Progressive Political Proselytizing

Change of Name and Location

2010-09-09T10:11:00.000-07:00

Since I am just starting out, I may as well make the shift to a better domain/name. Henceforth I will be at http://progressiveproseltyzing.blogspot.com which I feel has a catchier and more topical name that will better attracted the attention of "next blog" and stumbleupon viewers. See you there!

On freedom, and on libertarianism

2010-09-08T21:51:00.000-07:00

Freedom is a very good thing indeed, but what does it really mean? While often considered by some to focus on freedom from government imposition, freedom actually can mean freedom from a great many different things. The simple truth is that we are constrained by the reality of our situations. What we are free to, say, eat in the west is very different than what someone in a food crisis in Mozambique is freely able to eat. It is my contention that one can never be truly free without the freedom from the crippling oppression of poverty.

Freedom from poverty and freedom from government interference are two factors but there many others such as freedom from the constraints of culture and social customs, for instance, that lead to horrors like the treatment of women (such as FGM). Or freedom from being forced to accept pragmatically to consume the products chosen by the markets. Our world creates many barriers in many different ways and freedom can mean the elimination of all or any of these barriers.

Given the wide scope of this definition of freedom, we immediately arise at contradictions where "I support freedom" doesn't give a clear answer. For example, consider a welfare system that taxes people with wealth and supplies the means to acquire food to those impoverished who can't. On the one hand this limits the freedom of those forced, via governmental threat, to pay taxes but on the other hand it gives the impoverished the freedom to acquire food and other necessities - a freedom they were denied before. Which then is the worse imposition on freedom? Another classic example is the civil rights act which, technically, limits the freedom of an employer to discriminate based on race but of course opens the door and frees racial minorities to engage in the workplace and public places as they previously had not been.

The other consideration is that while freedom is an excellent virtue, it is not the only excellent virtue and others we wish to maintain may be contradictory. So for instance one might think some level of equality or egalitarianism is a good thing, or that reducing human suffering is a good thing. But if the cost of reducing human suffering or promoting equality is restricting the freedoms of some group (employers to promote racial equality or tax payers to reduce poverty) them we are going to have to balance these contradictory aims in some way, So more than just that "supporting freedom" leads to contradictory objectives, supporting several virtues of which freedom is only one leads to even more contradictory objectives. The resolution, often a difficult or even intractable process, at the very least requires a balanced, pragmatic view of these competing aims.

Finally, the issue I have with a lot of libertarian thought is that it overly focuses the definition of freedom to be explicitly freedom from governmental influence and hence, if one supports "freedom" one ought to support very limited government. The problem with this is that, as we have established, freedom means many more things than just freedom from "violation of property rights" by governments or individuals. Supporting a welfare system that frees the people from the oppression of poverty can be far more liberating than the taxation that makes this possible is oppressive. Furthermore, libertarianism preferentially overemphasizes the virtue of freedom over other virtues.

The bias WE insert into the news we consume

2010-09-08T20:43:00.001-07:00

One of the problems with using principally mainstream, headline based news is how easily this let's us perpetuate our own biases. Certainly the mainstream news media have systemic, homogenized, top down biases themselves - which ought to be the content of a rather long post but for now I shall simply defer one to Chomsky's classic Manufactured Consent - and certainly various media sources have disparate biases tailored to their respective audiences but I wish here to consider instead the bias we as readers introduce not the bias in the media itself.

The issue at stake here is that when an article is seemingly neutral and unbiased it let's us read the article and interpret it with whatever bias we ourselves have. Especially since so many stories are presented as a headline with a few limited details, perhaps a bit of barebones back story and a quote or two from both obvious "sides" and as such are for the most part devoid of advocacy and argumentation for a point we can read it and just internalize the details to fit our bias. We aren't challenged in our viewpoint at all. Contrast this with, say, a source taking an advocacy position where you can get detailed explanations and arguments in support of various points.

Take for instance recent announcements of some of Obama's further economic stimulus plans ahead of the midterm elections. Most AP syndicated versions of this story contain the most basic of facts, some comments about previous stimulus measures and a sentence or two of quotes from Obama or Gates and likewise from one of the bigger republicans. Now this is great in terms of quickly getting the basic facts - something we should generally acquire - but the problem is if one has a decided pro or anti Obama opinion one will just read this and through confirmation bias this opinion will get reinforced. There is nothing here to substantially change ones mind. However if you read op-eds especially in the independent media you can read about it in the context of some particular argument that may well sway you or at the very least inform you more than the trivial details usually offered.

There is a caveat of course. If one focuses on independent media with a clear advocacy bias and editorials that do likewise then the presentation of news will be biased. This is why one should be careful to read a varied range of sources to help develop, change and cultivate ones opinions opposed to merely observing the day to day flow of headline details with little contextual development. Books, talks, essays, blogs, independent radio from multiple sides and perspectives are really needed to help engage in actual rationalization of the issues opposed to confirmation biasing whatever you previously believed. Some of the best things to listen to can come from the best thinkers of a view you quite disagree. For instance my exploration into Austrian economics and the mises.org community has been enormously useful in cultivating many of my economic opinions despite disagreeing with a good number of points.

I should be clear that reading mainstream, headlined, AP syndicated stories isn't necessarily a bad thing - I do it daily - it just needs to be part of a broader experience from many sources of differing perspectives and scopes otherwise we fall too easily into the trap of simply reaffirming our previous opinions and not developing as thinkers.

Constitutions and morality

2010-09-07T21:39:00.000-07:00

On moral issue after moral issue - from gay rights to the "ground zero mosque" - the constitution frequently gets invoked to support or attack one side or the other. The constitution and morality are related yet fundamentally different concepts in the following sense. The constitution should reflect the ambient morality and cultural values of a people and times not the other way around. Morality is independent of the constitution and should stand or fall on it's own merits.

So take the example of gay marriage in the US. This is an issue I unappologetically support and believe to be morally valid. At the same time, there is some debate (I have my own opinions on this but they are irrelevant for the purpose here) that goes on in various courts about whether gay marriage is or is not constitutional. The point I wish to emphasize is that regardless of the result of the debate, even if the constitution explicitly forbade it, the moral validity of gay marriage would stand. We as people should act to modify the constitution to reflect the morality not to change our morality to reflect the constitution. This is in many ways and obvious and pedantic point; however, since on so many issues the constitutionality or lack thereof of something is used frequently to bolster what are effectively moral arguments it is important to emphasize this distinction.

