Category Archives: Foreign Aid

UPDATE II: Japan Won’t Be Needing Sean Penn

Asia, Crime, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Multiculturalism, Technology, Uncategorized

The rude Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Ichiro Fujisaki, the Japanese ambassador to the united states, reminded me of the time the regal (Akio) Toyoda went up against the proverbial Torquemada, his tormentors on the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. (Here) No words of condolence did Blitzer offer to the Japanese gentleman for the calamity his country and people have endured. Instead, Wolf hammered Fujisaki about the possibility of “another Chernobyl,” a meltdown, at one of the Fukushima’s Daiichi nuclear power reactors.

The March 11, magnitude 8.9 earthquake had damaged the Fukushima 1 power station. BBC reports more reliably and with greater detail that a big explosion on Saturday had caused “the cooling system to fail at the No 3 reactor and the fuel rods inside had been exposed.” (HERE) Wolf finally explained that the “tsunami had put that whole power plant basically under water, and killed its coolant capabilities.” (Transcripts) Fujisaki reiterated that, “We do not see evidence of a meltdown at this time,” and that his government had already evacuated the people, First from a three kilometer radius, then 10, and finally 20 kilometers radius. “We are taking as most cautious measures and we’re trying to evacuate people so that accident will not really affect people,” Fujisaki explained.

CNN further reported, via the Kyoto News Agency (the official Japanese news agency), that “9,500 people are unaccounted for. We cannot confirm that they are all deaths but know for a fact that 9,500 are missing.” A far smaller, magnitude 7.0. seismic event in Haiti, which CNN keeps invoking, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and the place is still in ruins, despite the rescue efforts of Hollywood actor Sean Penn. (And it’s not just the building codes, as our media’s analysis would have it.) Blitzer wanted to know if Japan could cope with its reactors without the US! The Chutzpah! How many working reactors does the US have?

Fujisaki assured him with the utmost politeness that “we are now coping with this issue ourselves. But, of course, there could be some consultation with other countries. But for the moment, because it’s just happening now, we are doing — working on ourselves.”

Wolf seemed shocked that a tremor and attendant tsunami that generated 30- to 50 foot tall walls of water that crashed onto Japan’s north-east coast had left some 6 million households without electricity. The ambassador assured Wolf that the number was down to 2.5 million. If that is correct, it is remarkable. Wolf and CNN hardly breathed a word about the biggest windstorm to have hit Washington and Oregon in decades. In 2006, “at least a million residents in the Pacific Northwest were stranded without power for days, in primitive conditions, befitting a Third World country.” Is Wolf unaware that, with Katrina, the US had established the gold standard for government ineptitude in a disaster? We in the Pacific North West are due for what Japan has just endured. We call it “The Big One.” The Japanese have responded calmly. I’d feel far safer in a disaster if at the helm were people who were driven by national and personal pride to put their best foot forward, and to stay stoical and soldier on.

Japan will be okay. It’s a highly civilized, advanced society.

When Wolf repeated, incredulously, “No looting? No looting; are you sure?”, one of CNN’s foreign correspondents, a Japanese woman (you guessed, her story is nowhere to be found on CNN’s website), proudly recounted how crime-free Japan is; how people pull together, yet are propelled forward by individual agency and initiative; how honest the average individual is; how, if you lose your wallet, you’ll likely find it at the nearest police station.

My husband, who traveled there recently, found the Japanese he collaborated with remarkably polite, refined, and respectful of experience and skill (whereas here in the US we idolize the average hubristic Millennial).

Japan is not a very “diverse” society, you know. Actually, it’s a homogeneous country. And as Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam discovered, but tried his best not to divulge, “In diverse communities, people ‘hunker down’: they withdraw, have fewer ‘friends and confidants,’ distrust their neighbors regardless of the color of their skin, expect the worst from local leaders, volunteer and carpool less, give less to charity, and ‘agitate for social reform more,’ with little hope of success. They also huddle in front of the television. Activism alternates with escapism, unhappiness with ennui.” …

UPDATE I: I have just posted this comment on Facebook, where the blog post seems to have struck a chord: “You all seem to have picked up on the incredible chauvinism with which our elites treat The Other—unless this Other is an illegal immigrant criminal, or some knuckles-dragging atavist. Do you think this has to do with the comfort those who have little awareness of their own motivation derive from patronizing lesser individuals? Underachievers make us feel good about ourselves. The latter are easier to ‘help.'”

