Not that long ago, there was talk of West Indians, dispirited by the failure of their players to
...continue Hail Gayle!]]> One of the many excellent things about the excellent Indian Premier League is the opportunity that it has given to West Indian cricketers to do great things on a cricket field, as impressive as the great things done by their great fast bowlers in the 1970s and 1980s. There are now about half a dozen West Indians making their mark on the IPL. It is no exaggeration to say that what the Indians are doing is saving the West Indies for cricket.

Not that long ago, there was talk of West Indians, dispirited by the failure of their players to do the sort of grafting you have to do to do well in five day international cricket matches in places like England, giving up on cricket altogether, and switching to basketball, or some such American alternative.

Not now. The innings of Chris Gayle in this game, which I am now watching (thank goodness for the recent multiplication of digital TV channels in the UK) on my telly, open mouthed, is already the talk of the West Indies. Got to be. I don’t know what time of day it is over there, but trust me, they are awake and cheering themselves hoarse. As of now, Gayle is 154 not out, off 54 balls. Even if you know nothing of cricket, know this: that’s dynamite stuff. Gayle is only a handful of runs away from breaking the record for the biggest twenty-twenty innings ever, set in the very first IPL game by a guy from New Zealand.

Yes. West Indian IPL Commentator: “This is now the highest score ever in all twenty-twenty cricket.” Gale 161 not out. And counting.

West Indian IPL Commentator: This is now the biggest twenty-twenty total ever. 251-3 and counting. The South African AB de Villiers has just got out for 31, made in 8 balls. South African cricket has been somewhat in the doldrums ever since the Hanse Cronje match-fixing scandal, and the IPL has been a shot in the arm for South African cricket also. They are now the top team in the world, at test cricket. Twenty-twenty mania hasn’t done them any harm either.

Globalisation, commerce, free people spending their own money on what they love, previously poor countries getting rich, individual people in previously poor countries getting rich, by cheering up the entire world – well, my version of the entire world anyway. I love it. Love it. Opposition players all clustering around Gayle to shake his hand. 175 not out. Kiwi Commentator: “You’ve broken record after record tonight. It was one of the best innings anyone here has ever seen.” Amen.

I just wish that more of my fellow countrymen could see all this. The English continue to talk head-in-sand nonsense about the IPL. In this silly piece, David Hopps talks about the IPL being “an essentially trivial Indian T20 tournament”. As so often, the word “essentially”, as the late Kingsley Amis observed many years ago, here means “not”.

There is actually an Englishman playing in this match, Luke Wright of Sussex. And good on him, because he has had a pretty good IPL so far, once he got to play. Good on him today, because he bowled in this game, and his bowling figures were: 4-0-26-1. In a game like this one, those are impressively normal numbers, even if the reason Wright did that well was that he was bowling some of his overs just after Gayle got to a hundred, and Gayle was having a bit of a chill, man.

Lovely.

LATER: The Guardian sums it up.

What this posting is about, besides cricket, is the rise of India and the necessity for people in England who have dealings with India to acknowledge that India has risen.

So far so sporty. But this morning, waking up at tea time, so
...continue Future Hope in Kolkata]]> Last night, before going to sleep, I switched on the radio commentary for the India England cricket match now in progress in Kolkata, so that, in the event that I did the opposite of dozing off (dozing on?) I would keep up with England’s currrently very satisfactory progress in that game. With luck, tonight and tomorrow night, England will bowl out India cheaply in their second innings and England will go 2-1 up in the four game series. Find out if that happens by looking, e.g., here.

So far so sporty. But this morning, waking up at tea time, so to speak, I found myself listening, not to England’s batsmen batting and India’s bowlers bowling, but to this broadcast (that link switches it on straight away which you might not like – maybe going here would be more convenient – details down a bit on the left) done by the BBC’s long-time cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew. This broadcast was about a charitable enterprise in Kolkata which rescues street children, gives them somewhere unscary and unprecarious and unchanging to live, and which then educates them.

This broadcast lasts a mere fifteen minutes, otherwise it would have gone on longer than the tea interval. The enterprise it reports on is called Future Hope.

Learning about Future Hope is the sort of process that causes people with opinions about how the world should be organised to say: “and this just goes to show how right I have always been about …”. To me, what comes through is how morally uncorrupted these children were when first rescued, it having been precisely their moral excellence that got the attention of the man, a chap called Tim Grandage, who started Future Hope, in order to rescue some of these children from their terrible physical deprivations and torments. The children who have grown up in the care of Future Hope sound, in this broadcast anyway, like the very definition of the “deserving poor”.

