Oikeutta Qaddafille

Kymmeniätuhansia ihmisä tappanut Muammar Qaddafi sai muutaman minuutin ajan kokea saman, mitä hän pakotti monet libyalaiset (ja ulkomaalaiset) kokemaan 42 vuoden ajan. Tähän oikeudenmukaisuuden pilkkeeseen suomalaiset reagoivat odotetusti:

Yhdysvallat on ryhtynyt liittolaisineen tappamaan itselleen epämieluisia henkisiä johtajia lennokeilla ja nyt valtionpäämiehiä taistelukoneilla. Kansainvälisen yhteisön tulisi tuomita tämä kovin ottein. -millä oikeudella

Liittouma sai YK:lta oikeudet ilmatilan suojeluun, mutta tosiasiallisesti vastoin YK:n lupaa pommitti siviilejä ja perääntyviä maajoukkoja. Raukkamaista ja rikollista. Sarkozy ja Obama tulisi viedä Haagin sotarikostuomioistuimeen tuomittaviksi. -HINNATALAS

Antaa tietysti tyylikkään kuvan uusista vallanpitäjistä: vanha mies pyytää armoa pakomatkalla ja hänet murhataan...
Eipä ihme että Amerikassa ja Ranskassa ja Italiassa ollaan ylpeitä, tämähän on juuri sitä toimintaa mihin heitä koulutetaan. -Juho-Kusti

Laittomasta väkivallasta puheenollen, olikohan tämä Naton toimi lentokiellon ylläpitämistä vai siviilien suojelemista vai YK:n mandaatin vastainen? -Johan On

Taas on länsiliittouman siunauksella oksennettu eurooppalaisen oikeuskäsityksen ja ihmisarvojen kasvoille. Ja tälle irvokkaalle lopputulokselle kansa sekä johtajat hurraavat, niin barbaarisessa Afrikassa kuin "sivistyneessä" lännessä. -roomalainen

Tämä tapahtumasarja on aivan järkyttävää valtion sisäisiin asiohin puuttumista ja sen luonnonvarojen ryöstöä. Mitä tutkimista siinä on, että Gaddafi nyt tapettiin, kun sitä eilen oikein peräänkuulutettiin?
Eikö Naton pitänyt olla vain suojaamistehtävissä, eikä sodassa?
Vanha sana, mutta sitä tämä on: imperialismia. -Erkki

Suurin piirtein yhtä innostuneesti täällä suhtauduttiin Osaman kuolemaan.

China is not a model

The Economist has another typical article that degenerates into treating China with words like "ooh" and "aah". First the article lists economic and political similarities between the US and the EU and then starts drawing comparisons to China, implying that the Chinese government (or any authoritarian regime) could cope with financial crises more effectively than "dysfunctional" democracies. Maybe, but let's not start treating China as some kind of a model until comparisons between the West and China become valid. Despite the fact that the Chinese GDP soon catches up with that of the US, their current GDP per capita is less than one tenth of that of the US. The time to start drawing comparisons is when the Communist party has made it possible for the Chinese to enjoy Western levels of prosperity. With their current political and economic system there's no chance of that happening.

There's one good point there though: "Every year China continues to grow, the case that countries need to be democracies in order to become wealthy and developed becomes more tenuous."

Of course, this is nothing new. During the Cold War many 3rd world countries adopted the Soviet system as an economic model. What failed them was not any lack of democracy but the centrally-planned economic system that China has now somewhat abandoned. Even in the West many countries were economically liberal before they were politically liberal. It was the wealth brought on by Capitalism that made people in the West demand more political liberties. This is also what makes the Chinese leadership so nervous.

It is Capitalism that brings stability in the first place because materially well-off people have a lot to lose if they resort to petty factionalism. (No wonder then that Communist revolutions took place exactly where Marx least expected them.) This is why democratic countries that have been made prosperous by Capitalism are stable while attempts to introduce democracy prior to Capitalism tend to result in failures.

