My Beauty Best Teacher

A sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority within its jurisdiction. When the Pilgrims left England and came to America, in their hearts they didn't recognize as their sovereign lord the King of England, realizing that anyone who could make it wrong to practice your religion could not truly be the real authority over your actions. The Pilgrims didn't recognize themselves as sovereign lords over themselves, able to determine what was right and wrong for themselves, knowing that this sort of selfishness and vanity would lead away from morality and create an absence of law. When the Pilgrims came to America, they didn't recognize 'no one' as sovereign, realizing that someone had to be responsible for their actions and had to provide law over them or else their community would dissolve into anarchy.

When the Pilgrims arrived in America, they knew in their hearts who their sovereign lord was- they knew who was the real lawmaking authority who watched over them and governed their behavior. Even on the shores of a faraway world, far from the British military or the power of the crown, far beyond the reach of any monarch, in a hostile land filled with potentially hostile people, the Pilgrims sat down and gave thanks to their sovereign lord and savior, to the authority which governed their society, to the source of law and rules and power, and to the one person who could possibly guarantee their safety and salvation. The Pilgrims gave thanks to God and his son, Jesus Christ, recognizing him as their sovereign.

Nolan Finley, writing in the Detroit News today, wrote in Editing God out of history distorts truth:

Ask any grade school kid who the Pilgrims were giving thanks to on the first Thanksgiving and I'll lay you three-to-one odds that the answer you get is, "the Indians." Public education is so obsessed with separation and so uncomfortable with discussions of religion that it has sanitized the unbreakable link between faith and America's founding. Now children are taught that the Pilgrims set the first Thanksgiving dinner for the Native Americans who helped keep them alive during their first harsh year in the New World.

This is more than just a small distortion in the name of political correctness. And it's not one of those Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays issues. Whether you're a believer or non-believer, you should be concerned that God is being written out of this nation's history because doing so will limit our understanding of who we are as a people.

Faith was the driving force in the lives of the Pilgrims. Certainly the Indians helped them through the deprivations of that first year. But the settlers believed it was their prayers that accounted for their survival. And despite the starvation and sickness, they saw this new land as a great gift from God, a place where they were free to practice their religion.

The freedom to worship sparked a hunger for other liberties and created a culture that chafed at submission to arbitrary authority.

The words they used matter. When you edit out "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" from the Declaration of Independence, as President Barack Obama has been doing lately, you lose the understanding that the early Americans were able to take the extraordinary risk of breaking way from their king and taking responsibility for their own governance because they believed God was the only sovereign they were answerable to.

It was a remarkable proposition at a time when the entire rest of the world was under the rule of monarchs.

The belief in America's divine destiny and its providential partnership fueled the nation's sea-to-sea expansion and sparked a missionary zeal for spreading freedom. It gave rise to the notion of America's large and unique place in the world and the theory of American exceptionalism that is also now considered quaint in many quarters.

The irony here is that schools have no problem exposing our flaws in the name of getting history right. It almost relishes defrocking our heroes — Jefferson owned slaves, and so did Washington; Jackson practiced genocide; the pioneers ravaged the land. They do so even to the point of challenging the nation's legitimacy.

But when it comes to discussing the very complex and integral ways religion shaped our history, educators lose their nerve. So they invent more convenient scenarios, such as Pilgrims cooking up the idea of a huge Thanksgiving dinner to honor their Indian benefactors, instead of the God whom they ardently believed led them to this New World and controlled every aspect of their fate.

There's both good and bad in the nation's religious history. Americans have done some noble things in the name of serving God, and they've made some tragic mistakes doing the same. It's not proselytizing to explore that relationship between God and country. It's just telling the truth.

Truth is largely being scrubbed from public schools today, especially in the social studies, in ways big and small, and the fact that almost every single one of my students thinks that Thanksgiving was held to give thanks to the Native-Americans and not God is just one more piece of evidence that our nation is losing its history and its soul, and soon when people ask you who your sovereign is, your answer of "The President of the United States" will not be the same as the Pilgrim's reply of "God and Jesus."

