Good article on Shin Buddhism

here

Shin Buddhism was founded by Shinran Shonin as a path for the masses, compared to the monastic traditions of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. While those schools focus on lengthy meditation and other rigorous self-disciplines to attain enlightenment, Shin Buddhism preaches salvation not through self-efforts but faith in the power of immeasurable light and life, wisdom and compassion, represented by the Amida Buddha.

The Shin tradition's message of faith has drawn comparisons to Christianity — one reason, Buddhist scholars say, it has been less appealing to American converts seeking a path distinctly different from their own Christian or Jewish upbringing.

But now Shin Buddhists have begun actively working to raise their profile. A seminal development was the 1998 publication of the first introduction to Shin Buddhism by a major publisher: "River of Fire, River of Water," by Taitetsu Unno, the nation's foremost authority on the tradition. The book helped fuel new study groups and sanghas of mostly converts in such places as New Mexico and Connecticut, according to Jeff Wilson, a contributing editor to Tricycle, a leading Buddhist journal...

At Nishi Hongwanji Temple in Little Tokyo, Mexican American minister William Briones is taking the Buddhist message to blacks and Latinos in East Los Angeles through talks at high schools and other locales. His temple, part of Shin Buddhism's larger branch, will celebrate its centennial next year.

One of the region's most dynamic congregations is the Orange County Buddhist Church in Anaheim, which has grown to 1,000 members from 650 in 1986 under the leadership of the Rev. Marvin Harada. Boosted by a 5% hike in Orange County's Japanese American population in the 1990s, the temple also reaches out to the wider community with such classes as "Buddhism in Western Literature," and a new publishing arm. Harada said those of non-Japanese descent now account for up to 10% of temple membership.

Harada's temple is also one of the few to offer meditation services. Official Shin doctrine frowns on meditation as an attempt to gain enlightenment, but Harada said he offers it as a way to relax and open the mind to Buddhist teachings.

The Rev. Koshin Ogui, the newly elected reformist bishop of the Buddhist Churches of America, is likely to encourage such measures despite resistance from Japan. He said he began promoting meditation several years ago in Cleveland, where six of every 10 callers wanted to learn the practice.

"I used to answer that we don't practice meditation, until I realized that if I lose six of every 10 people … I would bankrupt my store," he said with a laugh

.

These folks have emulated some Christian practices, among them, leaving those books in hotel rooms...mostly in Japan, but also in Singapore, San Francisco, and elsewhere.

The article also points to this link, which is a useful reference.

I guess Depleted Uranium (DU) is Clinton's fault

Thought I'd beat the righties to the punch on that one.

Mossback bemoaned a recent post on Atrios showing a shock animation on DU.

So, I did some googling...

Here's what a guy from Brookhaven National Labs (who should know) says:

Some ridiculous claims have been made recently, comparing radioactivity of depleted uranium to the background radioactivity of lead [84]. For this reason, the background total and a-activity of modern lead is also given in in Table 4. This radioactivity is almost entirely due to the 210Pb contamination, together with its daughter products 210Bi and 210Po (credit to Ettore Fiorini [103], see Table 2A of the uranium decay series). Since the radioactivity of commercial lead is not its intrinsic property (as it is for uranium), it depends on the supplier and the values in Table 4 are typical. Medieval and ancient lead can be several orders of magnitude less radioactive than modern lead (up to 50,000´ less for Roman lead), beause the 210Pb half-life T = 22.3 years is small compared to a few centuries (or millenia) [103]. But the total radioactivity of depleted uranium is still about 60,000´ higher than the total radioactivity of modern lead and its a-activity is 65,000´ higher.

His table above this text is noteworthy: DU is about 1/10 as radioactive as U-235.

But wait, there's more!

Why would, I thought, Mossback have thought DU wasn't harmful?

Well, in 1998, the Defense Department was in major denial about DU:

Depleted uranium is just that. It's uranium that has had its radiation content reduced dramatically. It is a heavy metal and is about as radioactive as lead, maybe somewhat less so. We don't believe that normal exposure to this creates cancer and we have not found that to be the case. We are still examining the results of exposure to depleted uranium, but in the case of the Gulf War we do not believe there is a link to cancer. We have not found one at this stage.

The above mentioned link debunks that BS.



Time to check out the RW bloggers...

Well...here's a document from 1999...so it must be Clinton's fault!