It should be immediately qualified that this does not minimize the value of the constitution, quite the contrary as it has clearly been immensely valuable at establishing a just society and codifies many excellent moral virtues. it is merely that the principle purpose of a constitution is not for moral determination. The main purpose is to codify the major structures and values of a society to ensure their stability. So for instance establishing the structure of governance ensures the stable continuation of governance of that structure. Or the establishing of a moral value like "freedom of speech" ensures the stable continuation of that value into the future. It isn't that it determines that freedom of speech is morally a good thing, it instead ensures that this good thing will occur into the future. In this sense the constitution reflects, not establishes, moral values.

As such, when we argue for or against something we should do so from evident moral principles and logic. If one cannot do this, it is rare that using an "appeal to authority" argument and invoking the constitution to determine your morality will be compelling. In so many cases of course ones morality and the constitution overlap and so certainly arguing by quoting, say, the 1st amendment to argue for the ground zero mosque, is fine because one could equally well have just invoked the moral value of religious freedom as is codified in the 1st amendment. However, if one can't argue the point without invoking the constitution, the argument cannot stand morally on it's own. Moreover, if one must invoke the constitution, it is important to not just pick and choose from it which is a huge problem in the political discourse. Politicians seems to love invoking the constitution any time it helps their cause but quickly forget it when it doesn't. I would contend that to not fall into these traps it is best to argue purely from moral principles.

We are all racists

2010-09-06T23:45:00.001-07:00

One of the problems with racism and bigotry in our society - quite apart from the fact that they still occur with such prevalence - is that they are often difficult to identify and label appropriately. I look at three reasons why this is so and then investigate a small sample of current bigotry such as surrounding the so called "ground zero mosque". The difficulties in labeling racism and bigotry allow it to perpetuate unchecked, and so it is important to see why this is the case.

The first reason it is so difficult to label bigotry and racism is simply that these words are very much pejoratives. It is a grave insult to call someone a racist to their face to the point where the word is almost a taboo. Part of this stems from the fact that when we think of racism, worst case scenarios of slavery, racial genocide and sectarian strife comes to mind all of which is far more extreme and serious than, say, overemphasizing violence within Islam as our media so loves to do. Because there are these such horrific extreme connotations attached to these words, they have developed into grave insults when used to describe less extreme acts. On the opposite end, one can trivialize claims of alleged racism by dismissing this as just being politically correct and that claims are empty in substance. So pegging a specific comment or action as racist means having to clarify the words are not referencing either ends of the spectrum.

Secondly, because everyone knows that racism and bigotry are and knows that it is bad, if you ever press them on a point they will tacitly retract their generalizations with things like "I know not ALL Muslims are violent" before continuing on talking about how Islam is an intrinsically violent religion. This ability to superficially evade blatant racism or bigotry and to have just enough qualifications when pressed about a gross generalization at hand to avoid clear cut bigotry makes pinning someone down as being a bigot difficult. One has to look at, say, the pattern of repetition and focus to determine, more subjectively, the level of bigotry opposed to the clear cut statements of racism prevalent in generations past such as "interracial marriages are bad".

Thirdly, and probably most importantly, when racism becomes very much ingrained in our society and when it is engaged in extensively by many people it becomes both difficult to identify for members of that society and moreover difficult to label because the people engaging in racist views or actions are not acting out of the ordinary. For example the view that "islam is a violent religion" is a common enough perspective (hopefully I need not explain why this is patently false, a poorly defined concept and intrinsically bigoted). This perspective is heavily reinforced by the mainstream media especially post 9/11 (the usage of the word "terrorist" in the media skyrocketed, for example), is obviously easily motivated by the isolated incidents of 9/11 and the two current wars in the middle east, and motivated by a sense of religious superiority. The result is that when people are bombarded by this opinion and indications of it, and when it is shared by so many, it is hard for people to even identify it as a systemically bigoted viewpoint and harder still to label one of the many who share it as bigots. Other issues such as the gross socioeconomic divide between blacks and white in the US from everything from poverty to incarceration rates is one where any individual person is not likely involved directly in active racism yet a legitimate structural racism exists within our society required to explain these differences. Yet the status quo is so innately accepted and the problems so easily ignored that it makes this systemic racism hard to identify and label.

Now I should qualify, just because I believe someone to be a bigot or a racist does not mean I necessarily think poorly of them. In many cases, perhaps an overwhelming majority, people are simply the products of our culture and should not be blamed unduly for their beliefs. There are certainly natural motivations for such beliefs and they are heavily reinforced by society which when combined with apathy or general ignorance can make a powerful combination. That said, I don't minimize the role of personal responsibility and think that it is through individual action that we can combat these deep set opinions in our culture.

As such, I advocate a more direct attempt to identify, label and change the opinions of people engaged in racist or bigoted actions or opinions. Of course, simply yelling bigot at people isn't going to help anything, but actively trying to challenge and identify the basic assumptions that lead to ones opinions may. We should try not to insult people, but we also should not be afraid to try and combat racism and bigotry directly. The simple reality is that they are alive and well in our society and need combating.

As a concluding and timely example, consider the so called ground zero mosque. For those who are not aware, this concerns a large uproar that a Muslim community center is being planned some two blocks away from ground zero (with churches, synagogues and strip clubs equal distances away). That there will be a 9/11 memorial, interfaith components to the multifaceted community center, that the imam is a leader in the interfaith community, hired by Bush and Obama alike, and that they practice Sufism, a particularly tolerant branch of Islam very different from that of Osama bin laden are all usually ignored. If my bias isn't clear enough, obviously the mosque should be allowed if not for the basic 1st amendment rights to freedom of religion but also as it promotes interfaith tolerance and acceptance that glorifies not denigrates the memory of 9/11. However, what is interesting for the purposes of this discussion is the systemic bigotry that motivates the opposition to the mosque. Firstly, let us be clear there is extensive opposition, 68% of Americans in one poll as well as some extreme cases of knifing a Muslim taxi driver for affirming he was indeed Muslim in NYC, to the burning of the mosque site in Tennessee, to the Florida mosque bombing or the proposed "burn a quran day" that while obviously not indicative of the general population show how bad it can get. I have read and debated many people opposed to the mosque and with nearly zero exceptions the arguments all focus on the premise that there is a relation between the 18 terrorists and the mosque, or perhaps "Islam in general". This assertion is of course devoid of meaning at all but the most superficial level that yes they are both technically Muslims as 1.6 billion people around the world are of innumerable sects and cultures. The only way it can be offensive is if one draws this connection and says it is meaningful. So the result is a perfect example where a wide spread and fundamentally bigoted sentiment exists and is being propagated by the media that would directly violate expression of religious freedom. Again, in don't think the best approach is to simply call people against the mosque bigots - they may not even be able, through no direct fault of their own, to identify why we might think this - but to really challenge the basic assumptions that lead to the conclusion that it is offensive or inappropriate and to introduce the narrative of acceptance and tolerance I expressed above.