This being a Test Match Special broadcast, you would expect cricket to figure in the story, and it does, although for a long time rugger seems to have been a bigger deal than cricket for Future Hope. Is Grandage a rugger enthusiast, I wonder? Indeed he is. Ever since it started, Future Hope has used sport to physically improve, to socialise and to excite its charges, and generally to give them positive and amusing things to think, and thereby helping to take their minds off past miseries. But India being India, Future Hope also wants to develop its cricket. The England Cricket Team have got involved, and they recently spent a day at Future Hope, as the broadcast describes. England’s formidable new captain, Alastair Cook, opened their new cricket coaching operation for them. Good for him.

This is the first time I have ever heard about Future Hope, and I have no idea if it really is as good a thing as Jonathan Agnew and the Future Hope people he talked to made it sound. These days, you can’t help but be slightly concerned about such a phenomenon. But it did sound like a very good thing indeed. And I want to believe that if there were any doubts about its excellence, the England cricket team would not have gone anywhere near it.

Today at Lord’s, the sacred home of cricket, England are embarking on the third and final game in their five day test cricket series against South Africa, but without Kevin Pietersen. Pietersen scored a brilliant century in the previous game. But no, he is not injured.
...continue Kevin Pietersen and the rise of India]]> I am now recovering from an illness. While ill, the only thing I could manage to pay much attention to, other than the various pains in my head, was the Kevin Pietersen Affair, the contemplation of which, to an England cricket fan like me, is a not dissimilar experience to that of being ill.

Today at Lord’s, the sacred home of cricket, England are embarking on the third and final game in their five day test cricket series against South Africa, but without Kevin Pietersen. Pietersen scored a brilliant century in the previous game. But no, he is not injured. He has been dropped.

Pietersen sent out disloyal tweets about the England captain and coach, for which transgression he did apologise, but too late. You can read the details, in the unlikely event that you want to, in media reports like this one, where phrases like “underlying issues on trust and respect” appear.

Where my interest in all this (I could write about it for ever) and the interest of Samizdata readers (who would presumably prefer me to keep a lid on it) may overlap, or so I hope, is in the big picture background to all this. Which is, in a word: India.

From time to time, usually, as now, from a writer trying to use such circumstances as a metaphor, you read about planetary objects being subjected by much heavier objects in their vicinity to gravitational forces so severe that different parts of the smaller planetary object start to be pulled in different directions, perhaps so severely that the smaller object threatens to fly into pieces. This is what is now happening to cricket in England, under the influence of that much larger cricketing object, cricket in India. Cricket is now like a solar system, and the quite big planet that is England cricket is being yanked about by the gravitational forces being exerted upon it by the Sun. And that Sun is: India.

The background to the argument between Kevin Pietersen and the E(ngland and Wales) C(ricket) B(oard), the people who run the Engand cricket team, is that Kevin Pietersen desires to be both an England international cricketer, and also to maximise his income (and also enjoyment and ego-massage) from cricket by all other available means, while nevertheless contriving somehow not to drop dead from physical and mental exhaustion. In particular, Pietersen yearns to be both an England cricketer and a fully paid up (very well paid up indeed) player in the Indian Premier League, the Indian twenty overs tournament that takes place in April and May of each year.

The ECB treats the IPL as just another foreign cricket league, concerning which they need to care very little. It’s a nuisance to their arrangements, but no more. They do not – or such seems their attitude – need to contrive any “window” to allow England cricketers to neglect their early season England cricket in order to cash in from a meaningless foreign slogfest, and then allow them time off from England games, or preparations for England games, so that they can avoid becoming completely exhausted. They pay England players well, and that should be quite enough, is their attitude.

But for any cricketer good enough or lucky enough to get a contract to be part of it, the IPL can be the difference between an anxious transition, when the time comes, from professional sport to the rigours of real life, and being financially secure for life, especially if he does well in it and gets asked back several times. During the limited time when Pietersen was able to play in this year’s IPL (he had to leave before the tournament ended), he did very well, scoring another brilliant century, for the Deccan Chargers Delhi Daredevils.

The over-arching fact about cricket now is that the IPL is not just another tournament in a faraway country. It is the first great assertion in the cricket world – the cricket world – of the massive economic power of Indian cricket fandom. As I never tire of saying in my various cricket blog postings, there are more cricket fans in India than there are people in Europe. I remember when the millions of India were famous only for starving. Now, these same millions are striding towards twenty first century affluence. And they are taking cricket with them.

