WhirledView

The Asian Pivot and Obama’s Gum-Chewing Problem

2013-05-22T05:00:00-06:00

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The President, it seems, can’t walk and chew gum. The so-called Asian pivot is a case in point, but not the only one.

Is it really possible that a great power with the formal institutional resources available to the U.S. can’t keep an eye on the Middle East and China at the same time? Especially since the China issue massively involves the Navy and the Middle East far less so?

Or is this really just a presidential problem? Does Barack Obama lack the smarts to juggle a complex agenda or, to use the current jargon, to multitask? Or is he a colossally bad manager? Or lazy? Or more in love with the image than the obligations of being president?

Or, truly frightening to contemplate, is the obviously troubled U.S. system we used to admire rotten and corrupted to the point of irremediability?

No Lack of People

Look at it this way. There are thousands of thoughtful, well-informed people within the State Department, the National Security Council, the many-pronged intelligence apparatus and the Pentagon to gather information, assess its implications, draw up policy and/or action plans and send them up the hierarchy to be dealt with—collated, evaluated, weighed, tweaked, given relative priorities with appropriate resources—and, passing muster, implemented. Could we possibly be reduced to this: able to activate only one department of one branch of government at one time?

Seems to me that a well-managed country that pretends to super power status should be able to deal with the Middle East and with China simultaneously—and also, at the same time, with Latin America and Africa as well as all the global issues that affect the welfare of this and other countries.

If not, the Republicans are right. Thousands of people should be out of a job because they are redundant, which is a polite way of calling them useless.

A Definite Lack of Deft PD

Actually, the apparent inability to multi-task isn’t my only perplexity on the “pivot” front, and I’d like to exhaust those concerns before I return to the question of whether this government can simultaneously walk and check gum (and, one would hope, also be able to blow big beautiful bubbles—excluding the financial sort, of course).

As an old hand at public diplomacy, I deeply do not understand why the administration so blatantly announced that it was shifting its attention, i.e., executing a pivot, to the East, thus implying that the U.S. lacks the resources to handle a full plate of global issues. Maybe the U.S. isn’t equipped these days to wage a two-front war, but any world power worth the name must have the resources to carry out effective diplomacy on a global scale. Otherwise, it’s not a middling power, much less a super power.

What’s more, isn’t it rather dense to inform both friends and non-friends in the Middle East that their neighborhood no longer merits significant American attention? What a wonderful way to dishearten old allies while encouraging trouble-makers to step up their mischief! And how insulting, this the loss of face, of importance, announced to the whole world: old friends no longer matter!

Naturally, this ex-practitioner of public diplomacy can imagine reasons for reallocating resources, but I can’t think of one good reason to trumpet such a refocusing of policy. Why tell China we’re so worried about their growing wealth and power that we’ll be turning all our attention on the South China Sea? Why put Beijing on the alert? Seems to me that a naive pivoting announcement does more damage to U.S. security than any of the so-called “national security” leaks that the Obama administration (not exactly innocent of administration-favorable leaking) is working overtime to prevent or punish, Wikileaks included. (By the way, the best way to prevent leaks? Classify less cavalierly.)

So what would be the better course in allocating resources and attention? Forget the grandstanding. Be tough or supportive as needed, judiciously devoting to each country or issue the staff time and resources merited, including, needless to say, regard for long and short term needs. Result: no inflated egos, no deflated egos, no red flags, no white flags, no jejeune statements about sticks and carrots, no awkward comparisons. And be aware of nuance: it’s one thing to say you’ll be paying a little more attention to X. It’s another to execute a complete pivot. (Are we tethered here to the President's love for basketball?)

The Mismanaged Benghazi Affair

Measure, reason, skill: none was apparent in the handling of the Benghazi tragedy, which presented the world with the awkward drama of three U.S. foreign affairs agencies trying to evade responsibility. That’s the CIA, State and the Pentagon. Result: a muddle, since the obvious point of convergence, i.e. the Office of the President, didn't jump in quickly enough with some straight talking about the actual situation in Benghazi: things didn’t fall through the cracks; there was no there there, meaning the U.S. presence in Benghazi was cloak and dagger stuff masquerading as a consular outpost, a fact which sort of dribbled out, but not before the Republicans had a chance to dance over the body of a dead ambassador. They continue to do so.

In public diplomacy and public affairs, you can’t have an on-the-shelf script (or big fat briefing book) for everything; sometimes you need smart articulate people with the depth of knowledge, dexterity and good judgement to improvise fast in order to ward off worse evils from wild public speculation.

Neurotic secretiveness, over-compartmentalization and dodgy bureaucratic arrangements lead to waffling. Waffling tends to create more problems that it solves. Someone wasn’t covering the special vulnerabilities of the weird mutant post that was Benghazi. Why? Willful blindness, perhaps. Plus lack of appreciation for the enemy? Neither a wise diplomatic stance.

Cluelessness in the West Wing

The IRS kerfluffle provides another example of administrative incompetence at the highest level: the President’s unimaginative, closest advisors failed to give him a chance to be pro-active vis-à-vis the IRS analysts who devised politically-charged search terms (liberal as well as conservative) to help them (very likely) deal with a plethora of organizations seeking advantageous tax status. The tax people were politically clueless, but their behavior was rational, and the president could have made that case before the Republicans jumped on another politically-resonant issue that refuses to die.

Dogged, devoted IRS people over-worked due to under-staffing caused by ruthless-budget cutting and a monumentally unwise Supreme Court decision in the case known as Citizens United. What a terrific story! But it was trumped before it was played. Doesn’t the President have any savvy public affairs people on his staff?

As for his own tsar-like, godlike, above-it-all stance, not only is it unconvincing, it's unappealing. I can't help thinking of the lifesize cardboard figures that tourists like to be photographed with.

