Globalization's cultural Americanization? Here, Asian tastes--not values--matter

ARTICLE: "South Korean Films Hit Records at Home, Despite Relaxed Quotas," by Lina Yoon, Wall Street Journal, 27 December 2006, p. B2.

Earlier this year, South Korea relaxes the quotas that for decades decreed that the bulk of screens showed mostly Korean films. The fear was that U.S. films would swamp all, like it was Canada or something.

So like, all of South Korean cinema was, like, reduced to two guys in plaid swilling beers and going on aboot hockey and moose, eh?

Not exactly a Second City parody yet.

Instead, new box office records for Korean language films and more local productions than ever.

Of course, more time is required, but South Korea's government was right to show some confidence in the economy's growing media content clout. South Korean culture is very hot right now in Asia. The spillover effect from all those videogame producers is being felt, as special FX films are hitting their stride in the local market, exploiting the locals' still strong taste for monster movies (Americans moved on to slasher films a long time ago).

Yes, foreign films account for roughly 40% of the total box office receipts, but frankly, the case in most of the world, with America as a non-too-strange exception (after all, we basically made the industry in its modern form, reinventing it many times along the way). But even here, Hollywood has come to recognize that global markets are roughly half its markets, so we're seeing--almost like a McDonald's altering its menu country by country--U.S. films increasingly tailored more and more for global audiences vice simply American ones. So again, as the South Korean spokesman for a theater chain said in the piece, that "what matters most is what the audience wants."

Good description of what's brewing between Ethiopia and Somalia

OP-ED; "What's Going On in Somalia?" by Jonathan Stevenson, Wall Street Journal, 27 December 2006, p. A8.

Somalia, especially to the south, is virtually all Muslim. Ethiopia is predominantly Christian, and "vigorously opposed to Islamism."

Eritrea, no friend to former parent Ethiopia, supports separatist Muslim elements in southern Somalia. Ethiopia, no stranger to crushing terrorist camps in that part of Somalia, gears up for some more of the same and deploys up to 20k troops in Somalia to achieve those ends.

So just look at how our self-deterrence works:

The volatile situation in Somalia presents the West with a thorny and immediate problem. To quell geostrategic tensions created by Ethiopia and Eritrea's intervention, a U.N.-sanctioned force would have to be led by a major power [read, America]. yet even if such a power could afford the troops and materiel, the insertion of a significant number of Western-led troops would run the risk of attracting (as in Iraq) still more foreign jihadists to Somalia and inspiring terrorist attacks worldwide.

Still think Iraq is a one-off?

This fight heads south.

Exploring what comes next is cooler than what's maturing now

Arherring from Dreaming 5GW wrote in to Tom to connect some of what their doing with Tom's thought (specifically jumping off of the SysAd-volution post). Arherring writes:

This sort of approach to counter-insurgency (and its inclusion into the Sysadmin) is exactly the sort of concept that we at Dreaming 5GW have been exploring. As the emerging Sysadmin evolves Fifth Generation capability to combat Fourth Generation opponents it will have to continue to include an
increasing number approaches that are economic, social and political, as well as military. In discussions at Dreaming 5GW, attempting to define 5GW, we have explored the concept that in 5GW effects come from several directions at once and at a systemic level. In other words, the effects may be several times removed from the 5GW action, but the multiple domains 5GW works through causes those effects to have significant reach. The trick is to make those effects cause a targeted group to act in a certain way that works toward a larger 5GW goal.

In this particular case of Marines in Al-Anbar the 5GW context is that it isn't about bringing in businesses, but creating and environment where businesses can succeed (security, investment and infrastructure).

Tom responds:

My own sense is that 5GW will be all about fait accomplis and the illusion of choice, and that the real nature of debates will be purposefully disguised until relevant players (always tricky to define, because many will self-select, but few will be "chosen") have steered outcomes toward desired ends. In that sense, it's a form of corporatism (a specific poli sci term) on a global scale until such time as institutions arise for greater global pluralism (connectivity typically predates code, which is driven by scandals revealed in their "due course").

It is the ultimate in horizontal global positioning ("conflict" suggesting too much kinetics) designed to stave off system-disrupting vertical perturbations/attacks.

This is where I think John has it backwards: it's 4GW, not globalization, that spawns its own self-limitations/destruction (parasites never seek system destruction, hence their limits of influence). 5GWers will, for many useful reasons, declare the terrorists to be "in charge of the world," but that will only serve as the primary obfuscation in global security affairs. Others are already well in use in other sectors (like "peak oil" in energy).

