Tragic flaw: Graft feeds Greek crisis

Marcus Walker reports for The Wall Street Journal:

Behind the budget crisis roiling Greece lies a riddle: Why does the state spend so lavishly but collect taxes so poorly? Many Greeks say the answer needs only two words: fakelaki and rousfeti.

Fakelaki is the Greek for "little envelopes," the bribes that affect everyone from hospital patients to fishmongers. Rousfeti means expensive political favors, which pervade everything from hiring teachers to property deals with Greek Orthodox monks. Together, these traditions of corruption and cronyism have produced a state that is both bloated and malnourished, and a crisis of confidence that is shaking all of Europe.

A study to be published in coming weeks by the Washington-based Brookings Institution finds that bribery, patronage and other public corruption are major contributors to the country's ballooning debt, depriving the Greek state each year of the equivalent of at least 8% of its gross domestic product, or more than €20 billion (about $27 billion).

[ ... ]

The Brookings study, which examines the correlation between corruption indicators and fiscal deficits across 40 developed or nearly developed economies, highlights how corruption has hurt public finances in parts of Europe, especially in Greece and Italy, and to a lesser extent in Spain and Portugal.

Greece's budget deficit averaged around 6.5% of GDP over the past five years, including a 13% shortfall last year. If Greece's public sector were as clean and transparent as Sweden's or the Netherlands', the country might have posted budget surpluses over the past decade, the study implies.

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The return of the Raj

C. Raja Mohan writes for The American Interest Magazine:

It is not clear what French President Nicolas Sarkozy had in mind when he invited a contingent of 400 Indian troops to march down the Champs-Élysées for the Bastille Day parade in 2009. But Paris might be on to something that Washington has missed, in spite of its more intensive military engagement with India in recent years. Although Paris does not have the power to engineer international structural changes in New Delhi's favor, it has often been ahead of Washington in strategizing about India. In its effort to build a partnership with India, ongoing since the mid-1990s, France has helped India renegotiate its position in the global nuclear order: It provided diplomatic cover when India defied the world with nuclear tests in May 1998, promoted the idea of changing the global non-proliferation rules to facilitate civilian nuclear cooperation with India, and worked with the Bush Administration to get the international community to endorse India's nuclear exceptionalism.

Of course, Sarkozy's motives might have been merely tactical: a move to butter up Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was among the honored guests at the parade, or to raise its share of India's rapidly expanding market for advanced arms. But Paris is capable of more than tactics: It may sense the prospects of a fundamental change in India's defense orientation and its potential to contribute significantly to international security politics in the 21st century. It may see that a rising India, which runs one of the world's major economies and fields a large armed force, will eventually bear some of the military burdens of maintaining the global order.

If so, it would not be the first time that India has done so. Western analysts, some British excepted, seem not to appreciate two historical facts: that the Indian armed forces contributed significantly to Allied efforts in the 20th century's two world wars; and that India's British Raj was the main peacekeeper in the Indian Ocean littoral and beyond. And it is not just the West that is ignorant of the security legacy of the British Raj; India's own post-colonial political class deliberately induced a collective national amnesia about the country's rich pre-independence military traditions. Its foreign policy establishment still pretends that India's engagement with the world began on August 15, 1947.

The image of Indian troops marching in Paris should remind the world that India's military past could be a useful guide to its strategic future. If the United States and India can together rediscover and revive the Indian military's expeditionary tradition, they will have a solid basis for strategic cooperation not only between themselves but also with the rest of the world's democracies. The Bush Administration showed an instinctive sense of this possibility when it committed itself to assisting India's rise and boosting its defense capabilities. President Barack Obama does seem to have a fund of goodwill toward India, which was reflected in his decision to receive Prime Minister Singh in November 2009 as the first state guest at the White House. But it is not clear if the Obama Administration has a larger strategic conception of the prospects for military and security cooperation with India.

In general, the Democratic administrations of recent times have tended to define engagement with India in terms of global issues and multilateralism rather than converging bilateral interests. Rather than frame the relationship with India using such ambitious but unrealizable multilateral goals, or drag Delhi further than it wishes to go into the Af-Pak mess, the Obama Administration needs to elevate the bilateral military engagement with India to a strategic level. While the U.S. debate on military burden-sharing has traditionally taken place in the context of Washington's alliances with Western Europe and Japan, a rising India may well be a more credible and sustainable partner than these two in coping with new international security challenges. If both sides can shake off the remaining historical baggage that has kept them at arm's length for most of the past sixty years, we may see something remotely like the return of the Raj.

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US panel names 13 countries as religious violators

Saudi Arabia and China are among 13 countries a U.S. government panel named on Thursday as serious violators of religious freedom.

The panel's report also criticized the current and former administrations in Washington for doing far too little to make basic religious rights universal.

That is the goal of the congressional act that founded the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 1998. The commission investigates conditions in what it calls "hot spots," where religious freedom is endangered. Its job is to recommend U.S. government policies to improve conditions.

It is a "small but critically important point of intersection of foreign policy, national security and international religious freedom standards," the report said. "Regrettably that small point seems to shrink year-after-year for the White House and he State Department."

This year's list of 13 "countries of particular concern" included all eight named last year — Myanmar, also known as Burma; China; Eritrea; Iran; North Korea; Saudi Arabia; Sudan; and Uzbekistan — plus Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.

U.S. actions currently in force against the original eight include embargoes, often on top of existing sanctions, and denial of military or financial aid. Sanctions have been waived indefinitely for Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan has a waiver of 180 days which remains in force.

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Musical Innerlube: Pulp - This is hardcore

Albarn, Hewlett & Moore team up for John Dee musical opera

From Broadway World:

According to contactmusic.com, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz are teaming up with graphic novelist Alan Moore to write a musical about the life and achievements of 16th-century alchemist John Dee.

John Dee was a noted mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, imperialist, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I of England. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy.

Of the opera, Albarn had this to say to New York Magazine: "It's based on the life of John Dee, who was a very influential force in Elizabethan Europe, especially England. He was responsible for creating the concept of the British Empire. So he affects all our lives in one way or another. He was an alchemist. It's about his life.
"I've just been reading about Hermetic magic and catalysts and philosophy, which is what all of his stuff is based on. And it's been brilliant."

Albarn has not yet begun to compose the music, but has been extensively researching Dee, philosophy, and magic in order to prepare. He and Hewlett, with Gorillaz, recently released the band's third studio album, Plastic Beach.

Damon Albarn is an English singer-songwriter and record producer. He has been involved in many high profile projects and collaborations throughout his career. Albarn came to prominence as the frontman and primary songwriter of Britpop band Blur, but is also known internationally for his work with popular virtual band Gorillaz, within which he serves as the principal songwriter and lead vocalist. Subsequent projects have included The Good, the Bad & the Queen, Monkey: Journey to the West and Mali Music.

Jamie Hewlett is an English comic book artist and designer. He is best known for being the co-creator of the comic Tank Girl and co-creator of the virtual band Gorillaz; he is responsible for the band's unique animated personas.

Alan Moore is an English writer known for work in comics, including the acclaimed comic book series Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. He wrote the novel Voice of the Fire, and performs "workings" (one-off performance art/spoken word pieces) with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre Of Marvels, some released on CD. As a comics writer, Moore applied literary sensibilities to the mainstream of the medium as well as including challenging subject matter and adult themes. He brings a wide range of influences to his work, such as William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Anton Wilson and Iain Sinclair, New Wave science fiction writers like Michael Moorcock and horror writers like Clive Barker. Influences within comics include Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby and Bryan Talbot.