Saturday, December 23, 2006 at 4:08AM Great piece by Steve, in the vein of Martin Wolf's defense of globalization. Lotta myths out there, and a lot of amazing navel-gazing in America, where we seem to think globalization lives or dies with our choices. Truth is, globalization is so much bigger and more resilient than just the U.S.
Saturday, December 23, 2006 at 3:51AM ARTICLE: "A Reagan Strategy for Iran and Syria," by Abraham D. Sofaer, Wall Street Journal, 20 December 2006, p. A18.
You want a realistic description of how we could talk to Iran and Syria, this is it, from George Shultz's legal adviser under Reagan.
Very intelligent piece.
Saturday, December 23, 2006 at 3:51AM ARTICLE: "Thai Debacle Shows How Asia Has Changed: Financial Crisis of a Decade Ago Isn't Likely Today as Less Debt, Stronger Currencies Protect Region," by James Hookway, Wall Street Journal, 20 December 2006, p.C1 .
Source note for my Fast Company piece.
Good reminder for us as we encounter the ever-present stream of predictions about globalization's demise due to increasing "fragility."
Drill-down artists are a dime a dozen. Horizontal thinkers are rare.
Saturday, December 23, 2006 at 3:48AM ARTICLE: "Mesa Air to be first U.S. Carrier in China: Flights in time for Beijing Olympics," by Barbara De Lollis, USA Today, 22 December 2006, p. 4B.
A process we'll witness again and again.
Mesa wants into China's booming domestic air travel market and is smart enough to know you better be low-cost if you want to compete there (all of China's airlines are similar to Southwest in their frugality and no-fuss efficiency, thus I was completely at home flying there).
To get in, Mesa must agree to a joint venture with Shenzen Airlines.
My prediction: five years from now a merged Mesa-Shenzen will be flying in China, in the U.S., and elsewhere.
Power all over da' pyramid.
And yes, it will shock the hell out of some Americans to find themselves flying a partial Chinese airline some time down the road.
But it will happen. Predicted to me by a Southwest pilot in US Air Force reserve (one star), who said the same "flags of convenience" process we saw shipping go through years ago would inevitably be repeated in airlines. Why? Sheer routinization of the business. Once established, it ain't rocket science, and the most efficient global platforms will inevitably rise in the biggest markets.
Friday, December 22, 2006 at 10:24AM Friday, December 22, 2006 at 10:21AM ARTICLE: China Tightens Adoption Rules for Foreigners, By PAM BELLUCK and JIM YARDLEY, New York Times, December 20, 2006
China's moves were long predicted. Reality is, the flow of unwanted girls will dwindle down dramatically in coming years, so restrictions will skyrocket for healthy ones.
But that's just great news for the unhealthy ones...
Friday, December 22, 2006 at 10:18AM ARTICLE: President Wants to Increase Size of Armed Forces, By THOM SHANKER and JIM RUTENBERG, New York Times, December 20, 2006
Good first step is increasing ground troops, but real change is shifting funds from air to ground and from smart weapons to smarter soldiers.
We shall see.
Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 2:23PM ARTICLE: Va. Lawmaker's Remarks on Muslims Criticized: Republican Had Decried the Use of the Koran for Congressman's Oath of Office, By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Washington Post December 21, 2006; Page A11
We should be ecstatic we've got a Muslim congressman and OF COURSE he should be sworn in on the Koran if that's what he wants.
The GOP leadership should rein this jackass in pronto, and Pelosi should be speaking out clearly on the subject.
Maybe both are happening and I'm just unaware out here in HI, but I'm glimpsing too much hyperbolic coverage to believe otherwise.
Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 2:18PM ARTICLE: Iran President Facing Revival of Students’ Ire, By NAZILA FATHI, New York Times, December 21, 2006
Thanks to Dan Hare for sending this.
Update: The student revival is definitely on my 2007 wish list (next weekend's column I'm writing on way home from Hawaii).
Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 1:11PM 
Went parasailing this morning. Younger son and wife went 800, while elder son and I do 1200. Got the long-sleeved souvenir crew shirts.
Also got word that Fast Company will publish my latest in the April issue. So feeling good on that.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 6:48PM On the Big Island.
Where the lava meets the road...
