GlobLog - May 2004
A direct link to each entry is obtained by using the button below the entry.

21:31 - RUSSIAN TRANSITION: A SECOND OPINION: Many still think that reforms ruined Russia. They should read the Foreign Affairs-article A normal country, by Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman. I don’t agree with all their conclusions, but it’s difficult not to agree that the big Russian story is that a threatening, oppressive and bankrupt empire could become a pretty normal middle-income country in 15 years. Here are their three arguments why the Russian economic crisis in the 1990s was exaggerated:

1) Much of the Soviet Union’s output was military goods, unfinished construction projects and other goods for which there was little demand on a market. Reducing that kind of waste looks bad in GDP statistics, but makes the economy more efficient.

2) “Under the Soviet system, moreover, managers routinely inflated their production figures to obtain increased bonuses. With the end of central planning, managers wished to underreport output so as to reduce their tax bills.” Official figures show that GDP fell by 29 percent 1990-2001, but at the same time electricity consumption fell only about 19 percent, indicating that true output fell less. And since firms are likely to use electricity more sparingly under market conditions, the decline in electricity consumption probably still overstates the real output drop.

3) Other statistics suggest that living standards fell less dramatically, or even improved: “figures for final household consumption, for example, fell just 4 percent (in constant prices) between 1990 and 2001. Retail trade actually rose 4 percent between 1990 and 2001. And average living space per person rose from 16 square meters in 1990 to 19 square meters in 2000. The shares of households with radios, televisions, tape recorders, refrigerators, washing machines, and electric vacuum cleaners all increased between 1991 and 2000. And private ownership of cars doubled, rising from 14 cars per 100 households in 1991 to 27 cars per 100 households in 2000. The number of Russians going abroad as tourists rose from 1.6 million in 1993 to 4.3 million in 2000… Since 1993 (the first year for which comprehensive figures exist), the percentage of Russia´s housing with running water has increased from 66 percent to 73 percent; the share with hot water from 51 to 59 percent; and the percentage with central heating from 64 percent to 73 percent. Since 1990, the proportion of Russian apartments with telephones has increased from 30 percent to 49 percent.”

20:01 - SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER THEM: At last a good journal on economic research! The electronic triannual Econ Journal Watch has promised to watch other journals for ”inappropriate assumptions, weak chains of argument, phony claims of relevance, and omissions of pertinent truths.” I’m sure it will have a strong free-market perspective, since the editor is my friend Dan Klein, a good classical liberal economist who has got a very charming cat. The journal has a wonderful section called ”Do economists reach a conclusion?”, where we learn if there is ever a consensus between economists. In the inaugural edition, Mark Thornton looks at drug policy, and concludes that the majority of economists are anti-prohibition. This is a page worth bookmarking.

00:10 - DOUBLE STANDARDS: President Bush replied to the charges of torture in Iraq by saying "That´s not the way we do things in America". That’s right, it wouldn’t happen in America. A nasty aspect of US policies is that is seems to apply different standards for different nationalities. The American taliban were given a fair trial, but suspect talibans from other countries (including a Swedish citizen) is still in a lawless captivity at Guantanamo Bay. I don’t think the American government would accept that any other government would treat Americans like that. Here is another example: The School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, has trained almost 60,000 Latin American policemen and soldiers to fight the war on drugs. In 1996, Pentagon was forced to release the school’s training manuals, which apparently included torture, extortion and execution. If this is the curriculum at an official, tax-funded school, I don´t find it mysterious that some American soldiers think they can treat Iraqi prisoners like they did.

18:36 - THE NEWSPAPER TAX: The Economist observes that newspapers all over the world are changing their format from broadsheets to tabloids, which can be read on public transports without hitting fellow passengers when you turn the page. But the strange thing is not that this is happening now, it is that it took such a long time. The Economist fails to mention it, but the reason why broadsheets were invented in the first place was the 19th century British newspaper tax, which taxed papers by the number of pages. Therefore, newspapers made the pages enormous, to minimise the tax. That this tradition hasn´t begun to fade until now is a certain proof of the power of taxes to distort behaviour.

16:00 - EUROPEAN PARTIES: I have been asked how I will vote in the election for the European Parliament 13 June. I don’t know yet. But I just replied to 25 questions at Votematch, to find out how close I am to the parties in parliament. It seems I am closer to the socialists and the greens than to the conservatives of Europe. The liberal group ELDR was my first alternative by far, and the christian democrat/conservative group EPP was second to last. Amongst other problems, EPP likes the CAP, wants an EU tax, and opposes membership for Turkey.

