Nortel hits the skids

Om has a piece today written by Venture Capitalist Allan Leinwand asking whether Canada should bail out Nortel.  He asks:  “But is preserving the country’s technological heritage reason enough to spend millions in taxpayers dollars?”

I think that the answer to the question is contained within the question.  There is no such thing as technological heritage … only a technology’s future.  Once a company has ceased to innovate with effectiveness, market forces must be allowed to run their course.

Nortel, whose turnaround CEO Mike Zafirovsky appears to be a bit of a jet-setter, was a global source of technical innovation for most of the last century, peaking in the 1980s.  Its DMS line of switches grew to become the dominant means by which incumbent local exchange carriers rolled out circuit-switched voice networks; and the means by which long-distance companies expanded their reach globally. 

This gave the company a lot of cash to throw around, chasing R&D with aplomb, but it wasn’t spent wisely and efforts to embrace IP were insincere and too little too late.  What Nortel failed to see coming was the enormous destruction of value that would occur when Voice became just another application on IP networks — and the opportunity to build massively expanded value by building new applications over that infrastructure.  Even as recently as a few years ago Nortel has been tremendously innovative, however their solutions have failed to reach into the marketplace as they were targeted at a single customer group — the incumbents — who themselves are flailing and sputtering.

They also have a broken corporate culture.  This happens when organizations get fat and lazy … and political.  I watched that culture attach itself, like a parasite, to Cisco in the late 1990s as we were hiring entire teams from Nortel and moving them to North Carolina and San Jose.

The issue of a bailout should be (but isn’t, since the Canadian taxpayer is already subsidizing the company’s operations to the tune of $30M) irrelevant:  Nortel has strong market and asset value still and should not need it.  The company suffers from the burden of expectations, both of the marketplace and of irrational shareholders; and from the criminal efforts of loathsome executives who tried to feed that beast rather than confront reality.

When AOL’s executives realized they had an overvalued asset with little-to-no real growth prospects, they limpet-mined themselves onto a depressed company with unrealized value.  That’s what Nortel could have / should have done several times in the past 15 years, but didn’t.

The chalice of innovation in telecommunications in Canada has passed on to RIM (neither of whose founders ever worked for Nortel — a rarity in the technology industry in Canada!).  Is the company wobbling simply as a casualty of the current economic cycle, or because of a deeper cancer and an endless stream of financial scandals?  Would $30M in investment be better spent on Nortel or on RIM, in the long term?

My guidance is: embrace the bankruptcy.  It’s an opportunity to restructure the business, re-orient the strategy, clear out the dead wood, and reset irrational expectations.  Nortel could yet again be an invigorating business, but shoring up the business that it is today is no way to get there.  In the meantime, Nortel has served its purpose in stimulating innovation in Canada and acting as an apprenticeship program for our country’s technology leaders.  Let it run its natural course.

Rumours that they’re nosing around in other cities are probably based on the fact that the Swedish kick-off discussions are still preliminary and that the NHL is exploring other possibilities. Earlier reports had them starting the season in Prague. I doubt this means they’d do this on any real scale, with a bunch of teams in a bunch of cities, but most likely another one-off like they did in London and, earlier, Japan.

However, I’ve now heard and read the Swedish rumours from a bunch of sources including my friend JR (who forwarded the Swedish piece). So this seems a little more solid than the others.

If you squint a little, that’s kind of how professional hockey began, more than 125 years ago, in the ponds and rinks of Ottawa and Montreal. Ironically it was in Buffalo where the beautiful game captivated the imagination of my favourite author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, inspiring him to become a sports writer. Even with more than 45 minutes of delays for snow clearing, hole patching, and refreezing, it was a great game which took hockey back to its roots. I think that’s an important point.

Dan Barnes, an Edmontonian, gloats that this happened first at the 2003 Heritage Classic in Commonwealth Stadium, and it’s a very good article outlining the motivations and tribulations that led to that successful effort at an outdoor game. He also advocates some other changes and innovations for the NHL season schedule.

Before I read his article I had opined a few days ago to Rhys that the NHL needs to take it on the road more often. This year the season opened between Stanley Cup winners the Anaheim Ducks and the L.A. Kings in the hockey hotbed of London, England in an event which garnered more buzz on this side of the Atlantic than it did in the UK. Leading up to that game, something (I think) more significant happened… the Kings played two exhibition games in Austria against Austrian League champions Red Bull Salzburg, and against Sweden’s First Division team Farjestad.

