The distinction between the legal order in Western democracies and the tyrannies of Stalinist Russia or modern China or the Arab gulf states, is often thought to be stark. In Britain in particular, we are complacent that 800 years of the common law will protect us against the overreaching power of state functionaries.

Today comes a case that shows this conceit to be ill-founded. It was already widely known that the Home Secretary would like the power to lock anyone up for seven weeks on her say-so. But it is not in effect yet, and is likely to be opposed in parliament. Who knew that the British state is already punishing 70 people with effective suspension of all their economic rights on mere accusation, by freezing their assets by Treasury order without any legal warrant or process?

The Terrorism (UN Measures) Order 2006 and the 2006 al-Qaeda and Taleban (UN Measures) Order were made under section 1 of the 1946 UN Act in order to implement resolutions of the UN Security Council. These orders are not parliamentary instruments but "orders in council" - the council in question being the Queen's Privy Council, so that the rules under which (according to solicitors for the victims)...

We have the madness of civil servants checking Tesco receipts, a child having to ask for a receipt every time it does a chore by running to the shops for a pint of milk and a neighbour possibly committing a criminal offence by lending a lawnmower.

...have not troubled parliament even under the pathetic 'negative resolution' procedure by which most of our law is now made. Nor has any judge or other independent authority been in involved in these seizures or assessed the evidence (if any) that justifies them. Nor is there any time limit. Or need to bring charges to support the indefinite punishment.

Which remains, though the learned judge found it entirely illegal, indefinite:

Jonathan Crow QC, for HM Treasury, had told him the UK government would be left in violation of a UN Security Council order were the orders to be quashed immediately.

The Treasury said the asset-freezing regime and individual asset freezes would remain in place pending the appeal.

A spokesman said the asset-freezing regime made an "important contribution" to national security by helping prevent funds being used for terrorism and was "central to our obligations under successive UN Security Council resolutions".

To which I say, and not for the first time, damn the UN. Neither the UN nor Treasury officials are supposed to make our law. And if this proscription stands, then we might as well have no law.

I never get tired of looking at this photograph. It never fails to fill me with wonder and awe at the ingenuity of my species who, against all the odds, have carved these glorious man-made islands of light out of the primordial blackness. Whenever I am heavy of heart, I open up this photograph and stare at it to remind me that, somewhere, there is light and life.

And there is. For now.

Towns and cities around the world are turning out the lights for an hour to highlight the threat of climate change.

Sydney was the first major city to begin "Earth Hour", when at 2000 (0900 GMT), lights went out on landmarks like the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

Bangkok, Toronto, Chicago and Dublin are among 27 other cities officially due to follow suit at 2000 local time.

With each passing day I become more convinced that the 'green' movement is actually a millenarian psychosis; a mental and spiritual sickness borne, perhaps, from some degree of civilisational exhaustion. Not just a belief that the end of the world is nigh, but an active desire to bring it about. And soon. Ours is not the first age to witness such pandemics of madness but, in the Middle Ages at least, there was the excuse of a near-universal poverty. In such a state of interminable plight, despair may not be the wisest response but it is at least an understandable one.

But now we live in an age of near-universal prosperity and progress. Never before has our species enjoyed such security and such freedom from want. Yet this is clearly no defence against a recurrance of this psychological plague.

Some pubs are spending the evening without the lights on while many Australians are marking the occasion quietly in the darkness at home.

Life, laughter, love, food, drink, warmth, travel, communication, progress, a world full of unprecedented wonders and it's all too much for them. Better to sit in the darkness and curse the lighting of even a single candle.

'Stop the world, I want to get off' was the plaintive refrain of some Broadway comedy show I think. It could also be the motto for the greens, except that they want everybody off. Is that what they aspire to as they sit at home quietly in that seductive, undemanding cloak of blackness? To switch off civilisation and shuffle away into the perpetual tenebrosity dragging everyone else behind them?

The conditions are ripe for the spread of this insanity. Indeed, it is spreading now. How long will it be, I wonder, before some official body somewhere floats the idea of mandatory blackouts and curfews? "The voluntary approach" they will proclaim, "has not worked".

And what do we do in response? Laugh at them? Ignore them? Rage against them? What would work to innoculate the rest of our species? What combination or words or phrases could we use to dissipate and lay low a viral madness? I am, of course, familiar with the customary rebuttals. "We will win because we have MTV and Coca-Cola". But without the light there is no MTV, there is no Coca-Cola. What do we have then?

The lights are not yet going out all over the world. But I fear that I will see them do so in our lifetime.