If we voted for the European parties I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to vote ELDR, but now we have to vote for national parties, and that makes the decision more difficult. For example it might be a good idea to vote for liberal, free-market conservatives like the Swedish moderate party, to get some healthy influences into the EPP – it is after all the biggest party in the European parliament. I will get back to this problem another day.

Here are my results from Votematch:

13:59 - KONFLIKT III: Nej, radioprogrammet Konflikt lät idag bli att rätta sina felaktiga påståenden om 11-septemberkommissionens slutsatser. Och visst kan man förstå att det fanns utrymmesbrist. Dagens program var nämligen packat av utrikesrapportering: 1) Intervju med Clintonrådgivaren Sidney Blumentahl, som angrep Bush, 2) Reportage om amerikanska konstnärer som angriper Bush, 3) Intervju med konstnären Carl Johan de Geer, som säger att Bush är värre än Saddam, 4) Samtal mellan fyra ganska eniga journalister och författare om chanserna för en renässans för 70-talets politiska konst i Michael Moores fotspår – Anders Ehnmark säger att Bush är en skurk i likhet med Saddam, 5) Intervju med filosofiprofessorn Avishai Margalit om skuld och skam inför USA:s framfart i Irak.

10:31 - WTO: I just got back from the WTO’s annual symposium in Geneva, where I talked at two seminars, one on the multilateral trade system – where I asked people not to exaggerate multilateral negotiations and agreements. Most reforms which can make globalisation work better must be done back home, unilaterally. The other one was on the strong links between trade and technological developement (organised by the International Policy Network), I was also supposed to debate the British globalisation critic Noreena Hertz, but she cancelled her participation. Since she declined an invitation to debate me once before because the organisers couldn’t pay the fee she demanded, it might be interesting to mention that none of the participants at the WTO seminar received a fee. They pay our travel and hotel expenses, that’s it. People seem to think that WTO is an enormously powerful and wealthy organisation, but it is completely dependent on the goodwill of the member countries, and the entire budget of the WTO is smaller than the travel budget of the IMF.

08:29 - MER KONFLIKT: För en vecka sedan skrev jag ett kritiskt brev till P1:s Konflikt. Medan jag har varit i Genève de senaste dagarna har jag fått ett vänligt svar från reportern Daniela Marquardt. Jag tycker emellertid inte att det besvarar kärnan av min kritik - att de sprider vandringshistorien om saudiflyget efter 11 september. Detta skriver jag om i Svenska Dagbladet idag.

22:47 - FICTION WITHOUT SCIENCE: Global warming causes the polar caps to melt, and all the fresh water stops the Gulf Stream, so that North America and Europe experience a new Ice Age. This is the scenario in Roland Emmerich´s new  film, The Day After Tomorrow. And it is slightly less realistic than the attack from aliens in his 1996 movie Independence Day. As a researcher says in the respected scientific journal Nature: "the only way to produce an ocean circulation without the Gulf Stream would be to turn off the wind system or stop the Earth´s rotation, or both." But isn´t it a good thing to exaggerate the risk to inspire political change? No, says the Danish scientist Bjorn Lomborg: "The problem is that if we overestimate the risk that climate change poses, then we will pay less attention to the other challenges that face us." For example, instead of promoting economic and technological developement to deal with these problems, we might stifle them with the costly and inefficient Kyoto Agreement. Lomborg again:

"Implementing the Kyoto agreement on climate change would cost at least $150 billion each year, yet would do no more than postpone global warming for six years by 2100. That is to say, it would cause temperatures to increase slightly more slowly - the temperature we would have reached in 2100 without Kyoto, we would now reach in 2106."

18:47 - COSBY IS SERIOUS: What do African Americans need to make progress? The same thing as everybody else: Ambition, education and hard work. So actor Bill Cosby said at an anniversary meeting of the NAACP. Reports said that the black audience cheered, but the black leadership was "stone-faced".

18:04 - SOMMARVIKARIAT: Och så säger Timbroliberalerna att Arbetsförmedlingen inte kan skaffa fram riktiga jobb!

17:03 - THE COST OF COWS: A new survey from the Swedish milk producers shows that 10% of Swedes think that cows are stupid, another 10% think that they are wise, and 53% think that cows are kind. What the survey doesn’t show is that each European cow gets $2 a day in subsidies, and that export subsidies reduce the price of EU milk powder by 50%. And neither does it say that the export subsidies to the big Danish-Swedish dairy producer Arla Foods amount to about 25% of its exports. In fact, this survey reveals a moral problem with milk subsidies that I had never thought about, since it shows that 5.4% are afraid of cows. I have always considered it wrong to force anyone to subsidise cows, but it must be even worse to force people who are afraid of cows to pay for them.

