DebateGate

I know, these tests are very limited, but they still offer a good overview of where one stands and how one's views have changed over the years. Here are a few online political tests to see where you stand. Report your results!

1. Political Compass This is the standard of online political marking.

2. Political Objectives

3. World's Smallest Political Quiz

Correction: This Could Become a Crash After All
As traders brace for fresh turmoil, soothing words may simply be hiding reality

Larry Elliott, economics editor
Monday March 5, 2007

Guardian

With his low opinion poll ratings, George Bush needs a crash on Wall Street like a hole in the head. The days are ticking away towards the end of his presidency and the Pentagon is warning that unless the "surge" in Iraq works the United States could be heading for another Vietnam.
Little wonder, then, that Washington did its best to rubbish any suggestion that last week's turbulence on the financial markets amounted to anything more than a little temporary difficulty. In this, the Bush administration was ably supported by the great and good of New York - or at least that part of the financial elite that wasn't banged up for alleged insider trading last week by the securities and exchange commission. As ever, the same reassuring story was spun. Like a hypnotist faced with a sceptical member of the audience, the words were repeated over and over again. Listen, this is a correction not a crash. Relax, the fundamentals of the global economy are strong. Are you listening to me? There will be no recession in the US. Did you hear what I said? There will be no recession in the US.

By the end of the week, the trick seemed to have paid off. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Fed, had downplayed the risks of recession brought to the public's attention by his predecessor, Alan Greenspan. And the markets were gagging for reassurance. After all, if you've spent the past couple of years persuading yourself and clients that investing in the current climate is risk-free, the last thing you want to hear is that the glittering edifice of the global economy is a Potemkin village - the fake Crimean settlements set up to impress Catherine II. The dozen charged by the SEC are not the only ones guilty of rigging markets; they were just a bit more self-serving about it, that's all.

Naturally, the consensus may be right. The consensus tends to be right more often than it is wrong, which is why real crashes of the sort seen in October 1929 and October 1987 tend to be a rarity. Indeed, the big sell-off of 20 years ago did prove to be far less of a threat than was initially feared.

Even so, there are reasons for concern. One is that the soothing words were at odds with what happened in the markets. Wall Street suffered its biggest weekly fall in four years with the Dow Jones industrial average down 4.2%.

Banks raised the cost of the dodgy loans in the sub-prime market, and the contagion affected other markets. The cost of insurance against credit defaults rose sharply and there was a flight to quality assets. This may prove temporary; if the self-hypnotism works the financial markets may soon again be seeking out all sorts of rococo investments, amplified by derivatives, in the belief that they are risk-free.

This, in some ways, would be more worrying than a flight to quality or rising spreads on junk bonds, because the riskiest of all markets is the one where the players can see no risk.

A second concern is that the US may be in a lot worse shape than Wall Street - cocooned by its sky-high salaries and lucrative bonuses - realises. One view of the US economy since the early 1990s is a glorious renaissance built on the coming industries of the hi-tech revolution; another is that an unsustainable stock market was followed by a bust, and that in turn was followed by an unsustainable boom in the housing market that has also now gone bust. Sure, the Fed could respond to the threat of recession by cutting interest rates, but the traction gained by cheap money is going to be a lot less this time. Why? For one thing, the two debt-driven bubbles have left consumers enormously over-extended. For another, inflation in the asset markets has spilled over into general inflation. Cutting the cost of borrowing might have more of an impact on prices than it would on activity.

As Stephen Lewis of Insinger de Beaufort puts it, the real surprise, given what has been happening in the US housing market, is that consumer spending has held up so well. But there is a sense that the consumer is starting to run out of road, with spending propped up by the one-off impact of lower energy prices.

Charles Dumas at Lombard Street Research agrees, and says the increase in borrowing on credit cards rather than the rising value of real estate, is a sign that US consumers are drinking in the last-chance saloon. The vast majority of Americans don't have a yacht and a summer home in the Hamptons; they don't have stock options and they have not seen their salaries rise at 10, 50 or 100 times the current inflation rate.

