What game is Iran playing?

After Roxana Saberi was found guilty of espionage by an Iranian court, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself calls for a fair appeal hearing, allowing Saberi to mount a full defence. Something is fishy.

If the Iranian President wanted a truly fair trial of the reporter, he would have invoked fairness right from the beginning of proceedings. An Obama administration would be incapable of reacting strongly to her sentencing, and Iran could have continued on its path of oppression and international disgrace. Why this politically unwarranted sudden turn?

Bloomberg suggests Iran may wish to reverse Saberi's conviction on appeal "to show magnanimity". Call it what you may, it isn't justice. True justice and fairness are independent of political expediency, and if Saberi is innocent she should be free now, not later on a whim of politically motivated magnanimity and a smoke screen of false and una tantum fairness.

This call for fairness smells of machination. Her appeal will probably be fair, she may well be freed and have the charged against her overturned. The outcome will be disastrous for the US either way though. A seemingly fair trial orchestrated to return a guilty verdict will discredit Obama's allegation of the original charges being baseless. An aquittal will instead lend Ahmadinejad credibility in the eyes of many Ayatollah apologists in the West.

I do hope the appeal is successful, but the price to pay will be steep. Ahmadinejad will expect quid pro quo, and the upcoming nuclear negotiations will provide the excellent opportunity for the godfather to clain the return of a favor. I can bet five bucks the appeal hearings will be scheduled during or right after the nuclear negotiations, and Saberi will be used to put pressure on the US envoys.

The only way for the US not to be indebted is to reject this opening as vehemently as they can, and I don't have the guts to advocate such a course of action.

Oh, pleeeeease!

Canadian Centre for Policy Obviousness: tax cuts impact quality of life. Duh!

The research lauds public spending, income redistribution and big government. Most of the commenters embrace the cause of the righteous "poor" against the greedy "rich". I can just see the massive gov't-o-gasm sweeping the left-minded in the nation.

I cry "crock!". Public education, public healthcare, public infrastructure building and merit goods are welcome in my books, as long as they are properly administered and I get value for money. Hiring five managers for every medical staff in the national health system will impact my quality of life negatively while increasing taxes. A tax cut that will force the firing of 90% of managing positions will increase my quality of life because I will have more money and a more streamlined health service.

I want public services of a value equivalent to my tax. Cutting taxes isn't about taking and giving, it's about making public services more efficient. Do we need ten managers for a library? Obviously no, and firing them to save money because of a tax cut isn't going to make my life any worse.

Assuming economics is a zero-sum game is childish. But then, tax advocates are just that: children who cry "Mommy", and mama is in Ottawa.

At last the bleeding hearts get it

Britain's liberal bleeding hearts finally plan to cut benefits to chronic addicts who do not seek treatment. At long last, and not a second too soon.

The welfare state is not an evil in and of itself. If people be helped in times of need, so be it. When one's in need, however, one does not indulge, and despite all the excuses that the urges of addiction are hard to resist, the crack just doesn't smoke itself. Therefore giving addicts and alcoholics the shove to do something about their condition is finally a step in the right direction.

In times of economic crisis, it is not for the State to cuddle its socialist ego with wasteful welfare that fuels crime, destroys communities and burdens the health system.

This just takes the biscuit!

Gambler sues casinos because they let him in! For crying out loud, when did people start forgetting that when you have a problem, you deal with it?

It isn't like the guy was in denial either: he submitted his name and picture to a "kick me out, maybe" list, which he then claims was laxly enforced and "caused" him to lose more money, his home and his job. This is not a case of someone profiteering from someone else's addiction, it's a case of trying to deny one's responsibility for one's own actions.

When you realize you have a problem, you seek help. Compulsive gambling isn't something one can solve going cold-turkey, and this is a case-in-point. The list he refers to as his bridge to salvation (not!) is merely a recommendation that gambling joints consider ejecting him from the premises. It isn't a ban list, ergo casinos can do whatever they like.

I do hope this case is thrown out and the guy gets the professional help he needs. Had he been smarter, after acknowledging the problem he would have sought the help of a psychologist. It would have been much cheaper than relying on casinos enforcing a weak recommendation.

I gamble from time to time. I go into the casino with nothing but the cash I think I can afford to spend. I never need to take my debit card out, because after losing about 30% of my bankroll I get royally bored, and prefer spending the rest on beer. If I can be this responsible at 23, I can reasonably expect others to be even wiser at older ages. Which is why I have no sympathy for Peter Dennis.