09:23 - BHAGWATI IS BACK: I have just finished reading the new book In Defense of Globalization, by the world´s foremost trade economist, Jagdish Bhagwati. It is a well-structured and very well-argued explanation and defence of the open economy by the scholar who has done more than anyone else to explain the benefits of free trade to the public. It is certain to become a classic. Over the years I have learned a lot by reading Bhagwati, and that´s probably one reason why I recognise a lot of my own ideas in the book. Have I returned the favour by influencing the title and the cover of his book? If not, "great minds think alike"... :-)

One thing that sets Bhagwati apart from other academics is that he is witty and brutally frank. Just read his explanation of why some economists think that the structural adjustment loans from the World Bank and the IMF are stifling, even though they are systematically ignored:

"Why, then, do splendid economists such as Stiglitz, who was senior vice president of the World Bank, think of conditionality as stifling, as if what is written is what is done? I suspect that this is because they misinterpret as a huge influence the stroking that they receive when they visit these client countries. They are met with excessive courtesy and protocol at the airport, stay in penthouse executive suites, meet with prime ministers and presidents, and wind up feeling that they are more important than they really are. The notion that these countries are playing the game and manipulating them because they carry bags of cash is beyond the egos that rise like helium-filled balloons in the higher-level echelons of the Bretton Woods institutions." (p. 259)

15:09 - PAKISTANI PROTECTION: For a long time car manufacturers in the west have fought for protection against competition from Japan and other places. What would the market look like if they had won? Take a look at Pakistan, warns Khalil Ahmad. Car tariffs, sometimes as high as 150 per cent, has limited choice, and manufacturers sell their cars at twice the international market price. And after you have paid for your car, delivery takes about 2 to 8 months. I can understand why some companies here would love such a system.

10:08 - EUROPEAN TRADITION: Yesterday in a TV debate about the election to the European Parliament, Swedish prime minister Göran Persson said that he wanted to see the EU as a strong rival to the US. And he spoke approvingly about "Europe´s strong cultural tradition of balancing the US". Let´s see...when has Europe ever opposed the US in a strong way? I can think of these examples: Great Britain goes to war to stop American independence; the early 19th century Holy Alliance between Russia, Prussia and other reactionary monarchies oppose democratic reforms inspired by the US; the 19th century European empires colonise poor countries to stop the American vision of an open world; the Kaiser tries to make the world unsafe for democracy; and nazi-Germany´s and Soviet Russia´s attempt to destroy Anglo-Saxon liberty completely. It is indeed a strong European tradition Persson wants the EU to belong to.

16:24 - KONFLIKT: I morse i radioprogrammet Konflikt i P1 utlovades sanningen bakom Michael Moores nya film. Det visade sig vara en intervju med författaren Craig Unger, som upprepade de myter som Moore populariserat. Med anledning av det skrev jag tidigare idag följande brev till Konfliktredaktionen: 

"Först och främst vill jag tacka för ett mycket bra program, som numera förgyller mina lördagsmorgnar.

Men just i ett sådant program är det tråkigt att höra ett så fundamentalt okritiskt inslag om Craig Unger utannonseras som sanningen bakom Michael Moores nya film. Med anledning av det undrar jag om ni skulle kunna besvara följande frågor:

1) Eftersom Ungers påståenden är mycket kontroversiella, var det inte oklokt att annonsera ut dem som "sanningen"?

2) Hade det inte varit bra att låta någon mer komma till tals i denna mycket kontroversiella fråga, för att visa att det finns fler uppfattningar? Nu framstod Unger som auktoritet snarare än polemiker.

3) Om det inte var möjligt eller lämpligt att ha med ytterligare en röst (en intervju är ju ändå alltid en intervju), hade det inte varit klokt att ställa några kritiska frågor till honom, i stället för att bara presentera det han sade som om han var en okontroversiell auktoritet på området?

4) Ni påstår att 11 septemberkommissionen fortfarande väntar på svar på frågorna om "saudiflighten" dagarna efter terrorattacken, och ger intryck av att kommissionen misstänker att detta har skett regelvidrigt. Vilken källa baserar ni detta på?

5) Har ni sett följande dokument från 11 septemberkommissionen, som slår fast att saudierna fick flyga först efter att den kommersiella flygtrafiken öppnats, och först efter att de resande kontrollerats av FBI (sidan 12)? Detta står i uppenbar strid mot vad ni hävdar - både i form av Ungers påståenden och i vad som har formen som ett mer redaktionellt konstaterande. Och det står definitivt i strid med vad ni påstår att kommissionen anser.