UPDATE II: With respect to “individual agency” and the attempt to do your best—values Japanese society upholds— Sean related the following: exiting the train station that takes you from Tokyo airport to the down down area, he flagged a taxicab. The driver could not speak a word of English, which makes him not that different from the cabdrivers you hail on American soil. With two exceptions: the first being that the driver was in his own, Japanese-speaking country. The second was the way he proceeded. This gentleman overcame the language barrier thus: Unable to decipher the note my husband had handed him in English as to his destination, Sean’s Japanese cabby existed his vehicle, leaving Sean in it ALONE, and stopped a near by policeman. The latter explained to the cabby where the client (Sean) was headed. A confident cabby got into the cab he had abandoned to look for a cop, and drove my husband to his destination. This kind of experience was repeated throughout his trip: agency, efficiency, occupational pride, politeness.

In a word: a traditional society, the kind this American historian believes thwarts progress.

UPDATED: ‘We Need To Do A Lot Less & A Lot Sooner Around The World’

Constitution, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Ron Paul, War, Welfare

Rep. Ron Paul: “There is no authority in the Constitution for the welfare state, the warfare state, and the police state. … If you learn about, fight for and promote free-market economics, I can guarantee that you will sleep better at night; you will enjoy your life, and you will feel like you are doing something worth while. Defend liberty.” This innocent, impish, almost awkward man can make those tears well in your eyes.

UPDATE (Feb. 13): Patrick Cleburne of VDARE.COM has captured the mood at FoxNews as “Ron Paul Wins Presidential Straw Poll at CPAC – Again Feb 12, 2001”: bad-tempered.

Read on as to why Ron Paul is serious about sovereignty issues too; always has been.

UPDATE II: Egypt In Economic Context (‘A Wave of Global Inflation’)

America, Economy, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Inflation, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Republicans

Speaking of boobs (http://barelyablog.com/?p=33995), Dana Perino, the Heidi Klum of the commentariat, wishes Iraq on the Egyptians. Perino, who was once a spokesperson to Bush, a man who was barely able to speak, prattled to a reserved Megyn Kelly on Fox News about the upheaval in Egypt.

Mentioning her boss’ achievements in Iraq made Ms. Mindless glow with pride. She pointed out that the bliss in Baghdad was brought about in response to the democratic urges of the Iraqis—yes, this was murder with majority approval, an American majority (http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=363.) Perino also implied that glorious Iraq is a product of a well-thought out philosophy.

Airheads aside, serious analysts—the kind who also live in the region or visit it on occasion—say Iraq “is looking a lot like Lebanon,” violent and balkanized beyond repair. Its few remaining Christians are being systematically exterminated.

Perino gave another shout-out of sorts to Iranian interests. Without being asked, she dredged up the Gaza-strip elections her boss had agitated for and got, back in the day. If you recall, those gave us Hamas.

Another day, another dullard.

Even John Bolton, who’ll take any position in opposition to Obama’s less bellicose foreign policy, seemed to agree with the restraint of the State Department’s response to the riots roiling Egypt.

Contrast Bolton’s unusual retrain with the American Enterprise Institute’s formulaic demand that “President Obama’s administration … assert the U.S. government’s role as the preeminent defender of freedom in the world. … Now is not the time for equivocation.”

Ditto the Weekly Standard. The folks there hanker after a time “when the Bush White House was feeling its oats with victories for the freedom agenda in Iraq and then Lebanon.”

That’s the neoconservative parallel universe for you.

In response to Bush pressure, “Mubarak pushed back with the 2005 parliamentary elections when he awarded the Muslim Brotherhood some 20 percent of the seats—if you want democracy, the Egyptian president seemed to be warning the White House, I’ll stick Osama bin Laden’s friends in parliament.”

Justin Raimondo, at Antiwar.com (for which I once wrote a bi-weekly column), puts “the revolutionary wave now sweeping the world” in the context of catastrophic economic policies and attendant realities. This wave will not spare the US, despite “the myth of ‘American exceptionalism,’ which supposedly anoints us with a special destiny and gives us the right to order the world according to our uniquely acquired position of preeminence.”

Coming to a neighborhood near you?

UPDATE I: You bet. In Egypt, “The government must approve the formation of political parties, effectively assuring its monopoly on political power.” (Via Infoplease.com ) More to the point: “the country’s inefficient state-run industries, its bloated public sector, and its large military investments resulted in inflation, unemployment, a severe trade deficit, and heavy public debt.”

State-caused poverty and the attendant lack of opportunities are likely the catalysts that have sent Egyptians into the streets.

The emphasis, in the US, exclusively on politics and on Egypt’s democracy deficit is myopic. Nevertheless, this focus allows DC’s chattering classes to forget that we too, albeit to a lesser extent, are over-leveraged. Our moocher and looter classes might also riot once they can no longer live out the life to which they are accustomed.

UPDATE II (Jan. 29): “A Wave of Global Inflation” is the tipping point for Egypt. Jerry Bowyer, author of “Free Market Capitalist’s Survival Guide,” agrees about the role of inflation and the attendant spike in the prices of basic necessities in the crisis in Egypt.