Uranium is a chemical substance that is also radioactive. Scientists have never detected harmful radiation effects from low levels of natural uranium, although some may be possible. However, scientists have seen chemical effects. A few people have developed signs of kidney disease after intake of large amounts of uranium. Animals have also developed kidney disease after they have been treated with large amounts of uranium, so it is possible that intake of a large amount of uranium might damage your kidneys. There is also a chance of getting cancer from any radio active material like uranium. Natural and depleted uranium are only weakly radioactive and are not likely to cause you to get cancer from their radiation. No human cancer of any type has ever been seen as a result of exposure to natural or depleted uranium. Uranium can decay into other radionuclides, which can cause cancer if you are exposed to enough of them for a long enough period. Doctors that studied lung and other cancers in uranium miners did not think that uranium radiation caused these cancers. The miners smoked cigarettes and were exposed to other substances that we know cause cancer, and the observed lung cancers were attributed to large exposures to radon and its radioactive transformation products.

Uh, really? Guess what? Here's a DOE report... here:

Evidently Native Americans don't smoke a lot of cigarettes.

But I digress: the real issue is the radioactivity. Put enough stuff that's radioactive around, and it's bad for you.

Now how much is due to radon and how much is due to uranium I haven't actually seen established, but put enough of anything out and it's bad for you.

There goes that "liberal" NY Times Again...

Social Security "privatization" make the op-ed pages today of the NYT, with a nicely Alice-in-Wonderlandian feature by José Piñera (president of the International Center for Pension Reform and co-chairman of the Cato Institute Project on Social Security Choice, was Chile'ssecretary of labor and social security from 1978 to1980):

There was no "economic" transition cost, because there is no harm to the gross domestic product from this reform (on the contrary, there is a huge benefit). A completely different issue is how to confront the "cash flow" transition cost to the government of recognizing, and ultimately eliminating, the unfinanced Social Security liability. The implicit debt of the Chilean system in 1980 was about 80 percent of the G.D.P.

We used five "sources" to generate that cash flow: a) one-time long-term government bonds at market rates of interest so the cost was shared with future generations; b) a temporary residual payroll tax; c) privatization of state-owned companies, which increased efficiency, prevented corruption and spread ownership; d) a budget surplus deliberately created before the reform (for many years afterward, we were able to use the need to "finance the transition" as a powerful argument to contain increases in government spending); e) increased tax revenues that resulted from the higher economic growth fueled by the personal retirement account system.

Since the system started on May 1, 1981, the average real return on the personal accounts has been 10 percent a year. The pension funds have now accumulated resources equivalent to 70 percent of gross domestic product, a pool of savings that has helped finance economic growth and spurred the development of liquid long-term domestic capital market. By increasing savings and improving the functioning of both the capital and labor markets, the reform contributed to the doubling of the growth rate of the economy from 1985 to 1997 (from the historic 3 percent to 7.2 percent a year) until the slowdown caused by the government's erroneous response to the Asian crisis.

Here's what he left out:

In 1973, the year the General seized the government, Chile's unemployment rate was 4.3%. In 1983, after ten years of free-market modernisation, unemployment reached 22%. Real wages declined by 40% under military rule.

In 1970, 20% of Chile's population lived in poverty. By 1990, the year "President" Pinochet left office, the number of destitute had doubled to 40%. Quite a miracle.

Pinochet did not destroy Chile's economy all alone. It took nine years of hard work by the most brilliant minds in world academia, a gaggle of Milton Friedman's trainees, the Chicago Boys. Under the spell of their theories, the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatised the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatised 212 state industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus.

Freed of the dead hand of bureaucracy, taxes and union rules, the country took a giant leap forward ... into bankruptcy and depression. After nine years of economics Chicago style, Chile's industry keeled over and died. In 1982 and 1983, GDP dropped 19%. The free-market experiment was kaput, the test tubes shattered. Blood and glass littered the laboratory floor. Yet, with remarkable chutzpa, the mad scientists of Chicago declared success. In the US, President Ronald Reagan's State Department issued a report concluding, "Chile is a casebook study in sound economic management." Milton Friedman himself coined the phrase, "The Miracle of Chile." Friedman's sidekick, economist Art Laffer, preened that Pinochet's Chile was, "a showcase of what supply-side economics can do."...


By 1982, the pyramid finance game was up. The Vial and Cruzat "Grupos" defaulted. Industry shut down, private pensions were worthless, the currency swooned. Riots and strikes by a population too hungry and desperate to fear bullets forced Pinochet to reverse course. He booted his beloved Chicago experimentalists. Reluctantly, the General restored the minimum wage and unions' collective bargaining rights. Pinochet, who had previously decimated government ranks, authorized a program to create 500,000 jobs. The equivalent in Britain would be a government program for 4 million workers.