Jerome Booth writes in Yahoo finance:

Africa's lack of globalization is evident in its unbalanced financing structure. State-controlled aid money dominates public finance in Africa in spite of improvements in macroeconomic policies, spreading democracy, and supportive commodity prices. Recent growth in local currency debt issuance is welcome, but foreign demand is rapidly exhausting local capacity to absorb selling, with potential destabilizing macro­economic implications if issuance continues unabated. Meanwhile, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the last great region of the world not to issue external sovereign bonds at all...Potential corporate bond issuance in Africa is maybe 10 times the sovereign (government) financing needs, but – and here is the rub – without a sovereign bond curve, the potential corporate issuers cannot issue as they cannot price sovereign risk. The bond market has far more capacity to finance Africa's development needs than aid, but bond markets need to lend to governments first. A balanced financing structure would replace aid-financed central government budget support with global bonds to sit alongside moderate local currency issuance and conventional aid flows.

In 1648 the Peace of Westphalia was signed, and so began the age of the nation-state. A state is a political and sovereign entity, and a nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity. Thus the term "nation-state" implies that the two geographically coincide, and after 1648 our world was divided up into nation-states.

Before 1648, the world was divided up into multi-ethnic and multi-cultural empires (Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire, etc), smaller states at what would now be called sub-national level (Liechtenstein, Andorra, etc), and even smaller states (various German cities and states). After 1648, the world was divided into political, sovereign, ethnically and/or culturally unified nation-states.

Problems arise when these nation-states 'fail'- they are too ethnically diverse, too culturally diverse, unable to control their own borders, or one government is unable to control the area. In these 'failed states', problems arise. According to the Times Online article "The Gathering Storm", failed states are going to be on the rise over the next decade, and are going to present rising security and humanitarian issues.

Afghanistan and Somalia were (and probably still are) classic cases of failed states. On the edge of collapsing right now are Pakistan and Yemen.

These are the areas were are going to be focusing on the in the coming decade. If you want to see where our troops are going to be going in the next decade, here is the map.

The reasons why these states have failed and continue to fail are because they are destabilized by terrorism, communism, dictatorships, and socialism. Pan-Islamism and One World Government are the some of the bigger threats facing these states, and the United States is going to have to take a steady hand on events and focus on all of those things that make states successful in this world- democracy, rule of law, and conservative ideals.

Emerging Markets reports on SSA debt markets:

If domestic debt markets are to develop, it is also vital to improve local debt management, which has generally lagged behind efforts at debt relief. Countries need a clear debt management plan(pdf) and issuance strategy(pdf), which might include publishing a debt management report, lengthening the yield curve, building benchmark issues as conditions permit and widening the investor base

Establishing a market for sovereign debt issues is key:

The limited size of local debt markets means that not all financing needs can be met domestically, and external commercial borrowing may also be cheaper than domestic debt, by removing the inflation and currency risk faced by international investors. Finally, it also fits in with the need to maintain a diversified funding mix. African governments now seem ready to test international investor appetite with sovereign issues, and Ghana’s milestone Eurobond issue in September points the way – the Ghanaian government could not have raised $750 million at a yield of 8.5% in the local market. African companies have also been active in the international market, especially telecoms and banks, and we believe international bond issues will be a significant feature of corporate Africa going forward.

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe writing in Africa Resource:

Africa has been the quintessential target of French military interventionism during this period because immanent in the worldview of the French political establishment, irrespective of ideological/political colouration, none of the former French-conquered and occupied African states is really independent or sovereign by any breadth or shade of either of these definitions. Instead, according to this conception, these are francophonie backwoods, which, at best, have some measure of local administrative autonomy (hence, “francophone Africa”!), with ultimate sovereign power lodged at the metropolitan centre in Paris

More here

Business Daily reported that:

Creating a strong Africa domiciled investment banking industry is an essential factor to ensure capital market rewards stay in Africa. The bond market is seen growing as more countries acquire sovereign credit ratings and float debt instruments.Eighteen countries across the continent have got a sovereign issuer rating from at least one International Credit Ratings Agency.In the equities markets, increasing local private and institutional participation and new issues have improved liquidity significantly, says Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, the executive chairman of Databank Financial Services.

Sierra Leone's tourism promise and more-Tony Blair
Barclays Bank up to more fishy stuff?
A bid to strengthen Think Tanks.
Is corruption in Nigeria's DNA?
A tour of Nairobi.
Writing off sovereign debt and hampering growth-Thompson Ayodele in the Telegraph
Can we rein in the destabilizing effects of Natural Resources? Perhaps with the Natural Resource Charter contends Paul Collier.
Taju Tijani asks, where are the Black British Millonaires?
How Corporate America Really Views Africa.
The Guardian compares their Katine village project with MVP's. They should take a look at the Working Villages and learn from the successes of Songhai Centre.

