The dearth of posts over the last week has a number of reasons, most of them business related. There is a lot of activity raising investment money into a software firm as well as restructuring some contracts on behalf of a local digital entertainment company. On top of that I suffered a short but violent stomach flu over the weekend which kept me down in bed and required an inordinate amount of sleep to recover from. But it looks as though that has gone away, although I still wonder whether it was the flu or the overaged Blue Stilton I had after dinner on Friday, maybe it was a combination of both. And then last night, technical issues which are being worked out right now with Stacy's help, who as always is a great help.

In any case it is somewhat frustrating as there is a lot going on that would under normal circumstances have been covered on these pages: the Arar case that is steadily getting out of control, Andrew Sullivan who is getting flak for discussing the merits of a democratic candidate and Tony Blair, whose political career might well be over before the end of this week. And then there’s New Hampshire and bird flu, yet another epidemic terrorizing Asia. In any case it will remain somewhat busy over the next little while and hopefully things will get back to normal later, for now posting will be intermittent at best.

Happy New Year, the Year of the Monkey is upon us.

Yesterday businesswoman Belinda Stronach, launched her campaign to become the new leader of the recently unified Canadian right. For those not familiar with the Canadian political scene I will give you a brief introduction: she was never elected to legislative or executive office before, her political experience is limited to behind the scenes networking, she is of Austrian descent, she's wealthy, ambitious and on the political side: fiscally conservative but likely to be socially liberal. Sounds familiar?

The new Conservative Party of Canada is desperately trying to position itself in the rapidly evolving political landscape where a popular centrist Prime-Minister and a resurgent left are getting most of the media attention. The only way for the new party to build on the little momentum it gained following its merger, that by the way resulted in some high profile defections, is to let a compelling and visionary leader take charge. However very few candidates have emerged to date that are able to unify the socially conservative and socially progressive constituents of the new party and develop an economic and foreign policy platform that is sufficiently on the right but that will equally appeal to those in the center. A tall order, but here's someone that might be able to fill it especially since she was not associated with either of the two parties that preceded the new union on the right. The emergence of Belinda Stronach, who at best is an unknown quantity when it comes to politics, has of course raised a lot of questions about her views and capabilities and so far I have seen few upbeat commentaries about her move and what she actually could represent. Given her age, thirty-seven, and her fiscally conservative but socially progressive agenda she is a representative of that new generation in politics that Andrew Sullivan calls “eagles”, not a very convincing term, but we all know what he is getting at. That ideological framework however does not interfere with Stronach’s pragmatic side, for instance she’s backing away from legalizing marihuana knowing that it will affect the relationship with the US which she rightly believes should be stronger, highlighting the importance of a North American security perimeter. In summary, a young, pragmatic, and conservative political talent.

However she’s totally untested and has a very short window to win enough support to capture the leadership position she’s looking for, but then we said exactly the same thing about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Belinda has launched a professionally styled campaign with her own well-designed website which includes, of course, a weblog. She can righly point to her achievents in the business world as evidence of leadership skills and no doubt she has surrounded herself with a team of solid advisers and the first high profile endorsements have come in. And yes, she's a babe. Win or lose, she could be positioning herself for a very meaningful role in Canadian politics and judging from her brief agenda she probably exactly has what this country needs. Given the scarcity of political talent on the right, I will give her the benefit of the doubt.

Update: The other thing that is so likeable about Belinda is that she represents a radical break from the traditional and preferred politician as Trudeaupia reminds us:

In Trudeaupia you can be gay, divorced, a single mother, pot smoker or inherit millions. You can fund lesbian porn films or grotesquely misuse taxpayers' money. You can jump parties or threaten to out of crass political opportunism. But you're talking about lowering taxes, scrapping the gun registry, shrinking the burden of government, scrapping capital taxes and rebuilding the military. They will be merciless. Women are allowed to be anything they want, except conservative.

Yep, all the more reason to say: Go, Belinda, Go!

Jackie points us to the Forgiveness Project, an initiative sponsored by a number of British celebrities (Helen Mirren, Anita Roddick, Emma Thompson to name a few) which is centered around the idea to assist victims of crime to help them replace feelings of hate with forgiveness in order to find reconciliation and move on. When I read the post and checked out the website it reminded me of two things. Firstly when I studied law the criminal law classes were dominated by a group of academics that adhered to the theory of Abolitionism and that strain of thought represented the idea that the entire penal system as we know it in the Western world should be abolished for something more creative and helpful to both the perpetrator and the victim of the crime. Abolitionism has lost some of its momentum in recent years, but the impact of those who wanted to decriminalize the criminal can be felt to this day in a number of countries that generally adopt fairly light and sometimes absurd sentencing. That brings me to my second point, the so-called healing circles that are used to resolve conflicts in native Indian communities in North America. In a number of cases regular judges have referred certain cases to these circles, even in situations where the violent nature of the crime would have warranted a more traditional approach by the courts. Both the ideas of the abolitionists and healing circles are well meant attempts to address issues that the criminal justice system as we know it can’t fix. But they are ideologically driven, too naïve and can not under any circumstance be applied to crimes where victims suffer violence, irreparable damage or death. The reason: they are an easy way out for the offender.