Given Asia's export-dominated growth is heavily weighted towards the US, investors should be prepared for the 9% fall in Shanghai last Tuesday to be the first of many bad days.

"Household borrowing is the centre of the storm," says Dumas. "When economies fluctuate, services fluctuate gently, construction and manufacturing more violently. Construction we know about: the housing slump is now beginning to be reinforced by a business construction collapse. The US manufacturing sector is now called China, or Pacific-developing Asia more generally. The current US downswing must take the gloss off growth in that region, where asset markets are priced for perfection." A different perspective comes from Stephen King at HSBC. His view is that the global economy is now more than the United States and its satellites. Even if America does slide into recession, there is no reason to assume the rest of the world will follow.

This requires a radical re-think, since we have become accustomed, particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union to assume the world is unipolar with the US the hegemonic power. King says the weaker domestic demand growth in the US last year did not seem to have knock-on effects elsewhere. Far from catching a cold when the US sneezed, the rest of the world went shopping. "Relative to our own forecasts, the big surprise last year was the strength of domestic demand growth, notably in Canada, Mexico, China, the Middle East, Germany and the UK."

On the face of it, this is a relatively reassuring interpretation of events. If there really has been a de-coupling going on under our noses, it is possible that a US recession could be isolated. Scratch beneath the surface, though, and King's thesis has some potentially serious long-term geo-political - and hence economic - consequences. What could be happening is that we are seeing the very gradual waning of US economic supremacy, with years of budget and trade deficits and two decades of excessive consumption chipping away at what is still a phenomenally powerful economy. Britain suffered from just this process in the final quarter of the 19th century; other nations were growing in strength and Britain was in the early stages of relative decline.

Paul Kennedy argued in the late 1980s that political power derives from economic power. The first doubts crept in for Britain when winning the Boer War in the face of determined resistance and guerrilla attacks proved a lot more difficult than London had blithely imagined. History may show that South Africa between 1899 and 1902 is a better parallel for America under Bush than is Vietnam.

larry.elliott@guardian.co.uk

Sonia Phalnikar interviewed Gerhart Baum | www.dw-world.de | © Deutsche Welle.

"We Need Proof That the German State is Capable of Mercy"
Is it time for Germans to pack away the memories of the RAF?
Gerhart Baum, interior minister during the height of left-wing terror group RAF's bloody campaign, spoke with DW-WORLD.DE about why two former terrorists should be released from prison.

Nearly 30 years after left-wing radical group, RAF (Red Army Faction) terrorized West Germany, federal prosecutors have filed a request for the release of Brigitte Mohnhaupt, a leading RAF member who was sentenced to life in prison in 1985 for her role in a series of prominent murders. Separately, German President Horst Köhler is considering a pardon for Mohnhaupt's former colleague, Christian Klar who is serving a life sentence for at least 11 killings.

The moves have sparked a furious debate in Germany pitting outraged relatives of the RAF's victims against politicians who say the killers have done their time and no longer pose a threat to society.

DW-WORLD.DE spoke with Gerhart Baum, former interior minister of Germany and ex-member of the free-market liberal FDP party. Baum is a prominent advocate of releasing the prisoners.

DW-WORLD.DE: Why are you in favor of releasing Mohnhaupt and Klar from prison?

Gerhart Baum: That's because I respect the principles of our constitutional state and believe they must be applied to the RAF terrorists too. They should not be given any special status, either in the negative or positive sense. At the time (of their arrest) we refused to treat them as prisoners of the war as they wanted. The RAF terrorists are criminals and murderers and must be treated like any other criminals in a comparable case.

We also need to make a distinction between the two. In Mohnhaupt's case, it's about releasing her on parole. With Christian Klar, it's about him being pardoned by the German president. Both cases are being reviewed by the authorities who will eventually make a decision.

Christian Klar was given a triple life sentence. Can you explain what "life imprisonment" means in a strictly legal sense in Germany?

(Christian Klar is in prison for nine killings and 11 counts of attempted murder)

It does not mean literally for life. There is no life-long imprisonment in practice unless the perpetrators are deemed dangerous and remain dangerous. According to our laws, a life sentence is reviewed after 15 years for the first time. And one of the fundamental principles of our legal system -- which has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the country's highest court -- is that human dignity, as it is laid down in the constitution, also means that a person who is sentenced to life imprisonment must be given a perspective for freedom.