The Power of Ideas and the Middle East

I recently finished reading Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, a controversial book according to which the liberal democratic system would ultimately prevail over alternatives. The book, based on an article in the National Interest, was written at a time when the Soviet system was collapsing. To put it simply, Fukuyama's thesis relies on two arguments:

1) Scientific knowledge, which Fukuyama associates with modern capitalism, accumulates in the sense that it's not possible to reverse the course of scientific advancement and as such it's not really possible to reverse the course of human history (for extended periods, that is).

2) People everywhere possess what Fukuyama calls thymos (from Ancient Greek), the desire for recognition, which goes unfulfilled in non-democratic systems because dictatorships don't recognize individuals as sovereign, as adults capable of independent thought and action. Thymos is just one part of the soul, however, as the soul also has desiring and reasoning parts.

If prosperity brought on by the free-market economy can fulfill the desiring and reasoning parts of the "soul", the thymotic part of the soul can only be fulfilled by granting the individual some inalienable rights, including the right to participate in the political process. Democracy can also effectively restrain individuals with megalothymia, the desire to be recognized as superior to others, while still allowing these individuals to excel in ways that don't interfere with the rights of others. And once this liberal democratic system has been imposed, it's unlikely to collapse. We may have thousands of unsatisfied people at any given time but they have no credible alternatives to liberal democracy. (The downside, according to Fukuyama, is that a world where people no longer have to struggle for recognition is a world without great human achivements; a world that is, simply put, boring.)

Fukuyama's book was written at a time when Easter Europe was going through a series of revolutions, the Autumn of Nations, which resulted in what had been considered unthinkable up until then; total disintegration of the Soviet Union with no shots fired (technically that's not true but you get the point). Now there's a chance of something similar happening in the Middle East, at least with respect to "struggle for recognition".

Of course the events in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan are not the first phases of a liberal revolution but they do address something that Arab dictators have long tried to ignore; the need of the average Arab citizen to be recognized as a citizen, not a subject. But the definition of a citizen varies as there are more competing societal models in the Middle East than there were in Europe in 1989. Communism had promised material abundance which never materialized. The free market system, on the other hand, had been tried and proven by then, so there was no question as to what should replace communism. Traditional authoritarianism in the Middle East might as well be replaced with an Islamic alternative. Islam is hostile to both free markets and democracy and Islamic movements in countries such as Egypt are anxious to consolidate power after having settled for a minor role for decades.

Islam remains a threat to the Middle East because there's no tradition of secularism in the Muslim world. Europe had Reformation, and the wars it brought, but many Muslims still dream of going back to the old days, days when the Muslim world was united under one caliphate bent on expansion. Fukuyama argues that Christianity contributed to democracy in spreading the idea that all people are equal in the eyes of God. The problem was that this would matter in afterlife only. God had to be taken off the equation - Christianity had to be secularized (at first via Reformation, then via the Enlightenment) before the idea of equality could be applied to our existence on this rock. Except for countries like Turkey which went through a process of quick and forced secularization, the Muslim world has yet to witness a similar process.

But while the current situation is not a liberal revolution and while it carries great risks, it's not the starting point for the establishment of a new caliphate either. Yesterday (on Fox News) Glenn Beck was going on about how the situation in the Middle East could lead to the establishment of a new caliphate, stretching all the way from Pakistan to the UK. This is of course a completely ludicrous idea. While there's no tradition of secularism in the Muslim world, the average Egyptian is not exactly a puritan Muslim either and as such is not too keen to hand power to extremists. The very fact that the extremist Muslim Brotherhood has tried to appear as a moderate force throughout the crisis pretty much proves this. Egypt is not the Iran of 1979 in the sense that there isn't a similar backlash against modernization (Westernization) in Egypt. Another obstacle to a caliphate is nationalism, which played a prominent role in the struggle against European colonial powers. While the Muslim identity surpasses the national identity, this does not automatically mend fences between dozens of Muslim groups. The United Arab Republic lasted for only three years even at a time when Egypt and Syria shared a common enemy. With different factions killing - or waiting for the opportunity to kill - each other, how can anyone expect these people to form a caliphate when they are nowhere near getting their own houses in order? The fact that Beck wears glasses these days doesn't make him any smarter. 