In my post Crony Capitalism Booming Under Obama Rule in February of 2010, I wrote:

One of my biggest fears about the Obama administration is not that it is liberal and not that it is communist, but rather that it is the beginning of a renaissance of National Socialism. One of the common misconceptions that people have about National Socialism is that it was against big business, or that big business opposed it. Free markets oppose national socialism, and individuals oppose national socialism, but Big Business, threatened by government, does the logical thing, and joins in. National socialism leads to an alliance of Big Business, which enjoys government protection against challenges to its market share and in exchange transforms itself into a tool of government control over the economy. Top executives and lobbyists do very well under a National Socialist regime, while the people suffer.

At the time, I was responding to a post that I found on powerlineblog called Crony Capitalism, which itself was a response to the article from Michael Barone called: "Under Obama, crony capitalism again rules the day."

That was several months ago now, and with the passage of time, we can re-evaluate my thesis- that the Obama administration is putting place a version of fascism that you can nicely called Crony Capitalism or State Capitalism, whereby the government subverts the free market for the good of the 'state' and makes alliances with Big Business to crush smaller companies through regulation and taxation.

Gregory Scoblete updates the situation with his article Will Free Markets Give Way to State Capitalism:

State capitalism, Bremmer writes, "is a system in which the state dominates markets primarily for political gain." From state-owned corporations operating in strategic industries like natural resources or defense, to enormous sovereign wealth funds in the hands of autocrats with opaque operating principles, state capitalism has enabled the world's autocratic states to reap the benefits of capitalist enterprise while maintaining a vice-grip on political freedom.

In Bremmer's telling, the world's autocratic states learned a valuable lesson from the implosion of the Soviet Union: command economies do not work and when they fail, they can bring down the over-arching political system with them. They also watched the post Soviet experiment in crash liberalization with horror. To protect their hides and preserve their privilege, autocratic rulers in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have created a "hybrid" system that leverages many of the tools of capitalism to generate wealth while the heavy hand of the state ensures that wealth is put to the service of the elites and rulers of each country.

Here in America, we have a ruler who wants us to emulate China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia- he wants to create a 'hybrid system' here where the fascist state can leverage capitalism for the good of the all-powerful state through the heavy hand of a tyrannical government. I'd love to sugar coat this, but the evidence is piling up that this is his intention.

Walter Russell Mead makes an interesting argument in a recent article- in spite of Obama running as the anti-Bush and in spite of his supporters voting for him because he was supposed to be the anti-Bush, his recent actions show that he is in fact working his hardest now to push for Bush's policies in international affairs:

....President Obama’s speech to State Department employees today was billed as a major address on recasting American foreign policy in the Middle East.

It lived up to its billing. President Obama has deep-sixed the ‘realism’ that marked the first two years of his approach to the Middle East. He has returned to the foreign policy of George W. Bush.

The United States is no longer, the President told us in words he could have borrowed from his predecessor, a status quo power in the Middle East. The realist course of cooperating with oppressive regimes in a quest for international calm is a dead end. It breeds toxic resentment against the United States; it stores up fuel for an inevitable conflagration when the oppressors weaken; it stokes anti-Israel resentment when hatred of Israel becomes the only form of political activism open to ordinary people; it strengthens the hold of extremist religion and strangles the growth of liberal forces.

More, he attacked Iran. All that talk about avoiding polarization with Iran is gone. Instead, President Obama singled out Iran as an oppressive, tyrannical regime supporting terror and running an “illicit nuclear program” as well.

He also followed Bush in attacking some US allies, calling on Bahrain and Yemen to make changes. It was a speech that enraged almost every powerful actor in the Middle East and put America out on a limb. Like Bush, Obama is willing to confront some of America’s closest allies (the Saudis, who back the crackdown in Bahrain). Like Bush, he hailed Iraq as an example of democracy and pluralism that can play a vital role in the transformation of the region. Like Bush, he proposes to work with opposition groups in friendly countries.

His policy on Israel-Palestine is also looking Bushesque. Like Bush, he wants a sovereign but demilitarized Palestinian state. Like Bush, he believes that the 1967 lines with minor and mutually agreed changes should be the basis for the permanent boundaries between the two countries — and like Bush he set Jerusalem and the refugees to one side....

