!

The Republicans are going to eat Obama's lunch on this.

I remember in the nineties everyone was worried the Japanese were going to eat our lunch. Today the Chinese seem to be the American bete noire, at least when it comes to economic competition. (And yes, I am guilty of hyping this to a degree.) I also remember reading Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers while I was attending university. At that time the deficit hawks were out in full force and the meager deficit of the day seemed almost insurmountable. Kennedy's main thesis, if I recall correctly, was that it was money, not necessarily military power per se, that led to the decline of great powers.

I'm not sure when the collapse will occur. Was Iraq the high water mark of our 'empire of bases' or are there more to come? I don't know. Things that cannot go on forever don't. But, they can go on a lot longer than any of us imagine.

But this budget turned my frugal inner-child sheet white: $3,800,000,000,000. And how much of it goes to the military? It may not be high enough to cause a collapse, but damn, that is a number I never thought I would see, inflation notwithstanding. And I cannot help but to wonder how much more there is to it in our off balance sheet partnerships with the Federal Reserve and Fannie and Freddie?

The worst thing about this budget are our priorities. We need to spend. We need to run deficits right now. The problem is that it's all military Keynesianism and sinking money into off balance sheet problems. The money, as I dissect the budget, seems that it's all being pissed away. That kind of frivolity leads to imperial overreach. We simply cannot solve our problems so we export them, via war.