In other words, Chile was pulled from depression by dull old Keynesian remedies, all Franklin Roosevelt, zero Margaret Thatcher. (The junta even instituted what remains today as South America's only law restricting the flow of foreigncapital.)

New Deal tactics rescued Chile from the Panic of 1983, but the nation's long-term recovery and growth since then is the result of - cover the
children's ears - a large dose of socialism.

To save the nation's pension system, Pinochet nationalized banks and industry on a scale unimagined by Communist Allende. The General expropriated at will, offering little or no compensation. While most of these businesses were eventually re-privatised, the state retained ownership of one industry: copper.

It's shocking that America could be going down the road to fiscal ruin, and the NYT is aiding and abetting it.

ASEAN: another sign of the world voting against Bush

link 1


link 2


From the first link:

VIENTIANE, Nov. 30 (Xinhuanet) -- The 10-member ASEAN countries and Japan have pledged to promote comprehensive relations during the related meetings of the ASEAN summit which will close later Tuesday.

ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and Japan agreedthat ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Parternship (CEP) Agreement negotiation should start in April 2005, according to the10th ASEAN Summit Chairman's statement released Tuesday.

The 8th ASEAN plus Japan summit was held here Tuesday as a related meeting of the two-day ASEAN summit to end Tuesday evening.

The statement said that the two sides are expected to conclude the negotiations within two years from that day.

An ASEAN Summit spokesman said at a daily briefing Tuesday thatthe drafted timetable for building an ASEAN-Japan free trade area is about 10 years and tariffs between the two sides will be reduced to zero from 5 percent during that period.

Taking into account the current high oil price, ASEAN supports energy cooperation with Japan, in particular in alternative energy,such as bio-fuels, and hydroelectirc power and energy security.

ASEAN leaders encouraged Japan to increase direct investment inCambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, such as through the construction of hydroelectric power plants and relocating environmentally friendly industries in these three countries in sectors where they enjoyed comparative advantage.

Japan's accession to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) in Southeast Asia in July 2004 is regarded as an important milestone in the ASEAN-Japan relations.

ASEAN and Japan also decided to promote human resources exchanges as well as social and cultural cooperation.

Japan welcomed the decision reached by ASEAN leaders to convenethe first East Asia Summit (EAS) in Malaysia in 2005.

The ASEAN leaders also supported Japan's proposal to host an ASEAN plus three (Japan, China, the Republic of Korea) foreign ministers meeting in Kyoto in May, 2005 to discuss the concept andmdodalities of an EAS.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

It looks like the "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere" is coming into being, albeit without bloodshed.

This is yet another thing that doesn't bode well for the USA. From the 2nd link:

The moves are likely to boost China's political and economic interests in an area where its relations have been strained by territorial disputes and lingering war animosities.

That could reduce U.S. clout among Southeast Asian nations that are key military allies and large markets for U.S. farm goods, machinery and Hollywood films.

"This is a wake-up call," said Myron Brilliant, senior vice president of Asia policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "China is becoming more aggressive in its outreach to its neighbors, and we don't want to be left behind."

The free trade pact would lead to the elimination of tariffs by China and ASEAN on thousands of products by 2015.

China's "charm offensive" — which includes the development of bilateral trade pacts, increased investment in energy and raw materials producers, and expanded tourism and educational exchanges — has strengthened its standing as a regional leader at a time when U.S. policymakers have been distracted by the war in Iraq and terrorism, analysts said.

"By any aggregate measure, the United States is still the great power of Asia," said Kurt Campbell, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. "But if you go behind the scene in boardrooms, military councils and diplomatic settings, you find that China's might and influence has grown almost exponentially in the last several years."

What the US could do about though, is hard to imagine.

Good thing, uh, we "reelected" George W. Bush, right?

Meanwhile, the ">dollar's headed even lower:

The dollar hit its new low against the euro, breaking the previous record of $1.3329 set Friday, shortly after European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet renewed his assertion that the euro's rapid rise against the U.S. currency is "unwelcome." The dollar also slipped against the Japanese yen Tuesday, falling to 102.54 yen from 102.88 yen on Monday.

This is of course due to our twin deficits- the budget deficit and the trade deficit. But it doesn't really matter at all, says Thomas Sowell (who doesn't understand economics, it seems)!

The number of falsehoods and halftruths from Sowell is amazing. Did it ever occur to him why the rest of the world isn't buying this BS?