Obama is showing quite a bit of courage in abandoning all of his previous principles, opinions, views, and voting records to continue the previous policies of an administration that he personally attacked many times, and his supporters are very brave in supporting Obama's remarkable change in policies from George W Bush to George W Bush. But in spite of all of this change and togetherness and hope and rainbows, I can't help but feel that if Bush's policies are so good and wise now, what sort of damage did Obama do in fighting them in the Senate during the blink-of-eye that he was actually in government prior to becoming President, and what sort of damage did Obama do to our nation in resisting these policies during the first two years that he was getting his ears dried off while playing at being President?

I guess I'm just nit-picking though- I should be happy that Obama finally is learning that all of his instincts and ideas regarding foreign policy are wrong and that George W Bush was right about a great many things. Obama's greatest foreign policy successes have come by following on Bush's heels- from killing OBL to the surge in Afghanistan- and maybe one of these days he'll begin to follow in Bush's domestic policy heels too and we'll go back to the awful days of 5% unemployment growth and positive GDP growth.

UPDATE: To be serious for a moment, I still can't figure out why the Jewish community voted for Barack Obama so strongly last election. I've always thought that something about how he deals with Jewish people bothers me- he appears at times to be against Jewish people, demanding more evidence from them and less from others, not believing them and believing others, and being cold and vaguely disrespectful towards Israel's leaders while warm and inviting towards the leaders of Israel's enemies. The National Review Online actually did some analysis of his speech, and picked up on a couple of these tendencies of Obama- his tendency to blame the Jews, his tendency to order the Jews to do things, and his tendency to minimize threats to the Jewish people. These are all vaguely disturbing tendencies for the President of the United States to have.

Robin Yassin-Kassab reviews The Crisis of Islamic Civilization By Ali A Allawi:

The economic news is worse still. For all the oil wealth and untrammelled capitalism, the 57 member countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (the OIC) account for 22 per cent of global population yet generate only 6 per cent of world GDP. An Islamic alms tax (zakat) of 2.5 per cent on the sovereign wealth funds of Gulf countries would produce an annual $75bn wealth transfer to the poorest Muslim states, but this isn’t on the agenda. Key Islamic values like justice, fairness and education have been ignored. Meanwhile, an illusory counter-movement to the collapse has been led, in the Sunni world, by Wahhabism. This puritanical reform movement is painfully literalist, unimaginative, and viciously sectarian. As anti-intellectual as it is anti-mystical, it rejects the flexibility of the traditional schools of law. Its influence has been projected far beyond the central Arabian desert by oil money and the ungodly Saudi-US alliance. The result is a schizophrenic response to the west—passivity and collaboration on the one hand, nihilistic terrorism on the other.

More here
via 3Quarks daily

Brill's overview of George Ayittey's Indigenous African Institutions-2nd edition:

Since the publication of the first edition of Indigenous African Institutions in 1992, Africa has undergone a substantial change. Still, much mythology and misconception enshroud Africa and its people. An enduring myth claims that pre-colonial Africa had no viable institutions. This book is an attempt to provide a better, modern understanding of Africa and its people – not for cultural rehabilitation or romanticism but for practical reasons.
Traditional or indigenous Africa has not vanished; it is still the home of the real people of Africa – the peasant majority, who produce Africa’s real wealth using ancient institutions and practices. Kings, chiefs, and village markets still exist in Africa.
The object of development is to improve the lot of the peasants – not the pockets of Africa’s ruling elites – and it starts from the “bottom up” – not from the “top-down.” What is there at the bottom are the peasants, their institutions, practices, and economic ways of life. Africa cannot be developed by ignoring its traditional sector, nor can this sector be developed without understanding how it works. Africa’s salvation, then, lies in returning to its roots and building upon its own indigenous institutions. This ethos is captured by such phrases as “sankofa” by the Asante, “majimbo” in Swahili, and the mantra, “African Renaissance,” touted by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.
Botswana is the only African country that built upon its own indigenous institutions and prospered. Moreover, it was the same indigenous institutions African peasants utilized to engineer what historians call, “The Golden Age of Peasant Prosperity, 1880-1950.” In recent times, pro-democracy activists revived and modernized an indigenous African institution (the village meeting) into a “sovereign national conference” and used it as a vehicle to craft a new political dispensation for Benin, Cape Verde Islands, South Africa and Zambia – in the same way as the United Nations used a loya jirga, an ancient tribal democratic institution, to chart a new political order for Afghanistan in 2002. Similarly, the same indigenous African institutions can also be used to craft uniquely “African solutions to African problems.” Thus, the blueprint for Africa’s economic rejuvenation can be found in its on backyard; that is, its own indigenous institutions. Tragically, African leaders, elites and their Western development partners have seldom looked there.