Welcome Cracks in the Edifice of Secrecy

The head of the IRS has resigned, but there’s a more highly-placed head that should be rolling just now: that of Eric Holder, the President’s good friend, who is also the Attorney General the United States. Holder has tried to make us believe that he had nothing to do with the heavy-handed, broad-as-a-barn investigation of a source feeding into the Associated Press offices. However, if Holder did indeed “delegate” the details of this particular operation, the operation was engineered to work precisely as Holder usually does in his relentless pursuit of non-transparency, always in the intimidating, all but criticism-proof guise of protecting the national security.

In fact, the AP snooping caper is entirely consistent with the Obama administration’s aggressive approach to uninhibited prosecutorial privilege. This Democratic president seems no less committed than his Republican predecessor to the systematic trashing of due process and all other procedural and judicial protections, to say nothing of its lack of respect for First Amendment guarantees of a free press and free association or the derivative right to privacy, all of which used to give us a sense of security as citizens.

Interestingly enough, the Administration acted quickly to deflect attention after the shocking extent of its AP source sweep was revealed. The ploy? Suggesting its support for a press shield law. Ha! Anyone who thinks the Obama people will not gladly let such a bill die must also still believe that this administration will fight to curb the malignant role of the super wealthy in American politics. Sommers, Geitner, Lew: the personalities say it all. Wall Street rules.

Hmmmm—Sorry

Perhaps I malign the Obama administration unfairly—which is to say, for the wrong things. Obviously these people do work hard. They work hard to manage issues they care about. If we don't always notice, it's because they must work as quietly as possible, lest our awareness lead to our much needed opposition.

Bumbling on the surface. Ruthless below.

And meanwhile the President does have a beautiful smile.

There’s an Asterisk in that “Nascent Economic Recovery”

2013-05-20T01:00:00-06:00

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

18 May 2013. The theme du jour seems to be “nascent economic recovery.” That phrase popped up everywhere late April, accompanied by analyses of economic indicators allegedly supporting the theme. 15 May 2013 the Bank of England became the latest, projecting a “modest” but “sustained” recovery for the UK.

It would be very welcome if true. Everyone hopes for the best. No one hopes for the worst. No one enjoys debunking hope. No one wants to bring the economy down by "talking the economy down."

Nor do we want to fool ourselves.

Read the fine print

Commentators seem to rely at least partially on a recent ONS estimate of GDP. ONS estimated the economy grew 0.3% in the First Quarter of 2013 over the previous Quarter and 0.4% over the same Quarter in 2012. But there’s an asterisk for those estimates.

“... this estimate is [based on] around 44% of the total required [information] ... [ONS had] good information for the first two months ... [and an] estimate for the third month which takes account of early returns to the monthly business survey ... [ONS had] between 30-50% at this point ... [Therefore the] estimate .... [is] subject to revisions ... typically small (around 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points ... .”

A lowering by 0.2 would change growth to 0.1% over last Quarter of 2012 and 0.2% over the prior year. Nor is this asterisk the only caution. The final estimate will be based on what actually happened during the quarter. ONS has already published reports in May that cannot be fairly read to indicate growth.

Fact check

You can’t rely on headlines.

Take for example a 10 May release from the Office of National Statistics concerning first quarter 2013 construction. According to the BBC the headline implication was, “Construction data suggests UK avoided a double-dip.” Unless one read the ONS report itself one would not know ONS characterized the data as showing construction during the first quarter was at its lowest level since 1998.

As it happened, the story did not receive a lot of coverage. Originally scheduled to come out Monday it came out instead on on “Take out the Trash” Friday.

The same day provided another example. ONS released reports on the trade balance between the UK and the Europe and also the UK and non European countries. BBC dwelt on the increase in trade with non European countries. As to trade with Europe, BBC characterized that as “flat,” again “suggesting” no double dip last year.

This is what ONS actually reported about trade with Europe:

“There is an increase of 31.8 per cent in the trade gap, the difference between UK imports from the EU and exports to the EU. This is the biggest increase in the trade gap in recent years. This difference is now £6.1 billion.”

Then there was manufacturing and production. BBC described this as “industrial output beat forecasts.” It did -- from February to March of this year -- but year-on-year -- according to ONS -- both figures were lower March 2013 than March 2012, which was lower than March 2011. As an ONS graph makes plain, while there were multiple ups and downs over the last 2 years, the slope of the curve has been down throughout.

The final example is employment. ONS released its report 15 May 2013. BBC focused on a 15,000 increase in the unemployment rate while noting a 43,000 decrease “in employment.” In an online piece BBC noted these statistics aren’t consistent with a picture of a recovering economy. But even this piece did not note the very first thing ONS wrote -- the rate of of working age adults actually in work fell.

I call attention to this statistic regularly. It's not the same as the number of unemployed. It's far more significant in that it puts employment in context. The population grows. The need for new jobs grows, a fact often glossed over in discussions of increases in the absolute number of people in work. As documented previously, the rate of working age adults actually in work declined steadily during 2008-2013.

BBC also noted total pay rises were at lowest levels since 2009. But BBC did not mention regular pay rises were at the lowest level since comparable records began (2001).

15 May 2013 BBC News at 1 led with the Bank of England forecast. BBC News at 6 did mention regular pay rises declined, but folded that information into the tail end of its coverage of the Bank of England’s forecast without highlighting rises were at the lowest level since 2001.

BBC's online piece did not offset the employment news with the Bank of England forecast. The piece painted a fairly bleak picture. But unless you went to the ONS site and looked up the actual ONS report, you would not know even from this piece how seriously ONS itself rated the employment developments it tracked.