6) Jag förstår om ni inte hade tillgång till information om vad kommissionen anser när inslaget gjordes, och misstag kan man alltid göra om man baserar sig på en enda källa, men i så fall utgår jag ifrån att ni korrigerar den uppgiften i nästa program. Gör jag rätt i det?

Med förhoppning om svar och med vänliga hälsningar,

Johan Norberg, Stockholm"

18:25 - SORRY: I apologise for my temporary obsession for Michael Moore. I got carried away... =) Now I am leaving town for a few days, but meanwhile you can read Jacob Sullum´s review of another popular leftist documentary, Super Size Me. The film seems grotesque - so the guy who made it is probably the new Moore.

17:48 - HOW TO USE SOURCES: When I debated Michael Moore’s new film on Swedish radio today, my opponent defended Moore’s statements about the "Bin Laden flight" after 9-11 by saying that Moore referred to a source in New Yorker. That is really funny, since exactly that New Yorker piece says this: "Once the FAA permitted overseas flights, the jet [with the Bin Laden family] flew to Europe." This is contrary to Moore´s statement that this was before commercial flights were allowed. Even more funny is that this New Yorker piece is quoted by Michael Moore himself on page 4 in Dude, where´s my country?, but he forgets or ignores it 16 pages later, where he writes that it happened "while thousands were stranded and could not fly"!

16:24 - THE FAN CLUB: The other day, I assumed that Michael Moore´s combination of conspiracy theories and lies in Fahrenheit 911 would be loved by the media, and that journalists wouldn´t bother to look at the facts. How predictable. Here is Daniel Schwammenthal´s description from Cannes, in Wall Street Journal Europe today:

"the audience in the official screening [gave] Mr. Moore a 20-minute standing ovation... At the press conference after the première, journalists applauded when Mr. Moore entered the room, before he started speaking and at the end. The questions were often prefaced by statements expressing admiration and support for his work; not one challenged any of the wild allegations made in his film."

10:10 - FÄRDPLAN FÖR FRIHANDEL: EU:s planekonomiska jordbrukspolitik är som det svenska vädret - alla inser hur dåligt det är, men ingen tror att det går att göra något åt det. Det är fel, visar min Timbrokollega Mauricio Rojas i en utmärkt och radikal rapport om hur hela jordbrukspolitiken kan nedmonteras på tre år. Det som är riktigt glädjande är att det har lanserats som en folkpartirapport, och Lars Leijonborg skriver förordet.

09:41 - THE RIGHT MAN FOR INDIA: In 1991, India was on the verge of bakruptcy. The finance minister told parliament that the fiscal deficit was 8.5 percent of GDP, and no foreign lenders were willing to finance that deficit. India had barely a billion dollars in terms of foreign exchange reserves – roughly equal to two weeks´ imports. But the minister also said that this could be turned into an opportunity, and he quoted Victor Hugo, "One can resist the invasion of armies, but not the invasion of an idea whose time has come." His strange idea was to liberalise India’s command economy, and make it into a major global power. He got support for his proposals and started deregulating and opening India up to the global market. Inflation and deficits were reduced and the economy picked up. India has since then grown by almost 7 percent per year, and absolute poverty has been reduced from 42 to about 30 percent. As he has said:

“We got government off the backs of the people of India, particularly off the backs of India´s entrepreneurs. We introduced more competition, both internal competition and external competition. We simplified and rationalized the tax system. We made risk-taking much more attractive... [and] much more profitable.”

This finance minister was Manmohan Singh. Now it looks like he will become India’s next prime minister. Good. More needs to be done, before the Indian government is really off people´s backs.

14:42 - SOURCE: I have been asked where the 9/11-Commission conclude that the story about the Bin Laden flight (which is exploited by Michael Moore) is a myth. You can find it in this statement from the Commission, on page 12.

14:37 - MOORE: Idag fick Michael Moores film Fahrenheit 911 fem plus i Aftonbladet, och jag skriver mer om dess blandning av halvsanningar och lögner i Svenska Dagbladet.

16:45 - €: There is "a strong possibility" that the euro zone could collapse in the next few years, according to Milton Friedman.