George Ayittey of the Free Africa Foundation writes:

1) Never Forget Your Roots

Africa's traditions, institutions, and customs are integral part of your heritage. This heritage includes participatory democracy based on consensus, free village markets, free enterprise and free trade. You cannot reject this heritage and remain African.

2) Seek Ye First the Economic Kingdom in the Private Sector

There is nothing wrong in wanting to be rich, but nobody became rich working for a wage/salary, unless he was prepared to steal or embezzle, like the African kleptocrats. But that does not pay in the long run. Earn your wealth in the private sector by actually producing something, even charcoal. If capital is a problem, do as the illiterates do by pooling savings as in the revolving credit schemes.

3) Privatize the Universities

Africa's universities should be privatized. They may be given a fixed annual government subvention and then allowed to raise their own revenue and manage their own affairs. This way, they can uphold academic freedom, which is currently not possible with the head of state, often a military imbecile, as the chancellor.

4) Demand and Defend Freedom of statement/Media

Recall that the first critical step in problem resolution is the exposure of the problem. Without freedom of statement this is nearly impossible... "African governments are responsible for the underdevelopment of African literature. Among the four main problems inhibiting the development of African literature is the expulsion of prominent African writers . . . the absence of African writers in international debates, absence of integrative policies and lack of publishing infrastructure" . All African intellectuals must demand the right to free speech and defend the rights of others for the freedom to speak, publish and write...

5) Practice Intellectual Solidarity

Respect and assist members of your own profession, regardless of differences of opinion. If one is under siege, all wherever they may be --- in or out of government, in or out of the country -- must go his or her aid. You may need group assistance yourself in the future. And extend this solidarity to other groups fighting the same cause as well...
6) Demand National Conferences

When a national crisis erupts, demand that a national dialogue or conference be set up to resolve it, as is done in African villages. The national conference must be sovereign and its decisions binding on all parties, including the government...

7) Disband the Military or Cut It in Half

No African intellectual with an iota of intelligence and a modicum of Pan-Africanist spirit would support, much less serve, a barbarous military regime. Ever! All those African countries that imploded were ruined by the military.

8) Pan-Africanism

Pan-Africanism, originating from the belief that African countries share common problems, common solutions, and common destinies will remain a dream unless you learn more about African countries other than your own.

9) Set Up a Rival AU
The time has come for the useless OAU(nowAU) to be disbanded or for a rival body, the Organization of Free African States to be set up. It should be made up of strictly democratic countries. OFAS can be set up under the aegis of President Nelson Mandela of South Africa.

10) Selectively Repudiate Foreign Debt

Insist that foreign aid be given only to democratic African countries. Time and again, foreign loans are taken by corrupt, illegitimate and repressive African regimes without the approval of the people.

Dilip Ratha suggests new private-public partnerships to mobilize additional international financing for Africa:

Establishing sovereign rating benchmarks and credit enhancement through guarantee instruments provided by multilateral aid agencies would facilitate market access.Creative financial structuring such as the International Financing Facility for Immunization(IFFIm) can help front-load aid commitments, although these may not result in additional financing in the long run. Preliminary estimates suggest that Sub-Saharan African countries can potentially raise $1-3 billion by reducing the cost of international migrant remittances, $5-10 billion by issuing diaspora bonds, and $17 billion by securitizing future remittances and other future receivables...[continue reading(pdf) ]

Prerna Mankad writes in Foreign Policy:

SWFs are obligated to make the best investments for the citizens of their home countries. They are not in the business of aid or charity work; nor should they be... If African governments are not even willing to invest in their own continent, why should others do so?...there are good reasons why many private companies are unwilling to invest and set up operations in Africa. Why else would Zoellick and others be pushing SWFs to fill the equity void in the first place? Corruption, lack of security, and failure to protect property rights are just a few of the reasons countries in Africa have failed to create a positive investment climate. If SWFs step in with billions of dollars, they may well undermine efforts to promote good governance. In the long run, it is those efforts -- not easy cash from Abu Dhabi or Beijing -- that will attract private investment and generate sustainable economic development. So, although an extra $30 billion for Africa should be welcomed, SWFs may not be the best way to deliver it.

