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Spengler says a lot of Muslim states will fail.
Financial crises, like epidemics, kill the unhealthy first. The present crisis is painful for most of the world but deadly for many Muslim countries, and especially so for the most populous ones. Policy makers have not begun to assess the damage.
The diplomatic strategy of the industrial nations now resembles a James Clavell potboiler, in which an earthquake interrupts a hopelessly immured plot. Moderate Islam was the El Dorado of the diplomatic consensus. It might have been the case that Pakistan could be tethered to Western interests, or that Iran could be engaged peacefully, or that Turkey would incubate a moderate form of Islam. I considered all of this delusional, but the truth is that we shall never know. The financial crisis will sort them out first.
As I commented in the late autumn, the world is not flat, but flattened (see Asia Times Online, October 28, 2008), leaving the economies of the largest Muslim countries in ruins. It is hard to forecast the political fallout, for when each available choice leads to a failed state, it is a matter of indifference which one you adopt. As state finances crumble, states will become less important, and freebooters will seize the stage. Think of the Mumbai terrorists as a political cognate of the Somali pirates, and the character of a Middle East made up of failed states comes into focus. …
Interesting transcript from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Colin Powell has called for Rush to be booted from the GOP. This is Limbaugh’s answer.
…Let me get this straight. The guy who has supported the Republican candidate for president should be thrown out of the party. That would be me. But the guy who bolted and sabotaged the Republican nominee by endorsing the Democrat candidate should stay in and be part of the team that determines what the Republican Party is going to be. The turncoat, General Powell, is the one who the party is gonna listen to? McCain’s a moderate. I supported McCain. Powell, who wants a moderate, did not support McCain. It’s unreal. It’s just incredible. Look, I’m trying to be a little humble here, but it’s hard when you got all this other stuff going on and Republicans out there now continue to trash me. It’s flattering; it is amazing. At the same time, it’s mind-boggling how I get under their skin. What I’m learning now, folks, it really doesn’t matter about party. It’s not getting under Republicans’ skin now. It’s getting under the skin of Washingtonians. It’s getting under the skin of the Big Government people. These are liberals. There’s no such thing as a moderate Republican. A moderate Republican is a liberal. General Powell, says, “I’m a fiscal conservative; I don’t like the social stuff.” What’s wrong with the social side? It’s abortion. But it’s more than that, it’s Washingtonianism.
Thomas Sowell’s Detroit thoughts.
… Detroit and Michigan have followed classic liberal policies of treating businesses as prey, rather than as assets. They have helped kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. So have the unions. So have managements that have gone along to get along.
Toyota, Honda and other foreign automakers are not heading for Detroit, even though there are lots of experienced automobile workers there. They are avoiding the rust belts and the policies that have made those places rust belts.
A bailout of Detroit’s Big Three would be only the latest in the postponements of reality. As for automobile dealers, they can probably sell Toyotas just as easily as they sold Chevvies. And Toyotas will require just as many tires per car, as well as other parts from automobile parts suppliers.
David Warren on the passing scene.
More good news: I’ve just learned the U.S. inflation rate fell in November — and at the steepest chart angle in history. I’d noticed the trend in my local supermarket. Food prices, threatening to shoot up through “global warming” (i.e. the vast transfer of grain fields to biofuel production by government subsidies to the latter, thanks to batty environmental ideas), are already coming down. There are specials especially on luxury items, and I can’t remember eating so well. (Perhaps it is just that my cooking has improved.)
There is nothing quite like a fall in demand to make everything — except governments, which do not feel guided by laws of nature — more efficient. We have watched the oil price crash; and yet people continue to act as if this hadn’t happened, and they should still feel shy about driving their SUVs. Environmentalists should be dancing in the streets. Alas, they are never happy. ..
Another Churchill bio? National Review has a look.
… Of the making of books about Churchill, therefore, there is no end. What is reality, what is myth? Revisionist arguments of several sorts spring up from the standoff between him and Hitler. Some depict Churchill as irrational, unnecessarily aggressive, sacrificing his own people out of bloodlust, or as immoral as the Nazis in waging war, for instance sanctioning the mass bombing of cities. He may even have considered using poison gas if circumstances demanded it. Others like to claim that victory came at too high a price, costing Britain its status as a world power.
In Warlord, Carlo D’Este investigates in detail how Churchill came to find the strength of character to oppose Hitler. A former U.S. Army officer who has become a military historian, D’Este takes the view that his early career of soldiering made Churchill the man he was, and gave him lasting heroic values. The sound of gunfire aroused every fiber in him; he could hardly keep away from any fight going. A biography written from a standpoint that necessarily limits treatment of other aspects of his career, this book is a thoughtful and authoritative examination of Churchill’s lifelong fascination with war. Importantly — but maybe a little contradictorily — fascination with war should not be confused with love of it; and D’Este insists that Churchill was no warmonger. For him, as for almost all who saw the man close-up in peace or war and left a record of him, Churchill was someone whose virtues and flaws were equally extreme, and often too close to be easily distinguished in his decisions and actions. Had he not been such a man, however, the course of history would undoubtedly have been different. …
Borowitz reports the Yankees have signed the Iraqi shoe thrower.