10:29 - MOORE INACCURACIES: Today, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 is being shown at the film festival in Cannes. Tomorrow you will read about how great it is in the big European papers. What you won’t get is the background:

According to the synopsis, the film investigates President Bush’s "close personal friendships and business ties with the bin Laden and Saudi royal families" and culminates "in the decision to allow bin Laden family members to fly out of the country days [after September 11, 2001] without FBI questioning." This is also an important accusation against the administration in Moore’s book “Dude, Where’s my country?”, where he complains that thousands of Americans were stranded at the airports, but close relatives of the mass murderer were allowed to leave the US. But as Wall Street Journal Washington Bureau Chief Alan Murray has explained, the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission has already shown that this is another ludicrous conspiracy theory:

”Staffers found that there were indeed six chartered flights, carrying 142 people, most of whom were Saudi nationals, which left the U.S. between Sept. 14, 2001, and Sept. 24, 2001. But contrary to Mr. Moore´s claims, not one left until after commercial airspace reopened and normal flights resumed. Moreover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation screened all passengers to ensure that no one of interest to various terror investigations was aboard.

The infamous "bin Laden" flight left on Sept. 20 with 26 passengers, most of them members of the sprawling bin Laden family. Contrary to Mr. Moore´s claim, however, the FBI interviewed 22 of those passengers, and checked all of them against various databases. There was no indication that any of them had been in recent contact with Osama bin Laden, or had been involved in questionable activity. The 9/11 Commission staff ran all 142 names against an updated terror watch list again this spring, and again came up with no matches.

The commission also found no evidence that the flights resulted from high-level Saudi contacts with the White House. They seem to have originated with lower-level contacts with the FBI, which apparently was delighted to have these Saudi nationals located, gathered in one place, made available for questioning and allowed to leave the country. Even Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism official turned White House nemesis, agreed the flights were of no particular concern.” (WSJ, May 11)

Michael Moore knows this, of course. He is not stupid. And he has done it before. But he excuses his conspiracy theories, distortions and outright lies when they are exposed, by saying that it is only satire. Just read this extract from an interview on CNN 12 April 2002:

DOBBS: Salon.com just took you to task on this book, pointing out glaring inaccuracies, which -- what in the world...

MOORE: […] you know, look, this is a book of political humor. So, I mean, I don´t respond to that sort of stuff, you know.

DOBBS: Glaring inaccuracies?

MOORE: No, I don´t. Why should I? How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?

Remember that convenient loophole when you read the reviews tomorrow, about how the coruageous Mr Moore has managed to uncover the Bush administration’s secrets. If there are no inaccuracies, it’s only because it is not even an attempt to describe facts.

16:06 - TRADE TREASURES: We know that we stand to gain from free trade, but how much? Here are the results from a new paper by Kym Anderson of the University of Adelaide, in the fascinating Copenhagen Consensus project:

- If rich countries abolished their agricultural protectionism, the world economy could gain $122 billion per year, simply by more specialisation and efficiency.

- If poor countries abolished their own tariffs, their economies could gain $65 billion per year.

- If we halved the legal limits for subsidies and tariffs, the global economy could gain something between $188 billion and $1 trillion per year.

- But there are not merely static efficiency gains. Cutting trade barriers by half could also raise economic growth by a third in developing countries and one-sixth in richer countries.

- Over 50 years, this extra growth plus the static efficiency gains from trade, adds more than $23 trillion to the world economy. Of this total, poor countries would reap $11.5 trillion.

Some anti-capitalists say that we should reduce poverty by redistributing the wealth of the US. Be patient, and you’ll get two US. $23 trillion is more than two present American economies.

11:16 - UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH: Social democrat EU-commissioner Margot Wallström is often mentioned as the next Swedish Prime Minister. Today she says: “The excellence of Swedish welfare is a myth...other countries catch up and surpass Sweden in several areas.” Now I understand why present Prime Minister Persson wants to destroy her political career…

10:48 - INDIA KEEPS SHINING: The Hindu nationalist BJP government was surprisingly defeated in the Indian elections, and the old Congress party returns to war. Since the government ran on the economy and growth, this has been interpreted as a defeat for the liberal reforms. In a way this is correct, but more as a way for the many millions of poor to get their share of the progress that has been made in recent years, than as a way to turn around. The Congress party has said that it will continue liberalising the economy, even though it is more sceptical to privatisation. Perhaps it might even attempt to reform agriculture, which has been mostly untouched by modernisation. Rumours have it that Manmohan Singh will be the new finance minister, and that would be great. He was the one who launched India’s reforms in 1991. Since then, every government has kept liberalising, whatever they have said in opposition. Few would want to abandon policies that have given India 8 percent growth, and have reduced absolute poverty by more than a quarter in ten years.

