Then we follow with the renewed calls for Beijing to allow the renmimbi to float, which is really to say that the EU and the USA want it to appreciate.
The Chinese on the other hand want to leave it be for fear it'll create chaos, which I'm assuming they fear would be large enough to topple the single party regime.
At the same time the Chinese seem to have requests of their own, involving European countries giving up some of their IMF seats.
What does all this chatter mean?
Late last year, Swadi, one of seven female lawyers now representing women detainees in Abu Ghraib, began to piece together a picture of systemic abuse and torture perpetrated by US guards against Iraqi women held in detention without charge. This was not only true of Abu Ghraib, she discovered, but was, as she put it, "happening all across Iraq".
In November last year, Swadi visited a woman detainee at a US military base at al-Kharkh, a former police compound in Baghdad. "She was the only woman who would talk about her case. She was crying. She told us she had been raped," Swadi says. "Several American soldiers had raped her. She had tried to fight them off and they had hurt her arm. She showed us the stitches. She told us, 'We have daughters and husbands. For God's sake don't tell anyone about this.'"
Astonishingly, the secret inquiry launched by the US military in January, headed by Major General Antonio Taguba, has confirmed that the letter smuggled out of Abu Ghraib by a woman known only as "Noor" was entirely and devastatingly accurate. While most of the focus since the scandal broke three weeks ago has been on the abuse of men, and on their sexual humilation in front of US women soldiers, there is now incontrovertible proof that women detainees - who form a small but unknown proportion of the 40,000 people in US custody since last year's invasion - have also been abused. Nobody appears to know how many. But among the 1,800 digital photographs taken by US guards inside Abu Ghraib there are, according to Taguba's report, images of a US military policeman "having sex" with an Iraqi woman.
Taguba discovered that guards have also videotaped and photographed naked female detainees. The Bush administration has refused to release other photographs of Iraqi women forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts (although it has shown them to Congress) - ostensibly to prevent attacks on US soldiers in Iraq, but in reality, one suspects, to prevent further domestic embarrassment.
(...)
In Iraq, the existence of photographs of women detainees being abused has provoked revulsion and outrage, but little surprise. Some of the women involved may since have disappeared, according to human rights activists. Professor Huda Shaker al-Nuaimi, a political scientist at Baghdad University who is researching the subject for Amnesty International, says she thinks "Noor" is now dead. "We believe she was raped and that she was pregnant by a US guard. After her release from Abu Ghraib, I went to her house. The neighbours said her family had moved away. I believe she has been killed."
Honour killings are not unusual in Islamic society, where rape is often equated with shame and where the stigma of being raped by an American soldier would, according to one Islamic cleric, be "unbearable". The prospects for rape victims in Iraq are grave; it is hardly surprising that no women have so far come forward to talk about their experiences in US-run jails where abuse was rife until early January.
One of the most depressing aspects of the saga is that, unaccountably, the US military continues to hold five women in solitary confinement at Abu Ghraib, in cells 2.5m (8ft) long by 1.5m (5ft) wide. Last week, the military escorted a small group of journalists around the camp, where hundreds of relatives gather every day in a dusty car park in the hope of news.
The prison is protected by guard towers, an outer fence topped with razor wire, and blast walls. Inside, more than 3,000 Iraqi men are kept in vast open courtyards, in communal brown tents exposed to dust and sun. (Last month, nearly 30 detainees were killed in two separate mortar attacks on the prison; about a dozen survivors are still in the hospital wing, shackled to their beds with leather belts.) As our bus pulled up, the men ran towards the razor wire. They unfurled banners and T-shirts that read: "Why are we here?" "When are you going to do something about this scandal?" "We cannot talk freely."
The women, however, are kept in another part of the prison, cellblock 1A, together with 19 "high-value" male detainees. It is inside this olive-painted block, which leads into a courtyard of shimmering green saysaban trees and pink flowering shrubs, that the notorious photographs of US troops humiliating Iraqi prisoners were taken, many of them on the same day, November 8 2003. A wooden interrogation shed is a short stroll away. As we arrived at the cellblock, the women shouted to us through the bars. An Iraqi journalist tried to talk to them; a female US soldier interrupted and pushed him away. The windows of the women's cells have been boarded up; birds nest in the outside drainpipe. Captain Dave Quantock, now in charge of prisoner detention at Abu Ghraib, confirmed that the women prisoners are in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. They have no entertainment; they do have a Koran.
