Today is Uzbek Independence Day. As Nathan ably explains over at Registan, a group of bloggers have pledged to blog in favor of sanction on Uzbekistani cotton. The end is to pressure President Karimov and to raise international awareness that he is noted violator of human rights. Cotton is symbolic of the area's problems (the disappearing Aral Sea), and it is harvested with the help of child labor (in Kazakhstan, children are pulled from school en masse to go to the fields; do not be surprised if the same occurs just south of there). On the other hand, farmers are paid to grow cotton, and be it as it may that that is a poor economic program, that's still money into the hands of the poor, so without knowing what would replace that income if cotton sanctions were enforced, I'm hesitant to call for such a ban on so little notice.

But I'm more than willing to increase international awareness of this man Karimov's doings. With apologies for my tired laziness, that is my situation, and it's free (sponsored) pass day at the Economist, so I invite you to read an editorial the Economist staff published last week.

Punishment please
Aug 25th 2005
From The Economist print edition

America and the European Union have let a dictator get away with murder

ON MAY 13th, the authorities in Uzbekistan opened fire on a peaceful demonstration of close to 10,000 people in the eastern city of Andijan, probably killing several hundred of them and possibly as many as 1,000. According to survivors, tanks rolled through the main square, firing indiscriminately, snipers picked off their victims from convenient buildings, and, later on, soldiers shot some of the wounded dead. That was three months ago. Since then, the European Union and America have expressed their horror at the worst massacre of demonstrators since Tiananmen Square by imposing the following sanctions on Uzbekistan:

1.

2.

3.

Weary observers of realpolitik might think that they have seen it all before: that the democracies often enough turn a blind eye to misdeeds of dictators like Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov when it suits them. But this is something special. On few, if any, occasions since the cold war has so little been done by so many in the face of such atrocity. At least China was thrown into the diplomatic ice-box for a few years after Tiananmen, and the arms embargo imposed on it is largely intact 16 years on. Myanmar remains a pariah even among pariahs—in both cases for misdeeds on about the same scale as Andijan. America claims that it is indeed pondering sanctions, but awaiting Europe's lead. This not a widely noted feature of its foreign policy these days, but there is a kind of sense behind it. A former member of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan is a part of the widest of Europe's concentric circles. It is a member of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and it has a partnership and co-operation agreement (PCA) with the EU. So there is some justification in allowing Europe, with its famous common foreign and security policy, to take the lead.

f so, the European Union has risen to the occasion as grandly as it did over Bosnia, Iraq and on so many other occasions: with a display of spinelessness worthy of a sea full of jellyfish. First, in June, it demanded that Uzbekistan submit to an international investigation to determine precisely what happened in Andijan. Failure to comply by July 1st, it terrifyingly threatened, might lead to a “partial suspension” of the PCA. Some countries wanted to go so far as to threaten a visa ban for (some) Uzbek officials and possibly even an arms embargo—but that was reckoned to be a bit too tough.

July 1st came and went, as did August 1st. Still the EU has done nothing. It has tried to send a ranking bureaucrat, one Jan Kubis, to take a look: but Uzbekistan has refused to let him go to Andijan. Fortunately, outfits such as Human Rights Watch, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe have proved more enterprising than Mr Kubis—so there is no excuse to be made that the EU does not have a pretty good idea of what happened. The latest word is that the issue of Uzbekistan may be looked at when the EU's foreign ministers meet in Wales on September 1st. But it is not even certain that the massacre of about 500 people by one of Europe's associates will merit a discussion there. Meanwhile, the Uzbek government is pressing ahead with its own investigation of what happened on May 13th. This involves beating “confessions” out of demonstrators who are made to say that they carried weapons to the square, and forcing neighbouring Kirgizstan to send Uzbek refugees back before they can tell any more tales to journalists, NGO workers, or even Mr Kubis.

But doesn't the West ignore equally grisly abuses in Chechnya? Yes, but there it can at least be argued that friendship with Russia is in its vital interest. Friendship with Uzbekistan is not. Uzbekistan has gas, but it is not very accessible to westerners. And until now America has had an airbase, but others in the region will do just as well. The failure to punish Mr Karimov discredits the West, and provides ammunition to its enemies. It has gone on for far too long.

I have, truth be told, one of the word's worst poker faces. It's a useful way of expressing skepticism (or distaste) without actually saying anything, but on the other hand, it can get me into trouble, such as when someone says "You look like you were pondering something: what?" (Hopefully, it was just something random and obscure, and I can answer honestly rather than refuse the question.)

I'm fairly sure that I failed a job interview today with the words

I didn't start doing it because it would somehow be useful to my career.

They were asking if I participated in any somewhat organized activities that might bring me into contact with strategic employees of other organizations.

I think my friends are well aware that I did not befriend them with any thoughts one way or the other about the names on their paychecks.

Comments are open for gripes about DC, or reasons why your hometown is superior to it, or suggestions as to the best location for opening a cabin in the woods.

The argument about whether or not to shoot the looters cannot be removed from the question of institutions.

Glenn Reynolds and Dave Kopel support armed response to at least some looting activity. Eric Mueller describes the idea as "reprehensible" but without much argument as to why. Ted Frank attempts to defend the shoot-the-looters program, but concedes that there may not be enough law enforcement on the ground to do the job and Orin Kerr points out the corollary to this concession, that without an adequate law enforcement organization, vigilante defense of law-and-order may be anarchy, not law.

To sum up: The concrete question of whether looters in New Orleans ought to be shot in order to preserve what little order remains cannot be abstracted from the question of 1, who is to do the shooting, and 2, how they are to know who the looters are. The basic paradox is that the more the social order is put in peril, the harder it will be to find a trustworthy and transparent group of people to save it. Strong anti-looting social norms might help here, but it will be difficult to develop them via internet in the next 24 hours, however hard Professors Reynolds and Kopel try. I suppose the obvious institutional alternative would be comic-book superheroes, but they are in short supply.

Today I met what I hope is the absolute nadir of the Yale Library System-- the antiquated and execrable MUDD social science library. So far as I can tell the thing really doesn't have that many books, which makes its position on the outskirts of campus, its policy of non-circulation for numerous U.N. documents, its nonfunctional cataloguing system, and mostly-absent reference- and circulation- help all the more bizarre. How hard would it be to simply append all of this stuff to some obscure basement of the main library?

It's like long-term storage with none of the convenience.