Can't be said often enough...

link

...not a single traditional Christian can be found among the leading names of the American Revolution. Neither George Washington, nor John Adams, nor Thomas Jefferson, nor Benjamin Franklin, nor Alexander Hamilton professed traditional Christian belief, although most of them expressed an idiosyncratic personal faith of some sort. The same applies to Abraham Lincoln, who attended no church, although his later speeches are hewn out of the same rock as the Scriptures...

...one can trace no obvious connection between the religion of America's founders and today's American evangelicals.

D. James Kennedy: where are the Christians speaking out against him?

link

By one measure, conservative Christians comprised 12 percent of the electorate this year — the same as four years ago. But they see themselves as a crucial piece of the president's political base.

They believe that if their agenda is not implemented quickly — if their concerns are not addressed in a timely fashion — God will be angry.

One leading evangelist recently warned, "God's patience runs out."

Dr. James Kennedy delivers sermons at Coral Ridge which are broadcast to 3 million homes. He said he knows of no timetable for God's wrath, but wants results fast.

He dismissed the concerns of people who worried about the impact of Christian conservatives on the U.S. government.

"Repent," he said with a laugh. "Repent. That's what I'd say
People who are concerned about the influence of Christianity "have never really surrendered their life to God and submitted themselves to his commandments — and if they did that they wouldn't have so much concern about some court saying again that it's wrong," he said.



Asked about the millions of Americans who are not Christian, or have a different interpretation of Christianity, Kennedy said with another laugh: "I couldn't care less. It's true."

"I think that the idea that the worst sin that somebody can commit is to offend somebody is ridiculous," he said.



Evangelicals say Kennedy may seem intolerant, but there's no greater love than upholding the will of God.

However, as Atrios quotes Frank Rich:

It took a British publication, The Economist, to point out that the percentage of American voters citing moral and ethical values as their prime concern is actually down from 2000 (35 percent) and 1996 (40 percent).

D. James Kennedy is a liar and a demagogue (and used the 10 Commandments in Alabama as a fund-raising scam, as the court involved found: "Aside from its being the only media outlet to record the night-time placement of the monument in the Alabama State Judicial Building, Coral Ridge has used the Chief Justice's name and his installation of the Ten Commandments monument to raise funds for not only his defense but also its own evangelical purposes. For example, Coral Ridge uses a picture of the monument to raise money for the Chief Justice's legal defense and, at the same time, toraise money for its own work. A fund-raising letter from Coral Ridge President Dr. James Kennedy included a donor-response form which read, in part, 'I want to help provide for Justice Moore's and the Ten Commandments' legal defense. Also, use my gift to continue sharing the life-transforming Gospel, through new editions of The Coral Ridge Hour and all the ongoing work of Coral Ridge Ministries.'")

When will Christians speak out against him?

Now about that flu-shot scandal...

link

HONG KONG A global pandemic of avian influenza is "very, very likely" and could kill tens of millions of people around the world, a top World Health Organization official said Monday.

Governments should be prepared to close schools, office buildings and factories in case of a pandemic, and should work out emergency staffing to prevent a breakdown in basic public services like electricity and transport, said Dr. Shigeru Omi, the organization's regional director for Asia and the Pacific.

Such arrangements may be needed if the disease infects 25 to 30 percent of the world's population, Omi said. That is the WHO's estimate for what could happen if the disease - currently found mainly in chickens, ducks and other birds - develops the ability to spread easily from person to person.

Deaths associated with the rapid spread of a new form of influenza would be high, he said.

"We are talking at least 2 to 7 million, maybe more - 20 million or 50 million, or in the worst case, 100" million, he said.

While many influenza experts have discussed similar figures privately, Omi's remarks represented the first time a top public health official had given such an estimate in public. But his remarks on the likelihood that the disease would start spreading easily went beyond the assessment of many scientists, who say that too little is known about the virus to gauge the odds that it will become readily transmissible.

Dr. Malik Peiris, a top influenza researcher at Hong Kong University, said that Omi's range of potential fatalities was realistic and consistent with current research into the A(H5N1) avian influenza virus. The biggest questions, he said, were whether the disease would develop the ability to spread easily from person to person and, if it did, whether it would retain its current deadliness.

"H5N1 in its present form has a pretty lethal effect on humans," he said.

A few analysts have suggested that the death toll could be considerably higher. Dr. Henry Niman, a medical researcher in Pittsburgh critical of WHO as too conservative, said that with more than 70 percent of the human victims of the disease dying so far, the death toll could, in theory, exceed one billion if the disease were to spread rapidly among people, with little if any reduction in the current mortality rates.

