One hundred years ago the terrorist was usually Eastern European in flavour, smelled a little of garlic, moved in the shadows of the big European capitals like London and Paris, plotting on behalf of a nasty foreign government some terrible outrage.

Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent (1907) is the classic novel that transports us into the world of these dangerous characters.

Terrorism's essence Conrad writes: “[A] bomb outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond the intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be purely destructive.”

But how dangerous is that threat measured against what governments can do to each other or against their own citizens?

Not very.

The Islamic terrorist phobia being pushed in the United States is not unlike the threat from Communism to the United States in the 1950s.

Tiny.

http://www.fujiarts.com/cgi-bin/item.pl?item=112463 

Real danger?

Try Mao whose mad economics seems to starved about 45 million of his own citizens.

And modern countries with modern weapons that disagree about the right way to run the world none of which are Islamic.

Articles questioning the threat from Islamic countries, typical of Islamic fear mongering, reminding us that the real issue for global peace is the big and powerful finding common agreement on how to run the world, and news that Mao did great harm to his own people.

Also articles about the rise in Americans in poverty, the impact of low interest rates on savings, the OECD looks at Canadian health care, and some things about Japan.

As Hamed Abdel-Samad explains the Islamic world is not well and poses no real threat.

In the western world, an astounding number of people believe that Islam is overpowering and on the rise. But as Hamed Abdel-Samad explains, today’s Islam is seriously ill — and, both culturally and socially, is in retreat. He argues that the religion can offer few, if any, constructive answers to the questions of the 21st century.  http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=8696

Unless of course you allow your foreign policy and the liberties in your own society to be twisted by the most recent paranoia.

The Islamic terrorist next door. The 21st century bogeyman.

Two ominous trends are converging in a way that could greatly complicate the U.S. struggle against Islamic terrorism.  http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20100918_5014.php

The early 20th century bogeyman. Mister Verloc.

"Mr Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law. It could be done, because there was very little business at any time, and practically none at all before the evening. Mr Verloc cared but little about his ostensible business. And, moreover, his wife was in charge of his brother-in-law."    http://www.online-literature.com/conrad/secret_agent/1/ 

(ed's note: we need a War on Nonsense more than a War on Terror).

Philip Stephens reminds us that real danger is how powerful countries think about the world. A world order rooted in the legal sovereignty of nations with a relatively free movement of capital, goods and people or a world order rooted in what can be taken and held.

Behind every conversation about how dangerous the world will turn out to be resides a simple question. To what degree will the big powers, old and new, locate their national interests in a shared understanding of collective security? We don’t know the answer but the present direction of travel is not at all encouraging.  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9b2a8d70-c1c6-11df-9d90-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss&ftcamp=crm/email/2010917/nbe/Comment/product

Mao's 45 million corpses.

Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday.   http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/maos-great-leap-forward-killed-45-million-in-four-years-2081630.html

 

Some light reading on the great leader.

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have revealed Mao as one of the 20th century's greatest monsters.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jun/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview10

 

US census results show a rise in number of people in poverty.

In the second year of a brutal recession, the ranks of the American poor soared to their highest level in half a century and millions more are barely avoiding falling below the poverty line, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/16/AR2010091602698.html?wpisrc=nl_most

 

Related.

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/news_conferences/20-09-16_news_conference.html 

The Wall Street Journal's take.

The downturn that some have dubbed the "Great Recession" has trimmed the typical household's income significantly, new Census data show, following years of stagnant wage growth that made the past decade the worst for American families in at least half a century.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703440604575495670714069694.html?mod=ITP_pageone_0

The Financial Times' take.

Poverty among the working-age population of the US rose to the highest level for almost 50 years in 2009, as the human cost of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression was laid bare in new census data.   http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2c34e206-c1b4-11df-9d90-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=crm/email/2010917/nbe/Newsmine/product

More on the 210 million unemployed.  Pdf below 'A IMF Challenges of Growth, Employment'

THE IMF and the ILO have put together a little collaboration that seems primarily designed to represent the IMF as something more than the big, faceless bureaucracy that's always advocating painful austerity.   http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/09/employment

Toronto Dominion Economics' Global Forecast. Pdf below 'TD Global Forecast'.

The Economist writes about the risks of low interest rates. People must save more now for retirement and spend less because the power of compound interest is lost with low interest rates. Recovery, what recovery? Deflation's fangs.

“JOHN BULL can stand many things but he cannot stand two per cent.” That aphorism, quoted by Walter Bagehot, a 19th-century editor of The Economist, expressed savers’ traditional distaste for very low interest rates.  http://www.economist.com/node/17043652?Story_ID=17043652&fsrc=nlw|hig|09-16-2010|editors_highlights

Bigots will always play the immigration card with lousy mathematics. Toronto mayoralty candidate Rob Ford is no different.

Our very good friend Steve Paikin and The Agenda discuss.

Canada: A Welcoming Country? Last month, when Tamil migrants arrived on Canadian shores, Canadian arms were not open. Are the Tamils refugees? Are they terrorists? Has Canada forgotten her welcoming roots?  http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=42

Canada's middling health care system.

The OECD’s latest edition of Health at a Glance shows that all countries could do better in providing good quality health care.  http://www.oecd.org/document/51/0,3343,en_2649_33929_44220787_1_1_1_1,00.html

Comparing health care. Pdf below 'OECD on Canadian Health Care'.

The National Post on the need for privatisation and competition. Given the public's appetite for this issue, Health Care: For The Next Generation.

The OECD this week recommended ....  http://www.nationalpost.com/Improving+health+care+without+crushing+taxpayers/3531320/story.html

Three articles from Japan that may hold up a mirror to Canada.

This story about a Japanese nurse acquitted of tormenting two elderly people with dementia because she cut their fingernails enough to cause bleeding in the nursing home she worked may just be random.

But it may also be partly about the frustration that wells up in a society that is ageing quickly and growing slowly. 

The drips of intolerance with the old man that can't get the change out his pocket at the cashier, the old lady drifting along at half the speed limit in a big old gas guzzler, the conversations about where to put mom and dad now that they need someone to change their diapers and wash them.

You know.

A high court acquitted a nurse in Fukuoka Prefecture on Thursday of injuring two elderly patients with dementia whose nails were removed while she cut them in 2007, recognizing her act as "necessary and proper" nursing care.  http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/nn20100917a8.html

When I lived in Tokyo the first time 1983-1994 I was fortunate through the introduction of now United States Executive Director for the Asian Development Bank Ambassador Robert 'Skipp' Orr to be introduced to Jim Foster.

Jim was in the political section of the US Embassy in Tokyo and he is one of the most thoughtful observers of Japan it was ever my privilege to know.

Here he co-authors a piece on the opportunity and need to repair US-Japanese relations.

Life rarely gives chances for a fresh start. But the launch of a new cabinet under Prime Minister Naoto Kan in Japan following the bruising leadership race in the Democratic Party of Japan offers just that opportunity.   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/opinion/16iht-edfoster.html?_r=2&ref=global

Why the intervention by Japan to weaken its currency is hopeless while deflation stalks the land.

If Tokyo’s currency intervention was simply a device to prevent financial markets from overshooting, as they often do, then it would be both worthwhile and feasible.  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89eec30a-c1c6-11df-9d90-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=crm/email/2010917/nbe/Newsmine/product