You can bet those two squads were up for a game against an NHL team, even one whose roster was as weak as that of the LA Kings. And you can bet Austrian fans (and those that drove from Munich and nearby in Switzerland) were treated to some great (though exhibition) play. But did the NHL do anything to promote those games? Did they even learn anything from the experiment?

Not likely. And you probably won’t see a lot of these again, except for yet more outdoor games in big football stadiums with lots of fans, in the same cities teams usually play in. Here’s a key problem: Unlike any of the other of the top 10 professional sports leagues on this earth, NHL teams are primarily financed from gate revenues at the stadium. Whereas, ticket sales are pure gravy for teams in other sports, which make most of their money from broadcast licensing and avertising, these dollars at the ticket counter the meat for NHL clubs. This means that when a team sacrifices those revenues to play elsewhere, they generally lose money.

The only reason the London game happened at all was that Kings owner Philip Anschutz also owns O2 Arena, and so was able to move the cash around his various enterprises. But for that little tidbit you’d be unlikely to have seen the game there.

In 1997 and 1998 the NHL opened the season with two games each in Japan in the run-up to the Nagano Winter Olympics. Although the League declared these a success there is some evidence that they were expensive, under-supported, economic failures — and the second of these series practically ruined the San Jose Sharks’ season, resulting in the league’s longest consecutive road trip. That has made Bettman’s promise to continue the initiative difficult to fulfill.

I’m not sure that developing a fan base in Japan particularly benefits the NHL. One thing that helps an audience identify with the players is seeing people who are like them. Unfortunately, the best the NHL could offer up to Japanese fans at the time was Paul Kariya.

Moreover, the problem with these being regulation league games (for points) is that these far-flung contests have to be woven into the NHL schedule. And after playing them, teams have to make the journey back to the US and Canada, adjust to pretty considerable JetLag, and hit the ice again for a real league game within 24-48 hours. This doesn’t exactly encourage them to want to sign up.

Watching the Spengler on TV and reading Paul Romanuk’s excellent blog on the tournament reminds me that there really is something special about how professional hockey is conducted in Europe. Having played there and seen how fans react to the teams and vice-versa, it’s reminiscent of what I can only presume to have been the case during the heyday of the NHL, through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

You may have noticed that 30% of the players in the NHL are European, but not one of them is from the UK. In fact outside of England’s foundering attempts to create a successful hockey league, Europe has a well-supported hockey community and Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, and Denmark all have vibrant professional hockey leagues with many fans. So why not support them, and in the process pull more fans to a direct interest in the NHL?

There’s already a revolving door for players between the NHL and leagues like the DEL … why not one for the fans as well? By my observation the relationship between hockey fans in Europe and the NHL is at best superficial. When the Washington Caps made German-born Olaf Kolzig their #1 goaltender, plenty of German hockey fans went out to buy Capitals jerseys with his name on the back… but are they staying up late to watch games? Ordering an NHL channel on digital cable (if there is such a thing)? Picking their favourite players for hockey pools? Not likely.

The Exhibition season for the NHL is actually rather half-hearted. Fans generally aren’t as enthusiastic about the games because the teams field the B-squads, holding their celebrities in reserve for conditioning and in fear of injury. They are also rarely broadcast on television, and as far as selling tickets goes, teams fill the seats for these throw-away games by stacking the games into full and partial seasons’ ticket packs and with give-aways .. for many teams there’s little to no honest profit in the Exhibition season.

But there is one nice thing about Exhibition games … as the LA Kings proved, you can pretty-much do whatever you want and as a bonus, you can stagger and schedule them vis-a-vis the regular season however you’d like. Some teams see the exhibition season as a necessary evil … I see it as a potential problem-solver.

My Modest Proposal is to therefore do two things during the Exhibition season, giving each team the choice of either:

1. Exhibition games in small North American towns with able support for a larger-scale game (ie. 5000+ seats in a hockey arena). Unfortunately this is too early in the winter for elaborate outdoor games. … or …
2. Exhibition play against Tier 1 club teams in Europe, perhaps a road trip consisting of 4-5 games each with a 3-day layover prior to the season start. Share the gate revenues with them (some play in NHL-sized arenas) to cover costs.

This would be a fabulous way to enhance the dialog between fans in Europe and NHL teams, and also to support the small communities which couldn’t support an NHL team (in Mr. Bettman’s opinion) but which still have rabid fan bases built around AHL, University, or Junior hockey teams. Again, this doesn’t detract from the success of those smaller-market teams but likely adds enough water to the tide to float all boats.