In short, tracking 4GW will get you the smoke, but understanding 5GW will get you the fire.

Every generation of war, like every generation of energy/politics/economics/etc., is declared the "ultimate" by its adherents, but they're more additive than transcendent. The best and most advanced simply move onward and upward, with the next generation representing the latest and greatest method of moving the total pile with the least energy and most gain for the manipulators in question.

That's why your site (Dreaming 5GW) is so cool: you're exploring what comes next, not what's maturing right now.

And for driving some of my thinking, I thank you all.

Good article on the damage created by our ag subsidies

POLITICS & ECONOMICS: "How Trade Barriers Keep Africans Adrift: West's Farm Subsidies Drive Ghanians Out of Rice Market, Fueling Poverty and Migration," by Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck, Wall Street Journal, 27 December 2006, p. A5.

Our ag subsidies are destroying agriculture in Africa, scattering farm families. The myth that ag subsidies protect the "family farm" here in America is absurd beyond words. Those farms, to the extent they still exist, receive only a tiny fraction of such subsidies, the vast bulk of which go to huge farms and ag corps.

The family farms we destroy systematically are found overwhelmingly in the Gap. As the president of Ghana's Peasant Farmers Association says, "Our family are scattering. It's not surprising people are getting angry against the West."

Our rice costs $240per ton. We subsidize the cost internationally down to $205. It costs $230 in Ghana to raise the same ton, but they lost out on the market shares as a result of our trade distortion. One American business consultant puts it this way:

U.S. farmers have gotten too greedy. Until there is some change in this, you'll have a huge part of the population in poor countries trying to leave and raising hell."

This is why the Doha round matters so much. We can Sun Tzu 'em today, or Clausewitz 'em years from now.

PNM is worth its weight in salt [updated]

ARTICLE: "In Raising the World's I.Q., the Secret's in the Salt," by Donald G. McNeil, Jr., New York Times, 16 December 2006, p. A1.

A third of the globe, roughly 2 billion, don't get enough iodine (available in iodized salt), so 10-15 I.Q. points are shaved off, on average. Having enough during pregnancy is the best way to avoid mental retardation.

Hundreds of millions in India and China alone suffer this fate, but other than India, all of the other "severe to moderate deficiency" states are located--no surprise--in the Gap.

But things can be fixed. Russia's parliament recently decides to make iodized salt mandatory. China's ten-year effort raises the percentage of people using iodized salt to over 90 percent.

Africa's fate is typical: no shortage of iodized salt because Kenya and South Africa export it, and yet half of the nations are mild to severe in the deficiency.

Update: Steve also posted on this article recently: Iodine and Intelligence

Sense the pattern in China?

ARTICLE: "For eBay, It's About Political Connections in China," by Keith Bradsher, New York Times, 22 December 2006, p. C1.

ARTICLE: "Home Depot to Buy Protege Retailer in China," by Michale Barbaro, New York Times, 14 December 2006, p. C2.

eBay closes its web site in China and instead takes a 49 percent stake in a joint venture with a Chinese company. Rather than try to build its own, it's paying the price of building the Chinese version first. What emerges down the road is probably what eBay will end up owning or sharing. It will be bigger than what eBay could grow on its own. It will tap the Chinese and larger Asian market better than what eBay could grow on its own. Later on, it will give eBay opportunities elsewhere at the bottom of the pyramid better than it could create on its own.

Home Depot already made this lap. Ten years ago it began "training executives at a small Chinese retailer, called HomeWay, on how to sell screwdrivers and shower heads."

Today?

Now, Home Depot is buying its retail protege in a move that will give the giant American chain its first stores in the fast-growing Chinese market.

So it goes to the head of the line....

With the acquisition, Home Depot will become the latest American big-box chain to enter China, a country that, despite its size and growing middle class, remains largely untapped by foreign merchants.

Wal-Mart agreed in October to purchase Trust-Mart, a Chinese retailed with 100 stores, people briefed on the matter said. And Best Buy said in May it had bought a stake in the Jiangsu Five Star Appliance Company, an appliance and electronics chain.

Sooner than you think, Chinese salesmen wearing orange smocks will be selling screwdrivers in Gap countries you'd never believe would ever need them, much less have the disposable income for home improvement.