Last night, after touring South Point (the southernmost part of the U.S.), we trekked to where the lava flows into the sea (volcano national park here), getting within a few miles to watch remotely at sunset. Wasn't going too far on foot on jagged lava flows using only flashlights to guide. Had that angle covered today, anyway. Still, pretty amazing to watch the red fire even from a distance at night. So amazingly dark down there, except for that: black lava ground, black sky, black ocean.
Today we get up and go snorkeling in the two nicest bays here on the island for that purpose. That was pretty amazing. Swimming with sea turtles and all those fish and checking out the coral. A bit otherworldly to be in the fish tank, especially given my fear of water. But it was a blast. I could have done it all day.
Then we took a helicopter tour of the island, which was beyond unreal. Three best parts: 1) flying over the active volcano from which all that lava flows and looking inside the crater to see a lot of action going on; 2) checking out the lava flows as they enter the ocean (really hard to see except from sea), and 3) the later half of the 2.5-hour tour that had us going into remote valleys and seeing a number of fantastic waterfalls (the biggest was 2,400-feet, which is "Lord of the Rings" fantastic).
Beat now, but sneaking off for 20th anniversary dinner with wife. The resort we're staying at it is almost Disneyesque in sheer scope. Have to take a monorail to our rooms!
Naturally, this all runs up a nice bill, but how how many 20-anniversaries do you celebrate in one's life? And how cool is it to snorkel with your kids among coral reefs?
I learned a long time ago: vacations are when you spend money. It's the rest of the year when you're a tightwad.
Tomorrow? Different form of flight and different form of undersea.
As always, we'll really need a vacation AFTER our vacation. Someday I'll figure out how to actually take one where I rest, but I guess it's just not in my nature.
Monday, December 18, 2006 at 1:09AM I'm seeing wire reports that say Ahmadinejad's nets are doing poorly in both local elections and one for "college of cardinals"-type body expected to pick current ailing ayatollah's successor, where supposedly the ex-pres (must be Rafsanjani)) is leading the vote.
If all that end's up being true, that's stunning. Imagine John Kerry winning a national election in 2006 to be the new Supreme Court Chief Justice.
So to me, this is like Ahmadinejad suffering a very humbling mid-term election.
Be clear on this point too: what's unfolding in the clerics' council isn't the will of anybody but the mullahs on top, who want Ahmadinejad reined him for all his elaborate foolishness that clouds their truly seriously pursuit of a nuclear shield against U.S. Military attack.
A while back TM Lutas said this election would signal Ahmadinejad's power, and I countered that it would really show the desire of his opponents to stop him. I thought that was a good comeback at the time (TM brings this out in me), but at the time I feared TM was far closer to the truth. I am greatly pleased to find otherwise.
To me, this election offers Bush a huge opportunity, so well-timed by the ISG report, to push the Mideast pile very differently, vis-a-vis Iran, and I mean a once-in-lifetime chance to reshape a region (his original dream going in).
And that's--more than anything--what saddens me about this administration: it started that amazing Big Bang, getting so much going (and so confounding the experts in the process) and THEN Bush-Cheney went braindead on Iran, rerunning the whole WMD dynamic, apparently because it worked so well the first time with Iraq.
But here fate intervenes more than Bush deserves, by delivering unto us a leader whose exceeding (and unthinking) brashness now rivals Bush's own exceeding (and unthinking) stubbornness.
All good things to optimists who wait.
As so often is the case in this business, just when someone declares the "end," it ends up just being the beginning.
Monday, December 18, 2006 at 1:08AM Perfect example of how connectivity drives code: all those Hawaiian laws against bringing in biologicals (plants, animals, etc.) that could prove invasive. As a tourist destination and travel hub, they are nuts about that here.
And they should be.
You connect, and all nodes get codes.
Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 4:08PM China's next set of leaders, America's next challenges
Incoming congressional Democrat leaders signal they'll get tough on China over both trade and human rights. While stipulating that Beijing must progress on both fronts, let me tell you why this myopic focus may ruin a historic opportunity.
China is on the verge of a generational leadership change that will profoundly shape its emergence as a global power over the next decade. Approached strategically, America should take advantage of this new cohort's eagerness for China to play an actively constructive role in international affairs.
To understand this future, you must know what's come previously.
Read on at KnoxNews
Read on at Scripps Howard
Also sighted at:
Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 2:37PM POST: Report: China weighs covert ops to overthrow North Korea's Kim
More intriguing intell on China considering "Kill Kim, Vol. I, II & III".