The Forgiveness Project builds on the principles of abolitionism and healing and applies it to the most serious of crimes, comfortably forgetting that in murder cases the only person with a right to forgive is no longer present to do so. The next step, if we take the example of the dialogue taking place between he 14-year old girl who was abducted and assaulted and the man who spent 25 years in prison for it, is to say: if such a dialogue can take place between the abductor and his victim after 25 years, why can we not strive to achieve that earlier? That goes to the heart of abolitionism: no real penalty, no protection of society at large, urge the victim to co-operate in rehabilitating the criminal. It hasn’t worked and it will never work. The rights of the victim and well-being of society should always be paramount and any measure of forgiveness should be entirely at the discretion of the survivor of a crime and that is not what the Forgiveness Project is about. They're too close to the Abolitionist tradition and that is why this project is on a very slippery slope.

David Janes yesterday summarized the Arar case in a list of hard and relevant questions, and Chris Lawrence today condenses his thoughts as follows:

I honestly don’t know what to make of all of this. I have a sneaking suspicion that elements of the Canadian intelligence apparatus were trying to get the U.S. to do some of their dirty work for them, because the Canadian government would never let them get away with it on their own, but there’s also the distinct possibility that U.S. authorities were freelancing. It’s all deeply weird.

No one really knows, but I think Chris's summary is pretty accurate.

When the discussion centers around global warming I very often throw in a comment that I kind of welcome rising temperatures, a remark that until recently could be qualified as politically incorrect. My reasons for unusual environmental commentary are generally two-fold: I like to wind people up and test their reaction, but also I do believe there's some truth to it. It does not always get a great response from friends and family yet, these days remarks about the positive side effects of this phenomenon are increasingly welcomed and this blogger - who by the way produces good content, with a healthy dose of irony – jumps into the debate with his view pointing out that it is not the first time that the globe is experiencing a period of relatively high temperatures. I can’t vouch for the scientific base but it is becoming ever clearer that we are not sure what causes global warming and that indeed it may not be all that negative. On the contrary, here in Vancouver after a few years of really mild temperatures and lots of sunshine the weather is sold as an additional bonus on top of lower taxes and a highly skilled workforce: a great place to invest, work and live!

Update: Iain Murray alerts us to the fact that in New York, Al Gore picked the coldest day in years to deliver a speech on, you guessed it, global warming.

What frustrated me most during the 2000 election campaign was the pre-ordained coronation of both Bush and Gore. The straight talking diversion provided by John McCain was fun while it lasted but the final outcome was never in question, nor was the futility of Bill Bradley’s campaign. While many on the left and right (hoping for that the sharp and engaging left-right debate) applauded the Dean phenomenon, I lamented it, even before one ballot was thrown in the box it seemed the race was pretty much a foregone conclusion. While I am not thrilled about either Kerry or Gephardt (it will not surprise you that if I were a Democrat, Lieberman would be the preferred option) it seems that together with Edwards and Clark we may yet see a battle where no one is able to claim that crown very easily. Let’s hope so, but bear in mind that it won’t really start until we’re in New Hampshire.

This week The Netherlands had its first Columbine-like experience. A disgruntled 17-year old pupil walked into the school’s cafeteria and shot a teacher at point blank range in the head, apparently for being suspended from school. The teacher died hours later and the country is in a state of shock because, and forgive me my fellow Dutch readers but I have to write this, a large portion of the Dutch population still has that dreamlike notion that “things like this don’t happen in The Netherlands”. Well, they do and the occurrence of violence and gun ownership in a country with one of the world’s most restrictive gun laws is rapidly increasing. I was not planning to write about this, until I heard last night that a number of students rallied near the school with photos and banners to support the killer, who on the day of the murder had turned himself in to police. It reminded me of this desecration, and it didn’t take long to figure out that the horrific murder of a teacher, father and respected city councilor had some ethnic undertones:

The killing and Thursday rally are certain to heighten ethnic tensions in the Netherlands. While the Dutch media does not publish the full names of suspects, or for that matter convicted criminals, publications have not been slow to point out the boy in this case is of Turkish extraction. Fear within a large segment of the public about "ethnic crime" and the perceived lack of integration by immigrants are at fever pitch in the Netherlands.

The gruesome murder is disturbing, yet the fact that many youths have rallied to the support of murderer tells us something about the serious level of disconnection between the Dutch and disgruntled immigrant groups who have failed to integrate economically, socially and morally. On the contrary, I have read many interviews with Muslim youths (second generation, born in Holland and fluent in Dutch) who claimed that while on the surface they look as if they had culturally adapted, they remained angry Muslims inside, bitter with their direct environment and depressed about their future economic prospects. A quick tour of Dutch news sites and message boards revealed as much, with comments from angry Muslim youths who felt that the killing was justified given the marginalized position of Muslim immigrants in The Netherlands. In a week where one of the main political parties acknowledged that integration policies had failed miserably, the murder of a teacher and the distasteful disrespect shown thereafter, illustrates that simple integration models don’t work and that a complete pan-European effort is required to stem the tide of economic misery and senseless violence. If Europeans don’t act themselves other groups will be more than happy to tap into the discontent among Muslim youth.