Don’t bet your children’s future on hopeful pronouncements

The indicators raise serious red flags concerning both the final First Quarter GDP estimate and the Bank of England’s optimism. It’s understandable why one might prefer good news, why one might search for “green shoots” in all those brown stalks. But before you bet your children’s future on hopeful pronouncements, fact check the headlines for yourself. ONS publishes its own take on its own statistics, readily available on line. That take speaks volumes.

Nawaz Wins: What’s Next in Pakistan?

2013-05-16T05:00:00-06:00

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The count’s still contested here and there—and loudly, especially in Karachi, which is no surprise. But the outcome is clear: the Pakistan Muslim League (N) won enough seats in last week’s parliamentary election to form a government all by itself. No need for coalition building in Islamabad.

That’s good. One-party government makes it easier to get things done, especially when there’s a responsible opposition to temper ideological excesses. Such an opposition the out-going People’s Party, whose lackluster performance in power made electoral defeat inevitable, has pledged itself to be. Even so, the PPP won slightly more seats in Parliament than the perky new kid on the block, the Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice Party) founded by ex-cricketeer Imran Khan, which had hoped to win a parliamentary majority. The U.S. should be happy. Khan has been very critical of Pakistan's relations with the U.S.

A Milestone

Before we start looking toward the future via a rather murky crystal ball, let’s pause to note an important milestone. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the 2013 election will allow a civilian-led government to hand the baton to another civilian government. U. S. President Barack Obama has already congratulated PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, and maybe this time—having been granted a third go as Pakistan’s Prime Minister—Nawaz will manage to complete a term in office. In 1999, Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf, with whom Nawaz had just waged (and lost) a high-altitude, mid-winter, mini-war against India, staged a coup and sent him scampering into exile in Saudi Arabia.

A New Nawaz?

“I’ve mellowed.” So says Nawaz, but the world around him may have changed more than he has. To name just a few of the more dramatic events of the past decade or so: the Twin Towers catastrophe in New York; U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq; the rise of drone warfare; the elimination of Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein; the Arab spring and its messy aftermath; the still raging civil war in Syria; the earth-shaking awakening of the Chinese dragon; the death of Kim Jung Il.There's more, but the point has been made.

A New Military?

Nawaz also faces a different Chief of Army Staff.

Many times during the lead up to last Saturday’s polling, I thought that the level of election-related violence—car bombs set off; candidates, party officials and ordinary people murdered; a high-level kidnapping—must surely have reached coup level. The Army would step in, declaring with the usual paternalistic panache that poor old Pakistan still isn’t ready for democracy. It didn’t happen.

Perhaps the Pakistani military under General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has also mellowed. At the very least, Kayani honored his pledge (or inclination) to keep the Army out of the electoral process, even if that meant the Pakistani Taliban’s selective violence might skew the results toward parties they gauged to be more sympathetic to the Islamist cause. Taliban targets tended to belong to the MQM, the PPP and the AWP, all openly secular in orientation. An interesting note: the PML-N insists that it too was harrassed, as if Nawaz feels some need to show there's air and light between him and the Taliban. Even more important: Taliban threats notwithstanding, people in most constituencies flocked to the polls to exercise their right to vote.

Maybe the Army remained aloof from the elections because Kayani is waiting for a better excuse to show who's boss in Pakistan. A possible cause for a fatal sting: if and when Nawaz moves to initiate a bona fide normalization of relations with arch-enemy India. Ex-businessman Nawaz says he wants more trade, and he has already invited India’s Prime Minister to the inauguration of his government on June 2.

Why would the Army object to this? Simple. Peace with India might shrink the military budget. It might also erode the officer corps’s standing in the Pakistani pecking order. What’s more, should private business take off in a serious way, the many enterprises controlled by well-paid ex-army officers would lose their commanding position in the Pakistani economy. In short, friendship with India and a thriving civilian-based economy would undermine the rationale for the existing military establishment.

The China Factor

But what if a new threat were already on the horizon, another would be hegemon offering another border to police aggressively? Iran, obviously, would not qualify, but how about China in its current high-handed expansionist mood?

Even a neighbor like little Myanmar has discovered that reliance on China’s apparent benevolence can be much too much of an initially good thing. For years China was a reliable, lucrative importer of minerals and forest products, a friend who wasn’t picky about human rights. Then China got overbearing and dictatorial. So the junta in Myanmar started democratizing, freeing the economy and making friends with the U.S. Although a displeased China has begun to stir up the border tribes it helpfully pacified for so many years, Myanmar’s opening to the West continues. President U Thein Sein, will be visiting the White House soon. U.S. human rights activists consider his visit to be premature. Foreign policy realists, watching as China aggressively probes terrestrial and maritime boundaries, are not unhappy. Those realists might also be sympathetic to keeping Pakistan’s army in a state of readiness, more or less allied with India, in a quiet watch across the Himalayas, where the U.S. certainly does not want to deploy its own troops.

There’s another way for Nawaz to keep Pakistan’s military well-funded and content, but it entails continued cooperation in the U.S. war against violent extremists. It also requires Pakistan’s acquiescence in the use of drones in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Carefully handled, this is entirely possible. The Pakistani military, however sympathetic to some degree of Islamization, would hardly enjoy the prospect of taking orders from mullahs, and Pakistan is not always unhappy to be rid of prime U.S. targets. The U.S. can probably get away with not always consulting about targets and timing, but the price will be high in damage to the U.S. image among ordinary Pakistanis. The Americans will always be the fall guys for serious mistakes, i.e, deaths with negative resonance in Pakistan.

Speaking of official visits, Li Kequiang, China’s new foreign minister, will shortly be visiting both India and Pakistan en route to meetings in Germany and Switzerland. Touching base with the new government in Pakistan makes good sense. It also makes sense for the fledgling government in Beijing to get an unmediated feel for the mood in India, where Congress control of the central government is shaky. Of particular interest to Pakistan is that India and China have resolved, for the moment, a spat over their never formalized border in Ladakh.

