Davos.…  Here is some back of enve­lope cal­cu­la­tions on why the power élite at Davos (depicted so well in Lau­rie Garrett’s recent pub­lic e-mail) are so mad at the US.  It’s pure eco­nom­ics.  The delayed recov­ery of the US (the only major econ­omy in the world not mired in the muck) and the huge run up in oil prices has body slammed the global econ­omy.  I am fairly sure that the case could be made that this war has already cost the global econ­omy ~2% in growth.  On a $40 tril­lion com­bined GDP that is a $800 b loss, 3/4 of which is borne by peo­ple out­side the US.  That’s $133 in income for every man, woman, and child on the globe that is now gone for­ever.  If the poten­tial 5–10 year global stag­na­tion (ala Japan’s sit­u­a­tion) sce­nar­ios some econ­o­mists are pre­dict­ing come true as a result of this shock, we may see this “lost” growth extend across the decade.  It may now be pos­si­ble to become the Her­bert Hoover of the global econ­omy. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]

I think this is only par­tially cor­rect. I think the econ­omy would be in seri­ous trou­ble no mat­ter what, because the sys­tem of global fiat cur­rency appears to be approach­ing col­lapse. How­ever, the war scare is cer­tainly mak­ing things worse, and mak­ing bad things hap­pen sooner than they oth­er­wise would have. The war will pro­vide a con­ve­nient scape­goat if the eco­nomic cri­sis comes close enough to the war, though.

Charley Reese -

Don’t Worry About Ter­ror­ism — ter­ror­ist acts have a very lim­ited
range. Espe­cially chem­i­cal weapons. They can­not be prop­erly called
weapons of mass destruc­tion. [rrnd]
bq.
I hope no one thinks that the par­tic­i­pants in World War II declined to
use chem­i­cal weapons out of human­i­tar­ian con­cerns. Hardly. They
man­aged to kill 55 mil­lion peo­ple with con­ven­tional weapons. Chem­i­cal
weapons weren’t used because every­body learned in World War I that
they sim­ply aren’t that effective.

…

Bio­log­i­cal agents prob­a­bly have a greater poten­tial to kill a lot of
peo­ple, but even these are no rea­son to panic. Mankind has been liv­ing
with anthrax, small­pox, plague and what­ever for thou­sands of
years. Anthrax and plague can be treated today. Small­pox was still
around when I was a kid, and we all got a vac­ci­na­tion. Today, there
are no known cases of small­pox any­where on Earth, and so far as any­one
knows for a dead cer­tainty, only Rus­sia and the United States have
small­pox viruses in storage.

I heard one moron on tele­vi­sion recently say that small­pox could kill
25 mil­lion peo­ple. Well, only if 75 mil­lion peo­ple were infected,
since smallpox’s mor­tal­ity is only about 30 per­cent. For a ter­ror­ist
to infect 75 mil­lion peo­ple is impossible.

In 2001, 3,000 Amer­i­cans died in the ter­ror­ist attacks; 91,000 died in
acci­dents; and 19,000 were mur­dered by home­grown crim­i­nals. In
addi­tion, about 2 mil­lion Amer­i­cans died of var­i­ous nat­ural
causes. There are 6 bil­lion peo­ple on this planet. Do you know how
many were killed in 2001 by ter­ror­ists in addi­tion to the 3,000? Just
409.

Of all the things you can worry about, being killed by a ter­ror­ist is
one of the least. Gertrude Stein once described Amer­ica as hav­ing
“more places where peo­ple aren’t than there are places where peo­ple
are.” That’s still true. We are 268 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in 3 mil­lion
square miles. The chances of any one of us being killed by a ter­ror­ist
are infin­i­tes­i­mal.
[End the War on Free­dom]

Another arti­cle on how the threat of chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons (and ter­ror­ism in gen­eral) is over­rated. Recent events show how this works in prac­tice. Since the gov­ern­ment and media began whip­ping up hys­te­ria, five peo­ple have died from ter­ror­ist attacks using anthrax. On the other hand, 21 peo­ple died a few days ago from a hys­ter­i­cal reac­tion to the use of pep­per spray in a club in Chicago.

Which is really the weapon of mass destruction–anthrax used by inde­pen­dent ter­ror­ists, or hys­te­ria used by gov­ern­men­tal terrorists?

Amy Fisher to Keep Kids Safe from Guns. Amy Fisher, the pistol-packin’ Long Islander who set off a frenzy of tabloid head­lines a decade ago when she shot her lover’s wife, cel­e­brated the end of her parole on Wednes­day by announc­ing her inten­tion to work for causes aimed at keep­ing hand­guns away from minors. [FirearmNews.com]

A con­victed mur­derer advo­cat­ing vic­tim dis­ar­ma­ment? Imag­ine that. It’s a lit­tle sur­pris­ing that she’s being so bla­tant about it, though.