But Omi and Peiris each pointed out that the high death rate recorded so far might be overstated, because people with less severe cases of the disease might not be diagnosed as having it.

.


I seem to be getting rather apocalyptic here, but there's going to be poop hitting the fan in many ways. And the US government is hardly prepared.

More on the falling Dollar

Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley is figured prominently in today's NY Times Op Ed section:

In this blame game, it's always the other guy. Yet global imbalances are a shared responsibility. America is guilty of excess consumption, whereas the rest of the world suffers from insufficient consumption. Consumer demand in the United States grew at an average of 3.9 percent (in real terms) from 1995 to 2003, nearly double the 2.2 percent average elsewhere in the industrial world.

Meanwhile, Americans fail to save enough - whereas the rest of the world saves too much. American consumers have borrowed against the future by squandering their savings. The personal savings rate was just 0.2 percent of disposable personal income in September - down from 7.7 percent as recently as 1992. Moreover, large federal budget deficits mean the government's savings rate is negative.

Now frankly, I think much of the world should be consuming more- but that's the needy portion of the world that comes to mind...


Asia Times (dollar bears to the extreme) have articles here and here on this:

Dr Jiang Ruiping, director of international economics at the China Foreign Affairs University, pointed out the following as a warning to the US in an article titled "Crisis looms due to weaker dollar" in the China Daily newspaper:
Since China holds huge amounts of dollar-denominated foreign-exchange reserves, the authorities should consider taking prompt measures to ward off possible risks.
Given the deteriorating relations between the US and the Arab world, quite a few Middle Eastern oil-exporting countries have begun to increase the proportion of euro in international settlements. Russia is reportedly going to follow suit.
About two-thirds of the reserve [Chinese] is dominated by the dollar. As the dollar goes down, China will suffer great financial losses.
The low earning rate of US treasury bonds, only 2% - much lower than investment in domestic projects - could cost China's capital dearly ... If the bubble bursts, China will suffer serious losses.
To ward off foreign-exchange risks, China needs to readjust the current foreign-exchange holding structure, increasing the proportion of euro in its forex reserves.
Considering the improving Sino-Japanese trade relations, more yen may also become an option.
China could also encourage its enterprises to "go global" to weaken its dependence on US treasury bonds.
Using US assets to increase the strategic resource reserves, such as oil reserves, could be another alternative.

And gold hit a 16 year high today:


"Many gold companies are unlikely to receive the full benefit for the higher U.S. dollar-gold price due to the appreciation of their currencies, such as the Canadian dollar, Australian dollar and South African rand," the Barclays Capital note said.

The rise in the rand, moreover, reflected the broader debate about the extent of the dollar's decline, which many banks have attributed to the size of the deficit in the United States current account, the broadest measure of American trade. ...


In South Africa, Trevor Manuel, the finance minister, seemed to rule out action to slow the rise of the rand, saying: "The problem is not the rand. The problem is the dollar."

The remark echoed a similar argument among some analysts in London. "It's an overall dollar problem, and I think the worrying problem for the dollar is that most people are coming around to this point of view," said Tony Norfield, the head of foreign exchange strategy at ABN Amro.

"The chance of intervention from the European Central Bank is pretty close to zero and we don't see any grounds for Japanese intervention," Mr. Norfield said. "The onus is really on the American side."

Buddhist Blogs...

I recently was directed to Blog Pulse, which purports to yield "Blog Trends," and which as a very nice blog search engine built into it. (The next google?)

They also have a multi-blog toolkit from which you can track conversations, and memes.

But it's the search engine that I used today, to check out the kinds of Buddhist blogs out there, or at least blog posts related to Buddhism. And what did I find?

Karen Armstrong's sister is a member of Soka Gakkai. Hmmmm... I only knew one or 2 Soka Gakkai people, and one was Japanese, and quite normal, except for the American ex-marine gun nut to whom she was married.


John Soper's talking some time off...(he probably needs it.)

And Shokai's in autumnal Samsara...

In short, I'm underwhelmed by what's out there. For my taste, too much repetition of other folks' "wise words." A bit of self-aborption here and there (and please don't assume I'm singling anyone in particular out there) masquerading as Great Truths. (Good try is here, though. Here too. )

To communicate what's not communicable with words ain't easy, and practice isn't about what profundities we can write on blogs. But this is still kind of a bright shiny new toy, these blog things, and I guess it takes time.

Thankfulness

I'm often asked how I celebrate the holidays, being Buddhist and all that.

This being Thanksgiving, we've been invited to a dinner with friends who want to practice an "American tradition."