Pakistan’s borders are equally subject to challenge and have already been adjusted once to China’s advantage. That experience notwithstanding, a cash-strapped Pakistan allowed China to build the trans-Karakoram highway, making possible a land route from western China to the Indian Ocean where China is heavily subsidizing the construction of a deep water port at Gwador. There’s only one problem with this little gift. Gwador is poorly located for trade from and to the populated areas of Pakistan, but it’s a quick and cheap beeline route from Western China to the sea. The Soviets didn't build the Salang Tunnel to make the Afghans happy; they were really building a nifty invasion route. Playing China off against India and the U.S. might seem clever but could be disastrous.

The Kashmir Problem

Re-cementing relations with the U.S. and achieving rapprochement with India won’t be easy for Nawaz, because it’s not clear that Kayani is ready to wash his hands of the militant Islamist organizations the ISI has used as proxies to make trouble for India in Kashmir (and for the U.S. in Afghanistan). No less obstructive, Pakistan’s nationalists and its traditionally Islamist parties are, once again, clamoring for a solution to the long festering Kashmir problem. Solution, in this case, means incorporating the entire territory into Pakistan, including the valley that India has administered, not always wisely, for a half century. Most Kashmiris may be Muslim, but India will not surrender this territory without the equivalent of mortal combat, and (even more interesting) most Kashmiris do not want to join Pakistan. Nevertheless, when Nawaz (or anyone else) proposes to talk trade with India, he will encounter the demand to solve the Kashmir problem first. It's the sort of argument that's habitually used to sabatage the least hint of improved relations between israel and Palestine.

An Existential Moment?

India, trade, China—none of this will matter until the big issue is confronted. Whatever the distribution of power between them, the new civilian government and the Army under Kayani face a watershed decision. They can cooperate to quell an insurgency with existential implications for the present form of government or they can allow the Taliban to overwhelm the status quo. The Army was supposed to have dislodged the militants who had taken control of the Swat Valley. Nevertheless, a zealot almost killed the schoolgirl Malala Yusufsai, who had the good fortune to be med-evaced to the U.K. She will survive to continue to champion education for girls. Will Nawaz and Kayani throw her under the school bus?

Past civilian governments have been too weak to eradicate violent extremism, while Pakistan's military dictators have kept the street peaceful by kowtowing to religious militants. If Nawaz and Kayani cannot cooperate, the tail will soon be wagging the dog. Iran will look like paradise compared to rule by the Pakistani Taliban. We’ve seen the prelude in Afghanistan.

Who is Nawaz?

So how much wiggle room does Nawaz have? And how much does he really want vis-à-vis India and Islamist insurgency? Nawaz himself belongs to a fairly conservative sect. Unlike the Bhuttos, who spent exile in London and the Emirates, Nawaz headed to Saudi Arabia, where support for salafism throughout the Muslim world originates. Outside funding notwithstanding, within Pakistan itself there has never been significant electoral support for Islamist political parties. The recent election was no exception. Even in Khyber-Paktunkwa, the Islamists couldn't capture a majority of legislative assembly seats.

We are, I think, left with a paradox. Nawaz Sharif appears to be a known factor, yet all we really know is that Pakistani policy under the PML-N could go in many different directions, none under U.S. control. In this situation, diplomacy will serve better than drones and CIA sub-contractors. Nor, though many politicians are for sale, will money alone be the deciding factor.

The Slapdash Cook Worries about Drought and Makes a Green Chili Cheese Omelet

2013-05-11T05:00:00-06:00

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The wildfire season is upon us. Until it rains, as we hope it will, soon, the following activities are banned from all Santa Fe city recreational areas: romantic campfires, wood- or charcoal-based cookery, cigarette smoking, fast-and-fun spark-generating vehicles and sky-piercing fireworks. Similar prohibitions apply to County and State lands. Last year the fire threat was so ominous that hiking trails were totally closed for many long weeks.

Meanwhile, rivers are trickles, reservoirs are low, forests are tinder waiting for ignition and—horror of horrors!—the chili crop in Hatch is under threat. Water needed for pepper irrigation is being slurped up before it reaches the chili fields in southern New Mexico. The way things are going, meteorologists say, the harvest will be small and any little green pods that manage to get to market will be expensive.

A crisis in the making.

In Northern New Mexico we put green chilis in or on practically everything—and I’m not referring only to huevos rancheros, enchiladas, tamales, empanadas and the like. How about steak with a green chili and mushroom topping? Or baked potatoes crowned with green chilis? Or marinara laced with green chilis? Or green chilis tucked under the skin of a roasting chicken? As for desert, consider chipotlé strawberry gelato or red hot dark chocolate made by the Chocolate Cartel in Albuquerque. When people mention Christmas in Santa Fe, they’re not thinking about Santa Claus. They’re ordering a dish that features red and green chili.

A chili habit is expensive to maintain, especially since a year’s supply has to be bought in a single swoop. Growers, having charred their chilis in wire cages rotated over beds of charcoal, stuff the limp hot pods into pint-sized baggies that have been been selling for five bucks a pop. Let’s do the math. I may live alone, but I still need twelve of fifteen bags to see me over the winter and through to the next harvest. That’s some sixty to seventy-five dollars per annum. Now multiply that sum by three or four to satisfy a whole family’s taste for tingle. Ouch!

Tingle varies, of course. There’s mild for wimps, medium for those who can stand a little excitement and hot for people who like to play with fire. A good trick is to mix a baggie of fire with a bag of medium. Otherwise the heat in the dish you’re preparing may be so strong you can’t taste anything else.