A lot of elections at the moment. Besides the US elections, we have just had the Spanish elections and in my wife's small country, Malta, the ruling Nationalist Party, a vaguely right-of-centre party that supported Malta's entry into the EU and the euro, won by an incredibly slender margin (just over a thousand votes). As I have a vested interest in Malta remaining a broadly open country, I am glad that the party won, or at least relieved that Labour, the main opposition party with a vindictively regulatory streak, did not. But my views on Malta's election are tinged with a bitter-sweet taste as the Nationalists, for all their generally pro-enterprise views, have made serious errors. The party took Malta into the EU. By staying out of the EU, Malta could have retained and expanded its status as an offshore tax haven, providing Monaco, the Swiss, Liechtenstein and Gibraltar with some useful competition as a friendly venue. Malta has quite a thriving IT and financial sector and English is widely spoken there, a priceless advantage. By keeping out of the EU, it could also have avoided becoming a conduit for tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who use the small island as an entry point for the EU. Malta, an island the size of the Isle of Wight with half a million people, is not a country that can easily absorb a large influx. But as my better half points out, Malta, a Catholic country, has long feared the shadow of its Muslim neighbour, Libya, just a hundred miles or so to the south, and sees EU membership as somehow tying it ever more closely to a non-Muslim population. The Maltese are quite a tolerant bunch but they are fiercely pro-western. The Archbishop of Canterbury would be thrown into Valetta's Grand Harbour.

One reason for the closeness of the elections is that there is a lot of anger at the governing party, even among most moderate voters, at some of the crasser building developments in the densely populated island. Even the most ardent defender of free enterprise will sometimes struggle to defend the ugly high-rise developments in part of the island that have gone up next to the attractive, honey-coloured buildings along parts of the country (in the smaller neighbouring island of Gozo, such developments have been far fewer, thankfully). Tourism is a crucial source of income for Malta; its historic buildings are part of its appeal, so long-term tourist entrepreneurs should hopefully follow their self-interest and avoid damaging the very thing that makes Malta a nice place to visit. This is an interesting subject for economists: ugly developments make money for investors in the short run and arguably, are better than no development at all, but the long run costs can be in the form of less tourism overall as would-be visitors go elsewhere for somewhere prettier.

Anyway, back on topic: this has to have been one of the closest election results I have ever read about.

Richard Dawkins is someone whom I generally admire in the field of science. He is on the right side of the argument, in my view, in excoriating attempts to portray 'intelligent design' (creationism) as science; much of what he says about religion is true and he is a sharp, lucid commenter about scientific issues. But alas, that does not mean his grip on reality is particularly strong when it comes to other matters. Take his recent comments about the supposedly enormous influence of Jews on US foreign policy, which have already provoked a lot of comment.

My own take on all this is as follows: Dawkins is not anti-semitic and it would be pretty outrageous to suggest as such; I don't think he is trying to say that Jews totally control the foreign policy of the world's most powerful nation, only that they have a lot of influence in proportion to their numbers. But what Dawkins plainly does not consider - assuming his remarks have been reported accurately - is how the 'Jewish lobby' is not some sort of undifferentiated mass. Also, consider some of the main policymakers in Washington: Dick Cheney and Condi Rice. They are not Jews; neither, as far as I know, is Don Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, etc. Nor do I think that the policy of the US/other major nations has necessarily favoured Israel vs other Middle East countries. Arguably, if the Jewish lobby was as powerful as some say, then the US would have sanctioned the ability of Israel - which certainly has the means - to reduce its foes to radioactive dust. Anyway, a desire to protect the state of Israel from annihilation - a threat that is all too real if one takes the ravings of Iran's leadership seriously - is a noble one. Israel is, with all its faults, one of the few functioning liberal democracies in the Middle East (that is partly what drives its Islamic foes nuts, of course). Even if one subtracts the beneficent impact of foreign aid, Israel's domestic economic success is a standing rebuke to the theocracies that surround it.

If Dawkins wants to press the claims of atheists, fine (as an atheist myself, I count myself an admirer of what Dawkins has done to challenge religious superstition). But he does himself no favours by repeating the tired mantras about the vast influence of the Jewish lobby.

Classical liberal scholar, Randy Barnett has a long and excellent post (which I came across via Instapundit) spelling out some of the contradictions that occur when libertarians, be they minarchists, anarchists or more 'pragmatic' types, get into arguments about events like the war in Iraq (I have been called a lot of names, but hey, I can deal with branded a warmonger and a sappy peacenic, as has happened).

In particular, he notes something that some of us at Samizdata have observed many times, which is that for a certain kind of isolationist libertarian, they almost endow foreign, sovereign governments with the sort of respect that they never have for their own states. Barnett calls this the "Westphalian" attitude (derived from the Treaty of Westphalia in the 17th Century which recognised sovereign state's boundaries in Europe at the end of the 30 Years' War). Barnett ends up by making a point that I would make, which is that judging the rightness or wrongness of certain wars cannot be done by simple recourse to a sort of Rothbardian non-initiation-of-force principle, even though that principle is mighty useful as a sort of discussion point (Rothbard is a hero of mine, notwithstanding certain problems I have with his specific views). Judging, for example, whether regime or thug X poses country Y an existential threat, and what to do about it, cannot be done simply by parroting a few principles. One has to judge the facts of the situation and ask questions such as, "is this war prudent"? or "Will it make threats to us worse rather than better?", or "What are the balance of risks?". Prudence, as the Greeks knew, is a virtue, although it seems at times a little unfashionable to point that out. With the benefit of hindsight, prudence might have led us to take a rather different view of what to do about Saddam, assuming we had to do anything other than deter him by threatening to nuke him out of existence (but then, that shows that acting in strict self defence can come at the cost of killing millions of innocent people, which is not exactly libertarian. Does this mean "strict" libertarians must be pacifists?).