Driving back in a torrential rain last night I heard some interesting analysis on the radio following the latest suicide bombing in Israel. A female professor who had carried out extensive research was able to tone down the notion that female suicide bombers were primarily driven by religious and political fervor. She had interviewed the few females that had survived and were now captive, and she was able to deduct that a significant portion was driven by generic suicide impulses. Abandoned by a husband, the old husband fathers a child with new wife, rocky marriage etc. So if that is the case Hamas and al-Aqsa must be using some very sophisticated recruiting methods, singling out females (who as yesterday’s bombing showed have a little edge in checkpoint situations) who are desperate enough to die but too ashamed and depressed to conceal the real reasons and wrap themselves in the blanket of the Palestinian cause.

PS: If anyone knows who that Professor is let me know, I googled for quite a while but nothing tangible emerged.

Like me, Megan McArdle was intrigued by the Child’s Pay video, selected as the winner out of a group of 30 second anti-Bush commercials. My take was: the deficit is going to be an important topic for the upcoming campaign. Megan, in a very good must-read piece says, the Democrats can argue what they want about the deficit, they are equally prone to deficit spending and it is an illusion to accept the Clinton years as a benchmark for Democratic fiscal prudence:

But the Democrats don't want to cut spending; they want to raise it. Dean and his brethren (with the possible exception of Wesley Clark) seem to have spending plans for every dollar they bring into the treasury through tax increases. If they want to publish a remotely truthful campaign document, they will thus have to admit that they aren't going to do a damn thing about the budget deficit.

And that is what makes the entire issue so depressing, both parties pay lip service to that great principle of balanced budgets, but once in office it is just too irresistible to tinker with taxes and spending, and the outcome is nearly always in the red. The American taxpayer is going to be stuck with a hefty bill regardless. Megan is correct about the 1990s and the fact that the boom produced surpluses, a similar pattern could be seen in Europe and Canada. The point however is: where do we go from here? The French and the Germans have already breached the 3.0% deficit limit put on them by the Euro’s Stability Pact and now even the Dutch are sailing very close to the wind. The only country that has miraculously avoided deficits is Canada where the debate is focused around the actual size of the surplus, honestly. It should be important to note that deficits are financed by debt that needs to be serviced and the substantial interest payment load weighed heavily on Canada’s finances in the 1980s and 1990s. But now a point has been reached where the new Finance Minister is going to ask Canadians how quickly they feel the government should pay down its debt (second best debt/GDP ratio of the G7 nations), and if there should be a formal debt-reduction target. It could be that number crunchers in Canada have warned politicians that there will be some very heavy spending requirements down the road if the country wants to maintain its publicly funded healthcare and pension plans. But we can’t be too sure that ballot-box driven politicians would necessarily listen to sound advice like that.

That brings me back to deficits as an election issue. I doubt that any large portion of the electorate in any western country is sophisticated enough to assess the impact of deficits on their economies, the way excessive spending is used to buy votes and the longer term impact of a heavy national debt load. An electorate that is leveraging itself to the hilt with mortgages, credit cards and car leases is ill-equipped to do that. “Child’s Pay” is a great video but few would understand the real significance and Megan reminded me that the real economical issue for individual voters, apart from taxes, will be: what is my chunk of these great spending plans the candidates are tabling? A depressing thought indeed.

It seems the Bush-Martin breakfast has yielded some results and the Arar case, as discussed yesterday, featured prominently on the agenda. The leaders were pleased to announce an agreement:

Under the new agreement, the White House has formally pledged to “formal notification and expeditious consultation” with Canadian authorities immediately whenever a Canadian national is detained in the United States for security reasons.

Well, I believe that in the Arar case the Canadian consular authorities were notified but failed to act. A thorough investigation and disclosure of the facts of the entire Arar case on both sides of the border is warranted, and it would be nice if the results could be disclosed to the public at large. But the breakfast yielded more results; Canada can now bid for reconstruction contracts in Iraq something that seemed to elude Canada following the controversial Pentagon announcement to exclude a number of countries that did not support the invasion of Iraq.

Mr. Martin said that "it actually does show that working together you can arrive at a reasonable solution."

Yes, a simple truth that his predecessor largely ignored with regard to US-Canada relations. It seems we have entered a new phase of bilateral relations, one that could have a direct impact on Paul Martin’s domestic standing, as I discussed last week:

As a liberal in Canada you can cut taxes, trim spending and even send troops to Afghanistan and keep the left-wing of your party quiet, cozying up to George Bush is another thing altogether and it has been one of the key reasons why pollsters see a huge exodus of voters in the direction of the hard left New Democrats.

The next big item on the agenda is joint missile defence and I leave it to your imagination how that topic plays to a liberal Canadian audience. But for now, things look brighter and that is good news, for both sides.

Brad DeLong and Iain Murray are pointing to the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian national of Syrian descent, changing flights in the US in September 2002, detained and deported to Syria by US authorities where he was held captive and tortured before being released. He is now back in Canada and making frequent media appearances to discuss his case. This has been front page news in Canada for months now and I find it somewhat surprising that only now it is getting traction in the blogosphere, the reason probably being that Maher Arar was a suspected terrorist, making it more difficult for some to advocate the man's rights.