Piano!

2010-09-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

Finally managed to upload some of my piano composition to youtube and then, somewhat later, to here.

How statehood recognition for nations is an important step towards post-nationalism.

2010-09-05T22:02:00.000-07:00

It is very easy to find fault in nationalism and other forms of ethnic, religious, political, linguistic or social tribalism that have led to wars, sectarian violence and immeasurable suffering for people around the world and as such to denounce nationalist tendencies outright. A post-nationalist world where we all get along and don't divide ourselves into autonomous nations at never ending odds with each other is certainly a lovely idealized utopia. But how to achieve such a world when this tendency seems so innately part of our psyche?

The first step in this aim must be reducing the currently occurring violence, war and oppression between nations. This usually occurs in one of three main ways, either by two or more states (representing, imperfectly, there ensconced nations) acting as belligerents for cross boarder war, a civil war between nations ensconced in single state or geographic region, or thirdly by a state oppressing a distinct nation within the states own boarders. It is the last case I focus on although the civil war case is usually very similar in that it is multiple nations who do not each have their own state. The simple reality is there are many nations who do not have states and whose people suffer greatly at the indirect or direct actions from states they reside in or are surrounded by. Kurdistan, balochistan, Palestine, Chechyna and Tibet are all examples of this. In today's unipolar world, aggression is all too often of this later form. To be sure, we have seen many nations form states; the collapse of the soviet union saw many examples of this especially in central Asia but it had also occurred as a result of international intervention such as for Kosovo or through internal empowerment such as in Taiwan. My contention is that very often the first step in removing hostilities and oppression between peoples is to allow for concrete nations to form their own autonomous states.

Once this has happened, once nations are given states, them the movement towards post-nationalism may commence even if it had the appearance of going the other direction by establishing nations in the formal state way. Cross boarder exchanges of commodities, peoples, ideas, languages and culture should all be encouraged and through this animosities can be reduced now that the background of mutual acceptance and security in the form of states exists. Without this precondition of statehood for concrete nations the asymmetrical oppression remains and this is impossible.

It should be immediately qualified that simply granting statehood to nations is not going to solve all the problems. Statehood may be enormously difficult to obtain in terms of pragmatic considerations, in determining if a group even fits the definition "nation", or perhaps is not even desirable. Consider, say, the Hazara in Afghanistan - an oppressed minority among many other tribes - that is perhaps too small to be given a country state. Or consider religious groups such as pre-Israel Jews whose diaspora is so diverse there is no natural geographic boundary to encompass many of them which is a prerequisite of a state. Or consider places like Quebec where violence and oppression by the Canadian state is virtually nonexistent and so the goals of moving towards post-nationalism are not hampered by the oppression that can occur from lack of statehood. My point isn't to argue for or against statehood in any of the above cases, but instead is this more general point about the potential for nationalism and statehood to be a stepping stone on the way to postnationalism.

One question that immediately arrises if one accepts this general contention is how fragmented should we become? Our world has become increasingly fragmented for a long time. The British, Ottoman, German, Japanese and Soviet empires of the 20th century are all gone and have resulted in a vast array of independence and increase in the number of autonomous countries. There are few exceptions where countries have amalgamated (war being the typical vehicle) but for the overwhelming majority of cases the world has fragmented into more, smaller, states. Even today, nationalist and separatist movements in many countries exist and we can imagine our world getting more fragmented into states in the future. Where then should we stop? Is it a good thing if every group that has coalesced to the point of being possibly considered a nation obtain a state? This is likely not the case and the most important consideration for granting statehood is the legitimate existence of oppression of the nation via states it resides in. The reason for this is that states do also draw barriers between people, as they coalesce groups and limit free interaction between them. There is thus a limit to how small and fragmented one can become before there is no more reduction of oppression by giving mininations states only increased barriers between people. Furthermore, the creation of smaller, semiautonomous regions (provinces, prefectures, states etc) within a larger country satisfactorily solve the legitimate differences between mininations. This is, of course, a subjective balancing act between some group being big enough that we desire to give an oppressed nation a state and between being small enough where the benefits are negligible and a subcountry structure would be better. It is better to consider any individual case at length instead of making a sweeping generalization between these two sides. Where there is more clarity is when a state is violently oppressing a nation that resides within it, the need for a separate state for that nation is important.

As I have mentioned, it is the dividing not the amalgamating of countries that dominates our worlds changing landscape. That said, there is a considerable amalgamation process occurring but it is at the superstate level. It is occurring through both large regional bodies such as the European union, African union, ASEAN, arab league etc as well as the global bodies such as the UN or IMF. Globalization can have many negative consequences such as how neoliberalization and international corporatism can lead to significant environmental, social, political and economic problems for various people. But while it has negative consequences, it also has positive consequences. Ideas, people, resources, culture, religions and values can cross and intermingle over increasingly porous boarders. With the protection of states to prevent direct oppression, these ties can act to bring peoples together and bind us in ways beyond that of nations and provide much hope for the future.

Much of the globalization that occurs requires the existence of a state which artificially raises the importance of a nation having a state. Participation in the UN for instance is, with a few exceptions for quasi-states, is limited to countries. Even war accords like the Geneva Conventions largely apply to state vs state conflicts and apply very little to civil wars, oppression of nationalists within a state boundaries or even of a foreign state invaded other nations that don't qualify as states. Groups like the Taliban or Hezbollah don't count as state armies and so the conditions of the Geneva conventions don't apply to their foreign aggressors which has led to many horrific eventualities. As another example consider the failure for ratification among much of the developed world of the UN convention on migrant workers which protects the diaspora of nations. Part of the reason our international agreements are so dependent on the existence of states is simply because they were written by states and for the benefit of states; in particular, written by and for the benefit of the most powerful states in the world. One only needs to look at the veto powers within the UN to see this. The result is that nations play second fiddle to states in the larger power structures of our globalized world which only increases the need of nations to be represented by states in order for fair and equitable, violence and oppression free existence to occur.