Anyway, Barnett's essay is first class. For the more straightforward anti-war line out of the libertarian tradition, Gene Healy of the CATO Institute still has what I think is the best essay on the subject. It reads pretty well in the light of events. Both articles are pretty long so brew up plenty of coffee first.

Tyler Cowen notes an unsavoury fact about the Chinese economic miracle:

...of the 3,220 Chinese citizens with a personal wealth of 100 million yuan ($13 million) or more, 2,932 are children of high-level cadres. Of the key positions in the five industrial sectors - finance, foreign trade, land development, large-scale engineering and securities - 85% to 90% are held by children of high-level cadres.

Cowen lifted the above quote from an interesting article that details how the regime in Beijing controls economic data coming out of the Middle Kingdom, which helps to prompt foreign investors to keep funding the great confidence trick that is the modern Chinese economy.

The family connections of China's super-rich and captains of industry must be considered alongside rosy economic statistics provided that expound China's development. These filial links between the commanding heights of China's supposedly private sector and its government betray the fact that China Inc. is the unholy alliance of a dictatorial regime and the application of corrupted 'free' market ideals. Such an arrangement will fail in due course, and will probably fail spectacularly since it has come this far.

I would like to draw your attention to what's happened to The Times's Law section in the noughties. Once upon a time this was a lively mini-newspaper on a Tuesday, aimed at lawyers, with two or three substantial comment pieces, news, Law Reports and lots of job ads. Now it is a single sheet of newsprint, and found buried inside a growing section entitled Public Agenda.

From an advertisement in last week's Economist:

Devolution Trust for Community Empowerment (DTCE), a Pakistan based non-governmental organisation funded by a consortium of donors through UNDP, is plannning to undertake a social audit in 110 districts across the country compatible with baseline social audit established in 2001/02 and first annual follow-up application undertaken in 2004/05. The objective of the exercise is to obtain policy feedback on citizens' views and experience in relation to key public services sectors like health, education, water and sanitation, police, access to justice and engagement in local governance arrangements. The study design should consider the comparison overtime [sic] with the baseline and follow-up applicaions in citizens' views, use and experience of public services under the devolved local government system in Pakistan with a strong element of institutionalization of the social audit process.

Meanwhile, working the other way round, a flyer reaches me from De Havilland information services [no relation] for a conference on "Embedding the Third Sector in Public Services":

Third Sector public service delivery is a new, effective and exciting avenue to further revolutionise and modernise service provision as we know it. However, this is no longer an innovation, it is a reality and public money already funds multiple public services through third sector organisations. It is acknowledged that the opportunities, expertise and fresh, grass-roots approach the third sector brings will bring improvement and better value to public services.

Major efforts to reinforce this through building an infrastructure and action planning to rationalize and embed this are underway in te Third Sector Review, recently conducted by the Office of the Third Sector. The final report is due in March [and?] will culminate in summarising the sector's contribution and propose how this will work in a better, stronger, more resilient infrastructure.

[all sic]

The Office of the Third Sector is very pleased with what has happened to the role of charities, and will be colonising more of British civil society presently..

"Metaphors furnish clues to transformation, but they are not the powers that resist or engender such new realities," a literary theorist once wrote.

For some reason, my home turf of East Anglia will not stay off the news

For sale: the world's smallest country with its own flag, stamps, currency and passports.

Apply to Prince Michael of Sealand if you want to run your own storm-tossed nation - even if it is just a wartime fort perched on two concrete towers in the North Sea.

Built in World War Two as an anti-aircraft base against German bombers, the derelict platform was taken over 40 years ago by retired army major Paddy Roy Bates who went to live there with his family.

Sealand, which is based off Felixstowe, one of Europe's largest container ports, has in its time been raided by the authorities, who have been at their wits' end to know what to do about the feisty Bates family. The place has even featured as an inspiration for people trying to harness encryption to make new forms of offshore banking possible, although I suspect that after 9/11, it will become impossible for a place like this to carry out totally private banking operations without countries such as Britain taking fairly robust action.

Even so, in his way, Bates has been a bit of a hero. He has established one of the longest-running 'private nations' on the planet in recent history. I wish him and his family the best.

This website is worth a read for material about offshore communities. And of course do not forget the Free State Project.

Every day or two I visit The Croydonian, and today The Croydonian links to an amazing report. Papua New Guinea is having a row with Australia, about an Australian evildoer who escape in a Papua New Guinea airplane, and Papua New Guinea is now threatening a range of nasty things against Australia, of which this, apparently, is the most nasty:

The most serious step being contemplated is the suspension of significant elements of Australian aid deemed not essential to PNG, the Herald understands.

Yes, you did read that right. Papua New Guinea is threatening to cut off aid, from Australia to Papua New Guinea! Imagine the consternation that must now be sweeping through the Australian aiding classes. They do not want us to help them any more! Worse: Perhaps they do not think we were helping.

Is this an idea whose time has come?

Having given up trying to stay PM and handed over the kulturcampf to Mr Brown, St Anthony now wishes to save the world:

In his strongest warning yet on the environment, the prime minister will tell fellow EU leaders that the world faces "conflict and insecurity" unless it acts now. "We have a window of only 10-15 years to take the steps we need to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points," Mr Blair says, in a joint letter with his Dutch counterpart, Jan Peter Balkenende.