While DeLong is pointing the finger to US authorities as those culpable for Maher’s maltreatment, serious doubts have equally been raised over the role played by Canadian authorities. It should be noted that Arar had been under surveillance by the RCMP and CSIS (the latter the federal Canadian intelligence agency) and these agencies have apparently passed certain information to their US counterparts, the nature of which no one is clear about. In addition Canadian consular staff failed to attend hearings for Arar held in New York, shortly before he was deported back to Syria. It’s far from being a clear cut case which is why Arar himself has been asking repeatedly for an independent inquiry. To date that has not happened but the issue has now made its way to today’s breakfast meeting between Bush and Martin at the summit of the Americas in Mexico. Given the track record of this matter so far it is unlikely that the country’s leaders will reach any meaningful conclusion, but both countries should make an effort to review their security and deportation procedures to ensure that at least there will not be a repeat of this embarrassing affair. And while they’re at it maybe they will care to disclose what information prompted the Canadians to keep Arar under observation and why the Americans chose to deport him directly to Syria. Only then can we truly make an assessment of Maher Arar and his case.

According to PunditFilter the blogosphere is baffled at the amount of attention former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill is getting. Yet, when I check out the various entries most of the bloggers seem to focus on the planning for the invasion of Iraq, which to me is a non-issue as I said yesterday. The point is however that the O’Neill story is a bombshell not so much because of Iraq, that’s just a little kicker for the media, no, it is the first time that a senior inside member of the Bush team discloses the inner workings of that team (Dan Drezner and Brad DeLong have some very insightful posts dealing with this issue) and alerts the outside world to what is now becoming a problem that has even got some Bush supporters questioning the wisdom of voting for him: the deficit. And then there’s the announcement that O’Neill will be investigated for leaking documents. This story is big as it is going to hurt Bush in a far more serious way than anything relating to Iraq, as it focusing on Bush’s perceived weaknesses as an effective and hands-on leader and on his greatest fear for not securing a second term: the economy.

So what’s the big deal about the deficit? On an ideological level it has bewildered many fiscal conservatives that Bush would break the bank and that he is not showing any signs of stopping. Democratic ads zeroing in on the future liability all of sudden are less of a quaint and desperate attempt to unseat a highly popular President, they contain stuff to think about. On a practical level we can argue that in order to boost the economy, finance the war on terror and fund a few other necessary plans the Bush administration had little room but to go into deficit, and yes we can to some extent defend those deficits, but while doing it discovered that other questionable tool for boosting economic fortunes: devalue your currency. The bigger the deficit, the greater the loss of confidence in the US Dollar. A reader alerted me to Econopundit’s view who says that in the long run the dollar will hold its own, but so far the greenback has tanked in a very dramatic way versus a number of other currencies. In itself it may bring short-term export driven relief and help adjust the huge trade imbalances, in the long run depreciated currencies will hurt an economy by affecting productivity and adding huge borrowing costs that eventually will need to be underwritten by the American taxpayer. With that knowledge there’s one clear conclusion: O’Neill’s ruminations, whether you like them or not, will have a material impact on the presidential campaign.

Two disturbing news items, no doubt related: hardliners seem to be getting the upper-hand in Tehran in what is deemed to be a bloodless coup and any potential of the US and Iran improving relations has been quashed. I have not spend any time on Iran lately but I think there are many other bloggers that do an excellent job here, Free Iran News, a sort of web central for the democracy in Iran movement is not only a good source of day-to-day news updates as well as analysis, it also has a list of bloggers that support the case of freedom in Iran. You’ll find many good Iran blogs right there.

The anti-war crowd must be jumping up and down over Paul O’ Neill’s revelations in his recent book. The fact that the Bush administration had started to plan the invasion of Iraq only days after being inaugurated and thus well before 9/11 is to many irrefutable evidence that the terrorist attacks had nothing to do with Iraqi Freedom. Well, they’re wrong, and as Glenn Reynolds highlights, the US had been in a state of war with Iraq since 1991 and even the Clinton administration considered war at more than one instance. For a new administration there’s a phenomenal amount of policy planning to be undertaken and as Iraq had continued to be an unresolved and threatening issue it is hardly a surprise that the President would have ordered a strategic plan, including a number of options, for Iraq. It would be a concern if Bush hadn’t planned for it.

Now O’Neill’s tenure can hardly be considered memorable and he himself no doubt realizes this as well. It must be a somewhat disappointing turn of events if what could have been the crowing piece on a long and impressive career, ends in dismissal. As a wealthy man, O’Neill doesn’t need to sell a lot of books to ensure a comfortable retirement, but that retirement could be so much sweeter if as many people as possible will have taken notice of what he had to say about his stint in the Bush Administration. That’s why O’Neill is throwing some heavy ammunition into both his book and publicity tour, and of course he is getting ample attention. But on one point he may be positioning himself for an after the fact validation of his warnings:

Suskind writes that O'Neill warned Vice President Dick Cheney of the consequences of a growing budget deficit, only to be told that Ronald Reagan's two-term presidency showed "deficits don't matter."