Those who oppose releasing Mohnhaupt and Klar say the two have neither shown any remorse nor contributed towards clearing up a series of unsolved murders.

That's precisely why Mohnhaupt and Klar have been punished so severely. Their sentences represent the toughest legal verdicts ever passed for RAF terrorists. They didn't show any remorse and they didn't cooperate in solving crimes.

But we have to be clear on the point that according to German law, remorse isn't demanded. It's desirable, but it isn't necessary. In the case of Christian Klar, who has appealed to the German president for clemency, it's a different matter. There I expect Klar to distance himself from his crimes. He has apparently done that. But that's for the German president to decide.

You were Germany's interior minister from 1978 to 1982 and thus a key player in the German state's long battle with the RAF. How do you look back on your role today?

In addition to using important police and legal resources -- which we managed to implement successfully to defeat the RAF -- I especially tried to highlight flawed developments in our society at that time. The aim was not to play down the RAF, but rather to draw attention to the social environment in which those turbulent events took place.

And let's not forget, they are an issue until today. Just recently a double book edition was published with articles from some 60 scientists who analyzed that period because the RAF is a radical byproduct of the disintegration of the left-wing protest movement. At that time, we tried to sway those who harbored sympathy for the RAF and win them over to the rule of law. And we were successful with that.

You were also responsible for passing several harsh anti-terror laws at the time. Do you regret any? What would you do differently today?

The anti-terror measures were a necessary reaction. We had to strengthen our police services which weren't in good shape then. We also had to adapt our courts and legal systems to deal with new criminal behavioral patterns by making changes to our penal code as well as legal procedural code.

I admit that some of this partly went too far. To an extent, there was also a political overreaction to the RAF threat. But we did then dilute some of the measures. When I took office in 1978, I also abolished some of the measures used by the police to hunt down RAF suspects -- a procedure which also hugely affected unsuspecting citizens. So we did draw certain consequences to deal with the threat of that time.

At the same time, it has to be said that since the RAF, anti-terror legislation has been continually beefed up, particularly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. We're practically living in a state of permanent emergency where the balance between freedom and security has been damaged and ended up putting curbs on freedom.

What lessons do you think Germany can draw from the RAF era in fighting terrorism today?

The most important thing is to maintain calm and not give in to hysteria and populist fear. Politicians should not be allowed to hijack security and turn it into an election topic. Instead the government has to tell the population that we must learn to live with risks. Germany must keep its cool, remain sober and pragmatic and only pass security measures that make real sense instead of symbolic gestures which are passed off as enhanced security for the population but which in reality only curb freedom.

Nearly 30 years after the RAF terrorized West Germany, the topic remains highly emotional and sparks strong reactions in Germany. Why is that?

That whole period -- the reform movements, the struggle for democratic reforms in the political parties, the left-wing protest movement, that whole turbulence and feeling of new beginnings of 1968, the new policy towards the Soviet Union -- is a fascinating one. Even the people suddenly lived differently at the time, they had a different relationship to sexuality, and art was in a heady heyday. All that does still fascinate or interest today's young generation. A year ago an RAF exhibition took place in Berlin where artists reacted to the RAF. I promoted the exhibition at the time and it saw a record 50,000 visitors, most of them young people.

But that is not to be mistaken as a fascination with the RAF, which is only limited. It's more an interest in the political spirit of a highly exciting time. I don't think that the RAF has turned into a myth. We have to remember that they were murderers, though they were politically motivated.

But the majority of the German population is against the release of Mohnhaupt and Klar. How do you explain that?

If you follow a simple question pattern -- are you for or against the release -- then I think you could very quickly even have a situation where the population will be in favor of the death penalty. This is where a democratic constitutional state has to show some nerve, keep its calm and hold fast to the fundamental principles of the constitution.