Since the scandal first emerged there is general agreement that conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved. A new, superior catering company now provides the inmates' food, and all the guards involved in the original allegations of abuse have left. were they arrested? were they tried? Court-martialled?
Nevertheless, there remain extremely troubling questions as to why these women came to be here. Like other Iraqi prisoners, all five are classified as "security detainees" - a term invented by the Bush administration to justify the indefinite detention of prisoners without charge or legal access, as part of the war on terror. US military officials will only say that they are suspected of "anti-coalition activities".
(...)
The women appear to have been arrested in violation of international law - not because of anything they have done, but merely because of who they are married to, and their potential intelligence value. US officials have previously acknowledged detaining Iraqi women in the hope of convincing male relatives to provide information; when US soldiers raid a house and fail to find a male suspect, they will frequently take away his wife or daughter instead.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, whose devastating report on human rights abuses of Iraqi prisoners was delivered to the government in February but failed to ring alarm bells, says the problem lies with the system. "It is an absence of judicial guarantees," says Nada Doumani, spokesperson for the ICRC. "The system is not fair, precise or properly defined."
During her visit to Abu Ghraib in March, one of the prisoners told Swadi that she had been forced to undress in front of US soldiers. "The Iraqi translator turned his head in embarrassment," she said. The release of detainees, meanwhile, appears to be entirely arbitrary: three weeks ago one woman prisoner who spoke fluent English and who had been telling her guards that she would sue them was suddenly released. "They got fed up with her," another lawyer, Amal Alrawi, says.
Last Friday, about 300 male prisoners were freed from Abu Ghraib, the first detainees to be released since the abuse scandal first broke. A further 475 are due to be released tomorrow, although it is not clear if any of the women will be among them. General Geoffery Miller, who is responsible for overhauling US military jails in Iraq, has promised to release 1,800 prisoners across Iraq "within 45 days". Some 2,000 are likely to remain behind bars, he says. Iraqi lawyers and officials aredemanding that the US military hands the prisons over to Iraqi management on June 30, when the coalition transfers limited powers to a UN-appointed caretaker Iraqi government. Last week, Miller said "negotiations" with Iraqi officials were ongoing.
Relatives who gathered outside Abu Ghraib last Friday said it was common knowledge that women had been abused inside the jail. Hamid Abdul Hussein, 40, who was there hoping to see his brother Jabar freed, said former detainees who had returned to their home town of Mamudiya reported that several women had been raped. "We've know this for months," he said. "We also heard that some women committed suicide."
While the abuse may have stopped, the US military appears to have learned nothing from the experience. Swadi says that when she last tried to visit the women at Abu Ghraib, "The US guards refused to let us in. When we complained, they threatened to arrest us."
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Prof. Krugman,
As you say the arguments on the shortcomings of European EMU as an OCA have been known ever since the early 1990s. If a group of economies are very open and trade in differentiated products, then as they are exposed to asymmetric shocks, they must have flexible wages and prices, high labour mobility, or alternatively, there must be some form of homogeneity and/or solidarity to ensure that transfers from one country to another balance the asymmetric shock. Otherwise one group of countries benefits from the union at the detriment of another. This is simple enough and it is what is taught in every decent manual on the economics of the EU. Moreover, it is easy to see how France and Germany might initially have benefitted from Greece's fiscal crisis. After all a cheaper € makes for more competitive exports.
What no one seems to focus a tremendous amount is on the merits of the Euro. First of all, the public and the commentators seem to have forgotten about all the exchange rate crises of the 1970s-1990s. Increased trade interdependencies expose EU member states to each other's bad governance, forcing to create arrangements to protect themselves from each other. The ERMs and the EMS were the first attempts at dealing with this issue, but proved incomplete at best, leading to the creation of the €. If the latter was to disappear, then we'd be back to the early 1990s.