Matthew Green at the FT reports on the Nigerian Capital Markets:

Some banking stocks have trebled in the past six months alone – the most spectacular sign of the shift in the country’s status from marginal emerging market play to star performer.
Driven by a combination of government reforms, debt relief and high oil prices at a time of heightened appetite for new types of risk, the gains have revealed a glimpse of untapped potential and looming hazards...A tougher line on money laundering and a newly-awarded BB- sovereign debt rating added to the allure at a time when global funds were turning to Africa as an antidote to dwindling returns in established pastures.
The sheer size of the country’s debt and equity markets has enticed hedge funds that worry about liquidity in smaller sub-Saharan countries, while strong domestic buying insulated Nigeria from a global sell-off in March

John Locke said that the purpose of government is to protect and enforce our natural rights, mainly our right to live, our right to live free from interference in our lives, and our right to earn and keep property. Here is his argument, shortened for time. Imagine that you live in a state of nature, a place where there are no laws or government. If someone killed you, it wouldn't matter if there were no laws, because it would be wrong- that means that there are rights that exist before and after government. If you went to Mars, and there were no laws, and someone put you in a cage, that would be wrong- they would have violated your natural right to liberty. And if you go into the middle of outerspace and someone robs you, that would be wrong, because your right to earn and keep property existed before government was ever around and exists even if government isn't there. These rights do not come from the government, and it is not the lawful creator or destroyer of those rights.

So, continuing the lecture, given that we have these natural rights, and given that in a state of nature they may be inadequately protected, the rational thing to do is to agree (ie, to consent) to give up our right to enforce our rights to a government, which will be better able to protect these rights. We do not give up our natural rights- we simply give up the power to enforce them. Therefore, the only reason why government exists is to protect your rights to life, liberty, and property.

That is not to say that government should do nothing. One could convince me that providing a bare-bones safety net of welfare (food stamps or medical care) helps to protect life. One might be able to convince me that liberal rights for criminals could better protect my liberty. And one might even convince me that paying for fire and police services help to protect my property better. As you can see, I'm not a fringe nut- I'm more of a Reagan Republican. That being said, think about what government does right now, what Obama wants government to do, and what your Congressman votes for government to do- do they believe that the purpose of government is to protect your life, your liberty, and your wealth?

Obama is going to give a State of the Union address tomorrow- I predict that in it, he is going to talk about how the government can take more of your property (or some other sovereign individual in our nation), control more of your liberty (or someone else's that you may or may not know), and quite possibly might let slip that he is changing the rules regarding the valuing of human lives (pro-choice and all that stuff).

Call up your Congressman and ask him if he believes that the sole purpose of government is to protect your life, liberty, and property. He better say "heck yah!", or else you better donate to his opponent next election and knock door-to-door so that you can throw him out of office.

Listen to a great interview with 760 WJR's Frank Beckmen as he speaks with Amity Schlaes, Senior Fellow for Economic History at the Council on Foreign Relations, about Obama and if he is repeating Roosevelt's mistakes, and you'll see why I am getting so upset about property rights violations by the Obama administration.

Life, liberty, and property. Remember those words.

Many people know that Iran getting the Bomb is bad, but exactly how bad is it? For non-students of international relations, Walter Russell Mead conveys in simple terms what will happen if Iran acquires nuclear weapons in the next year or two:

If Iran gets the bomb, the world will change in ways that are deeply destructive of everything President Obama cares about. A world in which nuclear weapons are widespread isn’t just a world in which the collapse of the non-proliferation movement has brought discredit on the concept of international law and binding treaties on security issues. It won’t just be a world in which the bad guys have learned that the good guys will blink if you stand up to them. It won’t just be a world in which emboldened Iranian adventurism will work more rashly and unscrupulously than ever to destroy our alliances and friends in the Middle East.

That brave new world that appears when Iran gets its nukes is an ultra-Westphalian world, a world of sovereign nation states forever emancipated from the dream of true international law. Nuclear weapons give every state — and every dictator — the ability to veto troublesome interventions in their affairs by treaty-citing busybodies and international lawyers waving documents and babbling about binding accords. If you have your finger on the button, nobody can make you do anything you truly don’t want to do: this is state sovereignty on steroids, and it is the what Barack Obama will leave as a legacy if he doesn’t stop Iran’s nuclear march.