If it turns out that the reckless spending mode the administration is now is going to have long term detrimental effects, O’Neill will have made his point for posterity. That’s why we should probably be reading his book.

Update: Robert Tagorda makes a similar point: let’s see what the former Secretary has to say about economics, not foreign policy.

I do not have a link in English for you but in my native country another old custom has come under pressure: protecting the identity of criminals. Believe it or not, I think The Netherlands is the only country in the world where it is forbidden by law to disclose the surname of anyone suspected of or charged with a crime. If OJ Simpson had been charged in a Dutch court the media would have been forced by law to describe Simpson as Orenthal J., or in a more recent case, Scott P. or an even better one: Michael J. If a newspaper violates this ban they can expect some hefty fines.

This is symptomatic of a justice system where the rights of the defendants appear to weigh heavier than the rights of victims. I have always considered this practice to be seriously outdated, especially given the fact that Dutch judges have a habit of being lenient and more than happy to send criminals back on the streets after serving usually brief sentences. Not only that, proper identification by name might help in avoiding potential confusion with other criminals and I feel that victims and society at large have a right to know who the perpetrators of a particular crime are. A number of Dutch police chiefs have now called for some of these restrictions to be lifted following a call to publish pictures of repeat offenders by victimized shop owners in order to trim down criminal activity in their neighborhoods. Whether the dissemination of photos works is debatable, but it gives you a sense of the desperation that some shopkeepers must feel. What I hope though is that it will spark a broader debate over the enormous and outdated protection defendants enjoy under Dutch law. Time for some change.

To be honest if NASA can pull off a manned mission to Mars then one of my childhood dreams will be fulfilled and I hope I will live to see it. My initial reaction to this ambitious plan however was similar to Dan Drezner’s. That fiscal restraint has gone out of the window a long time ago we all knew, but to throw a mission to Mars and the Moon into the mix is taking the spending spree to unprecedented levels. It could be a political move with the upcoming campaign in mind, but the Bush team has inadvertently given some great material to the Democrats: “first he spends a fortune to go to Iraq and now he wants your money to go to Mars?” And that is a mild one, I can think of nastier stuff. The point is that with a recovering economy and consolidation of affairs in Iraq it might work and be a great sell but the Bush team has taken a bit of a gamble here. Grandiose projects like this are left better to a second term when a President can built his legacy uninterrupted by electoral concerns, now it could come back to haunt him in a number of unpleasant ways.

If I read the various comments on the likely Bush-Dean battle I increasingly see comments on the radicalization of the debate where two extreme options will emerge. No longer that battle for the infamous center, although some would qualify Bush’s move on illegal immigration move as just that. It is therefore not a foregone conclusion that the political center has gone, but looking beyond the US it may well be that the popular politicians who successfully danced in the middle in the 1990s have fallen out of favor.

Take Canada where the Liberals have had an iron grip on power over the past decade by sometimes playing the left card, and sometimes the right card. It worked remarkably well, it kept the leftist core in the party at ease, and many free-market fiscal conservatives were enchanted by the tax cuts and balanced books. Yet, the world changes and in face of the new global realities it is imperative that the new Liberal leader and Prime-Minister, Paul Martin, starts rebuilding the relationship with the US because it is the country’s largest trading partner and there are many joint security issues. Not only that, US-Canadian relations are one of the key issues on the agenda of the newly unified right in Canada and Martin has no choice but to move in that direction if he wants to have some success at the ballot box later this year. As a liberal in Canada you can cut taxes, trim spending and even send troops to Afghanistan and keep the left-wing of your party quiet, cozying up to George Bush is another thing altogether and it has been one of the key reasons why pollsters see a huge exodus of voters in the direction of the hard left New Democrats. That challenge could in turn weaken the Liberal Party to such an extent that liberal conservatives might wonder whether continued support for the centrist Liberals makes any logical sense: why support a losing option in the middle if there’s a viable option on the right? The net result: the Liberals could loose their grip on power and become a minority party stuck between emboldened parties on the left and right. The end of a pragmatic centrist hold on power. An overly optimistic (or pessimistic, depending on where you stand) scenario? Maybe, but take a look at what happened in The Netherlands.

The Dutch Labour Party, until the mid-1980s solidly on the tax-and-spend left fell out of voter favor during that decade and realized that the only journey back to power was embracing the middle. The Dutch Labour Party became fiscally conservative and pro-market in its coalition with the Free Market Liberals (the Dutch right) and like Clinton in the US and Chrétien in Canada performed a clever dance in the middle which combined with a stock market boom and low interest rates ensured budget surpluses and lower taxes, a feast not seen in the lowlands since the 17th century. While in North America the war on terror had started to divide the centre, a different set of domestic issues started to spoil the party for the Dutch centrist coalition and the centre practically collapsed when Pim Fortuyn drove a wedge in that very center and the electorate delivered an unprecedented majority to the Dutch right. Labour was nearly decimated as a result of departing voters, many of whom delivered a huge boost to the up to that point small and irrelevant Socialist Party, an old style socialist group whom I have come to describe as Stalinist. It was earlier this week that the telegenic new Labour leader – not a union leader or academic as before, no, a former HR manager from Royal Dutch Shell – called out for a renewed élan for Labour for if the party would not be able to gain strength and confidence it would lose voters to the hard left and the right. Again, like in Canada we see how a left-liberal party that managed to stay in power by capturing the middle ground is now abandoned by that evaporating center.