While I have championed the formation of states for oppressed nations, it should be made clear that states themselves of course cause conflict, wars and erect barriers between people that are very difficult to lower. The largest wars of the last century where not within states (through civil war or oppression of some subsect or nation within a state) but between states such as the world wars or the proxy wars of the cold war. The first big superstate structures of globalization were designed to prevent state vs state wars such as the failed league of nations or the modern UN or NATO. To some extent this aim has been successful as a large state vs state conflict between modern powers seems unlikely in the post soviet world. The state vs state wars that remain are usually very much asymmetric ones were one of the states is a dominant military power and the other so weak it may not even qualify as a state. The American/UN invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, the Israeli invasion of gaza or southern Lebanon and the Russian invasion of south osetta come to mind. As such, we see that while the existence of a state to protect a nation is important, so to are the superstructures to prevent interstate conflict.

One component of states is the existence of a state army. It is through a national army that a state is capable of providing both defense against and as a deterrent for both foreign and domestic aggression. It seems counterintuitive because aggression is so often carried out through a state army, but the often implicit but sometimes explicit protection they provide a nation allows for the secure backdrop that ensures peace. I am certainly a proponent in mutual demilitarization between states but am forced to acknowledge that armies are indeed an integral part of a state. This consideration is very apt in the so called "two state" potential agreement between Israel and Palestine because it is very asymmetric when it comes to what kind of army gets included in the two states. On the part of the Israelis we have one of the most powerful military forces on the planet with a history of recent aggression (note I am not commenting on whether this is justified) and on the part of Palestine such an agreement if it forms would be for a completely demilitarized state possibly even surrounded by Israeli military on the Jordanian border and around gaza. There is a serious question of whether the later can really be called a true state at all since it lacks an autonomous ability to defend itself.

Perhaps the trickiest, and hence last, thing to consider is the question of when a state led war is justified because of another state oppressing a nation within it. The question is certainly relevant since most wars on behalf of the US of UN in the last 20 years have had at least some justification on the humanitarian front arguing in behalf of an oppressed nation (or nations) at the hands of a state. Saddam Hussein and Milosovec oppressed the Kurdistan and Kosovo nations respectively. The Taliban were brutal to non Pashtun ethnicities in Afghanistan. It will always be a tough question for when the horrors of a state led war become justified because they prevent the horrors of oppression on some internal nation. I don't try to answer this here, but I would emphasize that this question is among the most important to ask when considering a war. Too often the public justifications for war - and indeed the legal conditions where war is acceptable under international law - focus on things outside of this consideration. I have spoken at some length about this lack of focus on this consideration with respect to the war in Afghanistan where we consider such things as western security from terrorism far more than we consider the reduction of human suffering in Afghanistan.

The result of this discussion is the conclusion that for an oppressed nation, the granting of statehood is an important step along the path to a post-nationalism world where barriers and violence between people are alleviated as much as possible.

Afghanistan

2010-08-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

Now found at: http://progressiveproselytizing.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

The public debate surrounding the Afghanistan occupation, particularly in the US, focuses on two main options: continuing on roughly the current path or alternatively pull out and massively deescalate involvement due to a sentiment that the war is not working and it's costs are too high. It is my contention that both options are so poor for the afghan people, and indeed the West, that it is hardly worth discussing which is actually worse. The purpose of this post is to investigate why this is the case and discuss some alternative solutions.

In order to appropriately evaluate any given option we must first identify the metrics we use to claim success or failure; indeed, it is through a myopically narrow metric for success that has arguably led to the public debate being between two such poor options. More than any other factor, the consideration which dominates on both sides of the public debate is the effect on the West and to a considerably lesser degree the West's allies in the region. On the hawk side is the issue of security for the west both from rogue states and reducing the spread and practice of terrorism against western targets of which 9/11 is or course the most blatant example. On the dove side the reasons against wars focus on the cost in lives, in money, in reduced world prestige and power and other factors that focus on the consequences for the west of an occupation in Afghanistan or other regions. Discussion on behalf of the afghan people are usually tangential at best. Interestingly, even if one takes this narrow western-centric metric for evaluating the two options in the public discourse, henceforth referred to as status quo and deescalation, we find that even in this sense both options are unpalatable failures. However, I submit that as a humanist our metric should be widened to focus primarily on the people of Afghanistan and it's neighbors and in so doing we realize why our two options that were possibly debatable in the western-centric metric become quite abhorrent in a metric that includes a strong emphasis on the afghan people. One can become more detailed in our description of this general metric (not to be confused with narrowing it's scope) explicitly identifying factors like reducing civilian casualties, increasing rights and freedoms and increasing the quality of life of afghans and it is important to do this in a more detailed consideration but for our current purposes a loosely defined "afghan-centric" component to our metric will be sufficient.

Let us first consider the two options from the western-centric perspective. In some ways this is unnecessary as it already is to a limited extent part of the public debate although I will restate it here because it is usually only applied to half the necessary considerations. For the "status quo" option the doves are completely correct about the enormous loss in western soldiers lives, financial costs in the trillions between Iraq and Afghanistan and other factors. For the "deescalate" option the hawks are completely correct pulling out of Afghanistan would undoubtably result in a return to at best the chaos and oppression of the 90s and be a security risks to western interests. This is openly discussed in the public discourse but what is not is applying the dove and hawk arguments to the deescalate and status quo options respectively. For the dove/deescalate option what is rarely considered is what the resulting costs in western lives and funds will be down the road from allowing the region to descend further into instability and the flourishing of militant fundamentalist regimes. The spill over effects from Afghanistan through al Qaeda, the opium trade, arms trade, insurgent training and the spreading of highly militant fundamentalist forms of Islam will be exported to exacerbate the problems in Iran, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, etc. We cannot just consider the immediate saved costs from deescalating in Afghanistan we also have to consider the future costs of any intervention on behalf of the western community in Afghanistan or it's neighbors. We must not forget the lessons of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan after it's proxy war with the soviets ended in the late 80s and the follow up policy of essentially abandoning the country to Pakistani and Saudi stewardship that led to the civil wars, rise of the Taliban and then al Qaeda and the problems we face today. Just as abandoning throughout the 90s saved costs then but resulted in large costs today so too would abandoning now lead to large costs in the future. Less importantly, we cannot forget the lost economic opportunity costs of having a democratic neoliberalized regime engaging in multilateral investment and trade opportunities that are made impossible in times of war and chaos and if it were to exist would likely have positive spillover effects that would stabilize and westernize surrounding regions (recall we are arguing supposing a pro western metric, not arguing for such a metric). Finally let us consider the hawk/status quo case. The hawks maintain that the current war is needed for our security. Unfortunately, we are not more secure today then we were on 9/11 with the only real improvement being an increased public awareness of the risks compared to 8/11. Al Qaeda is now in more countries than ever before with a larger, more decentralized (and thus harder to eliminate) following, antiwestern sentiment in the middle east and south central Asia is back to an all time high after a brief retreat shortly after obamas inauguration which recent polls suggest has completely evaporated, key countries like Iran have become increasingly hostile and belligerent, insurgencies in places like Kurdistan and balochistan are on the rise etc. The London and madrid subway bombings alone proved that 9/11 was not an isolated incident, the threat of which was eliminated after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. So now that we have to bring into question that we are making ourselves less secure with both options and costing us dearly with both options it becomes plain that even by applying the narrow western-centric metric in a fair manner to both sides we see that we are comparing two very much undesirable options.