Mead is correct- once a nation acquires nuclear weapons, there is no more bossing it around at all. Many people think that is a good thing- both liberals and conservatives feel that the US should mind its own business. I used to think that way, but now I fully believe that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by God with certain unalienable rights, and that those rights include the right to live, the right to live in freedom free from tyranny, and the right to earn and keep property.

All men are this way, and thus I don't fret too much when the US gets involved in defending human rights concerns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, South Korea, etc. Iran will get nukes, its nuke scientists will help other nations get nukes, other nations will need nukes to defend themselves, and next thing you know, if the US tells a nation to quit butchering minorities or a particular religion, or to not kidnap or assassinate foreign nationals, or to not stone women or torture Jews, these nuclear armed nations will only laugh at the United States. The failure of the United States to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons will lead to a world that is less ordered, less law-abiding, and less able to be controlled by the Godly and righteous USA (and that's a bad thing- the US is a force of good in the world).

So, what is our great leader doing about Iran getting nukes? To be fair, George W Bush didn't do much about it- Democrats and liberals pounded the drum of 'negotiation' and 'no war' so often against his head that he wasn't going to do anything about it. So, that leaves it to Obama, and like most problems and issues that are left to Obama, he has decided to make them worse or vote present. Mead writes:

President Obama is probably hoping that luck or fate will spare him the horrible fate of presiding over the death of his dearest ideals and of being the American president who destroyed the credibility of the international system and let the nuclear genie loose in the most dangerous part of the world. Maybe sanctions will work; maybe the Iranians will change their minds. Maybe new technical problems will crop up and slow the Iranians down enough so that he can pass the problem on to his successor — as, indeed, his predecessors handed it down to him.

That doesn't make me feel any better for all those poor people who are soon to live in increasingly brutal tyranny- the one person who has the motive, means, and opportunity to stop this terrible fate is hoping luck or fate lets him push the problem on someone else's lap. But, elections have consequences, and everyone who sat home or voted something other than Republican on the ballots the last couple years had a part to play in this horrible comedy.

Reuters released a story revealing some pretty shocking things going on over confidential diplomatic cables from the U.S. embassies in Beijing and Hong Kong:

As the U.S. Federal Reserve grappled with the aftershocks of financial crisis, the Chinese, like many others, suffered huge losses from their investments in American financial firms -- from Lehman Brothers to the Primary Reserve Fund, the money market fund that broke the buck.

The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks, show that escalating Chinese pressure prompted a procession of soothing visits from the U.S.Treasury Department. In one striking instance, a top Chinese money manager directly asked U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for a favor.

In June, 2009, the head of China's powerful sovereign wealth fund met with Geithner and requested that he lean on regulators at the U.S. Federal Reserve to speed up the approval of its $1.2 billion investment in Morgan Stanley, according to the cables, which were provided to Reuters by a third party.

Although the cables do not mention if Geithner took any action, China's deal to buy Morgan Stanley shares was announced the very next day.

If this is true, and I hope that House and Senate immediately investigates these charges, then we have evidence and records of US officials being successful pressured by the Chinese government to unlawfully use the power of the federal government in such a way to benefit Chinese investment firms.

Timothy Geithner is the United States Secretary of the Treasury, appointed this position under Democrat President Barack Obama, and if it is true that Geithner was pressured by the Chinese to use federal government pressure in any way to circumvent the normal processes of our government then Geithner and anyone else who covered up or knew about this scandal should be impeached and thrown into prison.

Morgan Stanley received billions in taxpayer money as part of the bailout of 2008-2009. This taxpayer money helped Morgan Stanley stay in business. Chinese officials later bought a large chunk of Morgan Stanley, apparently after the White House applied pressure of some sort of federal regulators.

THE CHINESE ARE RUNNING OUR GOVERNMENT UNDER OBAMA AND HIS POLICIES, and Obama's latest debt proposal will put us further under communist China's control- they're already calling the shots in the Obama White House, Obama's bowing to the Chinese not just in reality but in real meaningful policy ways to, and this is now rising beyond 'Obama must go because he is imcompetent' and is getting to the level that 'Obama must go because he is criminally complicit in using the power of the White House to inappropriately apply pressure to other government agencies to help foreign governments to the possible detriment of US citizens.'