Furthermore, it is always beneficial that no party monopolises power, not even in the world’s biggest democracy. Especially not a Hindu nationalist party which was involved in bloody, anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat in 2002, and wanted to block everyone not born in India from standing for important political offices. The Congress party is much more liberal here, and has promised a secularised government and equal rights for minorities.

13:50 - MORE CHOMSKY: And today Mats Johansson wrote a nice review (in Swedish) of Chomsky´s latest book. As he observes, Chomsky is like an almost correct phone number: Some of the numbers might be right, but the whole is useless.

11:25 - CHOMSKY THE CHEAT: Believe it or not, the linguist and conspiracy theorist Noam Chomsky is the commentator on American foreign policy that is most read by Europeans. That’s sad. His sometimes relevant criticism gets lost in his grotesque perspective that the US and Israel is to blame for everything that is going wrong in the world. If they do something bad it is always because they are evil, neo-liberal and imperialistic. If someone else does something bad it is always a legitimate reaction to the evils of US and Israel.

But it is also sad because Chomsky does not hold truth in a high regard. Many are impressed by the long list of notes and sources in his books and articles, but few take the trouble to investigate how he uses them. But today Gellert Tamas pays attention to Chomsky’s defence of Diana Johnstone, who denies the Serbian mass murders in Bosnia. To show that critical Swedish commentators got it wrong, Chomsky writes that her book "has been very favorably reviewed, e.g., by the leading British scholarly journal International Affairs, journal of the Royal Academy". But Tamas read the review, and it was not very favourable, instead it explains that the book is full of mistakes, selective in its use of facts, and try to paint a revisionist picture of Milosevic as a multi-culturalist. Chomsky even gets the name of the reviewer wrong.

Chomsky does this a lot – invoking the authority of some prestigious journal which none will pick up. For example, in 1977 Chomsky denied Pol Pot’s mass murder in Cambodia (he denies mass murder a lot too), by explaining that "such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands".

Those who took the trouble to look at these journals found out that this was a complete distortion. The Economist had written precisely the opposite of what Chomsky claims, and what he is referring to is a letter to the editor, protesting against The Economist’s view – which makes it a lie to invoke the magazine’s credibility against the evidence of massacres. As for the Far Eastern Economic Review, the author merely wrote that he had not found evidence of massacres, and that he doubted some of the stories, but he presented no evidence against them, and concluded that "the numbers killed are impossible to calculate" – not that they "numbered at most in the thousands".

Of course there are instances when the US behaves in a bad way, and when massacre reports are false – but never, ever take Chomsky’s word for it.

10:36 - INSIDER INFORMATION: I just listened to the eloquent Boston Globe correspondent Tom Oliphant at a Timbro meeting, and he revealed how to predict the US presidential elections: The tall guy always wins. The only exception he could think of was that Gore was taller than Bush, but this doesn´t contradict the rule: Since Gore has such a bad posture, Bush actually looked taller. Perhaps Gore should have demanded a recount... (For your information: This time Kerry is the tall one.)

16:41 - RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE TORTURE: Just as Vietnam was the first TV war, Iraq is the first digital camera war. New pictures of humiliated and tortured Iraqi prisoners keep surfacing. And amidst the tragedy, we have to realise that the new thing is not torture – it is the fact that we hear about it, and that the US government promises to punish the guilty. The US hasn’t confessed to this in earlier wars, and I don’t think many other countries would. Once again: Democracy and the rule of law in a country does not mean that people there magically turn into decent, nice people, there will always be ruthless bastards, especially in war situations. What it does mean is that we have a system to get information about it and punish them. And this is precisely why Iraq needs a liberal, democratic government instead of Saddam’s murderous dictatorship, which systematically raped and tortured prisoners and their relatives.

There is a widespread impression that the US military tried to cover the whole thing up, and that media uncovered the story. That is not the case. The abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison took place in November 2003, apparently as punishment for a fight between prisoners. As Wall Street Journal reports, news about this reached the Army command in Iraq on January 13, and they started a criminal probe a day later. By March 20, they announced in Baghdad that criminal charges had been brought against the six soldiers. Meanwhile three other Army investigations were looking into what had happened. One of them detailed the torture at Abu Ghraib, and got hold of the pictures. It is from this report CBS and other media learned about the abuse, it was not the other way around.