Although the mechanics are a little different, the same appears to be unfolding in America where Dean has clearly staked his political gamble on a course that is materially different from what Clinton achieved in the 1990s. It should make it easier for Bush to collect votes in the middle now, not only by playing the war on terror card but also by pointing out that left-liberal economic platforms are not really designed to benefit the middle classes, or if they are they don’t always work out that way. So he can stay comfortably in his right corner without having to make too many moves into the middle ground. That’s why Andrew Sullivan earlier this week endorsed Howard Dean: it ensures clarity in politics, a healthy and intense debate that was so lacking on both sides of the ocean during the 1990s. It is one of my main gripes with Clinton, I could never tell where the man stood and what he wanted. Nor could many others which led to low voter turn-outs, again a phenomenon that occurred in Europe as well. With the disappearance of the center that terrible enemy of democracy - voter apathy - may now disappear, together with that very unsatisfying and unclear political center.

This is the most amazing, jaw-dropping piece of news I have read in long time. Many schools here are now barring children from throwing snowballs in the school playgrounds. Well of course! This is dangerous, a ball could be frozen, hit you in the eye and there’s million dollar lawsuit right there! And it incites violent behaviour! So the logical step is to ban this century practice of fun, a step completely oblivious to the fact that you deprive the vast majority of children from enjoying something that is an integral part of growing up as a child in the snow. More importantly by taking this course school districts seem to be comfortable with the effect which is that children will not learn a very basic skill: how to react to a snowball coming in your direction.

As soon as the snow came out last week I exposed my daughter Nora, who is three and a half, to a few well directed snowballs plus the age old tradition of soaping, rubbing her face in the fresh snow. She thought it was hilarious and instantly grabbed snow to throw at me: I had automatically provoked her and she, after having assessed this new and unusual situation, reacted smartly. This is normal, this is human, we learn our kids to judge something, evaluate the risk and respond. The moment we stop exposing our children to situations of risk and let them grow up in an artificial and highly regulated world, they will, once they’re old enough, have a very hard time to deal with the real world. They will either go berserk by engaging in every activity they were barred from or become a victim of behaviour they do not recognize since they were never exposed to it. Most likely both will happen which is the worst possible outcome. Well done school boards, a masterpiece of educational foresight.

Lots of activity on the business side yesterday, so there was little time for posting, but I did not miss the controversial interview in Ha’aretz with Benny Morris (hat tip: Roger Simon), a formerly left-wing Israeli historian who has abandoned some of his left-liberal viewpoints, to put it mildly. After you have digested his findings of war crimes by Jews during the 1948 war for independence and his take on the moral bankruptcy of Arab society, as well as his comparison of barbarians destructing the Roman Empire from within to the relationship of the West with the rest of the world today, you know he’s essentially a realist, neither left nor right.

Trained as historian myself I always identify with detached historical comparisons and Morris definitely strikes a chord. In abandoning the left but equally criticizing those on the right, he’s not just a realist, but a bitter one at that. That bitterness comes through in the end of the interview when he throws doubt on the ability to ever achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians. My argument has been that a peace deal could never work if it’s asymmetrical which is what it would boil down if one was signed today, so give it another ten or twenty years. By that time, according to Morris however, the Arab world (where fundamentalist takeovers of Egypt and Syria are practically guaranteed) is well equipped to destroy Israel with nuclear and biological weapons, and a fifth column of Arab Israelis is ready to rise up. There are a few weaknesses in the Morris view, notably his terrorism analogy with Europe and Africa falls flat and he completely discounts the potential for democratic development in the Arab world, Iraq is not mentioned once in the entire interview. Still this is a worthwhile read, a must-read I should say.

Update: Michael Totten is putting a name to the likely implications of what Morris foresees: total war, introducing us to a world where our current strategies against terror have failed. Not exactly stuff for your morning coffee read.

Bloggers who seem to have disappeared can make a surprise comeback, simply because they miss the art of blogging. I had written off No Cameras but stopped short of kicking him off the blogroll. Well, that apparently was for a good reason as the Dutch blogger in Washington State has returned, with a spouse actually encouraging him to do so. If you haven’t already done so, go check him out.

What would happen to a coalition officer serving in Iraq who, given the facts, found himself in a dangerous situation, fired at a looting Iraqi crowd, thereby accidentally killing one Iraqi man. I don’t have the answer; maybe a US military expert can enlighten me on what would happen to a US Marine officer, the Dutch however know how to deal with this. They wasted no time to detain the officer in question, transport him back to The Netherlands and drag him in front of a judge seeking to extend his custody. The judge wisely threw out this request pointing out that the evidence was scant at best and that any prolonged incarceration was highly inappropriate.

