The Iraqi election and other things

Dateline: IcelandAir Flight 633 from Reykjavik to Boston Logan, 1 February 2005

Gotta admit: the Iraqi election process went very well, and it was very impressive to see so many voters, so many candidates, and such a professional effort all around but especially from the interim government leadership. It's a big deal this all went so well in a country of over 25 million (something like three dozen deaths nationally despite a lot of efforts from the insurgency).

You have to hand it to Bush and the Neocons: they don't just talk about doing stuff, they actually get it done. Ugly and incompetent at times (basically the entire occupation)? Definitely. But they get it done. Others talk, promise, hedge, and generally give reasons why none of this can ever happen, but this election happened. It is awfully hard to imagine anything but Saddam still in power if Bush isn't president these last four years. And it's awfully hard to imagine all the change and tumult in the Middle East since 9/11 that actually has the region looking like it might finally start moving in the direction of something better after roughly half a century of U.S. presidents promising to do something and never quite doing anything but let it sink further.

The big thing now for the Bush administration is simply being smart enough to realize that with all the initial conditions severely altered, they need to plan adaptively if they want to take advantage of what they've started. That's basically my pitch in the Feb. Esquire piece, which the magazine will soon post online.

Frankly, my favorite media story to date on the election was run prior to Sunday's vote ("In Culture Dominated by Men, Questions About Women's Vote," by James Glanz, NYT, 30 Jan 05, p. 16). Talk about a glimpse of freedom: all those Iraqi women, for the first time in their lives, making a political decision "away from the immediate influence of husbands, sheiks and other clerics."

Here are some of my favorite bits:

• "Many women here express resentment over the de facto control that clerics already exercise in this lives and cite clerical rule in Iran as an example to be avoided. Many say that in the privacy of the polling booth, whatever the sheik may have directed will not be in play."


• "'I would go and listen to him and see if his words would be of interest to me,' said Om Muntadhar, an elderly government worker and a member of a local aid society. 'But when I go to the booth, I will do as I wish.'"


• "Women in Basra generally cite security and stability as top concerns for election day and put religion lower on the list."


• "'We want a really strong person, not a sheik,' said Iman Abdul Karik, also a government worker,. And Iman al-Timini, a translator, said she heard the same message from women again and again: 'No one would vote for the turbans.'"

Here's the real promise: the U.S. mandated that at least one-third of the candidate lists be made up of women. No matter how many get elected versus the religious leaders, we've set something very powerful in motion here, something the Salafi jihadists like al-Zarqawi and bin Laden will never abide by.

Catching up on news stories:

Africa insourcing? You bet, and language is key

An interesting piece in the International Herald Tribune ("Accent on Africa: A new continent for outsourcers," by Marc Lacey of NYT, 1 Feb, p. 11). Key of development seems to be legacy of English and French colonialism, which generates the language skills. Ghana and Kenya (English-speaking), plus South Africa of course, show the greatest advances to date, plus the greatest potential. But a bunch of French-speaking countries (Senegal, Morocco, Tunisia, Madagascar) are also joining the club, even though that's a potentially smaller global market over the long haul.

So far there are only about 50,000 call center jobs in Africa, out of a global total of six million, but as India, Philippines and Canada mature as labor forces and the price tags there start to go up, up-and-coming African states can be the next ones to move up that ladder. It's lucrative enough so that companies involved basically bypass the lack of wireline infrastructure and go satellite.

Kim Jong-Il rerun in works, making me ill at thought

Scary article on Kim Jong-Il making noises about one of his idiot sons succeeding him some day ("North Korea raises notion of a 3rd-generation Kim," by James Brooke of NYT, 1 Feb, IHT, p. 2). His old man started getting the people ready 30 years ago on Kim when he hit his early 60s, so dutiful monarch that he is, Kim, age 62, is doing the same.

After hearing East Asian experts at the MIT seminar talk about having to live with North Korea at least until Kim dies (best guess, a good 20 years), the notion of one of his sons carrying on the tradition is deeply disturbing. The North Korean population is basically developmentally delayed as a society after all these years of iron-fisted rule and lack of decent nutrition, whichóof courseóimpacts the 0-5 crowd most of all, making North Koreans progressively feeble-minded over time. I guess we should just wait another half century or so and maybe the entire place will be filled with four-foot-tall Neanderthals, like those tiny prehistoric humans whose remains archeologists just found. I'm not kidding, either. People there are shrinking in both size and IQ, thanks to all the years of deprivations. The Hermit Kingdom will be a modern-day Pygmy Kingdom if the Core doesn't finally step in and stop this horrific madness.

Unlike Iran, where I think the country and regime is ripe for connectivity (marginalizing the mullahs in a killing-them-softly-with-our-connectivity scenario), North Korea's continued isolation will serve no useful purpose while merely continuing the suffering of all those millions. Kill the mullahs' rule with connectivity alright, but just plain Kill Kim (pick any Vol. you want from my Esquire piece).

China's magic number

Interesting note from Davos meeting ("At Forum, Leaders Confront Annual Enigma of China," by Mark Landler, NYT, 30 Jan 05, off web): the usual "China's development will by no means post a threat to other countries" from China's exec VP sent there, Huang Ju.

But here was the bit that caught my eye: remember from PNM how I do the bit about all the conflicts in the world in the 1990s, and virtually all occur in countries with GDP per capita levels of less than $3,000?

Well, China's GDP per capita is predicted to triple by 2020, growing in total size to $4 trillion (still less than half of today's US economy, which sits in the range of $10 trillion). That number will yield a per cap of $3,000.

So China's emergence is ultimately not a danger, and yet, the Core as a whole has some history to cover with China between now and 2020, does it not? Otherwise, maybe we don't make that magic number without some useless and unnecessary conflictósomething I also deal with in the Esquire piece right on the stands today (and hopefully on the web next week or earlier).