As my younger son likes to say, "That's what I talking about!"

Give me your eager, your young, crouching masses...

ARTICLE: Military considers recruiting foreigners: Expedited citizenship would be an incentive, By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, December 26, 2006

Scary to some, but this is internationalizing the SysAdmin force on the sly. Afraid to recruit nations, recruit individuals instead.

Thanks to Dan Hare for sending this.

A bit of hoarding going on ....

DATELINE: On the island, Indy, 27 December 2006

My scheduler, Jenn, constantly berates me for giving away too much on the blog.

And she's right. I do give away too much.

When you start selling your time, you're selling privileged access, and the blog is basically the same thing for me--like watching the feature about making the movie while the movie's being made.

So I do catch myself now and then stopping blog posts. In fact, I'd say the last three columns (including my upcoming "top ten foreign policy wish list for 2007") were all ones that I got about three paras into on MovableType, only to pull them off and dump them into a Word file for later employment in the column.

I'm also starting to do that in conversation. Last night talking to my Mom, I made a point about types of thinkers (no, not my favorite horizontal v. vertical, which I was thinking about heavily last night as I drifted off to sleep [not before writing everything down on Fortran cards and stuffing them under an antique phone I use as a paper weight in my office--I know that's sooooo 20th century] after watching the "Davinci Code" disc 2 features, right after watching "Little Miss Sunshine"; and if you can't spot the connection between those two movies, you'll need to wait for Volume III) and I blurted out, "That would make a great column!" Well, I forgot the point, called my Mom this a.m., who also forgot the point, and then had it reawakened when I read the WAPO summary sent to my Treo. Bingo! 7 Jan column teed up.

Then I was just starting a post on Putin only to pull that one back. 14 Jan teed up.

Then I remembered a brief I got last month in Oak Ridge. There's 21 Jan teed up.

And then I'm thinking . . . twice a week would be pretty easy, come to think of it.

Here's the funny thing I notice: column ideas come to me much easier at home than on the road. You'd think it would be the opposite: being on the road gives me such exposure to stuff. But when I'm on the road, I'm drilling down constantly, thinking very male, being very vertical. When I'm home, I've got all these damn kids hanging on me, that gorgeous woman constantly hovering just out of eyesight, etc. I'm far more open to scanning the horizon, seeing the connections, being more female, going more horizontal (ooh, pun intended!).

I think I'm beginning to get Ron White's riff on everybody being "a little bit gay."

And that's why the horizontal thinking comes off as a bit too sensitive for some. They want national security planning to be all about the verticals, the kinetics, the direct stuff.

But the systemic resilience that Steve's been talking about for years is far more about the horizontals, the non-kinetics, the indirect stuff. It's the pre-emptive workarounds, shutting down your enemy's attack vectors in advance. It's what I instinctively reached for when I made getting better at handling System Perturbations the first of my three grand strategy prongs after 9/11 (the others being the discrete firewalling of the Core from the Gap's worst exports and shrinking the Gap with a combination of kinetics [Leviathan] and non-kinetics [SysAdmin]). And when you see John Robb's new book (selling quite nicely over 4 months in advance, which says good things about his chances to score a bestseller) basically pushing the same solution set (what he's calling "deep resilience"), you begin to see the confluence of thinking.

And yes, I realize that last sentence may trigger John to once again claim I'm stealing his new book, but I would caution him to put down that brick and shut the door on that glass house of his, cause Steve's already TM'd all the relevant "resilience" phrases years ago. Truth is, we're more than happy to see others use the term, because it bolsters our work and our company. But more to the basic point, it reinforces what we honestly believe in, and so we welcome someone of John's impressive caliber in helping to explain concepts we hold so very dear. Yes, I understand the mechanics of book selling, and the constant re-packaging of the "next X article" that explains all, but Time's point of "Person of the Year" (You) is a valid one. We don't live in a world where there can be one "X article." What was once the purview of a dozen or so white guys largely from New England (or the prep schools therein) is now subject to the wisdom of the crowd (John's basic point in his great Fast Company piece, "Power to the People," so yeah, John's been working the resilience concept on his own for some time as well).