UPDATE II: A Halibut's Heart In A Harpy's Hand

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Morality, Sarah Palin

On her eponymous reality show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” the former governor of Alaska and her daughter Bristol bond over ‘stunning’ halibuts and gutting them.” There is nothing wrong with showing the public something of the realities of commercial fishing. The Palins once made their living this way. Fishing is the most dangerous of occupations; it’s a tough and arduous life.

However, Palin took the clobbering and killing to a gratuitous level. She was not matter-of-fact about it. Rather, she cheered on the act, spoke about it in repetitive, gory detail, and climbed in herself. Then, like an Aztec priestess, she whipped out the still-beating heart of the Halibut she had beaten and was about to bleed for big Bristol to moo over.

This woman can be a pathetic primitive.

Not so long ago, I read a Times Literary Supplement book review of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals.” His is the first philosophical treatise arguing against eating animals that has captured my attention because of its appeal to logic and fact.

Safran Foer’s conclusion: “We should not – for both moral and prudential reasons – eat animals in the way we now eat them. ‘In the way we now eat them’ denotes their utterly miserable lives in intensive rearing facilities – factory farms, aka CAFOs or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation – and their horrific deaths at assembly line slaughterhouses.”

Note that this careful philosopher has not said we should not eat animals, but that given what we do to them, we should not eat them. This libertarian writer who had penned a defense of Michael Vick (I & II) has not changed her views on natural rights, but she has become more convinced than ever about our moral and ethical obligation to treat animals kindly.

Arguably, commercial pig farming is crueler than dispatching dogs, then-and-there, as Vick did. These “Babe” look-alikes wallow for ages in their own waste, in pig pens so cramped, the creature cannot even collapse when exhausted. The animal’s skin often ulcerates and its muscles and bones atrophy. Food farming can involve practices such as tail docking, tooth-clipping, “castration, branding, debeaking, and other painful processes.” I solve this ethical problem by patronizing farmers whose animals roam and graze, not by agitating for government to criminalize commercial farmers and hurt the multitudes they feed.

I don’t often eat meat, but when I do, I buy it from my local Natural Markets store, where it is guaranteed to have come from animals that have lived a good life and died painlessly. However, reading this review, we can’t even be sure of the “humane meat” promise:

“Even if the animals we eat had decent lives, which they do not, we would still have to face up to the manner of their deaths: “No jokes here, and no turning away. Let’s say what we mean: animals are bled, skinned, and dismembered while conscious”. Safran Foer is talking specifically about cattle here, but the deaths of other animals differ only in minor details. Typically, cattle are led down a chute to a “knocking box”. Here, theoretically, a steel bolt is shot into the cow’s brain. “Sometimes the bolt only dazes the animal, which either remains conscious or wakes up as it is being ‘processed’.” “Processing” continues with wrapping a chain around the animal’s leg, and hoisting it into the air. Then, it is moved to a “sticker”, who cuts its throat. If the knocking hasn’t done its work, then, as one slaughterhouse worker put it: “They’d be blinking and stretching their necks from side to side, looking around, really frantic”. Then they move on to the “head skinner”, where the skin is peeled off the head of the animal. Some cattle, not the majority but a non-negligible minority, find themselves still conscious at this stage. Then, on to the “leggers”, who cut off the lower portions of the animals’ legs. At this point: “As far as the ones that come back to life \[go\] . . . the cattle just go wild, kicking in every direction”.

It’s pretty obvious, though, that no fisherman has invented a merciful way to kill fish. Sarah Palin should have been sober and mature about what she was partaking in on that commercial fishing boat: “This is how it’s done, it’s not pretty or even merciful, but people have to eat.” Something like that. Instead, she put on a phony, blood-thirsty, eager display that was both inappropriate, creepy, and plain cruel.

UPDATE I (Dec. 13): Palin is wrong so often and on so many fundamental issues it’s hard to know where to begin. Go to the latest news item about her Haitian excursion, and there you’ll find this gormless woman giving it up for more foreign aid. (De-program by reading “YES TO US AID, NO TO USAID.”)

“I know that there’s been some discussion of U.S. aid perhaps being lifted from this area,” she said. “Again — not to get political — but if some of the politicians would come here and see the conditions, perhaps they would see a need for, say, a military airlift to come bring supplies that are so needed here.”

UPDATE II (Dec. 14): Huggs makes a perceptive comment; he is a perceptive, courageous reader, because, unlike so many of my WND readers over the years—he is intellectually curious and has never demanded that a writer confirm his opinions.

JH also nails Sarah: Her strength is in her fabulous persona; her life story, her family, her vigor, her sheer physical loveliness. I’ve always said that it’s a shame she doesn’t hone her expertise—energy issues—and, in matter of politics, listen to Todd more (he was a card-carrying separatist). I’d like to see more of the terrific Todd in her TLS series.