Chilis bought, you take the bags home and freeze them, and here’s what you do when you hanker for some green chili. You thaw the chilis, peel off their cellophane-like skins, remove their heads and seeds, then chop, chop, chop. That’s it. Use the chopped chilis à la paragraph four above. Or any other way that comes to mind. If you have any freshly chopped chilis left over or want to ready several bags at once, do this: pretend you’re making drop cookies, but don’t put the cookie tray in the oven. Place it in the freezer. When the dollops are frozen, collect them into freezer bags and store them until you need them. Thawed eight or more months later, the chili will be just fine. But who can wait that long?

Meanwhile, you’ll need two dollops of chilis (about two tablespoons) for the two-egg omelet we’re about to make. In an hour or less they’ll thaw and be ready to use.

The eggs I prefer are from the super duper local poultry farm called Pollo Real, which retails chicken products every Saturday morning at the Farmers’ Market. (Tuesdays, too, during mid-summer.) These eggs are so fresh it’s almost a crime to tart them up, but the better the eggs the better the omelet. For cheese, what you’ll need is aged cheddar or maybe gruyère. At any rate, grate some cheese with a flavor you like. You’ll need a couple of ounces or more, depending on the runniness of the omelet you’re aiming for.

As for the rest, here’s what also goes into my chili cheese omelet: a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh tomato and a generous tablespoon of chopped onions. Vary and balance the amounts to please your own palate. That’s what slapdash cooking is all about. Being free. Having fun. Eating well.

When it comes to beating the eggs, I blend the whites and yellows, then add a tablespoon or so of water and beat a little more. I apply the thinnest possible film of butter to a non-stick pan, get the surface really hot, pour in the eggs, scatter chili, tomato and onions over one half of the egg rondel and sprinkle the cheese over the whole circle. What comes next is simple but important. I cook my omelets warily on fairly low heat, to keep the eggs from burning while the veggies get semi-cooked and the cheese melts.

Shortly after the bottom surface of the omelet begins to show hints of golden browning, I fold the non-veg half over the half with veggies. Sometimes I flip the resulting half moon, too, once or twice, depending on what’s happening inside. The goal is to congeal the egg as much as you like without scorching the outer surface of the omelet. If you use good eggs, by the way, it's not necessary to cook them to death. What’s more, a decent omelet isn’t leathery.

Finally, slide the omelet onto one plate—or cut it in half and serve two people who want to have room for toast and muffins, too. Some words of caution: if presentation is important to you, don’t try to make a four egg omelet this way. You’ll end up with curious free form offerings on the plates.

By rights this chili cheese omelet should be served with green chile sausage, also from organic venders at the Farmers’s Market. But bacon’s just as good, and that’s all I had on hand: local bacon, smoked just right. Better than filet mignon. For breakfast, anyway.

And while you’re enjoying your omelet, do please pray for rain.

Double Standards: Buddhists, Muslims and Murder

2013-05-06T05:00:00-06:00

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Buddhist mobs have been killing Muslims in Myanmar. Where’s the outrage? Why aren’t all major Buddhist leaders, those supposed paragons of compassion, loudly, unequivocally, calling for a halt to it? Why aren’t Buddhist practitioners world wide wringing their hands with guilt? Buddhists are expected to hate the very idea of swatting a mere mosquito. Aren’t Muslims sentient beings?

Evidently, given what’s expected of all Muslims whenever a single Muslim commits an atrocity, there’s a double standard for mea culpas.

When Islamist terrorists go on a killing binge, the non-Muslim world immediately puts pressure on all Muslim intellectuals and the great mass of ordinary people as well. Again and again they must dissociate themselves explicitly and just as explicitly condemn actions with which they clearly have no personal connection. On the street and in the media innocent Muslims are routinely tarred with communal guilt. They’re racially profiled, and those with common names, the Muslim equivalent of John Smith, find themselves stuck forever on no fly lists. Although Christians, both clergy and their congregations, are not obliged to dissociate themselves from every mass murder by culturally Christian maniacs, Muslim silence is taken as proof of culpability. What’s more, the bloody passages in the Bible and the Koran get different readings, the former (take a look at Leviticus) being taken as embarrassing anachronisms, the latter as the present day intention of all Believers. To be a Muslim is to live under suspicion.

I was reminded of the peculiarities of this double standard problem as I encountered a fresh variant in American media reactions to reports of Muslims murdered just for being Muslims by members of the Buddhist majority in Myanmar. Buddhists there have raided several Muslim enclaves, torching houses, looting shops, killing people. It’s one of the less savory aspects of the relaxation of military rule in that country. These reports from Myanmar reminded me, in turn, of the continuing, largely ignored maltreatment of non-Buddhist Tamils by the chauvanistic Buddhist majority in Sri Lanka.

Although there are many interesting aspects to the history of Islam in Myanmar, they aren’t the point here. The point is that Muslims are being slaughtered by Buddhists, yet Buddhism isn’t coming in for criticism. No one is asking this Venerable or that Venerable to grovel as imams must grovel to atone for the actions of every misguided, bomb-planting Muslim youth.

This chain of thought got underway a couple of weeks ago, when I received the latest issue of a twice-yearly Buddhist publication called (ever so appropriately, I once thought) “The Inquiring Mind.” The Burmese vein of Theravada Buddhism has been very influential in the spread of the Dharma in the U.S., and it occurred to me that I might find in “IM” some mention of the distressing events in Myanmar. I found nothing. The inquiring mind wasn’t inquiring.