Let us move now to applying the more important, wider, metric for success which includes a focus on the afghan people to the two options presented in the public debate. Firstly we consider the deescalate option. One only needs to look at the kind of chaos that arose after the end of the cold war in afghanistan or alternatively compare it to the US pulling out of it's failed war in Somalia and that country's subsequent descent into chaos to see how repugnant the deescalate option is for the afghan people. The conditions at the end of the 80s that led to the rise of the Taliban and the civil wars exist today. We have considerable warlordism which control, rather oppressively, large regions within Afghanistan particularly north of the Hindu Kush among Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara groups. Indeed, the western war has depended on the warlords, as it did during it's proxy war with the soviets, initially for the actual ground invasion (very few US SOF were actually on the ground for the invasion) as well as subsequently for security outside of Kabul and khandahar. The warlords were directly, and are still to this day, supported by the international community, attempts to demobilize and demilitarize them have been futile at best and they retain in many cases extremely oppressive practices on their people. Furthermore, there remains considerable militant sectarianism and tribalism in the Pashtun belt where the Taliban arose. The Taliban resurgence still is strong (hence our current difficulties) and animosity between Pashtuns and the northern alliance warlords remain high. Further, the ability for jihadists and insurgents of all types to operate not just in Afghanistan but in Pakistan (for the Pashtuns) and in the central Asian states (for the northern alliance warlords) remain and security in these neighboring states has if anything worsened since the collapse of the soviets presence. Attempts by pakistan, iran, india, saudi arabia and others to extend hegemony for their own purposes also still exist. So the result is the factors that existed after the cold war that led to Afghanistan's strife still exist today and deescalating would inevitably create a descent into civil war, sectarian violence, oppressive localized regimes and be terrible for the afghan people.

The situation is actually worse than at the end of the cold war for two main reasons. Firstly the rise of al Qaeda internationalizes and the conflict and makes it more extreme. The Taliban and even it's more extreme leaders like mullah Omar were fairly inward thinking caring primarily for Pashtun hegemony and expropriating Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan for themselves, they cared little for acts like 9/11 and antiwestern sentiment among them wasn't actually very high. Al Qaeda however is outward thinking actively committing terrorism throughout the middle east but also Africa, Europe and of course 9/11. So now we would have to face al qaeda as already established and a Taliban who are now violently antiwestern as the result of our war. Secondly, the economic situation (the great stabilizer of countries) has deteriorated in most ways except for one: drugs. Afghanistan was once a major exporter of agricultural products, now it is a net importer and reliant on foreign aid to feed itself. The soviets maintained some mining and other industry that is greatly reduced in scale. Instead we have had a massive increase in opium (to make heroine) production which is now over 30% of the official GDP. The drug trade undermines any attempt to establish a state, corruption becomes rampant, it provides enormous funds for both the warlords and the Taliban that make their regimes possible, and these problems get exported to local countries which destabilize them as well. We only need to look at the difficulties in Pakistan before the very much established state under enormous pressure from the US managed to all but eliminate opium production (of course, it just crossed the boarder to Afghanistan and didn't accomplish anything and is again rising today). As an ancillary consequence, addiction rates have skyrocketed in Afghanistan which of course is terrible for their people. Drugs are actually an interesting difference between the US and the Europeans. In London, 97% of heroine comes from Afghanistan. In the US the majority comes from South America. Perhaps as a deliberate result of this, the American policy towards opium production has been one of willfully ignoring the problem. Indeed it has been explicitly stated that counternarcotics is not part of the mission and that they do not want to engage in "mission creep" and that further there is the undoubtably legitimate risk that being aggressive towards opium would anger the warlords who depend on it and on whom the west depends on in Afghanistan. What is often missed however is that the entire stability of the region is undermined because of the opium production and solving the opium problem goes a long way to solving the other security problems. In contrast, the British have taken some measures with the goal of reducing the drug problem particularly in the Helmand province where they have stewardship but it has been completely ineffective for various reasons. The result of these two main factors namely the rise of al Qaeda and internationalized anti-western sentiment and the replacing of a legitimate economy with a drug economy make the situation worse than at the end of the cold war and we ought to expect a deescalation program to result in a horrific failed state.

For completeness I should address the one way this could theoretically be prevented if the west pulled out namely via the currently established afghan government. The karzai administration now has an elected presidency, parliament, a national army and police force and other state institutions and so it is a priori possible they could retain some level of peace if western support left. Unfortunately they are simply now strong enough for this to be the case. They are utterly dependent on the west not only for all aspects of funding (the tax system is hopeless at securing funds and besides there is little genuine economy to tax once drug lords get free reign) but also for military security. Even if funding remained but western military power withdrew the current administration would have no hope of policing much of the country even if all the warlords and their security remained on board which is highly questionable if the west left. Currently the national government is more or less equivalent to being mayor of Kabul and it's influence outside of Kabul is limited. In the status quo with hundreds of thousands of foreign troops and a large dependence on warlords for security the Taliban is mounting a robust insurgency, without the west and even some of the warlords it would be hopeless. We are now forced to accept that should we choose the deescalate option it would be horrible for the afghan people and indeed ourselves.