As an American there, Thanksgiving is an interesting tradition- I need not go into its historical origins and controversies here.

But when we do Thanksgiving, uh, we're thankful.

Economic Indicators= We're goin' down the toilet

Atrios has a few good ones here, here, and here.

His first link, to a talk given by Stephen Roach chief economist at Morgan Stanley bears repeating:

In a nutshell, Roach's argument is that America's record trade deficit means the dollar will keep falling. To keep foreigners buying T-bills and prevent a resulting rise in inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will be forced to raise interest rates further and faster than he wants.

The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to their eyeballs, will get pounded.

Less a case of ``Armageddon,'' maybe, than of a ``Perfect Storm.''

Roach marshalled alarming facts to support his argument.

To finance its current account deficit with the rest of the world, he said, America has to import $2.6 billion in cash. Every working day.

That is an amazing 80 percent of the entire world's net savings.

Sustainable? Hardly.

Meanwhile, he notes that household debt is at record levels.

Twenty years ago the total debt of U.S. households was equal to half the size of the economy.

Today the figure is 85 percent.

Nearly half of new mortgage borrowing is at flexible interest rates, leaving borrowers much more vulnerable to rate hikes.

And to that I'd add this gem from EE Times:

Government-funded research and development programs are likely to get the budget ax in the next federal budget cycle, observers predict.

Government agencies funding R&D programs were busy sorting through a massive spending bill approved by Congress over the past weekend trying to determine spending levels for individual programs. Sources said agencies like the National Science Foundation are likely to see funding remain flat for the remainder of fiscal 2005, with any increase absorbed later in budget maneuvers designed to fund the war in Iraq.

And, China flips the USA the bird:


In a mark of China's growing economic confidence, the country's central bank has offered blunt advice to Washington about its ballooning trade deficit and unemployment.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Li Ruogu, the deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, warned the US not to blame other countries for its economic difficulties.

“China's custom is that we never blame others for our own problem,” said the senior central bank official. “For the past 26 years, we never put pressure or problems on to the world. The US has the reverse attitude, whenever they have a problem, they blame others.” ...

“Under heavy speculation we cannot move [towards greater flexibility] and under heavy external pressure we cannot,” said Mr Li. “So the best environment for us to gradually move towards a more flexible exchange rate is when people don't talk about it.”

His comments will disappoint US, Japanese and European politicians. Pressure has mounted on the Chinese administration to revalue the renminbi or to increase the flexibility of the Chinese exchange rate over the past two years.

Mr Li said China could only permit greater renminbi flexibility after creating a domestic financial infrastructure, including reformed banks and developed markets, able to cope with a more liberalised currency mechanism; considering the conditions and the wishes of neighbouring Asian economies on any move towards a more flexible system; and educating people on how to deal with a new exchange rate system, teaching them how to hedge.

Mr Li, who spoke before a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum last weekend, said China did not want to run trade surpluses or accumulate foreign currency reserves. Its reserves stand at $515bn.

“If there is a small deficit, we are not concerned. But certainly we don't want to run into the US situation of having a trade deficit of 6 per cent of GDP,” he said.

“That is not sustainable,” he added. “The appreciation of the RMB will not solve the problems of unemployment in the US because the cost of labour in China is only three per cent that of US labour. They should give up textiles, shoe-making and even agriculture probably.

“They should concentrate on sectors like aerospace and then sell those things to us and we would spend billions on this. We could easily balance the trade

Oh, and oil futures are at a two week high. Right after the elections for some reason.

Gold is heading north too- to $450 an ounce.

Well, looks like the rest of the world doesn't agree with the announced election results. Who could blame 'em?

And who on the right cares? Dan Rather's leaving so they're happy, happy, happy.

Good for them. I'm crying all the way to the bank.

Maybe they're starting to get it...about "airport security."

(link)


It's less about "security" and more abbout "appearances," but the audience is the object of derision.

They're not really racists?

link

Subject to an automatic recount Nov. 29 because of the closeness, Alabamians voted not to repeal sections of a state constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1956 to mandate racially segregated schools...

Amendment 2 failed by about 2,500 votes. The typical Alabama voter marked a ballot for Bush and segregation.


You’re asking how this could happen. The Legislature referred the amendment unanimously. The governor endorsed it.


The answer is that professed Christians, those of supposedly superior moral values, beat Amendment 2.


The opposition was led by the state’s Christian Coalition, which assured everyone that it opposed segregation and a poll tax, of course. It said those provisions had long been moot anyway. It said it would work with the Legislature to repeal them.