Let’s not kid ourselves that big-stadium outdoor games like the Heritage Classic and today’s effort in Buffalo really do anything to enhance the market for the game. Similarly I think it could be argued successfully that both experiments in Japan and in London were not cost-effective in enhancing the league’s market reach.

If the goal is making more money on an exciting winter event, fine. Let’s embrace these pond hockey games as novelties, for sure, and by all means keep doing it (teams report making more money doing so, so within reason I say fill your boots).

But if the goal is expanding the revenue from the league and growing beyond simply operating on gate receipts, let’s also work toward a schedule that does something to enhance the game and its growth; that brings in a new active global fan base; that invigorates the game with a dash of European flavour. There is natural affinity there, and a largely untapped market.

Let’s work toward growing the sport and fostering an exchange with the European leagues that will enhance the game both on and off the ice; and which also respects the contribution made by thousands of communities around the globe that contribute players to this game.

I think that, just to be sure, the US should install warning labels
on all fingers indicating that putting them in proximity to one’s
mouth while holding food could result in dire obesity, particularly in North America. But does
anyone really think that Warning Labels are meaningful anymore, after
decades of useless labels on CDs, Cigarettes, and Ladders?

In the longer term I think that history will illustrate that the real
problem isn’t simply, “sugar” (which is a generic term referencing
dozens of different additives) but instead High Fructose Corn Syrup,
or what I call “engineered sugar”. HFCS was born in the 1970s, in
part to address two things: the high cost of sugar, due to America’s
ongoing embargo of Cuba (which has traditionally ranked highly within
the top five exporters of sugar); and the dramatic overproduction of
corn, due to America’s moronic ongoing subsidy of its growth by
farmers (which has also resulted in the wholly unnecessary emergence
of Ethanol, BioDiesel, and lots of other stupid Corn-Into-Gold
technologies).

High Fructose Corn Syrup is not natural. Its existence is the result
of a mad chemist’s array of processes, fermentations, chain
reactions, and engineering. As such it’s natural to assume that we
organisms might have a really hard time ingesting, processing, and
excreting it safely. Consumed in high enough quantities (which most
of us do today) it has been revealed to effectively turn our bodies
into mush.

What’s circumstantially different between the relatively svelte
peoples of Europe and the statistically obese heifers of North
America is the quality of the sugars we intake. Europeans consume
lots of sucrose (from beet and cane) and us Americans eat mostly
biochemically-engineered sugars. We’re fat. They ain’t.
Confectioners can’t even use the term “chocolate” in the EU unless
their product uses real sugars, which is one reason why Mars bars in
the UK kick ass on North American ones.

So go ahead and label Soda cans all you want, but it’s pure,
unmitigated folly and will have no appreciable effect on the number
of forklift cases faced by paramedics in the future.

You really wanna cope with the obesity problem?

– Educate children (and adults) in schools on how to eat
better in SIMPLE terms
– Stop subsidizing the growth of corn and other crops we
don’t need
– Stop fucking with our food supply unless you’re going to test thoroughly the effects
– Disincentivize the sale and distribution of junk food with extra taxes, etc.
– Close forever the revolving door between the FDA and Monsanto

.. of course we won’t do that, because the Fat Kids can’t afford
expensive Washington/Ottawa lobbyists as can Monsanto, Yum! Foods,
and McDonald’s. Instead, the problem will just continue to amplify
until — like the hormonally-unbalanced, permanently ill beef cattle
of the North American livestock industry — many of the people of our
countries will be managed in a continuous state of illness and sloth,
taxing our social services to the maximum while displacing the truly
sick. All of this at no expense and to the massive profitability of
a dwindling (through consolidation) number of megacorporations
(including, of course, health providers who triage and manage the
lingering deaths of the populace) in the BioTechnology, Food, and
Health Care industries.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is a poison by many names (dextrose, glucose-
fructose, etc.), and is so pervasive in North American foods that
it’s almost impossible to avoid consuming it. My Snapple that
contains the “Best Stuff On Earth!” lists glucose-fructose second in
quantity only to water on the label. Just about the only package on
my desk today that doesn’t contain any HFCS is my bottle of Evian.

Some info:

http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/highfructose.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8003-2003Mar10
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jun99/927695713.Ch.r.html

A short term answer: go organic.

