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Prompted, no doubt, by the hugely successful prohibition on the private ownership of handguns, UK police chiefs are planning a gun amnesty:

"A firearms amnesty is being planned for early in the New Year to try to reduce levels of gun crime."

An inspired idea! I am quite sure that Britain's urban desperados will be rushing, RUSHING down to their local police station to meekly surrender their Browning Autos and AK-47s.

"A ban on ownership of handguns was introduced in 1997 as a result of the Dunblane massacre, when Thomas Hamilton opened fire at a primary school leaving 16 children and their teacher dead.

But even since the ban, gun-related crimes have soared, with one study suggesting handgun usage had gone up by as much as 40 percent two years after the ban."

The truly galling thing about this is conspicuous absence from the media of the various anti-gun campaigners who were infesting the airwaves barely five years ago assuring us that a complete ban on private gun ownership would reduce crime, make us all a lot safer and eradicate what they referred to as 'gun-culture' from Britain. Not a single one of these people have been brought back on air to be challenged or asked to explain themselves. I doubt that they ever will not least because many of them are still in government.

"The Home Office is considering a minimum five year sentence for anyone caught possessing a gun and setting up a national database and a new agency to trace illegally held weapons."

In that paragraph, the future lies mapped out. The 'amnesty' will prove useless and the criminal use of guns will continue to spiral. Faced with mounting pressure to 'do something' the Home Office will impose minimum sentences for handgun possession of five years (or, possibly, ten years as some are arguing for). The result will be that heat-packing gangsters will be far more likely to shoot it out with the cops rather than surrender as well as more likely to 'silence' anyone they believe might snitch on them. I see dead people.

Because there is no foreseeable prospect of a policy re-think, I suppose that this whole horrid panoply of unintended consequences will simply have to play out. The British have a penchant for learning things the hard way.

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...But nobody can be a great economist who is only an economist - and I am even tempted to add that the economist who is only an economist is likely to become a nuisance if not a positive danger
- Frederick Hayek

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The dependably clueless Prince Charles wants the state to require tax funded institutions like Britain's nationalised public health service and state schools to add insult to injury by not even attempting to get 'best value for your stolen money'... which is to say he wants such arms of the state to be required to buy British farm products even if foreign products are cheaper/better... not only does he say they 'should' buy British, but that the government should force them to.

Like most people with socialist & fascist understandings of economics, producers are all and consumers are nothing to Charles. Why will people like him not be more honest and just admit directly that they want productive taxpayers to be compelled by force to prop-up less efficient areas of the economy and they should not be given any choice in the matter.

The Royal Family usefully occupy the same seriocomical niche as the Flag and 'Hand-on-heart' pledge of allegiance do in the USA... and like that inanimate object and rote chant, are largely empty of real meaning beyond their warm-fuzzy-glow value. If only we could devise some means of permanently depriving Charles of speech, leaving him only with earnest looks and poses, then the British monarchy could have another couple centuries of seriocomical semi-usefulness ahead of them.

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The Raelians are a truly weird cult, that is for sure, and the fact they are claiming to have produced the world's first cloned human is hardly going to calm feelings about the technology. However even if their contention to have done so is true (not surprisingly I am disinclined to just take the word of a group which claims humans are the descendents of bio-engineered clones created by space aliens), I must say that I find it hard to get all that excited about the whole matter.

Although I do have worries that the technology and underpinning science is sufficiently immature that there is cause for concern for the health of a cloned child, the principle itself does not bother me at all... a child is a child is a child, and the manner of its creation does not give it any less worth or intrinsic rights.

However the issue of how to assign paternal and maternal responsibility for the child is, of course, going to keep a small army of lawyers busy for quite a while! I would be quite interested to see what people's views are as to "who is left holding the baby", if you will forgive the expression

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I have just watched part of a left wing John Wayne film (I did not see it all - I got so irritated I turned it off)... In Harm's Way (1965) blames American problems in the Pacific war against the Japanese, on stuffed shirt Conservative officers - people who call the war 'Mr Roosevelt's war' as people from their evil wealthy families called WWI 'Mr Wilson's war'.

Of course there is no mention of the film that President Roosevelt deprived the Pacific front of resources so that he could prop up Soviet Russia. Nor was this policy confined to the United States. Why did Singapore have no Spitfire fighters for air defence? Because the Spitfires earmarked for Singapore were diverted to Soviet Russia. 100, 000 troops of the British Empire were captured at Singapore - and they were left to rot and die. About 80, 000 Americans were captured in the Philippines - and they were left rot for years as well (many thousands died).

This was not because American commanders (Navy or Army) were poor in the Pacific (although some of the British ones were poor indeed). It was because the New Dealers in Washington D.C. did not care - all they cared about was their sacred Soviet Union.