If India really, really wants to watch you play twenty twenty cricket for a month and a half, at a time when cricket in England is only getting started in weather that is often vile (despite anything the Met Office may have told cricket people about such months getting warmer), then if you are a cricketer, you really, really want to say yes. But meanwhile, the ECB been starting its test match programme each year earlier and earlier, so that they have enough test matches to pay for all those wonderful new stadiums that they have encouraged the English counties to build in such excessive numbers and on such a grandiose scale during the previous decade.

The BBC’s Jonathan Agnew sides with the ECB and against Kevin Pietersen:

Trying to manoeuvre things so he can play for England and play a full season in the Indian Premier League is not the way Pietersen should be behaving.

Certain New Zealanders do it, as does Chris Gayle of West Indies, but that is because their boards do not have the money to pay them well. They accept players can earn big sums in the IPL.

But English cricket can afford to pay their players well and that is why they are top of the world rankings and both New Zealand and West Indies are not.

England players are well paid and must be available to play. You sign the contract, like Pietersen did, or you don’t.

Why, I wonder, does Agnew not mention the South Africans, whose best players also now adorn the IPL, and yet who, despite that exhausting interlude of money-grubbing, are now very likely to topple England as the best test team in the world? (All the Saffers have to do to accomplish this is not lose this third game at Lord’s.)

The England cricket team is in the meantime top of the test rankings not because it is a team of great players, or even a truly great team, but because it is a very good team with some very good players, very well coached, skilfully lead, at a time when there are no truly great teams around as great as the Australians of a decade ago or the West Indians two decades ago. England are now the first among a number of equals, and very soon, probably, not even the first.

But unlike anyone else in this England team, and when he functions in top gear, Kevin Pietersen is a truly great player. The ECB now want all of us England fans to think that the only reason that both the ECB and the rest of the England team have such a bad relationship with Pietersen is because Pietersen is … Pietersen. But this is not the only reason. Pietersen is indeed (to summarise heroically) somewhat of a plonker. But he is also a member of a small cricketing elite, namely one of those cricketers who can set himself up financially for life by playing in the IPL. None of the other England players fall into that exalted category. Of all the current England players, only Pietersen is definitely, directly, suffering from the lack of an IPL window in the England cricket season. Other England cricketers can fantasise about how they might strike it rich in the IPL. Meanwhile, they are, as Agnew points out, being paid very decently. Pietersen knows he could double his money, if he was only allowed to.

And what is more, Pietersen knows he can switch to the IPL, if he has to. Given the flat out choice, he would prefer to stick with England, while hoping that the IPL window he so desires can somehow be prized open, if only for him. But the reason he has been doing so much brinkmanship lately is that he does have a truly lucrative alternative, unlike anyone else in the England team. If he gave up on England and played for the IPL, he could also play in lots of other IPL copies, in Australia, Sri Lanka, maybe even soon (whisper it) England. (At present England has a faltering T20 tournament scattered stupidly throughout its ever more stupid season.) So, Pietersen’s bargaining position is unlike that of any other England player.

See what I mean about gravitational pulls pulling smaller planetary objects into bits? Indian cricket is now tearing a chunk out of the England cricket team. And if any of the new crop of England hopefuls with a penchant for hitting sixes (Bairstow and Hales spring to mind) make the leap to true greatness in the next few years, they too will be subjected to just the same gravitational forces as Pietersen is now feeling. It is not that Pietersen is a South African mercenary, or a plonker, although his plonkerdom in particular does not help. Without the IPL he would be a contented member of the England team. With the IPL he is a frustrated super-talent, who knows that he is within touching distance of being twice the cricketer he is now, and being paid twice as much.

The interests of the England players who cannot be sure of getting the big bucks in the IPL but who would love to give it a go, are such they they now want to keep their heads down and just carry on being paid well to play for England. But, they would love it if Pietersen could somehow carve an IPL window out of the English season, on their behalf as well as his own. They would like him to win this fight, in other words, but dare not now say so. How do you reckon Pietersen feels about that? More gravity.