Horrific though such a civilian death may be, all troops in Iraq are under extreme pressure and any investigation into civilian deaths should be handled carefully before ripping an experienced marine away from his unit, putting him in custody and placing him in front of a bewildered judge. It has a major impact on troop morale as one expert judged:

"It will affect morale in a rather negative way of course. They are operating there in a very unstable and insecure environment. Now they're seeing one of their men sent home suspected of murder and that will only lower morale in my view."

More importantly it leaves the troops on the ground unclear when to use lethal force in a setting that is extremely dangerous and life threatening. As discussed earlier, this incident highlights the ambiguous attitude the Dutch have towards their armed forces and will do very little to help solidify support for the Dutch mission in Iraq. This rush to justice was a preposterous act of arrogance by Dutch prosecutors and deserves as much, if not more, investigation as the accidental death of an Iraqi looter.

Update: The Dutch NRC Handelsblad, not exactly known for its pro-war stance, comes up with a sensible recommendation in its lead editorial today:

For The Netherlands and for him (the prosecutor –ed.) it should be evident that waging war and everything that goes with it is something you have to learn.

Indeed.

Time to expand the blogroll. I have added James Joyner’s excellent Outside the Beltway as well as two Americans living abroad. In Canada we have Debbye and her Being American in T.O. and in the UK it is Jackie with Au Currant. All of them produce riveting content on an ongoing basis, so go check them out, it’s worth your time.

Catching up on interesting stuff around the web, Jane Galt opens up the discussion about the Republicans and 2008. Interesting because I have been wondering who the Republican Crown Prince would be and some think it might indeed be Giuliani. I agree, but I do not think he would have to take on Hillary for her senate seat in order to get her out of the way and establish national credentials. Hillary’s term ends in 2006 which means contesting that seat to get into the White House in 2008 doesn’t make sense for either Rudy or Hillary. As for a national platform: if the Governor of Vermont can launch a national campaign, so can Rudy.

He faces two real problems though: he may not be entirely palatable to the rural social conservative base and by 2008 he will have been absent from the national stage for a very long period. The 9/11 effect will wear off and there is a limited amount of book deals to be had. Running for Governor of New York seems pointless, who wants to have that job after having been the Mayor of NY City? The answer may well be that if the Republican leadership believes he is a viable candidate he needs to be drawn back into the administrative fold, upon Bush’s re-election later this year there may be some interesting executive assignments where Giuliani can not only contribute as an experienced leader but stay in the national - and global - limelight to establish a platform for 2008.

My wife will contact Erika Drezner shortly to see if they can organize a group of disgruntled blogger spouses. Yes, there have been similar frustrations over here, Irene being mystified at the amount of time I spent blogging and reading other people’s blogs. In her mind, the entire phenomenon is nothing more than a bizarre grouping of pseudo-writers cheering each other on in their efforts to support the war on terror and relegate any voice of dissent to the bin of traitors and dangerous dissenters, which does not stop her from checking into my favorite reads on a very regular basis. In her mind, to echo Erika Drezner, there’s a world of normal people out there that watch TV or engage in other leisure activities. Yet, Irene was truly surprised by the scope of the phenomenon when I told her the number of people that visit some blogs, adding that it is a rapidly growing number as well. She is, to be frank, quite frustrated from time to time especially when I get home late and almost instantly disappear into my office “to post”. The purchase of a wireless laptop hasn’t helped, wherever I set up shop in the house I disconnect from my surroundings even developing the unpleasant ability to engage in a conversation when reading the screen, a very bad habit that I have now imported into my work life. I know, here’s the potential to start losing friends and colleagues and become somewhat estranged from the basic concepts of normal interpersonal interaction.

To be honest, this is one of the things I deliberated over Christmas. I mean, I have to keep an upstart software firm going as well as a fledgling digital entertainment firm. Both require a lot of time to be taken to the next level of growth and that involves more than a regular working day. Then, I have two lovely daughters who have a rightful claim to my time, and the two holiday weeks at home re-emphasized the importance of family fun. In addition, I have countless other hobbies that already have taken a backseat, not to mention our social life. I came dangerously close to deciding to turn Peaktalk into a pure content blog: a maximum of two articles a week as opposed to the usual daily updates. This weblog operates in a market occupied by academics that have plenty of spare time (just take a look at the daily output of the various professors out there) or young singles who have swapped their social existence with their blog identity. Keeping up with them is not easy; it is simply not feasible or desirable given my slate of activities. But as long as I can balance everything, I will continue to update on a daily basis an throw in the odd 1,000 word post whenever the subject matter hits me, I love doing it, really. But the issue is real and I have made one concession to Irene and it is one for my own good: get more sleep; a lack of it impacts all of my activities.

The three judges who compile the Monthly Top Ten Blogs over at Blogs Canada (with a directory containing over 7,000 Canadian blogs) has kindly included Peaktalk in their selection for the month January. Thanks guys, let’s see if my Canuck based readership will increase from the 17.25% recorded in 2003.