Finally, speaking as a Portuguese and as a social scientist I must also admit that the euro also presents a welcomed pressure for necessary economic reform. By creating a tighter system of monitoring between the member states, it divulges more information about the quality of their performance. If for the € to work, it requires a strengthening of internal monitoring and if this increases the pressures for rationalisation of policy making and reform, then I can only conclude that the € is positive for its less efficient member states.
It seems that European integration happens through trial and error along a fairly clear integrationist path. As with any other polity, decision makers tweak and fine tune the machine. When each monetary mechanism failed after another, the argument for the € became more and more credible. Now that the consequences of the shortcomings of the Stability and Growth Pact have been brought to light, the structure will be kept with enhanced powers and institutional support, and my guess is that sooner rather than later there will be a certain amount of fiscal powers transferred to Brussels in order to fulfil the OCA.
On the USA though, by the standard of its time the country would not have been seen as any more homogenous than the Hapsburg Empire, with all its religions and languages (English, German, French). Moreover until the Civil War most Americans considered themselves first and foremost Virginians, New Yorkers, etc, and only after that Americans. Yet the dollar, fragile though it may have been, existed before the 1870s. The EU in that sense is not very different from the early USA or India, although we do not have a military threat as a catalyst for integration.
Before I conclude, I would like to add that the issue of labour mobility is limited first and foremost by language diversity. This however seems to be a decreasing problem as the vast majority of Europeans are now adopting English as their second language, thus making it the continent's "lingua Franca". This should solve the issue of labour mobility in the next 2 to 3 generations.
To conclude, just because the €zone is not an OCA, it is not automatically undesirable. Moreover just because it is now a second best option, it does not mean that it will not become a first best option in the future, as labour mobility will increase and as geographical automatic stabilizers will start to play a bigger role "
For the last couple of days there have been some quiet reports on the tensions between the USA and Turkey caused by a the fact that "the foreign affairs committee in the US Congress narrowly passed a non-binding resolution condemning as "genocide" the First World War killings of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman empire".
I find this a positive step by the USA. I believe that having been the ones that caused this crime to be established, and consequently becoming the poster boys for it, has given Europe the honesty to call exterminations, by their proper contemporary name.
It is a non binding resolution and as such does not carry any consequences. It is tantamount to the USA recognising internationally and domestically that it is their held view that between 1914 and 1918, the Turks tried to get rid of the Armenians. This was obviously a dreadful development in the history of Turkey, but I don't see why they make such a fuss about it and get so offended. The history of mankind is filled with such collective bigotry and scape goating. Spain and then Portugal effectively commit such attrocities against the Jews in the Renaissance, and later towards the indigenous populations of their colonies in the new world. France did the same with the Occitans and the Hughenots, and if you really want to go back, the attitudes of the roman empire to those who unsuccessfully opposed it, were less than compassionate. As Thucydides put it in the History of the Peloponesian war,
“The strong do what they have to and the weak accept what they must.”Now here is my idea. Turkey should not moan in a corner a nagg about how everyone is making it feel bad. Do what the Chinese do when the americans lecture them about human right! Lecture them back on the hypocrisy of a country that systematically eradicated its indigenous population over the course of 3 centuries lecturing a country that oppresses the sovereignty, the freedom of expression and association of one its minorities.
I am obviously not saying that because the americans treated their native indigenous population bad that it entitles the Chinese to do whatever they want, just because they don't actually want to eradicate the Tibetans or the Turkmen or the Uyghurs(or any other ethnicity for that sake). I'm saying that all this is played out as a shame and blame game in the media, despite the hypothetical presence of actual moral considerations. It's ultimately a cause of pride, which may shift somewhat the political support of the present government. Turkey should rise above, accept that it commited an attrocity that can be (and has been )qualified as a genocide, and then extend an open hand to the USA and say, "Why don't you follow our example? The truth will set you free!" Playing the shame game might just be the politically intelligent thing to do by the Turkish government of the time.