In the 1980s when German President Richard von Weizsäcker pardoned RAF terrorists, it was considered an important gesture. That is not the case today because the RAF and its group of sympathizers no longer exist. What we need is renewed proof that the German constitutional state is capable of showing mercy.

Do you think Germany will finally close the RAF chapter once its last remaining former members are released from prison?

No, not in any way. We still don't know the murderers of a whole series of victims after 1985 -- for example those of Alfred Herrhausen (former Deutsche Bank chief) or Detlev Karsten Rohwedder (leader of the post-reunification government-owned Treuhand organization which was responsible for privatizing East German companies.)

And not only do we not know the identity of the perpetrators who are still being hunted, but the interest in the period around 1967 and 1968 still remains very high. So there is no way the debate will come to an end after the last RAF members are released. 

Link

I feel like the Cohen story probably did not get a fair hearing the other day and that it was definitely my fault. For that I apologise.

I don't apologise for my stance on the Israeli government. I'm crystal clear on that, but I think there were some good places for that topic to go and I did stifle it to make a different point.

I'd like to hear Brass' view on racism in Memphis and Sir's view on the topic in general, or specific view on the Cohen and Black Caucus issue. I'll refrain from comment if necessary or just post my points in the confines of what you all write this time.

I could have sworn I've made this argument before...

The transformation of the IRA shows why Israel should talk to Hamas

Only negotiations with both main Palestinian parties can deliver the peace deal that the two peoples now support

Jonathan Freedland in Jerusalem
Wednesday January 24, 2007

Guardian

The Israeli novelist Amos Oz once said Israelis and Palestinians were like patients who know exactly what painful surgery they need to undergo and are ready to face it. The trouble is, their surgeons are cowards. That's certainly how it seems now. The two peoples have come, without enthusiasm, to a realisation of what will have to be done, what will have to be sacrificed, to live alongside the other. Polls show large majorities on both sides ready to back a peace deal on the now-traditional lines: two states, one for each nation. A recent survey had 72% of Palestinians wanting their leaders to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Meanwhile, assorted members of Israel's cabinet have been tripping over each other to offer their own peace plans - recognition that there's a hunger among Israelis to escape the status quo.
Yet the two leaders - the surgeons - are frozen. Tonight Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, will address the Herzliya security conference, an occasion that has come to be associated with high political drama ever since Ariel Sharon used it to announce his planned disengagement from Gaza. Yet few among Israel's punditocracy expect any such thunderbolt from Olmert. Ever since his core unilateralism strategy was discredited last summer by what Israelis call the second Lebanon war - which seemed to prove that unilateral pullouts from once-occupied territory only bring trouble - Olmert has been without an agenda, let alone a vision.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is a byword for weakness. With next to no powerbase, even in his own Fatah movement, he has seen a virtual civil war erupt between his men and Hamas, which a year ago won a majority in the Palestinian parliament. More than 60 Palestinians have been killed by Palestinians. Before he can even think about reconciling with Israel, Abbas has to reconcile Fatah and Hamas.

How to navigate around this landscape is the challenge I found Israelis and Palestinians grappling with this week, whether in Jerusalem or Ramallah. Israel's officials speak of presenting Palestinians with a choice. Either they take the path embodied by Abbas, of negotiation and compromise, and reap the rewards - or they stick with the hardliners of Hamas and face the consequences, including economic isolation and a cold shoulder not only from Israel but from the European Union, the US, and beyond. To make that choice easier, Israel will sketch out the "political horizon", explaining what the Palestinians would gain if the Abbas approach prevailed - chiefly a rapid move to statehood on a substantial chunk (but far from all) of the West Bank and Gaza, with resolution of the thorniest issues to come later. That's the choice. As one official put it: "Go with Hamas, and it's isolation, stagnation and a dead end. Go with the moderates and it's international support, an energised process and a clearer horizon than ever before."

It sounds simple enough, but that approach carries multiple problems. The first is credibility. Too many Palestinians will say they've heard Israeli promises before that have come to nothing. They point to the December 23 meeting between Abbas and Olmert where the latter promised prisoner releases and relaxation of checkpoints, none of which materialised. What's more, the Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki told me yesterday, moderates face an uphill task when they argue that diplomacy gets results: "Unilateralism badly damaged that idea. Palestinians say, why should we make concessions when Israel has already given away land without any concessions from us?"