I am not interested for this purpose in whether he is right about 'catastrophic tipping points'. It is entirely possible he is. It is interesting that this is certainly not from his own knowledge. And since actually no one knows enough about climate to say under what conditions, never mind when, a catastrophe, bifurcation, flip, transition... whatever you would like to call it... might occur, then the fact the firm limit of years is reported as as little as 7 in some places, and up to 25 elsewhere, should not worry us.

What should, is the contradiction between the millenarian rhetoric and the irrelevance in its own terms of the hair-shirt policy that we are being exhorted to adopt. If the quantity of CO₂ in the atmosphere will cause catastrophe at some threshold level, then capping emissions from human activity merely postpones reaching the threshold. By not very much.

If things are that bad either: (1) We should find ways yet unknown to make global human greenhouse-gas emissions close to zero or net negative. (Sorry, no cooked food - except sun-baked and geyser-boiled - until we do.) Or (2) we should enjoy the party at the end of the world. But it seems those in charge do not know the difference between quantity and rate.

Now that is really scary. Reality I can cope with. I am aware I'm going to die, and probably suffer disease and loss first. That the course of my life will be determined not by biology, physics and economics, but by messianic imbeciles with no grasp of any of them, is harder to bear.

For me; the non-exclusive or: technofix plus fun.

For the Head Boy; "Repent, o ye sinners or burn in hell on earth! Go, and sin no more. (Than you did in 1990)."

Work sent me to the Conservative Party conference in last week. It was dull. But I saw the Globalisation Institute had a fringe event so I went along and they gave us all some wine. They had Mark Malloch Brown, the UN's Deputy Secretary-General, give a speech in which he said this:

After all our efforts at reform, Kofi and I felt let down, if not betrayed, by the UN Human Rights Council's biased and unbalanced approach to the Lebanon conflict. They focussed solely on Israeli actions, while ignoring the atrocities committed by Hizbollah.

That certainly woke me up. It is comforting to hear someone from the UN be so honest. Perhaps next we will find that he is an avid reader of the website UNisEvil.com. Somehow I think it unlikely.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's national current affairs flagship, the 7.30 Report, ran an interesting piece on Peak Oil theory, which was surprisingly contrarian considering the ABC's traditional biases (think BBC protégé). The most common manifestation of Peak Oil theory - a belief that at some point soon oil production will peak and then decline, causing spiralling oil prices and a world of chaos - has long been a favourite of environmentalists, leftists and the perpetually gloomy. However, of late Peak Oil's slip is showing to such an extent that even an organisation like the ABC cannot deny it is distinctly iffy. I would go further; it's demonstrably false. Mark Nolan, ExxonMobil Australia's Chief Executive controversially stated earlier this week that

According to the US Geological Survey, the earth currently has more than three trillion barrels of conventional recoverable oil resources. So far, we have produced one trillion of that.

When an oil company representative talks like that, one tends to believe him - oil companies have a natural interest in maintaining a perception of scarcity to maintain upward pressure on the price of crude.

And he's referring to known oil reserves. Thanks to woeful underinvestment in exploration by - and equally woeful management of - many of the world's true oil majors, the state owned National Oil Companies (subscriber-only article, sorry), we may have knowledge of just the tip of the iceberg.

Considering the pace of development of alternative energy sources, the famous quote from former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Zaki Yamani that "the Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil." is looking more prophetic than ever. Peak Oil chaos? Stuff and nonsense.

Decidedly. This is one of those sentences, from one of those articles, that you read again and again in the hope that it might bear some reasonable meaning on closer inspection. No-one could really think that, could they? Today's prize for greatest misplaced faith in the state goes to The Guardian's Hywel Williams:

Middle Eastern tribalism, just like the African variety, is the direct result of colonial interference which frustrated the indigenous development of state-building.

For Mr Williams, the state is by definition good... but only when it is doing what he wants, promoting what he believes is social progress. The state is only the state for him when it is a mid-20th-century north European welfare auction. Otherwise it is a reversion to some more primitive social form, not a real state. If becomes an instrument for evil, then that is because it is not a proper state; someone must have interfered with it.

Nasty states that express tribalism are not in the 'Western tradition', but they are caused by colonialism in the Middle East and Africa, while Putin's Russia on the other hand looks "to its Slavic roots", and while Bush's America is (apparently) a tribalism of politicised evangelicalism.

It is perplexing how 'tribalism' will stretch to cover everything Mr Willams does not like, but still he purports to think that local states for local people are a good thing (if permitting the English self-government is going too far, tantamount to endorsing apartheid). "Modern democratic states" are what he wants. But to be acceptable they should all be alike in this, in that, and in the other respect. His way of government is best. How is that different from imperial interference?