But it was Amendment 2’s third repealing action — of the clause saying no child had a right to an education in Alabama — that these professed Christians rejected.


Roy Moore, the ousted Alabama Supreme Court chief justice who built a Ten Commandments monument in the courthouse, said that repealing the ban on a right to education would effectively establish such a right. That, he asserted, would be bad. He said trial lawyers would use the deletion to file suit to get taxes raised for public schools and maybe interfere with home schools and Christian schools.

Conservatives, especially conservative Christians, often like to compare themselves to civil rights crusaders; and take umbrage if one criticizes the likes of Clarence Thomas or Condi Rice implying somehow "it's because they're conservative African Americans." (See the comments here, for a good example.)

No "conservative Christians," it's because, uh, your fellow travelers are racist.

Canada might be able to arrest Bush

link

In my opinion, if there's enough evidence, he should be brought to justice.

Let's not forget that Bush's nomineee for Sec. State

arguably lied under oath.

And arguably obstructed justice.

Why we're impoverishing ourselves

link

As T. E. Lawrence famously described it, fighting rebels is "like eating soup with a knife." Guerrillas do not depend on vulnerable lines of supply and communication, so counterinsurgents must target them directly, and even a few thousand armed guerrillas can create chaos in a country of tens of millions. Guerrillas camouflage themselves among the population; frequently the only way to distinguish an insurgent from a civilian is when he (or she) opens fire.

This is why the history of counterinsurgency warfare is a tale of failure. Since World War II, powerful armies have fought seven major counterinsurgency wars: France in Indochina from 1945 to 1954, the British in Malaya from 1948 to 1960, the French in Algeria in the 1950's, the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Israel in the occupied territories and Russia in Chechnya. Of these seven, four were outright failures, two grind on with little hope of success, and only one - the British effort in Malaya - was a clear success.

Many counterinsurgency theorists have tried to model operations on the British effort in Malaya, particularly the emphasis on winning hearts and minds of the local population through public improvements. They have not succeeded. Victory in Malaysia, it appears in retrospect, had less to do with British tactical innovations than with the weaknesses and isolation of the insurgents. The guerrillas were not ethnic Malays; they were recruited almost exclusively from an isolated group of Chinese refugees. The guerrillas never gained the support of a sizable share of the Malaysians. Nevertheless, it took the British 12 years to defeat them, and London ended up granting independence to the colony in the midst of the rebellion.

Paradoxically, it is only some weaker countries that have succeeded in suppressing rebellions, albeit by unleashing tremendous brutality against the civilian population. This is the approach that Guatemala adopted in the late 1970's and early 1980's to crush a growing communist insurgency in the countryside. Villages were wiped out in a campaign that killed about 200,000 people and made an equal number refugees. Hafez al-Assad of Syria succeeded with a similarly murderous approach when he crushed the Muslim Brotherhood rebellion in 1982, as did Saddam Hussein when he defeated the Shiite uprising in southern Iraq after the Persian Gulf war in 1991...The fact that we must consider them underscores the caution that should be employed before deciding to go to war. Still, given where we stand today, if the United States can find a way to withdraw most of its troops over the next several years and leave behind an Iraq that is not in a civil war, that is not a haven for Al Qaeda and is not an immediate threat to its neighbors, history may well record it as an odds-defying success.

I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

We're becoming a banana republic

Daily Kos pointed to this great book review in Salon that should give anyone who think's "We're number 1" some doubts:

As Jeremy Rifkin argues in his dense and contentious new research-driven tome "The European Dream," the United States remains ahead in per-capita GDP, but the difference is not as significant as it looks.

Much of American "productivity," Rifkin suggests, is accounted for by economic activity that might be better described as wasteful: military spending; the endlessly expanding police and prison bureaucracies; the spiraling cost of healthcare; suburban sprawl; the fast-food industry and its inevitable corollary, the weight-loss craze. Meaningful comparisons of living standards, he says, consistently favor the Europeans. In France, for instance, the work week is 35 hours and most employees take 10 to 12 weeks off every year, factors that clearly depress GDP. Yet it takes a John Locke heart of stone to say that France is worse off as a nation for all that time people spend in the countryside downing du vin rouge et du Camembert with friends and family ...

Whatever your intellectual and emotional responses may be to this burgeoning transatlantic conflict, it's difficult for any American to read Rifkin's book and not feel ashamed. The U.S. has fallen significantly behind the EU's Western European nations in infant mortality and life expectancy, despite spending more on healthcare per capita than any of them. (While 40 million Americans are uninsured, no one in Europe -- I repeat, not a single person -- lacks some form of healthcare coverage.)