Quantitative screwing

Central banking authorities around the world are jumping onto the bailout-zero-interest-never-mind-the-savers bandwagon. After the Fed and the Bank of England began musing about "quantitative easing", euphemism for "printing money", now pressure seems to mount on the ECB to follow suit.

I watched the loonie go under, standing at 1.67 to the Euro as I write. I also watched the greenback soar to 1.25 Canadian in the past months, making flying into the US impossible on my budget. To top it off, the British pound, long regarded as the most expensive and safest currency of a developed country, is down to almost parity with the Euro, trading at 1.46 US/GBP against 1.36 US/Euro. Factor in the commissions and the usual tweaking and Bang! it's one-for-one.

Does anybody know a country whose currency

1) Is not dependent on a commodity price
2) is regulated by a non-interventionist central bank
3) won't be used by a liberal government to bail out failed industries?

I have a fair Euro savings account, and I won't watch its value wiped out by a printing press.

Told ya so!

Krazy at the Broom points out that a European Union - commissioned inquiry into the August 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia was started by Georgia. I always maintained and argued that was the case. Not because I'm a pro-Russian nut, but because I don't buy into Western delusions.

Just because a government declares itself friendly to the West and looks to NATO and the EU doesn't mean it is a democratic, legitimate or intelligent government. Saakashvili, the Georgian president, has no grasp of international politics and lives in his own la-la-land where he can prod Russia and the West will not only support him, but defend him in battle when the fuse blows.

Russia has no use for such a pawn, or for the two breakaway regions straddling the Russia-Georgia border. There's nothing to be had there except mountains, poverty, smuggling, regional ethnic hates and trouble begging to boil over. But when a hostile government breaches a ceasefire treaty and starts shelling your own citizens, one has to react and bury the enemy's army under a cloud of Grad missiles.

The August conflict taught Georgia a lesson: the pawn cooled his heats and toned down the rhetoric. Until that nut is ousted from office, the Caucasus will always remain a gunpowder barrel ready to unleash its shock waves.

Death of a currency, rebirth of an economy

The Zimbabwe dollar is dead and no-one is there to mourn it. Faced with an inflation rate described with double-digit exponentials, the country resorted to the least evil solution the precarious government could come up with: bury the currency.

Other hyperinflation episodes had been tackled with a variety of policies, including the famous "shock therapy" that entailed transforming the economy into a free market overnight. Obviously this option wasn't on the table in Harare. A dictator still in power with a loyal police and military cannot be made to accept sweeping reform. Incidentally, abandoning the national currency resulted in a remarkably great arrangement: three separate currencies can today be used in Zimbabwe, shielding the economy from the danger of a single foreign collapse (unless contagion sets in).

Today, Zimbabwean hyperinflation is over and its central bank has lost all its inflationary powers. It is a godsend to monetarists. Watch Zimbabwe, it might be the story of an economic miracle brought by the demise of a berserk central banking authority.

House rules

Gerry Nicholls recommends Conservatives angry at Harper after his Manning Centre conference speech should join "Homeless Cons", a site for those conservative-minded who do not feel at home in conservative parties. I won't.

In every house there's house rules, and Harper is adamant that his rules be respected in his Party. Thus "I am Stephen Harper, thy Prime Minister, and thou shall have no other Prime Ministers before me". No wonder. Small-c and libertarian conservatives should, more constructively, organize within the Tory party and get their own faction leader.

I cite the Tory Reform Group, who can be defined as the libertarian wing of the UK Conservative party. They are notoriously at odds with the rest of UK Tories over Europe, being much less Euro-skeptic than their peers. Yet they remain loyal Tories and work constructively through speeches and publications to promote a more favorable view of the EU within the party. Their influence has dwindled in past years, yet most of them are still Tory members and voters.

That's what we've got to do too. Instead of claiming being orphans we should recognize who is top dog right now (Stephen Harper), organize into a loyal faction and have our voice heard within the party. When push comes to shove a credible faction leader can lay a strong leadership bid. Just because we don't agree with our current leader doesn't mean we're not welcome. In time our effort, loyalty and work can pay off with a leader from our ranks.

Homeless Cons may give some the comfort of knowing they're not alone in their disillusionment. It is not a surrogate for changing Party policy. If the libertarians go, their ideas will be confined to the "Theory" drawer. Between sulking and grinding, I choose the latter.

In defence of Harper's speech

I read the transcript of Harper's speech to the MCBD conference and did not find it as upsetting as other conservatives have. When Harper claims Wall Street abused its freedoms he says nothing but the truth: bad debt was peddled as solid gold through CDOs and auditing companies abused (more like didn't use) their freedom to write off some securities as junk. The present credit crisis is a gigantic systematic screw-up with no justification, as the entire economy bought into a Ponzi scheme by whose comparison Bernard Madoff is an innocent lamb.