I am still unconvinced of the isolationist argument vis Iraq that would have had Western militaries - and probably as a result civilians - quit the entire Middle East, and leave Saddam to wreak havoc as he has before, but my goodness, the case for non-interventionist foreign policy has never looked so good at the moment as the insurgency in Iraq gets worse. Jim Henley sums up the "do as little as possible" school of libertarian foreign policy as well as anyone:

If a war is worth years of struggle, billions squandered and thousands or tens of thousands of dead on both sides, why isn’t peaceful change worth as much? Why is it a “bold initiative” to announce a “generational struggle” to transform a region of the world through a war that might or might not achieve its ends, but preemptively absurd to launch a generational struggle to transform the same region through nonintervention, to instill liberalism and justice by exemplifying it? Because people might get killed? People get killed the other way. Because it might not work? Look around you. The other way isn’t working now.

My main problem with Jim's argument is that setting an example to the dictatorships, thugocracies etc of that region would strike me as a fairly drawn-out, if not rank impossible, endeavour (that's putting it politely, ed). We are talking about a process that might last thousands of years. And I am afraid that in the meantime, the various despots in that region might not quite get with the Enlightenment programme and develop a continued fondness for blowing infidels up. At best, I would say that such folk might, even at their craziest, be deterrable, which is why I think the libertarian world-view - if I can presume to call it that - should focus on deterrence, and forswear the temptations of what folk called pre-emptive action. But again - and Jim and others have to answer this question - does observing the niceties of national sovereignty always trump other considerations? For me, one of the clearest-cut examples of justified and smart pre-emption was the Israeli airforce's bombing of the Iraqi nuclear facilties in the early 1980s. No doubt some libertarian "leave-well-alone" foreign policy commenters fulminated about that event at the time, in a way that may have echoes now in what is being written about Israel's actions in Lebanon (see the posts below).

What to do?

Terrorism is an extreme form of political communication. You want to be sure that, in your response, you don't end up amplifying the messages that terrorists are trying to convey.

and,

We just have to live with risk. We can’t be completely secure, and we will never be completely secure.

Not some supercilious liberal flâneur and dilletante security-skeptic - such as yours truly - but Sir Richard Dearlove, formerly C, speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Reflecting on my recent, rather intemperate post about whaling, I have decided that I may have been a little too hard-line on the issue. Despite the current miniscule numbers of non-Minke whales culled by Japan (only Japan hunts species other than Minkes), it would not hurt to further encourage population growth in less populous whale species.

Thus, in an imperfect world where the chances of internationally roaming whales ever being made the property of individuals is about zero, I suggest a compromise with the pro-whaling nations as a best case scenario. Make an offer to Norway, Iceland and Japan to lift the IWC moratorium, in return for all IWC members (with the obvious but unspecified target being Japan) agreeing to the following stipulations:

i) all subsidies to whaling industries must be incrementally phased out

ii) whale hunting must be limited to the two Minke whale species with abundant populations, until the population numbers of other whale species have recovered sufficiently to remove them from the upper reaches of the 'endangered' list

Naturally, these conditions need refining; how to decide population numbers, how quickly the subsidies will be dropped etc. Regardless, if these two stipulations are broadly accepted by all parties, Japan can take such an agreement back to its belligerent and powerful pro-whaling lobby and present it as an ostensible overwhelming victory. Truth is, by letting market forces set demand - and hence supply - stipulation one would eventually harpoon (sorry, couldn't resist) the whaling industry in that country, and stipulation two would protect the less numerous species of whale in the process. I would not expect the perpetually emotionally overwhelmed anti-whaling lobby to accede to such a proposal, but I think it stands as the most effective way of durably cutting back the industry - if that is what consumers demand. Let the market decide the future of whaling.

Oh, how quickly smug, self-righteous smiles can turn into outraged gasping. I was quite pleased to see Japan, Norway, Iceland and others eventually get one over the woolly-thinking Western mouth-foamers at the recent International Whaling Commission meeting in St Kitts & Nevis. Of course, this is a mostly symbolic victory for those in favour of harvesting resources. In a practical sense, it may improve the pro-whaling camp's ability to set the agenda at future IWC get-togethers. This achievement was dwarfed, however, by the far more notable victory enjoyed by the anti-whalers earlier in the conference. The Japanese attempted to enact secret ballot voting at IWC conferences, and failed. This is a considerable strategic defeat, because secret ballots would have significantly enhanced the appeal of Japan's chequebook diplomacy in the eyes of swinging IWC members, who might otherwise be concerned about domestic political consequences should they choose to vote with the Japanese. Regardless of the relative unimportance of the Japanese camp's win - and the relative importance of the anti-whaling bloc's success at the meeting - the usual suspects are up in arms, like they always are. More on that later.

I believe Japan would require a two-thirds majority of members to overturn the moratorium on whaling that is currently in place, and they have no hope of mustering those kinds of numbers any time soon. Personally, I think Japan should simply follow Norway's lead and unilaterally discard the moratorium. Stop using this 'scientific research' nonsense as a pretext for a perfectly legitimate operation. The Japanese - and any other nation - have an absolute right to harvest the whale resource in international waters. They do not need to make excuses to anyone. It is time they looked the anti-whaling hysterics like Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand and their shrieking NGO allies in the eye and told the lot of them to get stuffed.

Take Greenpeace genius Danny Kennedy, walking the usual carping course:

It would be a stupidity really for civilisation to go back to this old barbaric business - which there is no demand for, I'll note, in this day and age - and actually deplete the asset that the whale-watched business is based on.