UPDATE: After sleeping on this one, I've decided that neither Obama nor Geithner has likely committed treason or other high crimes and so should not be impeached (although one could argue that it is possible that since Obama accepted massive amounts of donations from unidentified foreign sources last election that there is some sort of possibility of conspiracy that may be criminal). They are and continue to be incompetent in office, but no longer in the sort of incompetent bumbling fools sort of way, but now rather in the incompetent to the level that it is dangerous to the future of your children sort of way.

UPDATE II: Via memeorandum I see that Breitbart is on to this story now, so hopefully it will gain some legs, because if what Wikileaks reports is true, there are some borderline criminal behaviors that need to be investigated.

Emerging powers vie for influence in Africa.
Nigerian curiosity discusses Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF's).
Stifling entrepreneurs with fees and red tape.
A pertinent study on the The Unfulfilled Promise of African Industrialization.

Via Ace of Spades I saw this story that ran in the Wall Street Journal called Is Obama Smart?

Before you read it, I want to point out for the record that I am not hugely interested in how smart our politicians really are, since I vote mainly based on which politician better realizes that governments are instituted among men  only for the purposes of better protecting my life, liberty, and property than I could do so myself in a true anarchy. If I had a chance of a genius who hated liberty and wanted to redistribute wealth or an idiot who loved liberty and wanted to let me keep the fruits of my labor, I'd choose the idiot. In fact, I'd prefer an idiot tyrant over a genius tyrant to- I imagine they'd be less successful than a genius in pushing for regulations and rules and fees and taxes which control me and seize my wealth.

That being said, by looking at whether Obama is smart we can learn two important things; first, what does it truly mean to be smart; and second, whether his supposed intelligence just another example of bizarro world where smart is dumb and dumb is smart.

...I just think the president isn't very bright.

Socrates taught that wisdom begins in the recognition of how little we know. Mr. Obama is perpetually intent on telling us how much he knows. Aristotle wrote that the type of intelligence most needed in politics is prudence, which in turn requires experience. Mr. Obama came to office with no experience. Plutarch warned that flattery "makes itself an obstacle and pestilence to great houses and great affairs." Today's White House, more so than any in memory, is stuffed with flatterers.

Much is made of the president's rhetorical gifts. This is the sort of thing that can be credited only by people who think that a command of English syntax is a mark of great intellectual distinction. Can anyone recall a memorable phrase from one of Mr. Obama's big speeches that didn't amount to cliché? As for the small speeches, such as the one we were kept waiting 50 minutes for yesterday, we get Triple-A bromides about America remaining a "Triple-A country." Which, when it comes to long-term sovereign debt, is precisely what we no longer are under Mr. Obama.

Then there is Mr. Obama as political tactician. He makes predictions that prove false. He makes promises he cannot honor. He raises expectations he cannot meet. He reneges on commitments made in private. He surrenders positions staked in public. He is absent from issues in which he has a duty to be involved. He is overbearing when he ought to be absent. At the height of the financial panic of 1907, Teddy Roosevelt, who had done much to bring the panic about by inveighing against big business, at least had the good sense to stick to his bear hunt and let J.P. Morgan sort things out. Not so this president, who puts a new twist on an old put-down: Every time he opens his mouth, he subtracts from the sum total of financial capital.

Then there's his habit of never trimming his sails, much less tacking to the prevailing wind. When Bill Clinton got hammered on health care, he reverted to centrist course and passed welfare reform. When it looked like the Iraq war was going to be lost, George Bush fired Don Rumsfeld and ordered the surge.

Mr. Obama, by contrast, appears to consider himself immune from error. Perhaps this explains why he has now doubled down on Heckuva Job Geithner. It also explains his insulting and politically inept habit of suggesting—whether the issue is health care, or Arab-Israeli peace, or change we can believe in at some point in God's good time—that the fault always lies in the failure of his audiences to listen attentively. It doesn't. In politics, a failure of communication is always the fault of the communicator...

There is more, all of it good, all of it pointing out that Obama is not a smart guy. That's okay though- although he lacks experience, doesn't know his or government's limitations, and has surrounded himself with yes-men, the fact that he isn't smart is not why he is one the worst Presidents in the history of our nation. He's a bad President because he erodes the quality of life, encourages abortion of babies, puts in place policies that result in people dying, removes choices and freedom from people, acts in a tyrannical manner, and uses the power of government to unjustly take property from people so that he can give it to others. He's a bad President not because he isn't smart, but because he is a tyrant.