Thanks to Lexington Green for sending this.
Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 2:28PM 
Menagerie of animals at the resort.
Waikiki
Quick! Call Crockett &Tubbs!
H-3, heading into tunnel, on Oahu.
Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 6:55AM When I speak of Iran reminding me of late Brezhnevian USSR, people always ask me for examples.
Besides the huge and relatively efficient black market, this story presents my second favorite example.
Seriously, I had to quit smoking and almost enter rehab after a summer in Leningrad. It was like "Animal House" every night out.
Thanks to Lexington Green for sending this in.
Saturday, December 16, 2006 at 10:50AM POST: From Globalization to Localization, By Stephen S. Roach, December 14, 2006
Good piece by Roach. I do think we're in a generalized period of "caboose breaking" on globalization for a number of reasons:
1) We've just gone through a period of rapid expansion of the global economy and any expansion (esp. that big) begets some pullback and--here--political "profit-taking" of the Lou Dobbs sort.
2) the global economy is growing very nicely and very broadly, so many leaders will hold back on big global agreements, prefering localism and regionalism in the meantime (easier to achieve, and a collective form of caboose braking against the dangers of "them"--outsiders). We'll see this in Europe in spades. Typically, you get the big, risk-taking global deals when the economy is slow, and politicians are desperate to restart growth. But only the ignorant position regionalism as the binary alternative to global accords, when they're historically necessay stepping stones--as in, first you crawl and then...
3) Rural unrest in New Core pillars (where I first encountered the dynamics that led to my caboose braking notion) will add to some of this slow-down as well. That's both natural and good.
4) The mood in the world's largest economy is one of withdrawal from the world, due first and foremost to Iraq, so that encourages slowness on globalization too.
But it's wrong to read a slowdown and localization as the "demise" of globalization (or the much-feared ideology of "globalism"), because that's like saying a recession should push you to rejects markets and capitalism. Sure, some of the more frightened and politically-opportunistic will certainly go down that path. They always do, but market optimism always returns, as do competitive pressures.
What's different today about globalization (which, after all, is just a fancy name for global markets) is that companies within national economies all end up feeling like they have to scour the world to access cheap labor, raw materials, intellectual talent/property, production capacity and R&D.
And that won't change with a slowing of globalization sentiments in some markets. It'll just be delayed.
Beware of fantastic standards being imposed--as in, "globalization must sweep the planet in a few short years, binding all the world's peoples in everlasting peace, or it's doomed!"
That sort of bullshit got you socialism and fascism in the past and now the global jihadist movement, and it'll beget even dumber, more fantasically impatient ideologies in the future.
Meanwhile, global markets and the resulting integration will continue to win out over the long haul. But no, almost none of this stuff happens without some violence (that's why I called it the Pentagon's new map) and predictions based on, or their opposing straw-man arguments requiring, linear projections always prove false.
It's just not a straight line world.
Thanks to Hans Suter for sending this in.
Saturday, December 16, 2006 at 10:49AM 14 bags, eight checked.
Long haul to Phoenix, and then to LAX. Free flights from Southwest.
Then enough time in LAX to board for Honolulu. We sleep there tonight.
I am much grateful for the portable DVD players.
Meanwhile I struggle through next week's column, which centers on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Friday, December 15, 2006 at 11:14AM ARTICLE: Military Considers Sending as Many as 35,000 More U.S. Troops to Iraq, McCain Says, By JOHN F. BURNS, New York Times, December 15, 2006
1) Bush rejects the timetable
2) Rice is trotted out to reject on Iran and Syria
3) the military is poised to push the "go big" option and Bush is poised to "submit" to the generals (oh yeah!).
The only bright spot is one everyone had agreed upon earlier and which was in the works for months: more trainers.
But it is stunning when you think of the elections and what Americans said through them: Bush is basically blowing it all off.
On the "go big," I'm not pissed. I get the logic and it beats the "go small" and hope for better, but it can't be sustained and the training shift (or what I call "Vietnam backwards") won't constitute the tipping point the generals are hoping rather wishfully for.
The failure of this track will be linked back to two things: 1) the failure to engage the neighbors and 2) the failure to generate the preconditions of a true exit strategy--aka, jobs (Chiarelli's swan song).