But what happens to society when only rich people can afford to eat a
healthy diet, free from chemicals and engineered foods?

-Ian.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: bitbitch
> Date: Wed Sep 3, 2003 4:50:45 PM US/Pacific
> To: FoRK
> Subject: Male birth control that actually works (and no, this isn’t a
> spam ad)
>
> Fanfucking -tastic. As for the argument that men don’t like having
> their junk touched, to this I say, ‘Too damn bad.’ If RISUG is for
> real, I think the number of men being forced to choose between a
> little shot in the nuts versus no sex will explode like Viagra. I
> just hope its true, and it happens.
>
>
>
>
>
> About Time.
>
> http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/schulman081303.asp
>
>
> * The Sperminator *
>
> */ A new injection for men could shake up the world of contraceptives
> /*
> *
>
> <just 4
> percent of couples in Niger have access to birth control. Although the
> situation in this West African country is extreme, more than 125
> million couples worldwide — most of them in developing countries —
> cannot get contraceptives. Some of the children that have resulted
> from these couplings were wanted and some were not, but one thing is
> certain: Lack of access to birth control increases the burden on
> already strained parents and on the global ecosystem.
>
>
>
> Sujoy Guha, professor of biomedical engineering at the Indian
> Institute of Technology in Delhi, believes he has the answer to this
> problem. Highly regarded in India for his work on everything from
> disability rights to drinking-water purification, Guha has spent the
> last 25 years perfecting his invention, Reversible Inhibition of Sperm
> Under Guidance, better known (thankfully) as RISUG. RISUG, he says,
> has all the advantages of the perfect contraceptive — and, some would
> say, a surprising bonus: It’s made for /men./
>
> RISUG works by an injection into the vas, the vessel that serves as
> the exit ramp for sperm. The injection coats the vas with a clear
> polymer gel that has a negative and positive electric charge. Sperm
> cells also have a charge, so the differential charge from the gel
> ruptures the cell membrane as it passes through the vas, stopping the
> sperm in their tracks before they can even start their journey to the
> egg. RISUG doesn’t affect the surrounding tissues because they have no
> charge.
>
> Compared to the other male contraceptive choices currently available
> — abstinence, withdrawal, condoms, and vasectomies — RISUG is a
> whole new ballgame. In fact, Guha and others believe, the
> contraceptive promises to be even better than the choices available to
> women. Guha enumerates six advantages of his invention:
>
> * First, neither sexual partner has to interrupt the throes of
> passion to use it — no more running to the bathroom and fumbling
> with various ointments and plastics.
>
> * Second, the process, once it is refined and approved, will be
> completely non-surgical. /Whew,/ say a lot of men.
>
> * Third, it’s long-lasting. According to Guha, a single injection
> can be effective for at least 10 years.
>
> *
>
>
> Fourth, after testing RISUG on more than 250 volunteers, neither
> Guha nor other researchers in the field have found side effects
> more worrisome than a slight scrotal swelling in some men
> immediately following the injection. This swelling goes away after
> a few weeks. Compare that to the Pill, which even today can cause
> health problems ranging from severe migraines to blood clots.*
>
> <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/
> schulman081303.asp#toronto>, who says men’s attitudes toward
> contraception are changing. “In Canada, 10 years ago, it used to be
> tubal ligations [the more-invasive female equivalent of a vasectomy]
> to vasectomies were performed at a ratio of 2 to 1. Now that number is
> reversed.” Weiss believes a lot of men would prefer a procedure that
> wasn’t permanent. And, he says, RISUG is the most promising male
> contraceptive out there.
>
>
>
>
> Still, there’s been a lot more media fervor over the possibility of a
> male version of the Pill — even though its potential side effects for
> men include everything from liver damage and prostate problems to what
> is referred to in the literature as gynecomastia. Translation: Men
> growing breasts.
>
> Weiss thinks RISUG is preferable. “The only people who should be
> excited about the male Pill are pharmaceutical companies,” he said. He
> believes so much money has been poured into researching the Pill
> because pharmaceutical companies want something consumers will have to