Stupidity? How is this for stupidity, you stupid, stupid, stupid man; if there is no demand for whaling, why do you work for an organisation that helps make the dispute more intractable by whipping up 'pro' and 'anti' mobs and creating political obduracy in Japan over the issue? Can you not see why Japan subsidises its whaling industry? How long would the Japanese government subsidise its whaling industry if the passion was sucked out of the debate? Why not let whaling die a natural death - as it otherwise would in a decade or so - if left unperturbed by environmental crusaders? Do you revel in being counterproductive towards your stated aims, Danny Kennedy?

If anyone is interested, I have previously made the case for dropping the moratorium on whaling here.

John Mearsheimer is a Professor at the University of Chicago who has attracted a great deal of attention in the blogosphere recently for a paper he co-authored about the role of the Israeli lobby and its influence on the policy of the United States towards the middle-east region. I think it fair to say that, at the very least, the paper was not his finest hour.

But it attracted me towards some of his other work, and the estimable Winterspeak, posting at Jane Galt’s blog, recently went to a speech where he outlined some of his views on his theory of international relations. Winterspeak was not entirely convinced.

Of course, political science is even more of a ‘black art’ then economic science. A scientific theory in the natural world can be demonstrated or refuted by scientific verification. In the social ‘sciences’ such verification is much harder. Therefore, making predictions about the future is hard. But one I still a worthwhile exercise. Readers can judge for themselves.

One of the aspects of Professor Mearsheimer’s work that has drawn particular attention is his view that the internal composition of states does not matter, democracy or dictatorship, theocracy or monarchy, they will have the same foreign policy goals. Given that in the United States, democracy is seen as a sacred cow, this is bound to be a provocative stance.

In considering this point of view, it may be helpful to make a distinction between ‘strategic’ foreign policy thinking, and ‘tactical’ foreign policy thinking, just as a chess-player does. Strategic is ‘this is what we want’ and tactical is ‘this is how we are going to get it’. If you view Professor Mearsheimer’s work in that light, I understand why he thinks that way. Take, for example, his recent debate with Zbigniew Brzezinski on the future of China’s policy. It seems to me that the internal composition of China’s government will not make a great deal of difference towards China’s desire to regain Taiwan.

It does of course make a great deal of difference about how they go about getting it, though. I am not very knowledgeable about China or its people, so I am not at all sure about how a future Chinese democracy would go about trying to reclaim Taiwan from the mainland. It may be thought that a democratic Chinese government would be sensible enough to eschew war, but given what the Chinese people seem to think about their neighbours, and watching other Asian democracies in action, gives me reason to doubt the good sense of a Chinese democracy.

It does seem to me that the tactics a state employs though are extremely important, and have massive and wide-ranging implications. Therefore, if one may be critical of Professor Mearsheimer’s theory, it is that he under-rates the importance of tactical moves in foreign policy goal setting. The classic example of this would be the transformation of Prussia into Imperial Germany in the late 19th century, and its effects on France and Russia. A more contemporary one, and more pointed given his latest academic effort, is that vital one of United States support for Israel. This policy is effected precisely because the United States is a democracy and, like it or not, the American public opinion is far more favourable towards Israel. This expression of American opinion thus translates into a massively different policy position towards the Middle East then would be the case if United States foreign policy was principally conducted with the interest of the government only in mind, as would be the case if the United States was a dictatorship.

And that support has a huge bearing on the foreign policy strategies of Arab states. So in the long run, democracy matters.

That does not mean that a democracy is likely to pursue more sensible or rational foreign policies. Democracy is no guarantee of good government. It simply means that governments in democracies have different political considerations to bear in mind when they make diplomatic decisions. I would welcome readers views on this matter.

I remember, on either September 11 or 12, 2001, in a conversation about the war, I predicted that we would not get out of the current unpleasantness without nuclear weapons being used.

While the strength of my belief in this prediction has wavered a bit over the years, it has now hardened into near certainty.

Read it and weep.

Additional thoughts:

There is no chance whatsoever that the Americans will end the Iranian nuclear threat by preemptive military action. The threshold for certainty and "imminence" has been set too high, the political consequences for waging "preventive" or "preemptive" war have been made too dire, for American politiicans by the last five years of relentless dishonesty and fecklessness in the American media and political scenes.

The Iranian mullahs will get their nukes, (and sooner than the ten years generally bandied about in the media). Once they have them, they will be immune from diplomatic and military pressure. The odds that they won't use one, either directly or by proxy? Nil.

There remain two interesting questions: Who will they nuke, and what will we do about it?

I doubt they'll hit Israel, for all their bluster, because Israel is the one country that is certain to launch a massive counterstrike. There are lots of easier targets for them. There probably won't be any need to nuke Europe - the descent of that continent into dhimmitude will most likely be satisfactorily accelerated by the mere presence of nukes in Iran. I wouldn't be surprised if the mullahs chose Baghdad or possibly the Iraqi oil port as their first target, to get the Americans out of their face and off their borders.