So absolutely, the more the merrier, even as we understand the difficulties of keeping egos in check. Because this elephant needs a whole lotta blind men working the form, giving us descriptions from more angles than any one person can easily imagine. I naturally approach it top-down, being a systemic big-picture guy, hence my focus on System Perturbations and shrinking the Gap (the ultimate source of systemic instabilities). Steve, as a lifelong entrepreneur and business-builder, naturally approaches it more at the level of nation-states and large organizations, hence his focus on Development-in-a-Box and Enterprise Resilience Management (TM!). John, given his life experience, approaches it more at the level of individuals, hence his focus on Global Guerrillas and Societal Resilience. Naturally, we all claim our visions to be universe-spanning and the cornerstone of the future ("secure my venue and secure it all!"), but I suspect the future will require many cornerstones at many levels. So, nothing wrong with another brick in the wall, so long as we're all working the same wall.

Yes, there'll be all sorts of how-many-angels-dance-on-the-head-of-this-pin arguments about the details, but the essential solution set stares us in the face: we get stronger from within, we master that strength, we export it to others, expanding the resilient nets that define our world. Most of that change will be sold via fear, but most should be bought via hope, and a desire to improve ourselves both security-wise and economically (DeAngelis' big point, described glancingly in the Esquire "Best and Brightest" profile).

But back to my basic point: women hope, men fear. You want the diagnosis? Listen to the man. You want the solution? Listen to the woman (or your inner chick, he added, subtly distancing himself from the perceived gay-ness of that statement).

And you know what? You do see that ability to shift between those perspectives so much more easily among the Echo Boomers (hence, the generic use of the word "gay" now to mean essentially what "sensitive" or "nerd" did when I was young), which gives me a lot of hope. The diversity they can handle (race, sexual orientation, religion, thinking style) is somewhat stunning when I compare it to the world I grew up in as a child (basically, the 1960s). But coming of age in the 1970s, when so much broke open (the great myth of the 60s is that the change happened then, when in reality, it mostly came to fruition in the 1970s), I'm just open enough to sense it (the basic gist of my column a while back about Obama running). Thus, the web-based notion of "the One" (inspired by "The Matrix") arising politically is first seen perhaps in Barack's candidacy in 2008, and that would be a generational shift far more important, in my self-congratulatory mind, than the shift from WWII to the Boomers (Bush 41 to Clinton, which led to the counter-revolution that was Bush and his minders).

Then again, why get in touch with your feminine side when you can have the real thing? Thus I suspect Obama will run a very smart campaign designed to make his candidacy look as strong as possible while leaving open the opportunity to become Hillary's veep. To me, that's the stunning ticket that will make anything the GOP puts forward look awfully stale.

Hmmm, I know there's a post I was planning to write somewhere here on the island . . .

Must have saved it for the column.

Actually, gotta go check out an elliptical trainer I'm considering to replace the treadmill. I'm past worrying about whether these jeans make me look fat. I just wanna get into them without having to become Houdini!

No slouch in gift-giving myself

Here's my main gift to missus: original icon painting on wood board in floating frame. Iconographer is Fr. Theodore of Russian orthodox monastery located in hometown of Boscobel WI.

Hung in corner myself, because icons that big get their own corner, by tradition.

BFA in Turkish

Check it out:

You don't have to know Turkish to figure out they're calling it The Pentagon's New Map - 2.

Order it yourself at Hepsiburada.com.

SysAd-volution

ARTICLE: Commanders Bound for Iraq Tailor Strategies to a Fragmented Nation, By Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, December, 26, 2006

Ryan Schieffer wrote:

Dr. Barnett,
Greg Jaffe had a piece you may have seen this morning about Marines applying
the new COIN strategy and focusing on economics (microlending) and utilities
(sewers) in place of traditional concerns.
It was "more of the same" in terms of a sysadmin example, but one of the
clearest recent ones, and on the front page.

A couple representative quotes:

In recent weeks, the Marines preparing to go to al Anbar have brought in economic-development experts to talk with them about microlending as a means of jump-starting small businesses. Microlenders provide small loans to would-be entrepreneurs who can't secure traditional financing. Loan recipients typically open shops or craft businesses, helping to bolster the local economy...

The Marines' focus on economic development in al Anbar reflects the Army and Marine Corps' new counterinsurgency doctrine, which stresses that in such wars 80% of the effort should be along political and economic lines and only 20% should be military.

Tom says:

Further evolution of the SysAdmin force and function. As expected, a product of desperation over previous failures.

Coolest Xmas present I received

First place goes to a "The Departed" poster signed by DiCaprio, Nicholson, Damon, Wahlberg, Baldwin, Firestone and Scorsese himself!