> buy again and again — as opposed to an inexpensive, one-time
> injection. In the U.S., a decade of the female Pill costs about
> $3,600. RISUG would be dramatically less expensive, while
> pharmaceutical companies would have to pay $25 million to $40 million
> to bring it to market.
>
> But from the consumers’ point of view, RISUG could be a godsend during
> the approximately 30 years the average person spends trying not to
> cause a pregnancy. It would mean fewer women getting cancer from the
> Pill or having their uteruses perforated by an errant IUD. It would
> mean fewer men having to choose between the risk of a burst condom or
> the permanence of a vasectomy.
>
> And in the developing world, RISUG would mean much more.
>
> *This Little Injection Went to Market …*
>
> “Realize that overseas there just aren’t decent options,” said Elaine
> Lissner, director of the Male Contraception Information Project. “By
> the time condoms arrive there, they’re cracked by the heat. Poverty
> and lack of medical follow-up are a problem. You can’t use a diaphragm
> if you don’t have clean running water. You can’t use an IUD if no
> medical treatment exists if something goes wrong. You can’t use the
> Pill if it’s too expensive.”
>
> In the developing world, RISUG’s price tag could be brought down to
> about $22, the price at which Guha and Indian Drugs & Pharmaceuticals
> Ltd. (the largest Indian drug company) are planning to market it in
> India. This makes RISUG potentially affordable by even the world’s
> poorest.
>
> Studies have shown that when couples in the developing world start
> having fewer children, both the health and literacy of the children
> improve, and mothers are more likely to survive long enough to raise
> their kids. Moreover, families with fewer children have less impact on
> the natural world, because they are not as desperate for firewood,
> water, and bush meat.
>
> This “less children/healthier environment” connection has become so
> clear that wildlife organizations have started to team up with
> family-planning groups in biodiversity-rich areas of the world. In the
> Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, Conservation International
> is working with Mexfam to slow the clearing of the forests as well as
> to offer people there the option of reproductive health care.
>
>
>
>
> Inevitability, talk of providing contraceptives to people in
> developing countries raises allegations of racism — but there’s a
> huge difference between forced eugenics and offering people the choice
> to control their own fertility. According to Save the Children, 72
> percent of Sweden’s population has access to contraceptives; why
> shouldn’t the same choices be available in Niger? With the world’s
> population growing by 77 million people per year, access to
> contraceptives is not something the industrialized world can continue
> to hog.
>
> So far, what’s holding up the potential marketing of RISUG outside of
> India is safety testing. Although the Indian medical community
> maintains that its safety testing is better than that of the U.S.,
> Jeff Spieler, chief of research at USAID’s Office of Population and
> Reproductive Health, said, “The pre-clinical toxicology testing in
> India [on RISUG] was weak.”
>
> Lissner agreed that some of the older studies should be redone, but
> given the near-perfect record of RISUG so far, she noted, “If I were a
> man, I’d feel safer having RISUG injected than eating non-organic
> fruit.”
>
> RISUG will probably soon be marketed in India, but the U.S. will play
> a critical role in determining its use elsewhere in the developing
> world. Grants from U.S. agencies, corporations, and nonprofits spur on
> a significant portion of the world’s research. But, said Waller of the
> University of Illinois, “If funds from the U.S. are paying for another
> country’s research, then the research has to be already approved by
> the FDA. Otherwise it looks like we’re using the rest of the world as
> experimental subjects.” Thus, lack of interest in RISUG by the U.S.
> helps delay its use around the world.
>
> Meanwhile the developing world waits.
>
> As Lissner said, “Every month we delay means thousands more women
> dying in childbirth, more families in poverty from too many children,
> and more women dying in attempted abortions.”
>
>
> *[Correction, 14 Aug 2003: This article originally stated that birth
> control pills can cause ovarian cancer. In fact, studies show that the
> Pill can protect women against ovarian cancer.]
>
> *[Correction, 18 Aug 2003: This article originally stated Ronald Weiss
> is based in Toronto. He is based in Ottawa.]
>
>