Having said that, however, we must realise that some parts of US policies made these actions possible, by blurring the lines between harsh questioning and torture. It includes the lawless state of the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, approved questioning methods like sleep deprivation, hooding and stress positions, and the US system to send terrorist suspects to countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, where we know that they are being tortured for information. This is inexcusable, and we now know that it is destroying the reputation of the US precisely when it needs to be seen as a model for the oppressed. The war on terror is very much a war of ideas – freedom versus fundamentalism. And US leaders should tell their troops that they are fighting for freedom, and therefore must only use methods consistent with this. Instead, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has publicly said that the Geneva Convention is outdated. That is a blueprint for defeat in the war of ideas.

10:11 - A SMALL STEP FOR MANKIND: In a letter to the WTO countries, the European Commission has offered to scrap its €3 billion in export subsidies for agicultural goods if other big trading partners do. It´s not very brave - it´s almost half a year after the US promised the same. And it says nothing abut the other €40 billion in EU agricultural subsidies or the tariffs. And it is dependent on the outcome of negotiations. And it is probably only because they fear that the export subsidies will be challenged at the WTO early 2005. But as we understand from the French farm minister Hervé Gaymard´s statement to the Financial Times - that the offer is "very dangerous" and that "we are very much against this letter" - it´s clearly a step forward, and as such it´s very welcome. A small step for mankind, but a giant leap for the EU.

10:09 - STIGLITZ AGAIN: The figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Friday show that US employment in March and April increased by 625,000. This just mentioned as a background to Stiglitz´ claim that outsourcing permanently deprives the American economy of jobs.

09:55 - STIGLITZ MISCALCULATES: Today, Dagens Nyheter publishes a typical Joseph Stiglitz piece: 1) Explain that just the elite benefit from globalisation, 2) denounce those who do not agree as "foolish", say that they "stick their heads in the sand" and that they only pretend to believe what they do, and 3) do not bore the readers with any facts or proofs. Stiglitz´ only evidence that globalisation is not good for the many is that "During the ten years since Nafta was signed, average real wages in the US have actually been reduced". And this happens to be completely wrong. In these ten years, when US employment grew by 20 million, and the country’s labour market was expanded by more poor immigrants than before, the average real hourly compensation rose by 14.7 percent – almost a third more than in the ten years before Nafta. But Stiglitz need not bother about facts, he’s got a Nobel Prize.

15:53 - DEFENDING MURDERERS : Right now Skåne Social Forum (a Swedish version of World Social Forum) has a big anti-capitalist meeting in southern Sweden. It is an event for organisations opposed to neo-liberalism and corporate globalisation, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that they give a stage to some of the most brutal totalitarian dictatorships: One seminar is praising “Cuba’s progress” which is “threatened by the US”. Another one is meant to defend North Korea against myths spread by capitalists (a North Korean official was invited, but had to cancel). But more shocking is the fact that the city of Lund and the aid organisation Forum Syd is sponsoring the event with the tax payer’s money. And I am absolutely appalled that Amnesty International is among the organisations participating in an anti-capitalist forum that gives murderers a stage. If I don’t hear from Amnesty that it was a mistake, I will let them know that my membership in Amnesty is a mistake.

10:56 - OM TYST DIPLOMATI: Idag publicerar Svenska Dagbladet min slutreplik om näringslivets bristande opinionsbildning, kan läsas här.

17:46 - WELCOME! AND WATCH OUT: In Estonia´s biggest business paper, Äripäev, I welcome my new favourite EU country to the union. I also warn them about what to expect. Here is the English version.

17:25 - MUSIC TO MY EARS: Most big artists are deeply critical of the globalisation and capitalism that has helped them becoming stars. But here is an exception to the rule that musicians can only make themselves heard in tunes: The musician Peter Gabriel. "The anti-globalists are wrong", he says in an interview for Financial Times Deutschland, and he continues: "If you fight against globalisation, smash doors, fortify borders, stop immigration, rise taxes and tariffs, then the people of the world don´t get closer to each other, but become more estranged". According to Peter Gabriel, globalisation is a "worldwide quest for happiness, freedom and wealth". (Thanks to Christian Klauss.)

16:27 - WHEN FOOLS TRY SOCIALISM: Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have surfaced in the anti-globalisation movement. The other year, the French protectionist farm leader José Bové claimed that French synagogues were destroyed by Jews themselves, to get sympathy for their cause. Now Adbusters, the popular Canadian anti-capitalist group that thinks that the biggest problem in the world is commercials, has gone a step further, by listing the Jews who rule the world. It’s a list of 50 American neo-conservatives, and instead of attacking their politics (which would make sense in many cases), Adbusters asks "Why won´t anyone say they are Jewish?", and marks the Jews in the group with a black dot.

This, of course, is nothing new in the anti-capitalist tradition. As the 19th century German socialist August Bebel observed: "Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools."