Runner up is Taft 1912 ribbon/medal from campaign.

And she cooks too!

Folks, my wife.

Trying to unkink my back from all the bags. Too little Bowflex in advance left me vulnerable. Time to get back into shape!

Am I a "syndicated columnist"?

The first three "column sightings" identify me as a "syndicated columnist," which I still believe is technically untrue, and yet, I'm not sure the distinction I place on being "distributed" via Howard Scripps versus . . . whatever it would take to call me syndicated matters whatsoever to these local papers (I feel like if I were truly syndicated, the papers would have a spot automatically reserved for me X times a week versus having the choice to pick me up or not).

It's an intriguing concept, especially when entertained over a holiday, to think about just blogging, writing columns, penning pieces for magazines and cranking a book every two years. Do the speeches, yes, because they pay nicely. But just let it go at that.

But I find myself pulling back from that scenario at this time in my life. I don't just want to be a commentator, with the excitement factor being TV time (which I feel is ultimately self-destructive to systematic reasoning). I like being a practitioner more. I like the direct influence, attached to choices, as opposed to the indirect influence, attached to descriptions.

Plus, DeAngelis is a machine, a pure driving force of nature. He gives a strong vector and serious immediacy to everything. Introduce Steve to the right people with the right problems, and they don't just walk away with my vision, they walk away with solutions. I'm visionary-as-conceptualizer, but Steve's visionary-as-applied-scientist. It would just seem stupid not to combine our strengths at this point in our lives (we're roughly the same age), especially since we both entertain the notion of influencing political developments over time (Steve, from center-right, me from center-left).

Plus, while I know there will come a time when I slow down this cruel pace of travel and work, two things need to be in place for that to work: 1) secure income and 2) secure access. Right now, no one helps me move toward either better than Steve and Enterra.

Confronting self doubts? Always.

Testing waters mentally? Of course.

The end of the year naturally pushes such thinking. Your current set-up should always be your best option, otherwise you should be swapping out--then and there, with no apologies. That's just the individual version of the market dynamics we trust to improve our lives in the macro.

Column sightings

+ The MetroWest Daily News
+ The Daily News Tribune
+ The Milford Daily News
+ Kerry Fox Live!

Wii are having a very merry Christmas

Got to watch my eldest son serve midnight Mass last night, which was great.

Today, on this horribly rainy day, wii're playing tennis, golf, baseball and boxing each other in bloody death matches.

Hope everyone is finding fun things to do and nice ways to celebrate the day.

Tom around the web

One more week of just linking the posts that link to Tom without commentary. Then I'll shoot for better next week:

+ Wake up America
+ ZenPundit [2] [3] [4]
+ Purpleslog
+ souldrift
+ Shrillblog [2]
+ The Moderate Voice
+ Dreaming 5GW
+ Draconian Observations
+ Brad DeLong
+ I, Hans
+ Ernesto5
+ Opposed Systems Design
+ Humoud
+ We've got bigger problems than a butter shortage
+ Albert 's Blog
+ The Naked Underground
+ The Red Fox Club
+ bitterlemons-international.org
+ Dave Porter weblog [2] [3]

An Inconvenient Truth

Finally saw the DVD last week (before leaving for Hawaii) and it was really good. Gore's presentation, while not wowing me on delivery (low-key, with minimal timing), did dazzle me in terms of the AV set-up (immediately jealous).

And it got to me enough that I made the effort to find compact fluorescent 65-w (equivalent) flood lights to go along with the 60 and 100-w (equiv) "spiral bulbs" I've been installing throughout the house.

Traversing all over the Big Island also made similar impressions, both for the pristine beauty and the places of obvious environmental devastation (primarily caused by the volcanoes).

An Arabian Lech Walesa

ARTICLE: Saudi Lawyer Takes On Religious Court System: Rights Cases Used To Press for Change, By Faiza Saleh Ambah, Washington Post, December 23, 2006; Page A01

This Saudi human rights lawyer is the kind of person I would pick for a Nobel Peace Prize. Somebody who risks life and limb daily to reform an unjust system that routinely spins off the Osamas of this world is doing God's work. He's a Lech Walesa of the Arab world, and he deserves recognition and support. I assume Amnesty Int'l is on his case, one of the reasons why my wife gets away with giving away so much of my income behind my back (I tend to find these things on my credit cards after the fact).