I-Present shape and content of health care debate in USA 1) First of all, there seems to be no informed debate what-so-ever on the trade-offs implied by public and private options. In a time when media is accused of transforming complex issues into soundbites, this debate has gone further and turned an amazingly complex issue into 5 words: "good", "evil", "selfish", "communist" and "nazi". In my opinion, "uninformed" or "misinformed" are more appropriate. 2) Secondly, there seems to be no framework of analysis. It's not that people don't structure their opinions in a nice "1500 words essay" format, proposing a range of different opinions. But there should be some structure. I don't expect a unified framework of analysis either. Nor do I expect to see a fully informed debate, with complete information. However there should be some awareness of the multitude of issues involved such as, the consequences of private and public financing in terms of quantity and quality of health care services consumed by medical patients and the price of health care services paid to industry suppliers. 3) As a person who's studied social sciences and is used to the highly stylised methods of theoretical analysis, it is interesting to note how the real world is different from the one studied through the lenses of rational choice theory, even allowing for incomplete and asymmetric information. These models would predict that some form of debate should be taking place, with individuals contributing their personal experiences, specialists contributing their expertise and politicians taking from both sides to understand the issues and explain and implement policy. Instead, what I observe from this side of the ocean is that people who attend these townhall meetings have engaged in a series of collective monologues (not even... monologues at least have an argument, and tend to last a bit longer), dividing themselves in two self reinforcing camps, who seem to find no legitimacy or respect in each other's positions. Moreover the specialists seem to have fled the stage and politicians are doing their best not to be booed off stage. 4) The media is doing a pretty bad job at keeping track of this and at calling it a misrepresentation of facts (whether it be honest or not). The media which is supposed to inform is not.
II - Why is this happening?
1) and 3)Bad or incomplete information is normal in such a complex issue. In our efforts to understand things we simplify them. However, it's interesting that, what seem to be, concerned citizens don't take advantage of the opportunity presented by townhall meetings to destroy myths and clarify their opinion. I can come up with 3 inconveniently impossible to test reasons for this:
First, there's intrinsic human nature. Once we make up our minds, we don't easily change it. We are generally stubborn and therefore are not good at being contradicted, much less at constructively engaging those who contradict us.
Secondly, there's a group think type of behaviour, which implies that individuals of a certain group tend to interact much more with each other and through those interactions reinforce each other's feelings. In my understanding of the application of the Lipset and Rokkan cleavage model to the
This implies extremely bad news for the poor who cannot afford it and for people suffering from chronic (untreatable) diseases. Because for them p is 100%, this implies that if they would insure against that loss, it would be more expensive (because of administrative costs and profit margins of insurance companies) to insure than to pay for it themselves. Moreover, if its a chronic disease, it's likely that the cummulated cost of treatments will be quite expensive. The handicapt, those suffering from diabetes and the elderly will not be covered by health insurance, because they represent too high a risk. That why Americans have medicaid for the elderly. Moreover, anyone living in poor conditions or in a dangerous neighbourhood will also represent a high risk (though not a 100%) and will either not be offered plans or will have too pay overly expensive plans.
The state on the other hand detaches health care contributions from risk. Either by making it a flat rate or by tapping or incorporating it into the income tax, it implies that if you are a risky individual you will get access to the same public funded scheme as the non risky. This is good because it increases coverage.
However more greys ensue from these observations. Having to be a low or average risk implies that there are some incentives for strict private insurance. I once ran into this American retired gentleman who told me that in order to get insurance his insurance provider required him to loose weight in order to bring his collesterol levels down. This is annoying, but not a bad thing. On the other hand, if one can get insurance despite one's lifestyle, then there's no need to loose weight like that gentleman did. It's like when we go to a "all you can eat restaurant". The tendency is to eat more than normally, because its cheaper. The interesting observation at this stage is that Americans are more obese than "socialised" Europeans are. Therefore the incentives are either not all that good, or they are not stronger than psychologic and biological dependencies on sugar that low self estime and over exposure to fast foods may create. A final consideration about private insurance companies has to do with their impact on investment. Insurance companies accumulate money a bit like a bank. Instead of depositing money in exchange for being able to withdraw it later, the deposit is made in exchange for a promise that under some circumstances we can tap into an entitlement that the company will pay for our health care expenses (car repair expenses, for car insurance). In the mean time, the insurance company takes the money, invests it and collects the interest of this investment. This means that insurance companies are good for the economy (assuming that they invest well and that this investment is good for economic growth in general and not just for the firm). Therefore a balance is probably to be struck between the need to maximise coverage, maximise productive investment potential and minimise bad incentives (moral Hazard and adverse selection), through an appropriate mix of private and public financing. The second issue of demand and supply, is nicely understood through the tools of microeconomic product market analysis. This looks at the aggregate or collective analysis, and crams everyone together as similar in risk, but different in terms of incomes and can be very technical. However, a simple explanation ought to give a fair and accessible understanding of the issue. The difference between publicly and the privately financed options is a matter of quantity consumed/provided and costs of consumption. The public option works as a subsidy. The state comes in, buys the stuff for a high price and sells it back to medical patients at a lower price (figure1).