I guess I’m not surprised. I can’t recall having read any significant “IM” commentary on the distinctly uncompassionate victimization of non-belligerent Hindu or Christian Tamils by Buddhists during the guerilla war in Sri Lanka. But “IM” isn’t the only example of non-feasance. I subscribe to another Buddhist publication, a glossy monthly aptly named “Tricycle.” Its latest issue also fails to mention the situation in Myanmar. And I can’t remember any “Tricycle” issues grappling in a serious way with the implications of the violence in Sri Lanka over the years. (I’m happy to be enlightened if I missed anything major.)

Meanwhile, mainstream American publications have also failed to demand an explanation of how adherents of a creed based on non-violent compassion for all sentient beings can behave so murderously. Buddhists pride themselves on their deep study of consciousness and the workings of the mind, and yet they seem to have little or no interest in plumbing, exposing and expiating this very obvious chasm between core beliefs and bloody actions.

Perhaps the most influential leaders of Theravada Buddhism, the branch of Dharma practiced in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, have decided not to wash dirty laundry in public. If so, even though Buddhists haven’t declared war on Westerners, which doesn’t mean that Western values aren’t regularly trashed, it’s time for the rest of us to insist that Buddhist leaders face the harsh music Muslim leaders have had to face. (The Dalai Lama wouldn’t be the most useful apologist here. He leads a sub-branch of another vein of Buddhism.) And how about some engagement from the many Buddhist lay people in America, especially those who teach and write about Dharma? Although the Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has called for a socially-engaged Buddhism, most American practitioners seem to prefer the navel-gazing variety. The beguiling injunction to practice loving-kindness degenerates, in all too many instances, into a mind-numbing mantra practice.

Particularly poignant in regard to the Muslim-bashing in Myanmar has been the restraint and remoteness of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s virtual saint, who is reputed to have meditated regularly while under house arrest. During those long years as a political prisoner she was globally admired as a martyr of conscience, and she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent resistance to military rule. Since she’s been free to speak out, however, she seems to have lost her tongue. She certainly hasn’t been campaigning very vigorously to protect the lives and human rights of Myanmar’s Muslims. The Lady is a politician, it seems, not a Buddhist saint. Why is the world giving her such an easy pass?

What do the 2 May local election results tell us?

2013-05-04T23:00:00-06:00

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

3 May 2010. This week the UK demonstrated one old political maxim - all politics is local -- and one new one -- all spin is national.

In yesterday's local elections Conservatives and Liberal Democrats suffered significant losses.

Now for the spin.

Conservatives, who lost most, “got the message.” And the message? The Conservatives are right, of course. The electorate want what Conservatives are doing. The electorate are just “impatient” for it. Never mind the losses, the government just needs to do a better job messaging. Time to put UKIP under "scrutiny."

Pundits had a field day. The only thing better than egg on a politician's face is a story of dramatic political change.

Their "big story” was UKIP’s performance

UKIP did well and better than predicted. It certainly is a story that should be told. UKIP’s share averaged 25 percent, a substantial increase from last year's 7% in national polls or the 13% reported in the Sun poll this morning.

More importantly, there are now four Stallions in the corral with the mares.

UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, claims a “C-change” in UK politics. Many pundits agree. Others say it could be the start of something big. Maybe they'll prove right. But maybe it's overcompensation for not taking UKIP seriously enough in the past.

I agree most with Channel 4’s Gary Gibbon. Gibbon said the one thing clear to him is there's increased potential for a hung Parliament.

But there was another story

The progressive Labour and Green Parties also made gains. In fact, at 291, Labour picked up more than twice as many seats as UKIP. Green also gained. But the story commentators told was Labour disappointing expectations by some measure or another.

BBC further turned speculation into news. BBC reported their projection of what the results would have been nationally if it had been a national election, which it wasn't, and if UKIP's share remained constant, which is dubious, as if this projection was somehow news. BBC ignored Chuka Umunna's point that most of yesterday’s races were in previously Conservative jurisdictions. How does one turn a gain twice UKIPs in previously Conservative jurisdictions into a Labour disappointment? If UKIP’s victory was a potential C-change, it seems more than odd that results nearly twice as large only disappointed.

Why is this important?

This is important because politcos and the electorate now consider the election's political and policy implications.

Commentators who only the day before failed to predict the outcome spent the entire day today telling the public what those implications are. Some argued Parties will have to shift to the Right. Others argued that at the very least Parties will have to address UKIP’s focal issues differently. Many questioned whether one could consider Labour a true contender to take power in 2015. While Labour’s success rose throughout the day the story line remained essentially unchanged.

Premature

It seems premature to me to come to such conclusions.

First, the focus on UKIP's performance glosses over the more than double Labour and Green Party gains. If the country is pulling to the right how did Labour and the Green Party increase their councillors so significantly in largely Conservative jurisdictions? Does not compute.

Second, turn out has been low across the country. Hard to read partisan much less policy conclusions into what that turnout in a local election predicts for a national general election.

Third, it isn't clear that even UKIP’s success represents a victory for right wing ideology. While it is clear the electorate aren’t happy with things as they are, the ideological signals of even the UKIP vote are mixed.

Some compare UKIP to the US Tea Party. Its leadership certainly presents political challenges to the Conservative Party similar to those the Tea Party presents the GOP. Leadership's ideology may indeed be as broadly libertarian as the Tea Party's judging from policies that made it into UKIP's hurried Manifesto.

But not all who support UKIP are motivated by an ideological hostility to government.

There are other factors. Some say UKIP members distrust “suits.” Many do, but that isn’t UKIP's only point either.

Some say all UKIP really is about is disliking immigrants and the EU. Immigration and sovereignty are UKIP’s big talking points. But the reasons why include more than jingoism and “I’m not a racist but” prejudice.

Analysis suggests UKIP pulls from Conservatives at seven times the rate UKIP pulls from Labour. But UKIP does demonstrably pull from Labour.