We now move to considering the status quo option from the perspective of the afghan people. It should be noted that the recent increase in troop involvements since Obama doesn't represent a change in either strategy or tactics, but one of exclusively militaristic scale. Regardless, since it is time limited (or at least so it is still maintained by the Obama administration) and coincides with deescalation and attrition from many euro countries and canada the net result is not as significant an increase as one might think. The recent replacement of Gen. McCrystal with Gen. Patraeus underscores that no significant change in direction is occurring. As such "status quo" as an option includes the Obama administration.

Many of the reasons why the status quo is so poor for the afghan people have already been discussed such as warlordism, oppressive localized regimes, drug trade, little legitimate economy etc. Granted in some places like Kabul treatment of, say, women is undoubtably superior than under the Taliban regime but in many places outside it remains more or less the same. Measurements of the human development index and other quality of life indicators remain appalling near the bottom of the list of countries. One of the most blatant objective metrics is of course the tens of thousands of civilians killed, a majority of these through direct or indirect western military actions. The case stories of villages who get cluster bombed as a result of faulty intel passed to the US via the ISI (pakistans intelligence service, heavily involved with both the Taliban and the current regime) are appalling. Most forms of development in many regions are limited or nonexistent and the resulting quality of life is very poor. We thus conclude that the country is currently in a very bad place after nearly a decade of war and the only real way we can continue supporting the status quo option under the afghancentric metric is if there is legitimate hope for the problem being fixed this way in the future. To see that this is not the case we must investigate further the problems involving the current status quo conduct of the war and see how we can improve them.

As Michael Ignatief pejoratively refers to Afghanistan prior to his rise to Canadian liberal leader what the international community is doing in Afghanistan is "nation-building lite". It is a useful maxim that without development there can be no security and without security there can be no development. To make a sweeping generalization that ignores the more textured and detailed picture of isolated failures of the nation building effort in Afghanistan, there was simply too little focus on development and the focus on security that existed rarely addressed the root causes and instead was reactive. The US/UK took the task that focused too far on exclusively providing military security. In some places, like Kabul, this was indeed accomplished but did little to increase security in the Pashtun belt and north of the hindu kush the situation is the same as before the invasion: warlord control. Development was left to much of the rest of the international community but outside Kabul it was halfhearted and ineffective at best, often owing to the lack of security (take the Japanese road building attempts for example). The simple truth is that the initial war was intended to be as cheap as possible both in lives and money (hence using warlords as the invasion force, backed by US air power) and for the US/UK was in many ways ignored as the war with Iraq, considered far more important, was ramped up. Even by early 2002 much of the funding was getting diverted to supporting the inevitable Iraq war opposed to being spent on development in Afghanistan. There was considerable hope among afghans after 9/11 that the inevitable war would set the stage for a stable nation that would raise the security, freedoms and quality of life for the afghan people, but it was not to be.

Consider for example the Canadian mission. They were given the task of essentially policing khandahar a job their stretched thin military more or less did effectively for some regions of the city. However their lack of ability to extend further and the lack of any help from anyone else meant that the khandahar was being surrounded by the seat of the Taliban resurgence in 2004/5 with little the canadians could do to prevent it. Without security outside khandahar there was little development. Consider, say, the German role which was primarily the development of a national police force which took years to develop even minimally and today remains undertrained, underfunded, and too limited in scale to be effective. The story repeats itself among many of the middle powers involved in the war which are given a limited development goal but fail to achieve it. One large factor prevalent for both NGOs and governments is the increased privatization of the nation building efforts which suck up enormous amounts of funds and accomplish little. This privatization of war also results in feeding the military-industrial complex which perpetuates wars and has objectives differing from those we might ascribe to. Further regarding the NGOs they focus so highly in high profile projects with lots of security, which largely means Kabul. For example an enormous amount of schools were built in Kabul by NGOs which is laudable but few were formed outside Kabul and the level of subsequent funding for things like teachers salaries was far too low some working for over a year before being paid. The declining effectiveness of the international governments and the NGOS even compared to the 90s where they all got up and moved camp from the Balkans is striking.

The result of this underfunded and ineffective lack of focus on effective nation building and development during the early years allowed for the Taliban resurgence and prevents much hope for this changing if we maintain the status quo and hence the status quo, afghan centric option is also unpalatable. Having exhausted the cases of options presented by the public debate in both the western-centric and afghan-centric metric, we are left with the conclusion that we must instead seek a new direction in Afghanistan.

So let us now consider some ways that a new direction might look like. In general this is going to require an increased focus on development and ideally an even larger commitment to security to pave the way for the development. Granted they are completely different situations, but the US has had some phenomenal success with nation building when it commits wholeheartedly such as Japan and South Korea and even the efforts on behalf of the west in the Balkans recently were larger scale and more effective than Afghanistan. A longer term commitment to full nation building and not the lite version we have today is imperative. Several of the factors mentioned above can be fixed by focusing efforts on accomplishing them. The drug problem needs to be a focal point of the solution. There needs to be more pressure on the warlords to demobilize and to reduce their militant influence but this must be coupled by empowering the afghan state to handle the security itself.

An important part of the solution is going to be working with Taliban. To paraphrase chomsky's simple acknowledgement regarding the Taliban, "they are afghans, any solution that is effective will have to involve them". Because first and foremost the Taliban is a populist movement with widespread approval among many Pashtuns, while one can squash their militant capabilities with some marginal success the underlying sympathies that create the Taliban are much harder to eliminate. This can be accomplished at many levels from working with the leaders to demilitarize, from providing options for lower Taliban participants to lay down arms in exchange for, say, jobs as was done on a small scale to eliminating some of the source grievances such as endemic poverty and unemployment by building a stable nation. Pakistan must be pressured to do likewise.