European children are consistently better educated; the United States would rank ninth in the EU in reading, ninth in scientific literacy, and 13th in math. Twenty-two percent of American children grow up in poverty, which means that our country ranks 22nd out of the 23 industrialized nations, ahead of only Mexico and behind all 15 of the pre-2004 EU countries. What's more horrifying: the statistic itself or the fact that no American politician to the right of Dennis Kucinich would ever address it?

Perhaps more surprisingly, European business has not been strangled by the EU welfare state; in fact, quite the opposite is true. Europe has surpassed the United States in several high-tech and financial sectors, including wireless technology, grid computing and the insurance industry. The EU has a higher proportion of small businesses than the U.S., and their success rate is higher. American capitalists have begun to pay attention to all this. In Reid's book, Ford Motor Co. chairman Bill Ford explains that the company's Volvo subsidiary is more profitable than its U.S. manufacturing operation, even though wages and benefits are significantly higher in Sweden. Government-subsidized healthcare, child care, pensions and other social supports, Ford says, more than make up for the difference.

As anyone's who's travelled abroad knows, the US is quickly becoming a banana republic, becoming increasingly like Guatemala with an armed forces on steriods.

How come all those "glitches" favor Republicans???

link

MONTESANO, Wash. -- Grays Harbor County will have to re-count all of its ballots because of a problem with a computer reporting system, The Daily World of Aberdeen reported Tuesday.

County Auditor Vern Spatz said the re-count will likely add to Democrat Christine Gregoire's total votes for governor.

Statewide, at last count, Gregoire was 158 votes ahead of Republican Dino Rossi, out of 2.8 million ballots cast. The deadline for counties to finish tallying ballots is Wednesday.

"We do not have to rescan them, we could just rerun the report, but we don't want to have anybody have any doubts about this election," Spatz said. "We're going to take the time and effort to rescan every ballot in our office and generate new totals. It takes away any question."

We went blue for Kerry, for Patty Murray, ...why would we not go blue for governor, especially when the Republican was an extreme conservative?

So if Tom DeLay goes to prison

does he still get to be House Majority leader?




Ah, what double standards these Republicans have.

Gwynne Dyer Gives the Awful Truth:

link:

If there had been 300,000 U.S. troops in Iraq when the war ended, the orgy of looting, the collapse of public order and public services, and all the consequent crime and privation that alienated the Iraqi public might have been averted. The U.S. armed forces could have come up with that many soldiers for a year -- and if order had been maintained in Iraq and elections had been held there a year ago, it would all have been over by now. But on Rumsfeld's insistence, there were only 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Why did he insist on that? Because proving that he could successfully invade foreign countries on short notice with relatively small forces, and without demanding major sacrifices from the U.S. public, was key to making President Bush's new strategic doctrine of "preemptive war" credible. It was also essential to the neoconservatives' dream of a lasting "Pax Americana" (which could easily involve an Iraq-sized war every couple of years). So the generals were told to shut up and follow orders.

It's too late to fix Iraq by pumping more U.S. troop numbers in now. The resistance has grown so widespread that it would take half a million American soldiers to win at this game of Whack-a-Mole and install an Iraqi government that would last long enough for the United States to walk away from the country without humiliation. Such numbers simply aren't available without bringing back the draft, and even the present troop level in Iraq cannot be maintained for more than another year without drastic new measures.

That backdoor draft is getting kind of obvious, too:

The Army has encountered resistance from more than 2,000 former soldiers it has ordered back to military work, complicating its efforts to fill gaps in the regular troops.

Many of these former soldiers - some of whom say they have not trained, held a gun, worn a uniform or even gone for a jog in years - object to being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan now, after they thought they were through with life on active duty.


They are seeking exemptions, filing court cases or simply failing to report for duty, moves that will be watched closely by approximately 110,000 other members of the Individual Ready Reserve, a corps of soldiers who are no longer on active duty but still are eligible for call-up.

In the last few months, the Army has sent notices to more than 4,000 former soldiers informing them that they must return to active duty, but more than 1,800 of them have already requested exemptions or delays, many of which are still being considered.

And, of about 2,500 who were due to arrive on military bases for refresher training by Nov. 7, 733 had not shown up.

The Individual Ready Reserve is the "bottom of the barrel," and the stories about people being called up when they shouldn't be seems to me like the ultimate slap in the face.

It should be interesting to see at what point Bush starts to reinstate the draft.