Above all, Israel's approach involves a selective blindness, lavishing attention on Abbas as if Hamas did not exist and did not command a parliamentary majority. But there could be another, riskier way - one that would benefit not only Israel but the wider world too.

If Israel decided not to shun Hamas, but to reel it into the peace process, everything could look different. Hamas almost benefits from its isolation, retaining its status as the pure party, unsullied by compromise. If, though, it could, at long last, be brought into a national unity government with Fatah, it would soon have to get its hands dirty.

Until now, the sticking point has been Hamas's refusal to sign up to the three conditions set by the EU, US and UN: recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and a commitment to abide by existing Palestinian agreements with Israel. The international stance has been clear - either Hamas says yes three times, or it stays in the cold.

But, says one Palestinian analyst, instead of such a black-and-white choice, the international community should start seeing shades of grey. If Hamas can agree with one or two of that troika, then a process of engagement could begin. The trick would be to call on the peace negotiator's old friend, "constructive ambiguity". So if Hamas says it can "respect" existing agreements, rather than "commit to" them, maybe that should be enough (that linguistic difference is the current sticking point between Abbas and Hamas).

For Israel, the advantages would be clear. First, once locked into the process, Hamas would lose its above-the-fray status. Second, it is not a monolithic organisation, and differences between moderates and hardliners would soon be exposed. Third, Israel always used to say that it was not interested in the words Yasser Arafat uttered, it was his deeds that mattered. Well, now Israel could apply that same logic to Hamas - no longer obsessing over the statements Hamas is prepared to make, but over its deeds. If the movement continues, and entrenches, its current ceasefire and, alongside Fatah, works to enforce it among fringe groups such as Islamic Jihad, that should surely speak louder than any number of declarations.

And there is a larger interest at stake here. Currently, the isolation of Hamas has driven it into the arms of Iran, which has been only too happy to play the deep-pocketed sugar daddy, boosting Tehran's ambitions as a regional superpower. But this is a frail alliance. Palestinians are Sunni and wary of any kind of Shia hegemony. Tellingly, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the wider Muslim Brotherhood movement of which Hamas is a part, issued a recent warning against the growing power of Iran and Shi'ism. So Hamas is eminently separable from Iran, which could break up the Shia "arc" of influence that so troubles London and Washington.

Israel disputes all this. If there were moderates in Hamas, it says, Israel would be engaging with them, but there are not. Israelis point to the serial caveats and disclaimers that come attached to any Hamas hint of recognition of Israel's right to exist. What of the recent Hamas statement recognising Israel as a "reality"? That means nothing, one senior official told me yesterday. "I recognise Aids as a reality, that doesn't mean I don't want to defeat and destroy it."

In the end, it comes down to how you view peace processes. Do you believe that the enemy is only fit to take part in a negotiation once it has changed, or that the very act of taking part can change the enemy? The Israeli government believes the former. After the transformation of the IRA in the decade or more of Good Friday talks - from swearing it would never decommission a bullet to standing down its forces - I believe the latter. If Tony Blair wants to put his final months to good use, perhaps he can press this point on all those who need to hear it. Otherwise, the patients will remain stuck in that operating theatre, only getting sicker.


freedland@guardian.co.uk

I've pondered this recently as many people have made some fairly nasty assumptions about Americans in general. I've read that we have a collective "ADHD", that we are "weak-willed", that we have lost our "manliness" due to feminism, and all sorts of mostly unverified and quite frankly odd theories that tend to attempt to lay more blame than try to find the root of the issue itself.

Clearly this wasn't always the case. We can look back to the American Civil War and see the bloodiest conflict in American history. There were roughly 600,000+ Americans who died in that conflict. The Battle of Shiloh itself was remarkable in the shock that it brought the nation. By itself Shiloh saw more dead than the American Revolution, The War of 1812, and the Mexican-American War combined. It was later topped by other Civil War battles, especially notable is Antietam (which remains the bloodiest single day - 17 September 1862 - in American military history).