It is also important to acknowledge that the problems are not contained to simply afghanistan but that they spill over and are supported by the problems in neighboring states. Pakistan, and to a lesser degree other neighbors like Uzbekistan, must be pressured and supported to dealing with the problems as well. The relationship between Pakistan and the US is a fascinating one, and contains many of the keys to this story. Pakistan exists as a highly corrupt, highly militarized state that has been propped up largely though extensive US military and financial backing of which it receives more support than all but a few countries. However unlike countries like Israel, Egypt and turkey, Pakistan has complied less with American wishes. It has very openly supported the insurgency in the Kashmir which have nearly escalated to possibly even nuclear conflicts in it's vendetta with India. It defied the world in 98 by testing nuclear devices (as did India) and in 2004 was caught red handed exporting (bilaterally, actually) nuclear tech to Iran, NK and lybia. It horrifically suppresses nationalists in balochistan. Most importantly, it supports the Taliban. While the extent is a matter of debate, it is clear that at the very least components of the ISI still directly support the Taliban and the history of it's previous support and influence of the Taliban during their rise to power is clear. Indeed, the Taliban were seen as the proxy by which Pakistan maintained hegemony over Afghanistan, a result which was tacitly supported by the US as they decide to effectively abandon the region to Pakistani stewardship after the cold war. Today, the ability for the Taliban to exist, regroup, rearm, recruit and hide away top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders within the frontier provinces is crucial for the Taliban resurgence. While it did provide the logistical and some intelligence support for the US war (it had little choice, bush effectively said otherwise the scope of the war would be widenned to pakistans frontier provinces) it remains brazenly noncommittal and ineffective at dealing with the problems in it's borders. It uses US military support to fight it's own, unrelated, insurgency in balochistan opposed to the Taliban in waziristan and what measures it does take are focused on al Qaeda and other Arabs and very rarely on Pashtuns. The US answer to this has consistently been that one cannot pressure pakistan otherwise it may fail to do even the basics it does now, and instead it utilizes drone strikes to try and take out targets which is ineffective, an incomplete strategy and results in considerable loss of civilian lives. The same remains true in the central Asian states where the US has elicited the support of krygzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan for it's war effort as well as the use of warlords of those ethnicities but has done effectively nothing to pressure some of these highly oppressive dictatorial militant regimes in ways that would alleviate such pressures on the entire region. There are tens of thousands of religious and political prisoners in Uzbekistan alone, and this country is key to both the drug and arms trade as well as passively supporting warlordism through refusal to address the problems in their own country. The solution in Afghanistan will require extensive pressures and support applied to these other countries to fix the problem holistically as a region. Through supporting democratization, liberalization and reduced militancy in neighboring countries we will also be able to help Afghanistan.

We have discussed several generalizations thus far but an important point is that many of the necessary changes are not at the general level but instead rather specific. There is a general lack of a deep understanding within the UN and actions taken are done based on generalizations. Adding 30k new troops without changing the strategy or tactics is an example of this. In organizations as bureaucratic and large, and as dependent on a select few top down personalities as UN participants are, it is very hard to foster such a deep understanding and to remain flexible to local requirements. At the start of the war, the US had precisely zero pushto speakers in the CIA (a result of their abandonment of the region) and precious few speaking Dari and other local languages. The inability to resist the kind of momentum towards generalizations that persists results in so many specific situations being dealt with poorly because of limited understanding of the situation. The correct picture of afghanistan is a complex, detailed and interrelated one which requires sensitivity to local requirements. For instance, much of the shifts in the last couple years have been borrowed from the more successful Iraq mission. While there are similarities, Iraq and Afghanistan are very different places namely that the former was an actual established state with state institutions, infrastructure, a middle class, rule of law and an economy both from oil and without it. Afghanistan is a failed state in every sense of the word and requires a different set of tactics, namely more emphasis on nation building. Tactics like COIN which are now being applied in Afghanistan can work in some villages but fail miserably in others. Another tactic that consistently fails is the utter reliance on ariel attacks, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, that serve to further engender antiwestern sentiment as innocent civilians die and accomplishes little more than cutting off the heads of the Taliban hydra while ignoring the root cause. One only needs to glance collectively at the long list touted by the administration through the media of "number 3" Taliban and al Qaeda leaders killed by air strikes to see how futile this is. Part of the problem is reminiscent of hitlers attempt to invade Russia during ww2. The component of US power that is unquestionably their strongest and cannot be defied in the slightest by the inductance is American air power, just as the blitzkrieg tactics of Nazi Germany were it's largest source of unchallenged power during the European invasion. We too often focus on applying our best attributes without consideration for whether they are or are not effective in some specific situation. Just as blitzkrieg could not contend with the Russian slash and burn pull back tactic in a long cold winter, so too does US air power for all it's strengths not solve the insurgency problems in Afghanistan. This kind of slow administrative momentum that can't adjust to local requirements and focuses on the tactics that worked in fundamentally different situations.

A lot of these changes require a strong international commitment which is hindered by the current power sharing paradigm. The influence of the UN is undermined because of the asymmetric relationship which with the US. While the US supplies by far the largest military component with only Britain bring a distant second, almost all issues get filtered through the lens of what the US desires. When the vision of the US is as narrow and myopic as it has been, the ability for the other internationals to form a strong coherent and expansive vision for Afghanistan is limited. The responsibility for this is of course not just the Americans, for the other internationals show little indication of strong leadership and for the most part are willing to leave the difficult parts of the military component entirely to the Americans. Many good suggestions, solely them mentioned here, have been made by European leadership but directly or indirectly prevented because of American desires. Moving the international power sharing away from the unipolar world of today will require both leadership and a willingness to step up responsibility from the rest of the world as well as increased deference on behalf of the Americans to the international structures like the UN. However with a strong international commitment that engages opposed to ostracizing middle powers who can play an effective role much could be accomplished.

The culmination of this analysis is the conclusion that in a metric that considers both western and afghan interests that the two options considered in the public debate, maintaining the status quo and deescalating the occupation, are both undesirable. However, a third option exists which involves a significant change in direction. This new direction is not merely a matter of increasing the scale, although this is likely necessary, but instead is a multifaceted change in focus. As horrific as 9/11 was, it turned the worlds focus onto a region that was being ignored and sorely needed attention. The opportunity to create a better place and the hope for this future has been squandered but is not yet lost.

Local versus global efficiencies

2010-07-17T22:40:00.000-07:00

We are preferentially more aware of our local surroundings than we are of others. The result is that seeing when a product or service is locally inefficient - your local chain store doesn't carry products tailored to your local communities needs for instance - is very easy but seeing efficiencies at a larger scale is much less obvious. The result is we often grumble about a big company or the government being inefficient because it is genuinely locally inefficient while not seeing the larger global efficiencies tha make the company or government worthwhile.

Global efficiencies are things like only having one group of product procurers for the chain store compared to many buyers doing similar jobs for a series of independent stores or having a centralized supply chain. Any indivudal buyer may be capable of choosing a slightly better array of products for their local community but the local inefficiency is more than made up for in the chain store by the global efficiencies of centralized supply chains and procurement. As Thomas Freidman points out, the advantage in purchasing power for walmart, often naively considered the reason for their cheap prices, is dominated by their highly efficient supply train.