At the moment the situation in the Middle East seems chaotic and the outcome unpredictable but the prospect of a change in a system that is hostile to all three parts of Fukuyama's "soul" sounds better than mere stability. The status quo, which the Western world has helped maintain, has been feeding resentment in the Middle East for decades now with hardly any proof that it's been worth it.

"Cairo today is all of Egypt," he said. "I want my son to have a better life and not suffer as much as I did ... I want to feel like I chose my president."

LaFeber's recipe for economic growth

In one of the most biased textbooks I have ever read, Walter LaFeber states the following in his America, Russia, and the Cold War:

5. Are the American people prepared for the post-Cold War world?
(...) The Soviet Union, after all, rotted from the inside out. On the other hand, Japan's and Germany's rise to economic power occurred because of their educated workforces, intelligent governmental guidance, ability to plan long-term and high savings rates (three to four times the rates of Americans) that catered money for investment rather than a towering consumer indebtedness.

Not a mention of free markets, only references to planning, guidance and having lots of intelligent people. If that's all it takes, then why exactly did the Soviet Union collapse? They had some of the best scientists in the world, free university education and a whole lot of planning. I guess their planning wasn't intelligent enough. The Soviet Union also had a high investment rate, with investments allocated by "intelligent" technocrats. And how did it turn out?

As for Japan and Germany, neither really managed to plan long-term. The Japanese government got so entangled in subsidizing its enterprises that when the time came to pull the plug, they couldn't, as a result of which Japan has had two lost decades. Germany has been liberalizing its economy precisely because some of the welfare state policies it adopted are not sustainable in the long run. When these two economies grew the fastest after the war, it was in large part thanks to catching up after being torn to pieces by years of war. Compared to the rest of the world, their economies were still overwhelmingly liberal (as in free). The fact is that both countries would have witnessed similar, maybe even much higher, growth rates if their governments had simply kept their hands off. This is the recipe that allowed the West to rise above the rest of the world in the first place, long before anyone even dared to mention "public education".

Praising education as some Holy Grail is dangerous; it sends governments on a wild-goose chase, as if educating the people of Africa somehow could bring about an economic miracle. Don't forget that our comprehensive public education system appeared relatively late, decades after we had shed ourselves of extreme poverty that so plagues the (un)developing world.

Avatar: Cameron's manifesto

One word defines this film: naivety. In James Cameron's world, white men are evil capitalists who're willing to slaughter innocent natives or sacrifice colonists and marines for a profit. The natives are of course depicted as beings living in total harmony (even symbiosis, as in the film) with nature, which is how the left views tribes living in rainforests and on the prairie. In fact, harmony is an understatement: Cameron goes to great lenghts to push some sort of a Gaia hypothesis.

Of course, I wouldn't use the word harmony to describe the relationship some natives are perceived to have with their environment in our world. In reality, the relationship is one of oppression, based on keeping the native population in check. This also explains why natives (be that the Na'vi in Avatar or some bushmen in Africa) have little use for precious minerals lying beneath their "sacred" lands.

To be more specific, the relationship with nature is one of death, famine and an endless stream of deadly diseases. The population size is kept constant so that there's no need to build megacities, not to mention spaceships. It is only after this "harmony" is broken that man is able to break free from the oppression of his environment and of his tribe where individuals are delegated to roles they were chosen for by their elders (or some imaginary beings).