Bush sets out Iraq vision. Iraq with­out Sad­dam Hus­sein would be a “dra­matic and inspir­ing exam­ple” to the region, accord­ing to US Pres­i­dent George W Bush. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edi­tion]

I won­der if it will be as “dra­matic and inspir­ing” as the exam­ple set by Iran after the over­throw of Prime Min­is­ter Moham­mad Mosaddeq?

More Bones of Con­tention. A fresh twist in the saga of Ken­newick Man, the appar­ently cau­ca­soid 9,000 year old skele­ton who mod­ern Indian tribes… [Hit & Run]

The Indian tribes don’t want sci­en­tists to inves­ti­gate the bones, which they claim belong to their ances­tor (an obvi­ously absurd claim). What the two arti­cles linked to don’t address is the ques­tion which should be the only rel­e­vant one: who owns the land where the skele­ton was found?

Ground­ing Model Rock­ets. The invalu­able Space.com reports on the threat to model rock­etry con­tained in the Home­land Secu­rity Act: An excerpt: “A pro­vi­sion… [Hit & Run]

It turns out that, in addi­tion to cre­at­ing the Amer­i­can KGB, it also includes a round­about ban on model rocket motors.

Kot­tke: “When com­pa­nies get big, do they just nat­u­rally turn into bul­lies or is it a con­scious deci­sion?” [Script­ing News]

I think it’s a result of get­ting big enough to have a legal department.

Char­lie Reese -

The Facts About Rebel­lion — Mr. Reese has no bones to pick with
Hon­est Abe, but he uses this exam­ple to make a point that every
country’s lead­ers will crush an inter­nal rebel­lion. Sad­dam has lots of
com­pany on that score. [lew]
bq.
Which polit­i­cal leader made war on his own peo­ple, killing 262,000 of
them, burn­ing their cities, destroy­ing their food sup­ply and plac­ing
the sur­vivors under mil­i­tary occupation?

If your answer is Sad­dam Hus­sein, you’re wrong. The answer is Abra­ham
Lincoln.

Accept­ing the North­ern but incor­rect view of the War Between the
States, Lin­coln did exactly the same thing Sad­dam Hus­sein did. When
“his own peo­ple” rose up in armed rebel­lion, he crushed the rebel­lion,
bru­tally and decisively.

…

It’s quite true that, like any other dic­ta­tor, Sad­dam treats his
polit­i­cal oppo­nents harshly, but it’s also true that if you stay out
of pol­i­tics, you could live as freely in Bagh­dad as you can in New
York City. Unlike a communist-style dic­ta­tor, Sad­dam doesn’t give a
damn what Iraqis think or do unless it involves a threat to his hold
on power. There are two cat­e­gories of dic­ta­tors: total­i­tar­i­ans who
want to con­trol every aspect of a person’s life, and gang­sters who
just want to stay in power. Sad­dam is in the gang­ster cat­e­gory. Iraqi
women, for exam­ple, are enti­tled to free edu­ca­tion, just the same as
men, and are free to choose any voca­tion they wish. Prior to the Gulf
War, Iraq had one of the largest mid­dle classes in the Mid­dle East,
one of the best edu­ca­tion sys­tems and one of the best health care
sys­tems. We, not Sad­dam, have destroyed all three with the war and
eco­nomic sanc­tions.
[End the War on Free­dom]

Friends and Ene­mies. The Wash­ing­ton Post pro­vides a win­dow on how war fever has changed the views of once pro-American Arabs. In Cairo,… [Hit & Run]

bq. “I feel we have been deceived about the nature and char­ac­ter of the United States of Amer­ica,” he said.

Remark­ably, these are the words of a friend. Nag­gar is a World Bank vet­eran who quotes the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and whose son is a U.S. cit­i­zen. His library is stocked with works of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jef­fer­son, James Madi­son and “all the great founders.” He lived for 17 years in Wash­ing­ton, where he says he never felt like a for­eigner, and still longs for the city’s intel­lec­tual and artis­tic life and his favorite Asian restaurants.

In 1991, he founded a group called the New Civic Forum “to pro­mote the ideas and ideals of the United States of Amer­ica.” Today, the very thought gives rise to a long, bois­ter­ous laugh.

“I still believe in these val­ues,” he said, wip­ing his eyes, “but I don’t call them Amer­i­can ideals anymore.”

Those cer­tainly are still Amer­i­can ideals. The prob­lem is that the US gov­ern­ment has been betray­ing our ideals for many, many years. Sadly, I can’t see any way to explain it to peo­ple else­where in the world. The US gov­ern­ment today has noth­ing to do with what the gov­ern­ment is sup­posed to be, and the US media is actively hos­tile to Amer­i­can ideals.

For now, the flag and the blog are my weapons.

For days I have been pon­der­ing on how to answer Ken Hagler on the com­ment he made on his site on my story