The difference between the high price paid and the low price of consumption is paid for by government revenues and debt. If health care is provided for free, then it's completely paid for by the government, which would imply higher taxes and/or debt (area A+B in figure 2).
What this means is that medical companies will not make more or less profits because of a private or public scheme. On this issue the difference is only in the level of taxes or debt and in the number of people who get health care services.
A mixed system like the one
Comparing news casters with Walter Conkrite does very little to help this debate. Walter Conkrite was a bigger anomaly in terms of providing good information as the British political system is good at providing good governance. First of all there were no 24 hour news networks, who needed to entertain audiences all day long. Secondly, he had very little competition, as at the time there were very few syndicated TV channels broadcasting across the
III – What would help?
I think that 2 things could be done very easily that would help the general tone of the townhall meetings. I also propose 2 more widespread ideas for reforms that would help healthcare reform, its debate and the debate of other issues.
First, before the speaker comes to the stage, have a member of security read the rules of the talk. Ensure that anyone speaking without having been given authorization or otherwise disturbing the session will be politely removed from the premises. Might look bad on camera, but that’s just tough. Looks worst for the guy getting kicked out and it looks worse for the speaker if he stays as he is made to look like he cannot control his audience. If he does indeed say anything that is dauntingly stupid, don’t worry if it is that offensive people will rebel en masse and no amount of available (and reasonable for such an event) security will stop them from kicking him out. Finally if he does say anything stupid the camera is there to capture it. My hunch us that nothing bad will happen. Bush did that for 8 years and nothing bad happened.
Secondly, hand out panflets at the beginning of each session. Small, key word panflets briefly explaining the pros and cons of the public the private and the mixed scheme. They should be 2 pages (1 paper both sides) long and as a rule of thumb it would be smart to not let there be more than two panflets. These should be drafted by a non partisan group such as the CBO (Congressional Budget office) and endorsed by both of the major parties. This should enlighten the audience and improve the debate.
More complex proposals intend to change the rules of the game. Specifically regarding healthcare, regulate the restauration business with particular emphasis on fast food joints. Governments are there to provide good incentives. Meals that cost less than a certain price and provide calories above a certain threshold of healthiness should be taxed. Foodstuffs that comply with the health and safety concerns and targets endorsed by specialists and the government agencies should be given subsidies or tax cuts. Incentivise eating to optimise it, rather than maximise it.
Secondly, pass a law forbidding people from carrying guns. No one needs to carry automatic riffles. Why not carry a bazoola? It’s threatening and not appropriate for a debate. I don’t care what they say, this is the 21st century, not the far west. There’s law enforcement. That is a fairly tricky thing to do in the
Finally, pass the god damn legislation relatively fast. Yes liberal democracy is great and there should open debate about these issues. However debate must end at some point. There’s just so much that can be said about anything for so long. If you have the majority, and if it delivers you the votes, than pass the legislation that seems the most plausible, while you can, particularly when public debate becomes this silly. If the electorate does not like it, they can dismiss you at the next election and the next guy will either keep or reform the system. That’s the real beauty of liberal democracy.
PS: Oh by the way, there are some pretty well informed specialists (Krugman, Stiglitz, Mankiw, Roubini,etc) who are skillfully active in the debate. Some politicians (McCain, Barney Frank, and who else?) have demonstrated a very solid moral backbone in the debate. It's not ideal, but while it is imperfect, it is far from helpless.