No one but the Americans will be in a position to respond to the Iranian nuclear attack. Whether we respond in a meaningful way depends on whether whoever happens to be the leader of the US on that day will have the fortitude to nuke them back. The odds of that are rather small, I fear, and once the mullahs have used a nuke with impunity, they will do it again and again. Why not? Is there any reason whatsoever to believe that their behavior of the last 30 years will change for the better once they obtain the combination of more leverage and immunity from real consequence provided by nuclear weapons?

Brian has a new podcast available in which he talks with Antoine Clarke about elections around the world, the libertarian case for democracy and some juicy tidbits. Apparently. Meanwhile, I talk with Neil O’Brien of Open Europe on whether the European social model really is social and whether science should be funded by the EU.

The two acronyms that we hear concerning the twenty-first century are GRIN (Genetics Robotics Information Nanotech) to describe the wave of new technologies and BRIC (Brazil Russia India and China) to identify the new heavyweights. In foreign policy, media commentary has focused upon China, the earliest power to emerge an cast its influence across the globe.

Not far behind is India. With its longer demographic growth, this country is considered as the most powerful power in the longer term, since it will not have to deal with a rapidly aging population. Yet, because some of the people speak English, play cricket and vote, they are not considered to be a potential enemy, with whom we may come to blows. We forget at our peril that democracies can marshall the power of the majority and there is no guarantee that India will be on the side of the Enlightenment. Hindu chauvinism is a powerful counterweight to the Anglosphere. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, India has played on these assumptions to its advantage:

Was then the new Indo-U.S. joint statement a victory for U.S. diplomacy? In it, the U.S. for the very first time legitimated India's role as a nuclear power, by promising India that it "will work to achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India as it realizes its goals of promoting nuclear power and achieving energy security." This of course undermined enormously the already weak position of the U.S. in opposing Iranian nuclear ambitions, since what India has received from the U.S. is precisely what Iran has been claiming is its right, "full civil nuclear energy."

And in return, what did the U.S. get? - a promise "to combat terrorism relentlessly." Since India was already doing this, it wasn't very much. Meanwhile, India is maintaining its close relations with Iran and Russia, and even (on paper) a strategic alliance with China. More importantly, India is proceeding with Project Seabird, aimed at turning it into the major military power in the Indian Ocean. This does not make the Chinese too happy, to be sure, but it shouldn't make the U.S. too happy either, since at the moment, it is the U.S. that is the major military power in the Indian Ocean.

Let us remember that India will, rightly, consider her own interests paramount. They may not coincide with ours.

Recently, a Greenpeace boat was rammed by a Japanese whaling ship. Or vice versa, depending on which side of the fence you sit on. Somewhere in my blogospheric wanderings, I stumbled over a Greenpeace blog purportedly authored by the crew on that particular mission. Since sparring with members of the crew and those peopling their fawning commentariat, I am reminded yet again how soft-headed, shallow and emotionally driven the anti-whaling argument is.

It continues to amaze me how, over the years, Greenpeace has pulled off such a remarkable public relations campaign in regards to whaling. They have successfully ensured the utter ignorance of many hundreds of millions of otherwise intelligent individuals on the matter of whaling. For most opposed to whaling, there is one species, "the whale", and it is being fished into extinction by those nasty Japanese. Forget the fact that some species of whale are not even close to endangered. The minke, for example, has an international population ranging somewhere between 500 000 - 1.1 million individuals. The minke is the most commonly harvested whale. Icelandic and Norwegian whalers only hunt minkes and the vast majority of the Japanese catch consists of minkes. Forget the fact that, when the Japanese hunt other species, each year they have never taken more than 51 Bryde's whales, 10 sperm whales or 100 sei whales. If you want to check the population levels on each of those whale species, please take a look at the earlier IWC chart I linked to. To suggest this tiny rate of harvesting will have a negative impact on whale populations is preposterous. Even if the Japanese follow through on their threat to double their cull of minkes to about 1000, and - let's be generous - add another 1000 taken by the Icelandic, the Norwegians and indigenous groups, this cumulative figure of 2000 is clearly sustainable given a conservative population growth rate of 1% and a highly conservative total population of 500 000.

Another point that the anti-whaling wailers do not like to concede and invert in their rhetoric; whaling in international waters is not illegal. Membership of the International Whaling Commission is entirely voluntary, and no member is bound to accept its rulings. For example, IWC member Norway has been catching minke whales under an objection to the moratorium on whaling since it was put in place in 1986. Japan, whilst almost certainly running a misleading campaign that asserts its catch is predominantly for scientific purposes, could withdraw from the moratorium on commercial whaling and start openly whaling commercially any time it wanted to.

A further blow to the relevance of the anti-whalers' cause can be seen in the dwindling market for whale meat. Even arch enviro-moonbat David Suzuki concedes that the market for whale meat is falling in Japan. The same thing is happening in Norway, according to other environmental hysterics. Simply, the young don't much care for the stuff in Japan or Norway. The market for whale meat is literally dying. As for any potential non-culinary demand in the West, we no longer need whale oil, and there are far cheaper sources of pet food. When viewed rationally, whaling is a non-event, and its importance is further deflating.

