Nathan’s Musings

Lately, there is a lot of hand-wringing in the media about the West’s, especially Western Europe’s, dependence on energy imports of Russia. Much has been made of Putin’s self-assured demeanor at the recent EU energy summit in Finland, and many commentators are troubled by Russia’s behaviour towards Shell in connection with the Sakhalin project, where the Russian government is trying to gets its pet oil company, Gazprom, in on the deal using its envirnmental regulator as the battering ram.

Clearly, Russia is not the nicest place in the world. It is no Western democracy. But it is also not the old Soviet Union either. There is a free press, people are free to travel, and while Putin’s government runs elections and the political system in general in ways that gives it the political advantage, nobody wins elections with 99.9% of the vote these days. Russia today is also not the down-and-out place it was 10 years ago, and perhaps it is this that is really bothering some people in the West. The relationship between the West and Russia is much more complex today than it was in 1996. Russia has put its economic house in order in many ways and is enjoying the enhanced power its vast energy reserves give it. Nothing wrong with that–every great power behaves this way.

The unfortunate fact about fossil fuels is that nature, or coincidence, or God (take your pick) put most of the world’s reserves in decidedly nasty places. The only Western democracies with significant oil and gas are the US (which consumes far more than it produces), Canada and the countries around the North Sea (but the North Sea fields will be pumped dry relatively soon). It is not as if we can say, “OK, we’ll just rely on Norwegian oil because the Norwegians are nice and civilised and democratic.” They are indeed all of those things, but they just do not have enough of the stuff to go around.

So the choice for Europe is to import from Russia, a country with a somewhat dodgy political system but at least a fellow European country, or from the Arab states. I know what I prefer. When we fuel our cars with Arab oil, we are supporting terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, the enemies of Israel and of the West, and some of the most dictatorial regimes in the world. Compared to the Saudi Arabias or Irans of this world, Russia looks like a Jeffersonian democracy. So I know whom I would rather depend on!

The US government has a long history of being concerned about the virtue of its people. Even though this is the “land of the free”, Prohibition was imposed in the 1920s to make sure that the “free” did not drink too much. Since then, numerous other laws have been implemented to protect the people from themselves. Most recently, the Congress and the President have been concerned about online gambling. It is after all dangerous: you can lose a lot of money, you can become addicted to gambling, and worst of all, the leading online gambling companies were–horror–foreign and based in exotic places such as the United Kingdom and listed on some funny outfit called the London Stock Exchange. So something had to be done. Never mind that virtually every state has a state-run lottery; that casinos are now all over the place, not just in Nevada and New Jersey, and that games of chance are so popular that poker has become a spectator sport. Gambling run by US companies is apparently virtuous, while gambling run by British companies is evil. So now a law has been passed which prohibits US banks and credit card companies from processing payments resulting from internet gambling, effectively killing the business in the US.

Of course, any sensible person would look back at the history of prohibition, consider the nature of the Internet and conclude that the only effect of such an idiotic law will be to eliminate all legitimate online gambling companies, leaving the field wide open to all kinds of sleazy operators. After all, Prohibition did not make people drink less–it just provided a wonderful business opportunity for the mafia. And so it will be with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

In order to save my American friends from the claws of the online mafia, as a public service here are some suggestions for getting around the new law. Basically, you need two things: a way to fund your account with the online gambling company, and a way to log into their web site without giving away the fact that you are located in the US. Both issues are relatively easy to solve. First, you need to open a bank account and obtain a credit card from a bank outside the US; Mexico and Canada are obvious choices, but other countries work well too. I have (or have had) bank accounts in Denmark and Spain without being a resident of either country. You will need to do it in person, however, so a vacation abroad will be necessary. Secondly, to log on to the gambling server without giving away your IP address, you need to use a proxy server located outside the US (if you don’t know what I am talking about, ask any literate teenager in your immediate surroundings to help you out). Open proxies are easy to find, for example here. For added credibility, pick a proxy in the same country where you have opened your bank account. And voila! You are all set.

Incidentally, all this may even become relevant for you even if you do not play onlike poker or blackjack. Apparently, the US Congress is also looking into other online gaming activity of US residents, such as playing War of Warcraft or Eve Online. Since the real problems of the US are not easily solvable, the good men and women in Washington are concerning themselves with what pale-faced geeks are doing on the net. Sad, really.

I am listening to a story that makes my blood boil as I write this. Some good ol’ boy judge in Texas has ruled that Kenneth Lay’s conviction should be overturned because the creep died before he had the chance to appeal the initial conviction. Now, you might say that it does not matter since the guy is dead anyway–is there is heaven and hell, then we all know where he is spending eternity, and if there isn’t, then it is all moot. But it does matter for those still here. While the Enron ex-employees and retirees that Lay cheated out of their life savings are flipping burgers at McDonalds or greeting customers at Walmart, the Lay widow will get to keep all the ill-gotten gains. A figure of $43 million is mentioned on the news, money that would otherwise have been seized and used to partially compensate Enron investors. May the bitch choke on the cherry in her Martini!