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada, in a highly unusual travel warning, on Wednesday urged Canadian citizens born in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia to think carefully before entering the United States, saying they could fall afoul of tough new U.S. anti-terrorism laws.

The Foreign Ministry said it issued the advisory after Washington stipulated that anyone born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, or Syria needed to be photographed and fingerprinted on arrival in the United States.

This includes citizens of Canada, a country which is traditionally regarded as one of the closest allies of the United States.

“It’s not something we approve of and we’ve registered our strongest disapproval with the United States authorities,” Foreign Minister Bill Graham told reporters.

“We can’t tell the Americans what to do on their own territory. What we’re telling them is that we don’t accept this and we find it very troubling…I am certain that in due course common sense will prevail.” The Foreign Ministry advisory, posted on its Web site, is another indication of how ties between the two neighbors have soured in past months amid disputes over trade, policy toward Iraq and immigration policies.

Before the Sept. 11 suicide attacks, people from both countries crossed the shared 5,525 mile border with barely a thought. Security and identity checks have now been tightened considerably.

The U.S. rules, introduced on Sept. 11 this year, are designed to tighten security by authorizing the Immigration and Naturalization Service to track the arrival and departure of non-immigrants.

Ottawa’s travel warning follows the controversial deportation of a Canadian citizen by the United States to Syria, his birthplace, earlier this month.

The advisory also said Canadians born in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Yemen could attract special attention from U.S. authorities.

“In these circumstances, the (ministry) advises Canadians who were born in the above (eight) countries or who may be citizens of these countries to consider carefully whether they should attempt to enter the United States for any reason, including transit to or from third countries,” it said.

Graham said he had raised the issue last month with Secretary of State Colin Powell (news – web sites), who gave assurances that some kind of flexibility would be introduced for Canadian citizens.

“We’re expecting some news from the Americans. They have not brought in that flexibility,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Reynald Doiron.

In Washington, the State Department said the new rules were designed to make the United States safer.

“I think we are concerned that many, many countries in the world have had problems with terrorists,” spokesman Richard Boucher told a briefing.

He referred specifically to the case of Algerian-born Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested in December 1999 trying to enter the United States from Canada in a car packed with explosives. It later emerged that he had ignored a Canadian deportation order against him and even managed to obtain a Canadian passport.

“So, yes, it’s a big border and bad guys try to come across. I think that goes without saying. The question is what we, in cooperation with the Canadian government, can do to make both our countries safer,” said Boucher.

Last month, U.S. agents at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport arrested a Canadian they suspected of links to militant groups, finally expelling him to Syria on Oct. 8.

Mohamed Arar — who also holds a Syrian passport — was arrested as he was changing planes on his way back to Canada from Tunisia. He is in detention in Syria, where authorities are probing whether he has links to groups such as al Qaeda.

U.S. critics charge that Canada’s immigration system does not do enough to weed out militants who might want to launch attacks in the United States. Graham said he had stressed to U.S. officials that all immigrants had to go through tough security screening before coming to Canada.

“I have pointed out to them that both our countries are countries of immigration and that Canadian citizens have a right to be treated as Canadian citizens wherever they may be born,” he said.

Hussein Amery, president of the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations, said the U.S. rules were a clear case of racial profiling and urged Ottawa to toughen its stance.

“It certainly looks, smells and feels like racism…the Americans are certainly not treating Canadians as friends when they do this,” he added, referring to the Arar case.

Canada’s ties with the United States are already under strain over a protracted trade dispute about Canadian lumber exports, fresh tensions over wheat exports and Ottawa’s opposition to a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq.

———–

To wit: Saddam Hussein was nearly toppled from power prior to Desert Storm, and in his recent “election” he received 100% of the popular vote. Sure it was rigged. He was the only name on the ballot. The point is, people didn’t need to show up to vote for him, so the appropriate measure isn’t which box they checked, moreover how many of them showed up to do it. Iraq’s population is estimated by the CIA World FactBook at 24 million. An estimated 12 million people in Iraq showed up to vote. With only one choice, Iraq had a higher per capita voter turnout than the last US election. There were no hanging chads in Baghdad.

The growth of Islamic Conservatism flies in the face of people and societies making progress toward free expression, cultural evolution, and equality for women. But does this conservatism truly express the will, or does it express the fear, of the people?

You can find people spray painting “Death To America” on subways in New York; you can find them burning flags in Ottawa. Yet what we see in our Western minds when we think of places like Iran are images of people voicing their hatred against us in murals, chants, and protests. Why? Because we believe what we are shown. And because we are shown that which substantiates our fear.

Societally, there is really very little to differentiate Them from Us. They are people. We are people. We have fear and love and so do they.

If peace begins with understanding, then this article below (and works like it) are important in cutting through the CNN/CNBC/WSJ propaganda, which teaches us to hate those in the Axis of So-And-So. We are taught to hate and fear them as an important mechanism in building support for wars abroad which have nothing whatsoever to do with democracy, freedom, or equality. They have everything to do with oil, wealth, exploitation, and paranoia.

The sad fact is that as long as we in the West try to foist our world views upon other societies, they are catalyzed to resist, galvanizing around regimes which promise to Defend their freedom, honour, and dignity. If democracy is to spread throughout the world then it must germinate and flourish within the hearts of indigenous peoples. It worked for us…

-Ian.

