While the US sleep, Middle East arms to its teeth

A very informative article about the military build-up in Saudi Arabia, prompted by teh weakness of teh American policy in the Middle East and the United States's reluctance to confront the soon-to-be-nuclear Iran:
"Over this year of Arab Spring revolt, Saudi Arabia has increasingly replaced the United States as the key status-quo power in the Middle East — a role that seems likely to expand even more in coming years as the Saudis boost their military and economic spending. 

Saudis describe the kingdom’s growing role as a reaction, in part, to the diminished clout of the United States. They still regard the U.S.- Saudi relationship as valuable, but it’s no longer seen as a guarantor of their security. For that, the Saudis have decided they must rely more on themselves — and, down the road, on a wider set of friends that includes their military partner, Pakistan, and their largest oil customer, China."

The article is worth reading in a whole. Here is one of the most interesting paragraphs:
"The Saudi shopping list is a bonanza for U.S. and European arms merchants. That’s especially true of the air force procurement, with the Saudis planning to buy 72 “Eurofighters” from EADS and 84 new F-15s from Boeing. The rationale is containing Iran, whose nuclear ambitions the Saudis strongly oppose. But Riyadh has an instant deterrent ready, too, in the form of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal that the Saudis are widely believed to have helped finance. "

Europe: fatalism and reliance on government

Here is an interesting poll. Too many things come to mind when looking at the tables, so I limit discussion to quoting only the first two tables.

It is truly striking how much the population of the socialist countries relies on the state to solve their problems at the expense of their personal freedom.

The level of fatalism demonstrated by the table below, is less sharp, although surprizingly high in Germany.

Objective reality vs. subjective views

Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize winner, engages in a silly game of tying economic ideas to political ideologies:
"First things first: The attempt to create a common European currency was one of those ideas that cut across the usual ideological lines. It was cheered on by American right-wingers, who saw it as the next best thing to a revived gold standard, and by Britain’s left, which saw it as a big step toward a social-democratic Europe. But it was opposed by British conservatives, who also saw it as a step toward a social-democratic Europe. And it was questioned by American liberals, who worried — rightly, I’d say (but then I would, wouldn’t I?) — about what would happen if countries couldn’t use monetary and fiscal policy to fight recessions."

One may argue whether Economics is a science or not - it is certainly not a science in the same ways as physicists and mathematics are, but the argument will essentially boil down to what you define as a science, and how you call a field of knowledge which, although falling short of the precision provided by physics/math, is nevertheless capable of logical analysis and predictions in the areas where the "sciences" are powerless.

Yet, anything with a claim for being a kind of knowledge should be objective - which is independent on the subjective (conservative or progressive) views of the person presented with such knowledge. Otherwise, it would not worth a Nobel prize.

A stand for the abused 1%

Serious article addressing the absurd notion that all the social problems can be solved by taxing the richest 1%

A few quotes:
"It is amazing how the “one percent” epithet, a reference to the top 1% of earners, has caught on in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world. In the United States, this 1% includes all those with a 2006 household income of at least $386,000. In the popular narrative, the 1% is thickly populated with unscrupulous corporate titans, greedy bankers, and insider-trading hedge-fund managers. Reading some progressive economists, it might seem that the answer to all of America’s current problems is to tax the 1% and redistribute to everyone else."

Inconvenient truth:
"But what might be the most important overlooked fact is that the rise in income inequality is not just at the very top, though it is most pronounced there. Academic studies suggest that the top tenth percentile of income distribution in the US, and elsewhere, is also moving farther away from the median earner. This is an inconvenient fact for the progressive economist. “We are the 90%,” sounds less dramatic than “we are the 99%.” And, for some of the protesters, it may not even be true."
Before dismissing this paragraph, please check the statistics  - you might well turn out to be among the 10% of the highest earners in your country, particularly, if you have an advanced university degree.

Social mobility and the value of education:
"Perhaps most problematic, though, is that something other than plutocrat-friendly policies is largely responsible for the growing inequality. That something is education and skills. True, not every degree is a passport to a job. Freshly-minted degree holders, especially from lower-quality programs, are finding it particularly hard to get a job nowadays, because they are competing with experienced workers who are also jobless. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate for those with degrees is one-third the unemployment rate for those without a high school diploma.

Close examination suggests that the single biggest difference between those at or above the top tenth percentile of the income distribution and those below the 50th percentile is that the former have a degree or two while the latter, typically, do not. Technological change and global competition have made it impossible for American workers to get good jobs without strong skills. As Harvard professors Claudia Golden and Larry Katz put it, in the race between technology and education, education is falling behind."

The real problem:
"To acknowledge the fact that the broken educational and skills-building system is responsible for much of the growing inequality that ordinary people experience would, however, detract from the larger populist agenda of rallying the masses against the very rich. It has the inconvenient implication that the poor have a role in pulling themselves out of the morass. There are no easy and quick fixes to education – every US president since Gerald Ford in the mid-1970’s has called for educational reforms, with little effect. In contrast, blaming the undeserving 1% offers a redistributive policy agenda with immediate effects."

Lieberman: Jordan is not Palestine

A strange statement from Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, whom western media routinely call "far right" or simply "fascist":
"Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday that the claim that Jordan is the Palestinian state is not based in reality and those who push such a view do so at the detriment of Israeli interests.

Speaking at a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting, Lieberman added that the claim that Jordan is Palestine contradicts international law and the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement."

On the one hand, the Lieberman's statement contradicts the well-known demographic reality - according to Wikipedia there are 2,700,000 Palestinian people living in Jordan, whose total population is about 6,400,000. This number is greater than the number of Palestinians living either in the West Bank (2,345,000) or in Gaza (1,416,000). While this number is not enough to claim that Jordan is the fulfillment fo the Palestinian aspirations for a statehood, it is sufficient to make it impossible for the Palestinian problem to be truly resolved outside of the Jordanian borders.

On the other hand, the good relations between Israel and Jordan require that the Israeli government join the game with King Abdullah and the Western powers in pretending that the solution of the Palestinian problem can be achieved at the expense of Israel only.

The fact that it is Lieberman, who is being so diplomatic, is amusing, but not totally ridiculous - being the head of the third largest political party, he may be trying to position himself as a serious statesman... he would definitely need to look more serious the day when he takes a shot at becoming the prime minister.