Nigel Farage himself commented UKIP represents people from across the political spectrum who're disaffected with established “neo liberal” globalism and feel unheard concerning what they believe are the impacts on them of it. UKIP pulls workers who’ve lost jobs to deindustrialization, the impacts of globalized free trade and -- they believe -- immigration. Anecdotal and testimonial evidence suggests immigration is an issue not because “they’re different” but primarily because UKIP supporters see immigrants taking British jobs and services for which British workers pay. One can quote official statistics at them but they believe what they see in their communities. In an era of scarce jobs, competition for British jobs is a particularly emotive issue. Once upon a time it was for Unions and Labour.

In the weeks ahead, UKIP will have to translate rebellion against policies into policies that work and survive scrutiny without losing membership. Due to the diversity of its membership, that may well prove to be a significant and largely underreported challenge.

I think today's instant analyses were premature. I'm particularly skeptical the results imply Conservatives and Labour must make “retail offerings” tailored to a perceived electoral shift to the Right. The clearest lesson just may be, there is no political cadre or ideology on the horizon that currently inspires the trust of an electoral majority. Alliances may be the precondition to governing -- if indeed alliances are possible.

Diplomacy Lesson from the Past - Kathryn Wasserman Davis

2013-05-02T09:06:56-06:00

By Patricia H Kushlis

Kathryn Wasserman Davis died at 106 on April 23, 2013. No cause for her demise was reported although it was reported that she was a strong supporter of environmental causes.

Kathryn Davis came from a line of women’s rights activists and internationalists. Among her earliest memories were those of her suffragette mother demonstrating in downtown Philadelphia for the women’s right to vote. True, I read that in her Wikipedia biography but Mrs. Davis also told me the story herself and if my memory serves, she proudly showed me a black and white photo of her mother’s political activism in action.

Had Mrs. Davis been of my generation, I have to wonder if she would have retained her Republican identification: her viewpoint and that of today’s Republican Party seem so antithetical.

Swiss interlude

From 1969-1975 Katheryn Davis’ husband Shelby Cullom Davis was US Ambassador to Switzerland, a country where the couple had first met as university students. He made his fortune in the financial insurance business on Wall Street turning a considerable sum of money from his wife’s family into considerably more. Presumably he bought the Ambassadorship through donations to the Nixon for President Campaign. That’s how those positions happen. The Davis’s knew the right people and well, money would have likely quietly changed hands moving from their considerable assets to the campaign’s seemingly effortlessly.

I never had the impression, however, that Ambassador Davis was simply after the title or that he wanted to run things at Jubeläiumstrasse 93. More likely both he and his wife had a long standing love affair with the country, wanted access to the people who mattered and simply liked the upper class Swiss life style. He had a strong career deputy named Richard Vine who later returned as Ambassador. Davis left the running of the embassy to Vine as well as dealing with the Swiss on substantive issues (the main one being banking secrecy – my how things don’t change).

From one Canton to the next

So the Ambassador and Mrs. Davis traveled the country – from one canton to another – showing the stars and stripes as the Viet Nam War wound down and meeting and greeting local officials, members of the general citizenry as well as patting the heads of the farmers’ well kept cows.

When in Bern, the Davises were gracious and generous hosts and kind to Embassy staff.

I wonder had Mrs. Davis been born just two or three decades later whether she would have pursued her own career – either as a career diplomat (she had the background – including a stint at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and a PhD in international relations from the University of Geneva - and the intelligence to do so) or in the private sector - not just as helpmate to and source of investment capital for her husband. At least, she would have had the choice.

Showing the flag off the beaten cow path

How productive the Davises five years in Bern was in narrow foreign policy GIPRA terms of today is questionable but they did get the official limousine to places off the beaten cow path and ski trail and made an attractive, well-bred couple of the internationalist school of Republicanism – representing a viewpoint now sadly disappearing as quickly as the setting sun over the Pacific Ocean - as curtains dropped on the Nixon administration.

The Davis’ were never an embarrassment to the US Mission, the government, or taxpayers – as certain other Ambassadors have been, are and will be in similar positions. Yet I never had the feeling that their presence made much of a difference in the long term scheme of things – it was more like frill on a cocktail dress or frosting on a tea cake.

But the fact that the Davis’ five years spent in Switzerland paid for by the US government was not even mentioned in Mrs. Davis’ obituaries suggests it was not a highlight from her or her offsprings’ standpoints either. Or maybe her life was so long and her personal engagement in numerous philanthropic projects thereafter so much more worthy of mention those five years became an after thought.

Feather-bedding in the State Department

In an April 12, 2013 Washington Post Op Ed, Susan Johnson - outgoing president of the American Foreign Service Association – and former Ambassadors Ronald Neumann and Thomas Pickering bemoaned the increase of political appointees in the State Department and the consequent lessening size and influence of the career Foreign Service on US foreign policy formation and implementation.

They have a point. Statistics show that the Department has become top-heavy with too many unqualified chiefs with conflated titles affixed to their security passes and likely too few Indians to do the quality work. This seems to be particularly true in the bureaus of public diplomacy and public affairs – at least that’s where the loudest howls to that opinion piece originated.

The two public diplomacy bureaus – when they were still part of the United States Information Agency before Madeleine Albright and Jesse Helms destroyed it in the 1990s – contained only a tiny sprinkling of political appointees. The bureaus actually functioned rather smoothly perhaps as a result – run collectively in a sometimes uneasy alliance by the professional Foreign and Civil Services who often worked around the few politicals to get things done.

I can only think of one phrase for what has happened since then: creeping, unproductive feather-bedding especially in Washington for electoral purposes at the taxpayers’ expense.