Football (aka soccer) knows all about this kind of yanking around of its national teams, by the pull of unimaginably rich foreign club tournaments. In football, international teams are almost all of them potential arenas of conflict between the few who can get lucrative club contracts in such places as Spain or England, and the rest who are good but not that good. But everyone involved in a team like, I don’t know, Senegal, knows this. They face the problem of, say, their two star players being tired from playing a full season for Real Madrid or Bayern or Man City, and they deal with it. A problem faced is a problem well on the way to being solved. The ECB problem is more basic. Their biggest problem in the Pietersen Affair is that they seem unwilling to face the fact that they have a problem. They think it’s personal. Pietersen can bat to die for, but he is a plonker. Make him knuckle under or get rid of him. They think Pietersen is the problem. No, the problem is India, and how to live with India.

What must be especially frustrating for Pietersen is that the alternative universe that the ECB still clings to is already such a proven absurdity.

That IPL window, which the ECB still refuses to open for England players is now a global cricket fact. No other countries bother with test cricket while the IPL is in session, which means that if England remains the only one (in its own eyes) in step, then even if in some Platonic sense they are “right” about the wrongness of the IPL and of people like Pietersen wanting so very much to play in it, who the hell are they going to play against?

We witnessed the nonsensical answer to this question in England earlier this year, when England, in vile English weather, trounced the West Indies second eleven. The West Indian team, the proper one, is now the opposite of England, being most definitely less than the sum of its parts, not the least of its problems having been that they have felt, for several years now, as Agnew notes, the full force of the IPL’s gravitational pull and have been pulled completely apart by it. They have a number of very IPL friendly players, with several potential Kevin Pietersens in their side and at least one actual Kevin Pietersen, in the shape of Chris Gayle, the current IPL batting top dog bar none. (Gayle has had just the same problems trying to gouge sense out of the West Indies cricket bosses that Pietersen has been having. Like Pietersen, he is a tricky man to deal with.) And these West Indian stars all played in the IPL, leaving their journeyman brethren to lose their meaningless test series in England.

I remember very little about that meaningless test series in England, but I do remember that on the first day of it, Chris Gayle scored an utterly brilliant century. I watched this brilliant century on my television. But Gayle did not score this brilliant century for the West Indies, against England. He scored it for the Bangalore Royal Challengers.

You would think that the ECB would have got the message. How soon before cricket fandom everywhere just hoots with derision at these “test matches” in the sodden and frigid English spring? Such tests test nobody except the out-of-their depth second-stringers sucked into them. With the star players of the touring side missing, these tests mean very little. Sport is all about meaning. Drain the meaning from a game, and the thing is dead in the water. Literally in the water, if you are playing in England, in May, and you don’t get lucky.

I haven’t done the sums, but it occurs to me to wonder if England would already now have been definitely toppled as the number one test team, if you exclude that meaningless 2-0 win against the Windies? My guess: yes.

For many decades, cricket was another kind of solar system, and England (in the shape of the M(arylebone) C(ricket) C(lub) (made world famous in a Monty Python sketch for having bested the Piranha Brothers – 3m51s into this)) was the Sun. Then for a few years cricket was just a gaggle of countries, the top few all being roughly equal. Now it is a solar system again, and now India is – to be more precise India’s fans are – the Sun. I guess if you were once the old Sun, having to cohabit as a mere planet with a new Sun is rather galling.

Nevertheless, it must be done.

This posting has only incidentally been about Kevin Pietersen. What it is really about is the rise to global prominence of India, and about what that is doing to the globe.

[What I can remember of] a remark made by one of the commentators on the Indian Premier League cricket match between the Chennai Super Kings and the Rajasthan Royals. It was prompted by Chennai’s apparent “rationing” of all-rounder Albie Morkel, who despite being restricted to a mere 6 balls, still managed to score 18 runs, thus saving the game, Chennai’s interest in the tournament and, by extension, civilisation itself.

Except there were two horses. Oh no. It couldn’t be, surely?

Of course it could

“[Journalists are taxed at lower rates than normal people] … this is a considerable privilege, definitely worth preserving. It creates an identity of interest between the elite and the journalists, who are inhibited from revealing too much about anyone with powerful protectors.”

He thinks this is a good thing? Seriously? Journalists have an incentive to cover up the wrongdoings of the powerful, and this is good?

Leaving aside the obvious corollary of this, that France effectively licenses journalists, I personally do not think that politicians
...continue Vulgarity]]> In the post below, Jonathan quotes Theodore Dalrymple saying the following rather mind-boggling statement.

“[Journalists are taxed at lower rates than normal people] … this is a considerable privilege, definitely worth preserving. It creates an identity of interest between the elite and the journalists, who are inhibited from revealing too much about anyone with powerful protectors.”

He thinks this is a good thing? Seriously? Journalists have an incentive to cover up the wrongdoings of the powerful, and this is good?