Perhaps nowhere else are local inefficiencies lamented more than with respect to government where we might, say, have to jump through all sorts of bureaucratic hoops - unnecessary for our indivudal need - to get a service. However the global efficiencies of having a single standardized all encompassing bureaucratic procedures for a given service often completely trumps these local inefficiencies. For example, one can compare the provision of health insurance in the Canadian versus American models. In the private system in America, a large number of competitors in many jurisdictions puts pressure on each company to be as locally efficient as possible to stay competitive. Very often the local efficiency of the private sector greatly exceeds that of the public provision. However the unified governmental approach as in Canada allows for considerable global efficiencies that result from only having one group work for everybody opposed to many groups reproducing similar tasks (like advertising or financial management) many times over. Add in the removal of profit in the private system and other factors and the comparison between the two systems makes it unsurprising that the US spends far more for moderately lower quality of care than much of the rest of the western world.

Of course, it is not a priori true that either the local or global efficiencies will dominate and each case requires a unique analysis but the point of this post is merely to ensure we remain cognizant of both global and local efficiencies and not focus too unduly on the failings of the latter when it comes to dealing with big instituitions like government.

How fractional reserve banking is a free market force

2009-11-30T22:17:00.000-08:00

As the financial overhaul bill starts it's way through the US congress the question of precisely how much the government should limit the ability of banks to fractionally reserve arrises and one feels compelled to consider the origin of such a system. In our world control over the money supply is monopolized by the central banks and their policy of money creation is often, and correctly so, blamed as influencing things like the current crisis. My argument is that money creation would also exist and comes about in the free market via fractional reserve banking.

Consider a purely free market currency where the currency is determined by market demand for a common, reproducible, divisible, long lasting medium of exchange such as gold. The need for warehousing and safekeeping of this medium of exchange results in the creation of banks. A reputible bank can exchange a peice of paper as a redemption slip for a certain amount of say gold in the bank. As the bank and paper notes grow in reputation they can be traded much like current money backed by the gold physically inside the bank in what would be called a fully reserve system. Now, other than governmental legislation there is no reason why a bank can not print more notes than it has money in the bank. While there is some risk that everyone would try to reclaim the notes at once and there would not be enough gold to go arround, the risk is small enough such that the market desire to aquire credit and for warehousing fees to be lowered and then even reversed so one can make interest from depositing in the bank would compel banks to lend in such a fractional reserve system. Because the notes have real value in terms of their purchasing power and ability to pay debt when a bank lends in a fractional way it is creating money.

Barriers to entry for a currency are high as their is little added value for consumers of a currency in having more than a couple which is why such alternatives to the central banks currencies like the USD or CDN don't form. However there is no reason to suspect such a fractional reserve system would not have been created by purely the market forces mentioned above it is merely that the government beat banks to the punch by using their authority to aquire the legitimacy that is slow to develop from a large collection of individual banks trying to introduce their own common currencies.

The point of all this is not to ignore the problems that printing money creates nor all the virtues that having avaliable credit creates for an economy the point is to acknowledge that printing money is not just a result of government intervention it would occur in a free market economy as well unless the government actively regulated against such things.

Opensourcing and postcapitalism

2009-11-23T10:45:00.000-08:00

The classic struggle, in both the world and in discussions, between the market and government over who best solves our problems both get thrown into a bit of a loop when the example of open source software comes up. The reason is simple: Open Source Software has been known to drive innovation and increase our quality of life while being resilient to either the top down pressures of government or the bottom up pressures of capitalism. What I want to explore is the motivations behind open source software and the possibility that this model of creating productive, innovate work can apply outside of the narrow field of software development. It should be noted that the motivations for open source software are widespread and at times definitely overlap with capitalist motivations in the sense that one is often creating something for (not exclusively) their own benefit; in particular, the apache webserver was a great example of this. That said, altruism runs high in the open source community and the development of software often comes at great expense to the individual developer in terms of time, resources and potential that could have been spent on more personally beneficial endeavors. The benefit is often towards various communities as a whole and it is this nature of open source to collaborate with little incentive towards material personal reward for the benefit of communities at large that I wish to explore.

My premise is that while humans evidently feel a pressing desire to benefit themselves, to a varying degree they also feel a pressure to benefit the communities they are a part of. I believe this latter desire to benefit the communities one is part of is selected for both physically and culturally. This altruism of humans towards ones communities is fairly evident in our culture in everything from families to volunteering to patriotism. What has been less evident is a good example that shows it can be made into a business model that drives innovation and quality of life improvements; that is, until open source. Open source has proven that valueable innovative products that aim primarily for the benefit of others both can and will develop. What is interesting is that many of the motivations are not personal gain and stem from a desire to be a part of a larger community and a desire to benefit the community.

The problems in both capitalism and communism can be seen in this way. For capitalism, the central tennet is personal gain and while it obviously does benefit communities it does so only out of an aggregate of personal benefits. Likewise for communism the ability to benefit exlusively oneself was restricted in favour of benefiting the community. What I see is the need for both personal and community based actions in our productivity models as this best reflects the underlying human conditioning. Traditionally in capitalism selfish benefit precides at the workplace and altruism is relegated to social interactions after work. Open source gives us a model on how the two motivatioms could be combined in the workplace. Consider for example Intel's embracent of the apache server an open source project freely helping on this to the benefit of the community while building value added services for their own profit on top of this platform.

Overcoming the more dominant demand for personal gain will not be easy and it is important not to enforce systems like communism that restrict our desire for personal gain. That said I feel there is a large potential benefit in average quality of life if our future social contract coincides more strongly with our inate desire to benefit communities at large.

Split Passions

2009-11-13T11:06:00.000-08:00

Here I am sitting at my computer. I am listening to a recording of my latest piano song. I am relaxing 5 tabling NL50 and chatting about the media reaction to Fort Hood on the forums. Above the monitor my white board is covered in math diagrams. But what I am REALLY doing is day dreaming about the winter snow camping trip this year. This is when it occurs to me that my passions are really quite a disparate collection.

So that is what this blog is going to be about: Math, Music, Mountains, Poker and Politics. I like the alliteration. Possibly other things, but that should be the theme. As the first four are all things you DO while the last is something you TALK about it is more than possible the last of these will take up an undue portion of the blog. I am also not quite sure WHY I am making a blog other than that I like the sound of my keyboard. As such the possibility that this is my first and last blog post is not at all remote.