The fall of Communism in Eastern Europe 16 years ago has had many consequences, good and bad (mostly good of course), large and small. The large consequences most people are familiar with: NATO and the EU have new members, Volkswagen cars are nowadays made in Slovakia more than in Germany, one million Polish citizens have moved to the UK and Ireland, and so on. This post is about the small-scale consequences; but since life is an amalgamation of many small things, such minor consequences are still worth looking at. Take street names in Poland, for example. In the city where I was born, Wroclaw, a large number of streets and squares have been renamed since 1990. No more streets named after Commie heroes like Dzherzhinsky; the 1st May Square is now called, what else, the John Paul II Square. Buildings have not escaped unscathed either; a large arena built by the Germans in 1913 as the Jahrhunderthalle (”century hall”) became Hala Ludowa (”people’s hall”) in 1945 but has now reverted to its old name, albeit in Polish as Hala Stulecia.

Not only Communist names have to be expunged; new heroes must also be recognised. And so, a new big roundabout in one of Wroclaw’s main squares, Plac Grunwaldzki (named after a battle in 1410 in which the Poles defeated the Teutonic Knights), is probably going to be called Ronald Reagan Circle. In today’s Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish paper which I read on the web, the Wroclaw city council president explains that Reagan deserves to have one of the city’s most central places named after him, since he is chiefly responsible for Poland regaining her freedom.

This is all well and good, except for the small businesses who have to spend money on new stationery, business cards etc.; for the locals who have to get used to new names; and for visitors who may have brought with them last year’s maps…

Turkey wants to join the EU some time. This is a difficult prospect to imagine. I like my kebabs, and I generally like the Turks I meet here in northern Europe. For the most part they are hard-working people, and Islamic fundamentalism is not nearly as common among them as it is among the Arabs and South Asians here. And after all, we invited them to come here back in the 1960s.

But accepting and even welcoming the Turks who live here and accepting and welcoming Turkey as an EU member are two very different things. Besides the obvious economic implications–Turkey will have more people than Germany in 10 years, and its low income and large agricultural sector would bankrupt the existing EU agricultural and regional aid policies–there is the more fundamental question whether Turkey as a society subscribes to the European values, known as the “Copenhagen Criteria” that define a minimum standard for democracy and human rights that a country must meet to join the Union.

As Turkey stands now, that certainly is not the case. This is a country where writers and journalists and routinely tried for “insulting Turkishness” or “insulting Ataturk”, where mention of the Armenian genocide of 1915 may land you in jail and where the military is the ultimate guarantor of the secular state. As I write this, I hear the Turkish Prime Minister on TV, issuing veiled threats to France because the French are about to pass a law criminalizing denial of the Armenian genocide (similar to laws making Holocaust denial illegal which are in place in several European countries). He said (according to the BBC translation): “passing this law will have no impact on Turkey, but it will have a great impact on France”. Is Turkey a European country? I think not.

UPDATE: The French National Assembly did go ahead and pass its law, and the Turks are furious. There is the usual talk of economic boycotts etc. In a delicious bit of irony, some Turkish official was on the BBC attacking the French law because it infringes on freedom of speech. Just to clarify, I do agree with French ex-Culture Minister Jack Lang who called the law “stupid”; I do agree that laws forbidding Holocaust denial or racist expression in fact do nothing to reduce racism. I think it is better to allow the morons to have their say and be judged in the court of public opinion. But to hear a representative of the Turkish government–one of the more repressive regimes in Europe when it comes to expression–defend freedom of speech is truly a bit rich.

It is often stated that economic sanctions do not work. In most cases, this is true, either because the country to which sanctions are applied has a sufficiently strong economy or (more often) because the outside world does not have sufficient backbone to make the sanctions stick. Now we have a rogue state, North Korea, which has exploded a nuclear device. Happily, this is one case where sanctions will work. The efficiency of Stalinism are such that North Korea is unable to feed itself. It depends on the outside world for food aid and on the Chinese for energy. If the Chinese were on board, sanctions would bring the North Korean economy to collapse within weeks. And this is what should be done. Total isolation, no food from South Korea, no coal from China, no aid from the UN’s World Food Programme. It cannot be right that the UN helps prop up a regime by feeding 2 million of its people (10% of the population), thus keeping a lid on potential social unrest, while the government develop its nukes.

Yes, people in North Korea would suffer. But they will suffer even more if their government decides to re-unify the Korean peninsula by force. Anyway, what is the alternative? Letting North Korea continue its development of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles? Continuing negotiations that only serve to give the regime more time, as is happening with Iran? North Korea teaches us once again that appeasement does not work and that diplomacy, unless backed by a credible threat of force or sanctions, is merely a useless exercise in mental masturbation.Rarely was a case for strong sanctions as clear as in this instance. If the world can come together, regime change in North Korea can be accomplished without any need for invading or bombing the place.

…were put to good use in Pennsylvania yesterday. I went to visit the NRA web site to see if they had any commentary on how Charles Carl Roberts used his sacred Second Amendments rights at the Amish school. What I did find was “information” on how to fight the UN’s global gun ban, numerous stories of a political/legislative nature, but no mention of the massacre. A search on the word “Amish” yielded a link to one article only, about some hunting controversy in the late 1990s.

Obviously, the NRA cares more about some stupid constitutional amendment written by a bunch of white slave owners in the 1780s than about the lives of real children in 2006.