Leaving aside the obvious corollary of this, that France effectively licenses journalists, I personally do not think that politicians and bureaucrats should have any right to privacy whatsoever. They choose to go into politics, and they are trusted with our money and are given considerable power over us. In return, everything they do up to and including going to the toilet should be subject to scrutiny. They should have some protection against being libelled (but even then a relatively weak right – the burden of proof should be on the politician and it should be necessary to prove both untruth and malice). In truth I am not that keen on extending much of a right to privacy to anyone else either. As long as you are telling the truth, you should generally be able to say it out loud, in any forum. This is one case where the Americans have it right with the First Amendment.

As for the vulgarisation of culture, London is the most culturally vibrant city in Europe. Culturally speaking, Paris today is about as interesting as English food circa 1955. At least, Paris inside the peripherique is. There are some interesting things going on in rap music, language and art in some of Paris’ suburbs, but I doubt that Dalrymple is much of a fan. The price of cultural interestingness may be some vulgarity, but who gets to decide what is vulgar and what is art? Old men decrying the tastes of yoof today, I guess. The Nazis were very keen on doing this, too. As are the Chinese communists.

China is a deeply authoritarian place. As a consequence of that, the country is culturally pretty dead. The Chinese watch imported movies, and encourage their children to learn to play western classical music. What is produced domestically and gets wide distribution is frighteningly bland, which is what happens under authoritarian regimes. Interesting things can be going on underneath, which can sometimes lead to cultural explosions when the authoritarian regimes are gone (see Spanish and South Korean post-dictatorship cinema, for instance), but China is a way from that.

Who do you compare China with, though? There is one obvious rival.

In late April, a couple of days after some unspeakable barbarians had exploded a bomb in a restaurant in Marrakesh, I was sitting in a cafe in Fez, in a more northern part of Morocco. As in many cafes worldwide, there was a television in the room. This was showing a soap opera of some kind on a pan-Arabic TV channel. (There are many, many, many pan-Arabic TV channels. They are run out of Qatar and Dubai. Moroccan roofs have more satellite dishes on them than I have seen anywhere else on earth). This particular pan-Arab channel was showing a soap opera or a popular movie of some kind.

In any event, the program in question contained some Islamic symbols. There were mosques in the background of a few scenes. The TV was showing subtitles in Arabic. I am not sure if that was because the program was originally in some other language or if these were just closed captions in the same language as the original material, turned on because there was a lot of background noise. (It may have been that the program was in fact Pakistani, and the original language was Urdu, but I am not sure). In any event, though, the program contained musical dance numbers of a form that were familiar to me. And there were slightly more bare female midriffs than one expects on TV in an Arab country. I expect there were more than one sees on domestic Moroccan TV, too, which partially explains the satellite dishes. Morocco is authoritarian enough to censor its own TV, but not authoritarian enough to attempt to ban the dishes.

The program was not made in India, but the grammar of the program was entirely that of Bollywood. In North-West Africa, in the Arab world, one of the leading cultural influences is clearly India. This is hardly surprising. Go to Dubai or Abu Dhabi or Qatar and who does the actual work? People from South Asia; Indians and Pakistanis and Sri Lankans. Even when they are making programs for Arab markets, they use their own cultural reference points. Even when making programs for their own market, Pakistanis use Indian cultural reference points. However it happens, and however second or third hand it comes, the cultural influence of Bombay on the Middle East and North Africa is clearly immense

And is Bollywood vulgar? Oh Lord yes. More conservative Indians elsewhere in the country denounce its amoral wickedness as much as anyone in America has ever denounced Hollywood. The entertainment industries of India are run by gangsters at least as depraved as any who have ever run Hollywood or Las Vegas. It isn’t any great coincidence that the most savage terrorist attack carried out by Islamic extremists in recent years was on the city of Bombay. This is the heart of wickedness and vulgarity, and they know where the enemy is. Indian culture is vibrant and vulgar. On the surface and in the mass market at least, Chinese culture is dead. And Indian culture is the country’s greatest weapon against its enemies.

Betting in cricket and other sports should be legalised in India, a Delhi court has said, pointing out that the police have failed to curb illegal betting in the country. Legalising betting, the court said, would help the government keep track of
...continue “Betting in cricket and other sports should be legalised in India …”]]> Further to what I, and Johnathan Pearce, and Natalie Solent, have all being saying here about cricket corruption, and about how this is a story about more than mere cricket corruption, I just noticed this report from a few days ago, at cricinfo.com. Cricinfo is one of my regular haunts, so sorry for not linking to this earlier:

Betting in cricket and other sports should be legalised in India, a Delhi court has said, pointing out that the police have failed to curb illegal betting in the country. Legalising betting, the court said, would help the government keep track of the transfer of funds and even use the revenue generated for public welfare.