Considering the above, the anti-whaling campaign seems like a ridiculous waste of energy if "saving the environment" is key. One of the eco-pirates on the Greenpeace boat claimed, in a response to my initial post on their blog, that "Greenpeace's position is based purely on the need to leave healthy intact ocean ecosystems for future generations." If they were truly a group concerned with preserving ocean ecosystems, they would be concentrating their efforts in South East Asia, where numerous fisheries are in various stages of collapse due to rampant overfishing. The whaling debate shows Greenpeace for what they are - a bunch of filthy hypocrites who ignore true environmental catastrophes to chase after high profile red herrings. Please pardon the pelagic pun.

Louise who? Louise Arbour is High Commissioner for Human Rights at the UN, that is who. Now like it or not (and I certainly do not), most people reading this blog pay for the United Nations and so have an interest in what their tax money buys in that cesspool of corruption. One of those things is Louise Arbour's salary so that she can defend 'Human Rights'.

Now rather prominently amongst those things commonly felt to be a human right is the right to express yourself, just so long as you are not crying 'Fire' in a crowded theatre or actively inciting people to violence. Yet when a Danish newspaper prints some cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, sparking protests from Muslims, does she support the right of Danish people to express themselves? Hell no.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour was investigating the matter. "I understand your attitude to the images that appeared in the newspaper," Arbour wrote the Organization of the Islamic Conference. "I find alarming any behaviors that disregard the beliefs of others. This kind of thing is unacceptable."

Investigating? If it is 'unacceptable', it sounds like she is well past the 'investigating' stage as it looks pretty damn clear who she thinks is in the wrong here. Let me tell you what is unacceptable. Pandering to people who want to see force used to 'punish' people for saying things they do not like, that is unacceptable. Claiming to defend human rights on our dime while giving aid and comfort to intolerant bigots, that is unacceptable.

Muslims should feel free to express themselves too. Let them match through the streets and scream until they are blue in the face, calling the entire editorial staff of Jyllands-Posten "kufur bastards" if they like, just so long as they do not call on the state to 'punish' them. The state can only punish people for breaking the law and there is nothing illegal about expressing critical views about Islam.

Either Louise Arbour immediately recants her views and accepts the non-negotiability of freedom of the press or she must be sacked. Your tax money pays for her antics, so you can demand her removal.

Tell you Member of Parliament/Congressman/Senator/whoever. Got a blog? Pass it on. Sack Louise Arbour.

Samizdata's informal motto is "guns 'n' girls", but in this post you get neither. Instead you get a picture taken in Brussels of a fine, hand-rolled cigar and an American flag:

The man is Richard Miniter and the photo comes from this interview in The Brussels Journal under the title "America Is Winning the War on Terror, Says Expert".

Here is a good article in the National Interest demonstrating how private sector peacekeeping is much better than its UN equivalent. To quote,

Peacekeeping success does not come from a splendid rebirth of Western interest in these missions, but rather from the unheralded role played by the private sector doing jobs once provided by Western militaries, and from a more realistic and pragmatic approach by the funding states. Sent by donor states, private companies are increasingly providing the missing skills, capabilities and, most importantly, the actual will to carry out international mandates in conflict and post-conflict (CPC) situations. The peacekeeping success stories that get the most play by advocates rarely include the central and growing role the private sector is playing to ensure that success. Private firms filling a myriad of non-traditional roles are creating fundamental changes in the way international peace and stability operations are undertaken. From a humanitarian perspective, this is long overdue.

The article argues that the United Nations, only as good as the resources that its members bring to the table, is a useful framework for co-ordinating security co-operation, but argues that its peacekeeping capabilities should be privatised. As they say, from a humanitarian perspective, this is long overdue.

I am watching the BBC Ten o'clock News, and the lead story is Condoleezza Rice, spelling out the Bush doctrine:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has delivered a forceful call for democratic reform in the Arab World in a major policy speech in Cairo.

The US pursuit of stability in the Middle East at the expense of democracy had "achieved neither", she admitted.

"Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people," she said.

The BBC's Frank Gardiner said her comments marked a complete departure for the US, and were "immensely risky".

Indeed. In order to have seen this one coming, you would have had to have read some of President George W. Bush's speeches, in particular his Second Inaugural Address, and to have then made the even greater mental leap of realising that President George W. Bush had actually thought about what he was saying, and had meant it.

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. (Applause.)

As the BBC immediately explained, the worry is that democracy in the Middle East may result in Islamomaniacal governments which "hate America". As opposed to regimes like the ones in Egypt and Saudi Arabia now, which permit no anti-American sentiments whatsoever.

Now the BBC is explaining that Egypt, like the USSR before it, is immovably non-democratic. Mubarak will be followed in the fullness of time only by further Mubaraks. We shall see.

President George W. Bush is a physically quite little guy, or so he seems in the photos that I have seen. He has an eccentric way with the English language, his pauses extending to the point where they flirt dangerously with embarrassment. He believes � really believes � in God. So, he is an easy man to underestimate, and all of Europe now does this. Yet if US Presidential greatness is defined as determining a new course for the USA and then making that new course the actual course that is then steered by (which it is, although there is also the matter of whether the new course is good and wise to consider), then President George W. Bush is getting greater by the month.