—– http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/ 0,7792,820885,00.html Inside the ‘axis of so-and-so’

Although Iran is often portrayed as a hardline theocracy, there is a vibrancy about its society that is rarely found in its Arab neighbours, writes Brian Whitaker

Monday October 28, 2002

It’s not very often, I must confess, that women beg me to change seats on a plane in order to sit next to them.

No matter how much I may have fantasised about such things, I had certainly never imagined being approached by a hijab-wearing but discreetly flirtatious Iranian woman travelling alone on a flight from London to Tehran.

“Please help me,” she said, deploying the oldest chat-up line in the book. “I have problem with my English lesson.”

And so we passed a few innocently romantic hours with English verbs and prepositions in exchange for a smattering of Farsi phrases that I hoped would prove useful during my first visit to Iran.

As we came in to land, my companion pointed out of the window. “Ayatollah Khomeini died,” she said, indicating the burial place of the man who led the Islamic revolution. Recalling the hysterical scenes at his funeral some years ago, I imagined his loss was still a matter of grief for Iranians and made suitably respectful noises.

But the Iran Air steward, who happened to be passing and had seen her pointing, leaned over and said: “Why are you showing him that? Show him something nice instead.”

From that point on, I knew that some basic preconceptions were about to be shaken. Since the revolution, Iran has been known as the Islamic Republic and recently joined, as one Iranian politician put it, the “Axis of so-and-so”.

In the west, we are so familiar with the TV images of fanatical, chanting Iranian crowds that we tend to imagine this goes on all the time. The first revelation on arriving is that the outward trappings of religion are far less apparent in Tehran than in Cairo; it is one of the most secular-looking cities in the Middle East.

And those giant murals saying “Death to America” – much sought after by visiting photographers – are also rather scarce, though they can be found if you look for them.

The second revelation is that the vast majority of Iranians are perfectly normal human beings. If they’re fanatical about anything, it’s their fondness for all things kitsch.

None of this helps to solve the puzzle of Iranian politics but merely complicates it. On one hand there is an elected president and a parliament whose members are chosen in fiercely contested ballots by voters who may be as young as 16 (since at 16 they were considered old enough to be slaughtered in the war with Iraq).

On the other, there are the elderly theologians who approve or reject candidates for election, lay down the law on other matters and often, though not always, get their way.

Determining the relative influence of these elements, and that of the factions within them, provides constant employment for foreign analysts. It’s almost impossible to talk in a meaningful way about the Iranian government without saying which bit of it you’re referring to.

One thing is clear, however. The gerontocracy creates the moral codes which others feel obliged to undermine. Thanks to the ayatollahs, defiance is almost a national pastime.

Around 70% to 80% of the population has access to satellite television, though dishes are illegal and occasionally get seized. Forged cards for the receivers cost a very reasonable £5 or so.

The popularity of satellite TV is scarcely surprising. Films on the legal Iranian channels are cut to remove any kissing, and the sound is dubbed so that boyfriends and girlfriends become brother and sister – which in most cases makes a mockery of the story line.

The hijab, of course, is compulsory and foreign women visiting Iran are expected to comply, too. A notice at the airport requesting their cooperation begins: “Dear Sisters, hijab is the expression of our Islamic civilisation …”

According to Dr Nasrollah Mostofi, Iran’s tourism supremo, this has now been enshrined by the United Nations in its global code of ethics for tourism as a way of respecting “indigenous peoples’ values”.

The reality among Iran’s “indigenous people” is that many – particularly the younger women – cover as little hair as possible, teasing the headscarf back until it is perched almost on the back of their head. If someone stares disapprovingly, they rearrange it with an expression of innocence that says: “Oh dear, look what the wind has done to my scarf.”

Unlike Saudi Arabia, Iranian women can – and do – drive cars. In theory they can also hold any official position except that of a judge. Contact between unrelated members of the opposite sex is supposedly forbidden, but it goes on nevertheless.

In Isfahan after nightfall, boys and girls cruise the main streets. The girls write their mobile phone numbers on scraps of paper, which they drop for the boys to pick up. The boys call them on the on the phone, eyeing their quarry across the street.

On the outskirts of Tehran, there’s Jamshidieh Park, a vast and picturesque area of woods and streams, cafes and picnic spots constructed by the late Shah – though people hasten to add that it has improved greatly since the Islamic revolution.

