Some bits in the mosaic of our time are ignored because we look for boulders. This column presents issues that might deserve attention.
 
1. Capitalism scores! Again! A Masserati owner who is also a welfare client has turned up. Where else, besides in Capitalism, would this be possible? As there are no roses without thorns, this triumph over classical poverty creates some problems. If the poor have Masseratis, what will be allotted to normal earners? What will those get who could always afford supercars? Furthermore, what will be done about speed limits once the Masserati has become the “people’s car”?
 
2. Many great minds have pondered the causes of collective success and failure. The outcome depends on whether people are content with the prospects made available to them or whether they are inclined to create their own opportunities.
 
3. In some (mainly unsuccessful) regions of Eastern Europe, the majority believes that only the crooked can be successful. This view is more than only a product of old-style economic anti-Semitism and of the more recent Marxism that could seep into the consciousness of the average person. Nor is this perception entirely a conclusion drawn from Communist and post-Communist living experience. Much of the view is attributable to the lack of understanding for the kind of man-made factors that cause a society to be successful. If, therefore, one wishes to help such societies to develop then the aid given should not be in the form of money. (It is stolen by the politically empowered élites and so it furthers corruption.) If aid is to do more than to make the donor feel good, it should take the form of the transfer of economic expertise and of tested success-strategies.
 
4. The primaries of the Democratic Party seem to prove that conventional racism –embraced by the majority and directed against a minority- is not a major issue in American politics. The focus is shifting away from the racism of the majority. Now the center stage is occupied not by white racism but by a new “color blind” racism. Therefore, the general election might be partly about whether black racism is an issue for “Anglos”, Hispanics and Asians.
 
5. A telltale sign of triumphant racism is when, to prove our innocence of racism, we are asked to ignore the racism of some select groups.
 
6. Burma is a madhouse. The main problem with that is that the keys are in the hand of the ruling inmates. The demented rulers show traits that are, except for North Korea, unique. Hundreds of thousands are imperiled unless help is extended immediately. Irrational as ever, the tyrants have made the natural disaster into a secret of state. Consequently, nature’s destruction is about to be surpassed by the military that has kidnapped the country it now cruelly occupies. Aid workers and supplies are hardly allowed into the secretive place. The Junta that demands payment for letting the help in and confiscated some of the good that have entered. In jest, the solution might be to tell the generals that they may steel half the material sent from abroad.
 
7. The really effective ways of succor involve difficult measures. What the Burmese really need is not food and medicine to ameliorate the natural disaster. To save these people from the misery that surpasses the suffering meted out by the cyclone, the world would have to relieve them from the perennial source of their misfortune. This root cause referred to is the government. Pure humanitarian help can serve as a cop-out. There are instances when helping demands humanitarian intervention. Since “Iraq”, given the currently popular rejection of the intervention and the principle behind it, there is no appetite for “tyrant removal.” A further impediment preventing humanitarian intervention is the concept of sovereignty. Whenever sovereignty and humanitarian concerns collide, the former gets priority. Meaningful help can imply that the inviolability of the tyrannies that hide behind the principle of “internal affairs” is to be ignored. Acting only once those who sacrifice their people to serve their eccentric ideas attack their neighbors and are defeated, means not doing enough. As things stand, international help often limits itself to distributing bandages to the bleeding. To relieve the suffering the bayonets must be confiscated. That only works if pressure backed up by might is applied. Should this fail, acting on the threat is the only option left.
 
8. Thailand is said not to wish to apply pressure on Burma reluctant government to accept the aid its people need. The reason is that Bangkok wishes to have a friendly neighbor. This calculation might turn out to be mistaken. Eventually the Junta will fall. Those that survive Burma’s self-occupation will take control. This will put a new system with a long memory in charge of a country that will still be on Thailand’s border.
 
9. May 8. Putin as Prime Minister earned praise from the newly enthroned President Medvedev. He applauded Putin for making Russia “respected” again. As so often, the meaning of words to those who use them becomes decisive here. What Medvedev meant under respect is what others term “feared.” The world suffers when insecure great powers confuse respect with fear.
 
10. Izvestiya has presented a list of the “modern” arms paraded in the old style through Moscow on May 9th. (Russia celebrates VE Day then so as not to share the eighth with the West.) Revealingly, the report uses the account to compare the capacities of these weapons with their Western, mainly American, equivalents. You can guess whose superiority gets proven. Moscow laments about the uni-polar world and argues the need to revert to a multi-polar one. Do not mistake this to be an expression of a newly found commitment to an international system of checks and balances. The explanation that the Kremlin is justifying the incremental resumption of the USSR’s foreign policy is much more convincing.
 
11 Much ink flows to discuss the passing of the baton from Putin to Medvedev. Until now, that is under Putin, Russia had a presidential system. From now on it is about to function as a cabinet system. If, in a few years, Putin returns to the Presidency, Russia will again be under a presidential system of government. The big star with matching gravity is Putin. The lesser political planets rotate around him. Possibly, the future will prove that we have been missing the point. In time, we might conclude that Russia is again a monarchy in substance, while remaining republican in form.
 
12. Again, Russia reaches for leadership in her western-Eurasian sphere of interest. Europe’s relationship to power politics and the Atlantic alliance creates a vacuum. Its existence – and not only oil-money – encourages Russia to fill the void. Washington’s reaction to the unfolding situation will be to nudge Europe to assume responsibility for its own regional challenges. As a result, resistance to make NATO into something more than the fiction it currently is, will be vigorous. The opposition will refer to the adequacy of America’s ultimate protection and voice suspicions of the US’ motives. That will contain a hint that for moral and security reasons, one should not be too closely associated with her. Europe does not wish to be a Power on its own and at the same time, it refuses to be America’s junior partner. This position ignores not only its contradictions but also that the USA has no interest in limiting the sovereignty of Europe or the independence of its constituting parts. Russia or China offer, if the last point is considered, no rational alternatives. Thus, it would appear that the American alliance has no convincing alternative.
 
13. The UN’s Human Rights Commission regularly examines the record of its members. On May 8th it was Switzerland’s turn to submit to a Universal Periodic Review. Some of the issues raised might not advance the cause of human rights but they definitively provoke sarcasm. Here an entertaining collection. Russia wanted to know why parties with an openly racist program are allowed to operate. This might tell little about the real platform of the 90 year old People’s Party. At the same time it reveals much about the political values of Russia’s representative and the way his fellows rule the country. Algeria wished that hostility to aliens be combated. Mexico desired action against torture. The Ivory Coast complained that DNA tests are used when Africans with refugee status requests to be reunited with their claimed family members that were left at home. The refusal of refugee status for undocumented persons – who claim to belong to an “unsafe” country and deny their own “safe” state origins – also got hit. So was the lackadaisical combat of slavery and by Japan, Portugal and Romania that women earn less than men. (Candidly, the slavery bit makes one wonder whether the complaint is not the result of an unintended misstatement.) Haiti (!) wanted to know why there are so many weapons in Switzerland when her suicide numbers are so high. Predictably, Cuba, we are told, demanded that development aid be increased. Regardless of the foregoing, the best part is that a coalition of thirty Swiss NGOs (mainly government financed) greeted the report as part of a constructive dialogue that called attention to human rights deficits.