Nevertheless, if there’s a single lesson to be taken away from the Davis’ five year tenure in the bucolic medieval city of Bern is that the best thing political appointees can do is to leave the substantive heavy lifting to the pros and support them as best possible. I think the Davis’ smartly succeeded with this task and the American people were better for it. It’s indeed unfortunate that their five year stint in Bern was not mentioned in Kathryn Davis’ obituary.

Did the UK's Triple Dip "escape" signal a "healing" economy?

2013-04-26T18:27:32-06:00

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

25 April 2013. It’s official. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates the UK avoided the dreaded Triple Dip Recession -- at least for the first quarter of 2013. Based on 44% of the “required output determination” ONS estimates the UK grew 0.3% the first Quarter of 2013 over the last Quarter of 2012 and .4% over the first Quarter of 2012. The usual suspects celebrated the news as vindication of the Chancellor’s Plan A. But a cross section of economists and independent think tanks remain skeptical.

The skeptics include me. In this piece I will suggest a perspective I think more consistent with observable reality. The theme is, absolute numbers grow, but their value diminishes.

Consider Exchange Rate

I regularly convert US dollars into UK pounds. I’ve become very aware of the impact of fluctuating rates on the value of the converted currency.

In a prior FOI request I asked ONS how they account for these fluctuating rates in their estimates. ONS informed me they don’t, but they do adjust for inflation. I've asked ONS to confirm that is the case with the last figures.

From the perspective of one who makes and spends his or her money in the UK the impact of exchange may appear less important than inflation or subsumed in its calculation. But when one must consider what it will cost in outside currency (an asset) to buy pounds (a commodity), it's an important consideration and an indicator of the strength of the UK economy. Moreover, in the end, I as a consumer must still buy at inflating prices -- and pay taxes -- with pounds of fluctuating value.

So I regularly ask, what will it cost in US dollars to buy £4,000 for the month’s living expenses. I also regularly ask the trends and whether the timing’s best to take care of a US obligation rather than convert dollars into pounds to spend in the UK. That is in its small way just what transnational investors and businesses do when they make investment decisions.

Based on this experience I decided to look at the ONS headline figures through the prism of the exchange rates. I asked, what did it cost in US dollars to buy £4,000 per month in each of the quarters ONS compared.

The detailed work sheet can be found here Download Exchange Rate Worksheet .

Briefly, it cost me $650 more to buy £12,000 pounds during the last Quarter of 2012 than it did during the first Quarter 2013 and $241 more during the first Quarter of 2012 than the first Quarter of 2013. Restated another way, the £12,000 for first Quarter 2013 was of lesser dollar value than either of the comparison Quarters. The drop in value was 3.4% and 1.3% respectively. While the absolute numbers grew .3% and .4% respectively their value relative to the dollar shrank.

Does that put the .3% and .4% GDP growth figures into a different perspective?

Employment

Where else have we seen an increase in absolute numbers but a contraction in their value? Employment. Between 2008 and 2012 the net number of persons estimated employed at least one hour per week for pay increased 402,000, but the percentage of working age adults actually working for pay shrank from 59.6% in 2008 to 58.7% at the end of 2012. Moreover the majority of new employment was part time, for which the average wage was £155 per week.

A picture consistent with experience

The light shed using this model appears even more dramatic when comparing the first Quarter of 2008 -- identified by ONS as the pre crash peak -- to the second Quarter of 2009 -- identified by ONS as the post crash trough -- to the first Quarter of 2013. The value of £4,000 fell 22% from the peak. Startling, but perhaps more startling is realization the value of £4,000 also fell 6% from the Quarter ONS identifies as the recession's trough.

I recognize and acknowledge the economic picture is also more complicated than my simple comparisons based on the value represented by how much in dollars it costs for a person to transfer funds from the US to the UK. But the model does have a value and a point. It suggests an explanation more in keeping with our daily experience, one based on an integrative look at the indicators rather than taking each one separately as if isolated from one another. Together they suggest 1) the value of GDP declined while absolute numbers increased and 2) the UK economy has never really climbed back out of the trough.

The picture thus presented matches up not only with underlying employment numbers and trends, but also observation. We all know our incomes buy less. We all know most of us -- if we can find work -- work longer sometimes at more jobs just to keep the bottom from falling out from under our personal economies. We all can see what’s happening across our High Streets. We see retail shops closing, replaced by Pay Day loan companies, betting establishments and Charity shops. We see food bank usage rising. We know the distribution of aggregate GDP has changed, increasingly redistributed from the many to the few. We aren’t blind are we.

Placing GDP figures in line with exchange rate valuations and detailed employment data yields a consistent picture -- also consistent with our personal experience. The rosy headlines don't.

Moreover, they don’t for investors considering whether or not to invest dollars in the UK. Such decisions are complicated. Sometimes an investment in a “distressed” company (or country) can be a money maker. But the UK policy maker surely has to wonder whether that sort of investor builds the future or strips the distressed assets then turns them over. Is that the kind of investment the UK wants or needs?

Responsiblity is the ability to respond

Nothing of significance changed between last week and this.

Last week IMF advised in the clearest of terms the current economic policy fails the UK. It should be changed.

That policy still fails the UK this week. It still needs adjustment. The ONS figures do not suggest the UK economy heals. As factoring in the long term exchange rate trends demonstrate, the UK remains mired in a deep economic trough.

That will not change without a change in economic strategy, but the Chancellor and Prime Minister reject all advice to change. They grasp at the straws of transient estimates to justify themselves. They are wrong. Economics is a mechanic's tool box. What mechanic refuses for ideological reasons to use a Torque Wrench for a Torque Wrench's task but rather insists on using a hammer? That is what the Chancellor and Prime Minister do.

They fail the country with their obstinance. It's past time to change strategies or change strategists.