The park is also a popular retreat for the young, not least because its steep stone stairways are enough to deter the elderly or infirm from venturing far – and what the mullahs don’t see, the mullahs don’t complain about.

Jamshidieh Park does, however, have a darker side. Last week, a man was hanged there in public for killing a policeman, since the Iranian preference is to carry out executions at the scene of the crime.

I decided not to witness the hanging, though I’m told that on these occasions people usually start camping out around three or four in the morning in order to get a good view.

Unlike Jamshidieh, a neighbouring slope is treeless and bare, apart from the vast concrete wall that surrounds it. This is Evian prison, though there are no buildings to be seen on the surface. The whole structure – built by the Shah but still utilised by the Islamic regime – is inside the mountain. At least one Iranian journalist is currently locked up in its dungeons.

Despite such medieval practices, Tehran is essentially a modern capital with modern urban problems: traffic jams, pollution, drugs, HIV and all the rest. Viewed from the mountains nearby, a thick brown cloud of fumes rises from the city as the morning rush gets under way and hangs there for the rest of the day.

Hefty state subsidies mean petrol is sold at 20% its market price – which only encourages congestion. Regardless of the change of regime in neighbouring Afghanistan, vast quantities of drugs – hashish, opium, morphine and heroin – continue flowing into, and through, Iran.

In the first nine months of this year, the authorities seized 113 tonnes of drugs and arrested more than 84,000 suspected dealers. In the same period, 42 police officers have been killed – or martyred, as the Iranians prefer to say – in the battle against drugs.

According to Ali Hashemi, the presidential adviser on drugs, the situation is now much worse than it was when the Taliban were in power, because the new Afghan government has so little control.

Among a population approaching 70 million, an estimated 275,000 Iranians are addicted to heroin – which has led in turn to a spread of HIV infection. The heady days of the Islamic revolution have clearly gone but the country is still evolving, both socially and politically.

What is often portrayed as a battle between conservatives and reformers, or between theocracy and democracy, is actually a lot more complex. Neither side is monolithic and the dividing lines between them are often blurred.

It might also be portrayed as a battle between the young and the old, between the generation that remembers the Shah and the generation that does not. Amid the carnage of the eight-year war with Iraq, the ayatollahs sought to replenish their martyrs by turning Iran into a vast baby factory – with the result that half the population today is below the age of 15. And they are reaping the consequences.

In order to provide work for the rising generation, they now have to create 760,000 new jobs every year – an almost impossible feat which helps to explain the frustrations of the young.

But perhaps the old-versus-young theory is an over-simplification too. Last July the elderly Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri announced his retirement as prayer leader in Isfahan with a searing letter that struck a chord across the generation gap.

Attacking “the crocodile of power”, he spoke of “the hellish gap between poverty and wealth … a sick economy, bureaucratic corruption, desperately weak administrators, the growing flaws in the country’s political structure, embezzlement, bribery and addiction, and the failure to find effective solutions”.

None of this was couched in terms that questioned the value of the 1979 revolution but, rather, suggested that the revolution had strayed from its original goals.

Since then, the ayatollah has been silent. A soldier stands guard outside his house and turns away visitors on the grounds that the ayatollah is not at home. Officials say this is for his own protection, though to others it looks suspiciously like house arrest.

Iranians certainly indulge in hard-ball politics, with lots of casualties along the way, but there’s also a vibrancy about it that is rarely found, for instance, in the Arab countries with their sterile politics, their time-serving leaders and their grovelling journalists.

In Iran, it’s politics with a purpose. Newspapers speak their minds and get closed down by the dozen – only to reappear under a different name.

“The important matter is that issues surface, in the news media or in parliamentary debates,” says Massoumeh Ebtekar, who is one of Iran’s six vice-presidents and the highest-ranking woman in the country. “Nothing is being covered up.”

What is developing in Iran, she says, is “a novel form of democracy – a religious democracy. It has its own red lines, it has its own norms and values, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to work out.”

Along with other Iranian officials, she dismisses the idea that the United States will seek “regime change” in Iran after dealing with Iraq. But she argues that efforts by foreigners – particularly the Americans – to force the pace of reform in Iran have had the opposite effect, strengthening the hand of the conservatives.

“The reform process has been endangered by foreign pressures,” she says. “Democracy would have proceeded much more smoothly without those pressures.”

Email brian.whitaker [at] guardian.co [dot] uk

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> From: “Mises Daily Article”