Earlier today I was hit by a sudden and profound bout of Hong Kong nostalgia. I have started to check into the other major Hong Kong blogger, Phil and his Flying Chair and it alerted me to Anita Mui’s death on December 31. If you follow the thread of comments you will get an idea of what the late Cantonese diva was all about, the Big White Guy also has some moving comments. To me, even though I have limited knowledge of her oeuvre, she was the ultimate symbol of Hong Kong stardom and her early departure at age 40 as a result of cervical cancer has only added to the Callasesque proportions of the legend that she now is. Rest in peace, Anita.

So I have returned after a 16-day hiatus. Was it good, useful, relaxing or even inspiring? Hard to say, but I did manage to do a lot of things that I had been planning to do for a long while such as cleaning up my home office, catch up on sleep, and more importantly, evaluate from a safe (meaning uninterrupted by e-mails or calls) distance the way I have been operating my business affairs, hoping to reach some meaningful conclusions that would help me be more effective in the New Year. It’s impossible to say if I accomplished the latter; the proof is in the pudding as they say. But apart from these more serious tasks I did spend a lot of time with Irene and the kids and we had a great Christmas break with in the end a big dump of snow. In addition we finally had the time to watch the entire fourth season of the Sopranos and the Hollywood classic Shane, which had been on my wish list to see ever since I first saw it 20 years ago.

What’s more I tried to avoid the news and it seems that I did not accomplish that entirely for I finally had time to read some of the local newspapers and logged on from time to time to see that the blogosphere does indeed never sleep, not even during Christmas and New Year. The only thing on the news front that got me somewhat irritated was the apparent deal with Libya, a slap in the face of those who lost their loved ones in Lockerbie fifteen years ago. I got excited over the latest missive from the Washington hawks; especially their take on North Korea was one that I had advocated before. Let’s see what happens.

I will not throw in my predictions for 2004, but suffice it to say that I think that the War on Terror will be dominating the news. Accomplishments in that war, an economic rebound and a weak opponent will help Bush to another four year term, which in turn will have further implications for the geopolitical shape of the world. Anyone counting on a Bush reign cut short by economic setbacks and disaster in Iraq is now busy rewriting policy and strategy documents. That applies in particular to Europe, Canada and especially the Middle East where the first victories in Afghanistan and Pakistan appear to be frail at best …

The first news item of the year that really caught my attention was a report of the meetings that are taking place between India and Pakistan. Given the fact that the two were on the brink of war only five years ago these encounters are no doubt encouraging but from our perspective there is an undercurrent worth noting.

One of the main obstacles in the relationship between the two South Asian powers is the issue of sovereignty over Kashmir. The long and deep conflict over this mountainous area is a cause celebre for many Muslim fundamentalist groups associated with and supported by the Taliban. This has put the pro-Western and likeable Pervez Musharraf in an uncomfortable spot, for in spite of all his co-operation with the war on terror by delivering al-Qaeda operatives to the US on a recurring basis, he has barely taken any action against the Taliban or other local fundamentalist groups. On the contrary, it appears that the Taliban have regrouped and are able to re-launch their activities on a regional basis. Not only have they assisted in leveraging Pakistan’s position vis-à-vis India with regards to Kashmir, the Taliban have (as opposed to al-Qaeda) a very strong following in Pakistan and are no doubt enjoying the free reign the Pakistani leadership has granted them. An emboldened Taliban could come to haunt the fragile arrangements by which Afghanistan is currently governed and also prepare another, potentially successful, lethal challenge to Musharraf. While I have often dubbed him Partner Pervez we should be under no illusion that the terms of the partnership are both limited and flexible. Yet, Pervez himself should be aware that at some point he may have to adopt his flexibility to save his own skin.

Pervez’ life is on the line, but so is the political life of Paul Martin, Canada’s new Prime-Minister. There are clear signs that the country is becoming disaffected by the near totalitarian grip of the Liberal Party on politics. An emerging political scandal in British Columbia, implicating Martin fundraisers and activists is only adding fuel to the fire. It is expected that in the anticipated federal elections the protest vote will come out as both on the right and the left some viable alternatives have presented themselves. If such a protest vote is directed at a centrist party in a multi-party country, the outcome however could be less than desirable. While it is good news that the Canadian conservatives have finally merged and put an end to their counter-productive vote splitting, it is far from certain that they as yet have the capability to secure a parliamentary majority. The threat then comes from the left as many in the Liberal Party disgruntled with the pro-business Martin will throw their weight behind the New Democrats, who represent a strain of socialism long outdated but still potent, especially under their new leader. The net could be that no party is able to capture a majority, leading to potential coalition arrangements where the hard-left can play a meaningful role.

A nightmare scenario, true, but quite feasible if I compare this to a similar collapse of the centrist social-democrats in The Netherlands a few years ago: it led to a strengthening of the Green Left’s position and an astounding number of seats in parliament went to the stalinist Socialist Party. It was only the emergence of Fortuyn and his school of thought that prompted a tilt to the right, even after his death. And that’s exactly where the challenge is for the newly unified Canadian right: find a leader who can formulate a compelling vision that will not only fly with its core supporters but that will find an ear with that dissatisfied group in the middle. If they don’t, Canada could be headed for a government that is even less desirable than the questionable one it has now.