“It does not need divine eyes to see that ‘satta’ in cricket and other games is reaching an alarming situation. The extent of money that it generated is diverted to clandestine and sinister objectives like drug trafficking and terrorist activities,” said additional sessions judge Dharmesh Sharma, of a Delhi trial court. “It is high time that our legislature seriously considers legalising the entire system of betting online or otherwise so that enough revenues can be generated to fund various infrastructural requirements for the common man and thus check the lucrative business in organised crime.”

Now I will willingly grant you that this is anything but a pure libertarian argument, of the kind that would prevail in Brian-Micklethwait-world. Judge Sharma is emphasising the revenue gathering opportunity inherent in legalisation just as strongly as the anti-crime point. But for what it is worth, I also much prefer a legalised and quite heavily taxed and state-regulated betting regime to total illegality, if those are the only choices I am offered. And they are, given the current state of the world and of its predominant opinions.

Now, as we libertarians like to point out, if you ban consenting activities between adults – such as betting on sports – then when such activities are driven underground, criminals get involved, with all the sort of consequences we are now writing about.
...continue What happens when gambling is banned and related thoughts]]> In the previous posting by Brian on the alleged match-fixing scam involving Pakistan’s cricket team, one commenter called Jim made the excellent point that gambling is illegal in Pakistan. It is, as the practice is banned under Shariah law – but there is a vast and thriving underground gambling industry there and indeed across the Indian sub-continent.

Now, as we libertarians like to point out, if you ban consenting activities between adults – such as betting on sports – then when such activities are driven underground, criminals get involved, with all the sort of consequences we are now writing about. That is not to say, of course, that if gambling were legalised in Pakistan, that the match-fixer gangsters would hang up their hats and do something else. But it would, in my view, help a great deal to drive some of these scum away.

Americans bored by all this talk of cricket might recall that baseball has had its problems in the past, as have other sports too. This Wikipedia entry is worth reading (and maybe improving).

And there are certain parallels in this issue with insider dealing in financial markets. On one level, I think that it should not be made illegal since it is difficult to work out the difference, sometimes, between a trader who is just quick off the mark to exploit new information and someone who happens to be privy to inside information. Arguablym, distortions caused by insider dealing eventually get arbitraged out by other investors. However, in the case of private stock markets, they are, as private institutions, perfectly entitled to set the rules so that trading is seen to be “fair” and open, if only to encourage investors to buy and sell stocks who might otherwise have been cynical about insiders getting all the best deals. It is like a private sports association setting down rules against things such as use of enhancement drugs, and so on. So long as no-one is forced to compete against their will, no-one can carp about the rules, and the adoption of such rules draws in more people and interest.

Back to the insider dealing point: As more people play in a market if the rules are seen to be fair, then this encourages greater liquidity and reduces the cost of capital. With the match-fixing issue, the costs of not punishing wrongdoers is something similar: it will drive away people from the sport due to greater cynicism, and hence reduce revenues, investment in new grounds and facilities, and so on. Cynicism, whether in sports, business or elsewhere, is a sort of deadweight cost on an activity by driving away fans, investors, etc.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is concerned that her Pakistani hosts have failed to grasp the nettle of good governance, and reminds them of the high purpose and duty for which democratic societies entrust their representatives with the sovereign power:

That sure explains Pakistan’s little handful of problems at present. I’m ashamed I never thought of it. I had some childish intuition that they might have something
...continue So that explains it!]]> I had a good chuckle after reading this over on Goat in the Machine:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is concerned that her Pakistani hosts have failed to grasp the nettle of good governance, and reminds them of the high purpose and duty for which democratic societies entrust their representatives with the sovereign power:

“We (the US) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan.”

That sure explains Pakistan’s little handful of problems at present. I’m ashamed I never thought of it. I had some childish intuition that they might have something to do with a civil society sufficiently dysfunctional that making a living by taking other people’s stuff off them, was far too easy in comparison to getting paid for producing stuff they wanted.

How could we have been so blind? The Taliban and Al Qaeda are pissed off at the world because they are under-taxed! Oh the humanity.

The creepy thing is I am sure that really is, in essence, what Clinton thinks.