Still, the American Civil War could be a notable exception. In fairness it was a true war of brother against brother and divided loyalties. The Great War and World War II would set much different examples as would Korea and Vietnam.

Korea would see 54,000 Americans killed and Vietnam would see another 58,000.

So the question is invariably asked, why do many Americans scoff at the nearly 2900 dead American soldiers in Iraq?

One potential answer, in my opinion, may lie in something that has changed very much on most political parts of the spectrum since the days of Vietnam. Americans, as a general rule, hold individualism in far higher esteem than any concept of the greater good.

Now, before I'm severely attacked, I'm not making a judgement about that statement, I'm just stating it as an observation which I believe to be true and which I believe gives most Americans a strong distaste for war casualties. Historically, if we look at the Vietnam era, there are many ways of viewing that war and its consequences both from a right-wing, centrist, and leftist perspective. Yet, very few of those perspectives defend the antics of the Johnson and Nixon administration to cover up specific details of the war that were released through the Pentagon Papers, My Lai reports, and latter documents.

Moreover, there aren't many people from those perspectives who vehemently defend Richard Nixon's involvement in the Watergate affair. When Reagan came and won office it was with the idea that in many ways "Government was the enemy." Yes, have patriotism and a love for America, but the idea of a sense of allegiance to the state is a pseudo-socialist concept. Bill Clinton came in and offered much the same idea of a limited Federal Government. Plus, leftists in general are wary of nationalism as it occasionally has been used to historically excuse excesses of the state into depriving individual rights.

To be more precise there has recently existed a distaste for the idea of dulce et decorum est pro patria mori even when certain groups rally around the flag and call for support of our troops abroad. The United States general population does not have that sense of Hegelian support of the state above the individual. Moreover, the United States population does not have a sense of the rights of others, non-Americans, above the rights of individual Americans. So with Bosnia and Kosovo, neither popular wars in their own right, they proved succesful by their low casualty figures. With Iraq, the problem is that the casualty figures exist and the war has not been sold to Americans as one of the rights of individual Americans. Americans don't seem to have a pressing concern for the rights of individual Iraqis, or if they do it is not considered a concern of which the American military needs to resolve the issue.

I've seen arguments in 3DHS that anyone middle class voting Republican is voting against his best interests. The argument implies that Republicans deceive all manner of folks into voting for them which implies that Republican voters are some how not intelligent enough to see this deception or to think for themselves, and that Democrats were somehow smarter and better. I'm not saying this justifies the comments you're talking about, because it certainly does not. But sometimes it is hard to be motivated to condemn someone for doing something that someone else is doing to you.

And I'll say that sort of "voting against their best interests" reasoning is wrong all around. And you're right that it is subtly racist to use it about African-Americans in particular.

I wanted to address this post by Prince from a while back. It was made in a thread started by knute that was inherently racist and I thought that perhaps pulling it out and giving a new perspective would help in addressing this separately from the other issues.

First of all I agree that condemning a group of people for not condemning another person is a bit odd. It implies that by not condemning someone there is passive approval, which on a forum like this is not necessarily true.

On the other hand, I disagree with the notion that one cannot make inferences based on class. One can even make some inferences based on race, for example we know that certain diseases strike a particular ethnic group more than another (as an example, those of Scandinavian ancestry are more susceptible to develop schizophrenia than the average population from other ethnic backgrounds). Yet, making inferences based on the intelligence of a broad group of a race or religion, for example, is purely racist in sentiment.

The problem with the above example is that the middle class is ill-defined and purposely so. "Middle class" as used by politicians is basically a code phrase for "Americans" or "Average Americans" or "you and I." It can range from someone who scrapes by to pay the monthly bills and feed the family to someone who has a five car garage and a brand new Porsche SUV for junior. In other words, it is too ill-defined to be of any practical use. You'll note that "middle class" is not a Marxian term at all. It is a rather catch-all political construct.

Having said that, all mainstream sides of the political spectrum will aim towards the "middle class" at least in rhetoric. So saying "my side is best for the middle class" is just another way of cheering for the home team.