Truth is, whatever we may seek to blame the crisis on it lands two personalities on the defendant's bench: social engineering and immorality. Liberals are to blame for the former (bullying banks for the sake of equal home ownership), while conservatives could take the blame for the latter. As the idea that looks to the future, conservatives in America failed to emphasize the concept of added value and ownership.

Handing out junk mortgages for the simple sake of selling a garbage CDO isn't banking, isn't libertarian and isn't moral. Giving mortgages with a policy to add value to the branch's area, hoping to attract more professionals, more banking business and more wealth is added-value lending.

Example: a young professional is more likely to marry and make career progress. This means he or she will put more money in a savings account and bring another customer to the bank while paying back the mortgage. As more young professionals move in, the area gets gentrified, more affluent and requires more banking. That's looking to the future from a conservative perspective.

When you give out a mortgage, it's your money in play. Until we hammer this concept back into the system we will not learn any lessons from this mess. That's ownership. You own the house, but I own the risk. If ownership is the nail and regulation is the hammer, so be it. We are defending a free market in which everyone passed the buck together with a time bomb. It ain't right. Banning CDOs won't work (after all, solid debt is still debt) but we can't keep them in their present form either.

Harper's emphasis on family and faith isn't big news either, nor is it an ultimatum to libertarians. The family is the foundation of society and Harper's faith in the speech's context is the belief in the existence of good and evil beyond mere economic calculation. Don't libertarians believe in morals too? Where's the problem? Fears of a socially conservative agenda are easily assuaged: if the so-cons even try it, we will have 1993 all over again.

Harper's speech is simply stating that there's a mess to sort out and it's not just liberals who are to blame. Those balking at government spending didn't have the prospect of losing one's seat in the PMO.

He could have said some things better, and I for one take offence at the allegation that libertarians don't like to take responsibility. It's the faux libertarians who are ready to go liberal at the turn of the tide, whom we tried to defend as members of the free market who refuse to be responsible for the cleanup. True libertarians will not peddle garbage and true libertarians will not ask for a bailout.

Harper didn't walk into a libertarian meeting with the intention of alienating his audience, he still wants to win elections (duh). He merely wanted to set the record straight, that things will change after this crisis toward a more qualitative rather than quantitative approach and if someone wants to criticize the stimulus one should first try stepping into the PM's shoes. Imagine handing over the country to Dion, Layton and Duceppe, who would undo almost three years of hard work grinding through the slimmest minority.

I still like Harper. True he still throws out the occasional bungle or two, but the man has cojones. He came out in the heart of dissent and faced it head-on. We should take it as an opportunity: he is now up to discussing policy rather than just politics. We can take offence and sulk, or we can respond. This time we'll have more public attention because the media portrays it as if Harper's bullying us. Nothing's further from the truth. Were he a bully, he wouldn't have come into the Manning conference.

Abusus non tollit usum

If you are irresponsible it's still your fault. Emotion-ridden proposals to sue alcohol-producing companies for fetal alcohol damage are beyond laughable, particularly so when coming from a healthcare professional.

Mothers who abuse alcohol and drugs during pregnancy are behaving irresponsibly because they disregard the consequences, ergo they don't give a damn about the life they are carrying and destroying within. Feed me no nonsense about it being society's fault, if you drink or shoot up it's still you doing it and no-one is forcing you to. When someone wants to destroy themselves, take alcohol away from them and they will find other ways to throw their lives in the bin, like hard drugs or stabbing others for fun. Because we can't expect booze sellers and producers to take such lawsuits lightly; they will simply pack up shop and move their business to higher health professional IQ areas.

Truth is we can't eliminate or reliably prevent FASD. Education and awareness campaigns can only go as far as the recipient's common sense can take them. Irresponsible mothers will keep popping hard liquor and babies, in that order, while social services will keep popping in to take the kids away and give them to more deserving families. All we can do is jail mums whose children have FASD, inventing a crime of alcohol abuse during pregnancy. Where would that take us?

Booze is great, as myself and many other happy responsible drinkers will no doubt vouch for. We support local businesses that produce and sell good liquor products, we have a great time and thus contribute both to GDP and HDI. The misuse of this resource is no reason to force a liquor price increase for companies to cope with pay-outs for someone else's stupidity. Moreover, the inevitable higher booze prices will push the addicts into either crime to procure the money or more accessible hard drugs. Now there we'd have a BIG problem.