This oppression, or harmony, is not anyone's choice. It's merely a sad state of affairs. An individual wishes to preserve his or hers genetic heritance. Pumping out as many babies as you can, hoping that one or two of them reaches maturity is not ideal considering the opportunity costs of being nothing but a birth machine which is why we desire to improve our living standards so that we can settle for a smaller number of children. To get around this oppression, we discover ways to exploit our surroundings, to cultivate land. This results in production surpluses. We end up having countries instead of small and isolated tribal areas which are far from ideal from a genetic point of view; problems such as inbreeding depression result from low levels of genetic variation.

Since living in that state of oppression is not a choice, it's only stupid for people to perceive this primitive way of life as something that is much closer to man's true nature. It's usually echoed that Western people have lost their touch with that something magical in the dirt and have embraced techno-consumer culture instead. Of course, that "something magical" is nothing but ignorance. Having lost this ignorance does not make us Westerners any poorer but richer, both materially and spiritually. Science and magic cannot co-exist. Pockets of superstition and oppression such as Indian tribes or Islamic neighborhoods cannot exist where the West rules.

And then there's imperialism. We are to believe that Westerners only brought tears and sorrow to the darkest corners of the world while in reality we brought technology, education and, ironically, the means (agricultural technology, food aid and modern medicine) to maintain surplus populations in 3rd world countries, populations that would not exist without Western aid. (This wouldn't be such a bad thing if 3rd world economies were liberalized in order to end this dependency. Aid, however, only provides an excuse not to liberalize.) Of course, property should not be taken by force (although property rights of extraterrestrials have not been defined: would we consider aliens as animals, comparable to dogs and cats instead of humans?) as in the movie, not when it's already being utilized by the natives.

Even worse, in the film imperialism is mixed with modern American politics. America never was an imperial nation (except for their sole possession, the Philippines). The film makes references to America's post-9/11 foreign policy, mentioning well-known concepts such as "pre-emptive strikes" and "shock & awe". In the movie, marines are used to further commercial interests, pushing the ridiculously simplistic view that the Iraq War is/was about oil. This only hurts the credibility of the movie and it's totally unnecessary. (The same thing happened with V for Vendetta.)

As a 3D experience the first half of the movie was incredible but the story (its premise was copied directly from Unreal) turned out to be so repulsive, predictable and naive that I was in great pains watching the second half. No wonder: Cameron's political views have been well known since at least Aliens but while Aliens is a brilliant movie with subtle reflections on human nature, Avatar is an in-your-face type of political manifesto.

Zimbabwesta afrikkalainen mallimaa

Zimbabwesta on tullut afrikkalainen utopia valkoisten imperialistien jälkeläisten jätettyä maan:

Maan uusjako [eli eurooppalaisperäisten maatilojen siirtäminen afrikkalaisille] syöksi Zimbabwen talouden sekasortoon. Valkoiset suurtilat tuottivat yli puolet Zimbabwen vientituloista ja työllistivät satojatuhansia mustia.

Nyt Zimbabwe joutuu tuomaan ruokaa ulkomailta, sillä oma ruoantuotanto on romahtanut.

Tähän ei voi muuta sanoa kuin että sitä saa mitä tilaa. Nyt olisi myös oiva tilaisuus lakkauttaa kaikki Zimbabween menevä kehitysapu ihan vaan siitä syystä, että kannustimet omien asioiden kuntoon hoitamiseen saataisiin paikalleen.

Mitä muuten tulee maatalouteen, EU nähtävästi pyrkii syventämään Zimbabwen ongelmia entisestään dumppaamalla subventoituja maataloustuotteita maailmanmarkkinoille:

Maitotuotteiden alhaiset maailmanmarkkinahinnat ovat painaneet tuottajien tuloja niin, että EU:ssa ollaan ottamassa käyttöön jo kertaalleen romukoppaan heitetyt juuston vientituet.

Niiden avulla EU:n sisämarkkinoilla kummitteleva "juustovuori" saadaan heivattua yli rajojen toisten niskaan.

Kenellekään ei nähtävästi ole tullut mieleen, että maataloustukien lakkauttaminen myös lakkauttaisi ylijäämätuotannon.