This week's column

Some unthinkable possibilities

Quick! Name the country we turn into a parking lot the next time al-Qaida's network pulls off a 9/11. If your knee jerks toward Pakistan instead of Iran, your instincts are sound because conditions are falling into place for that scary scenario to unfold.

No, we won't be toppling a regime - much less nation building - anytime soon in a country of 170 million Muslims (eight times the size of Iraq). But the United States could readily find itself unleashing the "gravest possible consequences" (remember that spooky Cold War phrase?) inside Pakistan's borders - specifically the federally administered tribal areas that border Afghanistan.

This swath of remote mountain ranges has never been effectively governed by distant Islamabad, but it's where the Taliban have - according to The New York Times - recently set up a virtual mini-state. The tribal areas are also where most terrorism experts believe Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida's senior leaders operate openly in secure sanctuary.

This mini-state grew out of a series of peace deals that Pakistan's government felt it had no choice but to offer to thousands of Taliban fighters who've taken up permanent residence in the tribal areas since fleeing Afghanistan. The accords offered the warriors respite from the Pakistani military in exchange for a cessation of cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.

But the net result has been even more frequent incursions, plus the Taliban have used brutal terrorist tactics to subdue any opposition from the indigenous tribes, executing dozens of local leaders who dared stand up to them.

Worse, as the Taliban's grip grows stronger, the mini-state becomes a regional magnet for jihadists eager to get a crack at the 40,000 American and NATO troops operating next door. That means Afghanistan gets far bloodier in 2007, just as Iraq's civil war hits its stride.

Here's the scary scenario: We pull back our troops from combat in Iraq, which means we let the sectarian violence run to its logical conclusion. The downside? Lots of ethnic cleansing forces a de facto partitioning of that fake state. The upside? Iraq stops serving as the central front in the long war on radical extremism because: (a) foreign fighters are driven out by the locals and (b) American military personnel are increasingly off-shored on naval vessels.

Then imagine rising domestic pressure here for a similar pullback in Afghanistan. At that point, we've granted the global jihadist movement the same truce that Pakistan offered the Taliban. Naturally, the Taliban would interpret that standoff as a sign of weakness and eventually its embedded ally, al-Qaida, resumes plotting offensive actions against the American homeland.

This scenario would come close to restoring the pre-9/11 status quo between America and radical Islam, swapping out Iraq for Iran as the Persian Gulf rogue slated for containment.

Now imagine some al-Qaida affiliate lights off a nuclear device inside the United States. While our intelligence agencies can't quite pin down Tehran as the ultimate source (or North Korea, for that matter), we're once again burying thousands of corpses in some major American city. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden publicly praises Allah from his lair in northwest Pakistan.

Then think about what a sitting U.S. president feels compelled to do next.

Americans, madder than hell, want al-Qaida to know that we're just not going to take it anymore. But they're also convinced that invading large Muslim states get us nothing but thousands more casualties and radicalized regimes.

With John McCain or Rudy Giuliani, the tough-guy approach would be clear: Going nuclear gets you nuclear in return. But don't assume it would be any different for Hillary Clinton as she reaches for Margaret Thatcher's mantle or Barack Obama as he stretches for his own JFK-like mystique.

Sound incredible?

Let me remind you that America's the only government in human history to employ nuclear weapons against an enemy state, and with the Taliban back in the mini-state-sponsoring saddle, a politically correct target now exists.

I neither advocate this possible response nor condemn it. I just think it's essential we know what path we're on in this long war because, under the right conditions, nothing remains unthinkable.

Iraq must devolve first, then reintegrate

ARTICLE: Shiites Remake Baghdad in Their Image, By SABRINA TAVERNISE, New York Times, December 23, 2006

We hear partition of Iraq is too hard to achieve, but as one reader recently pointed out, the Iraq constitution allows a whole lotta separation, and, as this story points out, the neighborhood-by-neighborhood separation of the major cities (declared unthinkable by James Baker, Mr.-we-don't-have-a-dog-in-this-fight) proceeds pace.

Impossible?

Happens here all the time in the States silently and slowly over time, as races self-segregate in neighborhoods. Likely to be with some real violence in Iraq, but try and stop it. This is just the immaturity and the fakeness of "Iraq" being revealed.

Condition need not be permanent, but the necessary devolution-leading-to-future-reintegration-on-the-basis-of-economic-logic is impossible to obviate in this case, given recent past history.