16:01 - UPDATE ON TRANSLATIONS: I am often asked where my book In Defence of Global Capitalism has been translated. So far it has been published in Sweden, Estonia, Britain, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Turkey, United States and Canada. Translations are also under way in Spain, Finland, Albania, Ukraine, China, India and Pakistan. Pretty global.

14:16 - HOCKEY WITHOUT CCCP: When the Russian hockey players were liberated from communism (see “CCCP hockey” below), many of them went to the NHL to play. Jason Bauer sent me this story about one of those players, Mikhail Tatarinov who played for the Washington Capitals: When a player was brought over the team took him out to show him around town. When they took Tatarinov to a grocery store, he freaked out. He couldn’t believe that a store with so much of so many different kinds of food could exist in reality. It had to be American propaganda...

09:51 - TORTURE IN IRAQ - PAST AND PRESENT: The fact that several American soldiers have tortured Iraqis in the old prisons of Saddam Hussein is disgusting. It proves once again that war is hell, and that democracies are also capable of horrible acts. And it reinforces the need for stronger internal controls, more transparency, and severe punishment of those responsible. But two things are overlooked when some people in the region now claim that the US is no better than the old Saddam regime:

The first thing is that the pictures really prove that the US is superior to the Baathist dictatorship. In the US, a whistleblower is not shot, but welcomed as a hero. In the US, the press is free to report the facts its regime would like to conceal. In the US, soldiers are punished when they torture prisoners, instead of being punished when they don’t torture prisoners.

The second thing is that neighbouring countries that now condemn these deeds never complained about the systematic torture under Saddam’s regime, which he not merely encouraged, but also participated in personally. Let’s hope that these new reactions reveal a new sensitivity to torture in the Middle East, and not merely the traditional hostility to the US. Read this report from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, from Kenneth Pollack´s book The Threatening Storm (2002):

"This is a regime that will gouge out the eyes of children to force confessions from their parents and grandparents. This a regime that will crush all of the bones in the feet of a 2-year-old girl to force her mother to divulge her father´s whereabouts. This is a regime that will hold a nursing baby at arm´s length from its mother and allow the child to starve to death to force the mother to confess. This is a regime that will burn a person´s limbs off to force him to confess or comply. This is a regime that will slowly lower its victims into huge vats of acid, either to break their will or simply as a means of execution. This is a regime that applies electric shocks to the bodies of its victims, particularly their genitals, with great creativity. This is a regime that in 2000 decreed that the crime of criticizing the regime, which can be as harmless as suggesting that Saddam´s clothing does not match, will be punished by cutting out the offender´s tongue. This is a regime that practices systematic rape against its female victims. This is a regime that will drag in a man´s wife, daughter or other female relative and repeatedly rape her in front of him. This is a regime that will force a white-hot metal rod into a person´s anus or other orifices. This is a regime that employs thalium poisoning, widely considered one of the most excruciating ways to die. This is a regime that will behead a young mother in the street in front of her house and children because her husband was suspected of opposing the regime. This is a regime that used chemical warfare on its own Kurdish citizens, not just on the 15,000 killed and maimed at Halabja but on scores of other villages all across Kurdistan. This is a regime that tested chemical and biological warfare agents on Iranian prisoners of war, using the POWs in controlled experiments to determine the best ways to disperse the agents to inflict the greatest damages.
This is the fate that awaits thousands of Iraqis each year. The roughest estimates are that over the last 20 years more than 200,000 people have disappeared into Saddam´s prison system, never to be heard from again. Hundreds of thousands of others were taken away and, after unforgettable bouts of torture that left them psychologically and often physically mangled, eventually were released or escaped. To give a sense of scale, just the numbers of Iraqis never heard from again would be equivalent to about 2.5 million Americans suffering such a fate." (Borrowed from Trojan Horseshoes.)

11:40 - JAG TÄNKER EFTER: Igår stod jag för Veckans eftertanke i TV-programmet Agenda, och jag valde att tala om vår oförmåga att uppskatta vardagen. Krönikan kan ses och läsas här.

00:42 - WHOLE AND FREE: Now we have experienced the historic enlargement of the EU to Central- and Eastern Europe. Let´s for a moment forget that the new citizens are hoarding sugar and other goods, since EU tariffs and VAT will increase prices. And let´s forget that the new members are forced into the last planned economy, the Common Agricultural Policy, and that the old members have introduced restrictions on their right to work there. Right now we are celebrating the end of the cold war. And democracy won. Europe is, in the words of Bush the elder, "whole and free". This is a night of celebration.