Before anyone says that the Soviet Union saved Britain from German invasion think about the following: Thousands of allied sailors died taking supplies to the Soviet Union (not Soviet sailors dying taking supplies to Britain). Whether operation 'Sea Lion' (the German invasion of Britain) was practical or not (and the Germans certainly lacked the resources vital to operation 'Overlord' the allied invasion of France in 1944), the choice by Hitler to switch German air attacks from British airfields to British cities made operation Sea Lion a dead letter.

This choice was made before the Germany invasion of the Soviet Union. The 'Battle of Britain' was won before the invasion of the Soviet Union (not after it).

Of course there would have been no WWII anyway if Hitler and Stalin had not allied in 1939 - but the New Dealers (and their friends in Britain) blanked that out.

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It looks like there are some very interesting air defense systems being brainstormed for future US aircraft carriers:

"The discussion about the CVN-21 has been around quite a bit, and again reminds you that the Navy was looking to start with what they call CVNX-1 in '07, and then follow that with a second ship in FY '11, that they call the CVNX-2. I think you are all familiar with sort of the general characteristics of it. And we had a long and very fruitful conversation with the Navy leadership on this, and they proposed -- the Navy leadership proposed what we are now calling the CVN-21, which is a ship which will have roughly, give or take -- don't hold me to the number here -- but roughly 80 percent of the kinds of new capability that as anticipated by the time we would have reached the CVNX-2. So that includes crew reductions, new flight decks, and maybe most importantly of all a new nuclear reactor power plant, which will provide upwards of three times the electrical output of the current power plant. And, that being so, it opens up the opportunity to begin experimenting with the kinds of weapons systems that heretofore were not possible with the kind of electrical power available. So whether those are electromagnetic rail guns, free electron lasers -- I mean, there are all kinds of proposals that one has heard in the past which were impractical given the unavailability of power in large quantities that could be focused down for those kinds of purposes."

The above item is from a DOD background briefing.

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Since I was once an anti-draft demonstrator, I find it heartening to read the DefSec of the United States state pretty much what my feelings were then and are now: a draft is slavery. In his words:

"My guess is that if one looks over a span of time, the history of our country, we'll see that we have tended, during the periods that we had a draft, we tended to pay people about 40, 50, 60 percent of what they could have made in the civilian manpower market and use compulsion to have them serve.

Once that ended, we then were forced -- properly in my view -- to go to incentives that can attract out of the public sector the people we need and reward them properly so that they will in fact stay and serve and develop the kind of educational background and the kinds of skills and the kinds of time in position so that they can perform well for the country."

A nation whose citizens will not defend it does not deserve to survive, and a government which must rely on volunteers must be more circumspect about the use of those volunteers. Wars must be for the protection of family and society or else volunteers will not be forthcoming.

I think one could make a very strong "original intent" argument here. The times may require the "standing armies", but a volunteeer service at least acts as a brake on adventurism.

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Prodded by a recent conversation with my eldest brother who is a UKIP (UK Independence Party) member, on the subject of British nationalism, I recently put the pieces of a puzzle together concerning the dramatic events of 1940 that I want to try out on the readers of samizdata. (Apologies in advance to all those who see the only puzzle as being how long it took me to puzzle out the obvious.)

At the risk of publicising my own slow-wittedness, it has always puzzled me that British nationalists these days almost to a man now worship the ground that Winston Churchill walked on, because he saved Britain in 1940, despite the fact that Churchill himself wasn't a British nationalist.

Preliminary digression. Did Churchill actually save Britain in 1940? I tend to accept the orthodox view that Churchill did indeed save my country, and that it really was one of our finer hours.

The case against how Churchill behaved in 1940 is that an accommodation with Hitler was there for the taking, which would have been less harmful to British interests than even the events that subsequently unfolded, and certainly than any events that looked at all likely in 1940 if we did fight on.

As to that, I've always been fond of the words spoken by Ralph Richardson in the early stages of the film The Battle of Britain. Richardson plays a British diplomat who is squaring up to his German equivalent, played by Curt Jurgens. The Jurgens character speaks of how the Fuhrer is willing to offer "guarantees" to Britain. Replies Richardson: "Experience shows that Herr Hitler's guarantees guarantee nothing." Exactly so. The case for not trying to accommodate Hitler in 1940 in one pithy sentence.

(I've heard it said that this is also the basic case against Saddam Hussein. The man simply can't be relied upon to refrain from what he has promised to refrain from. He is therefore not, and never can be, a member of the club of Heads of State who, no matter what they may do to their subjects, can at least be relied upon to tell the truth to fellow club members.)

Well I'm not entirely sure about that. Maybe there was a good deal going which Churchill spurned. But this I do know. Churchill was, as I say, not a British nationalist. He was an Anglospherist.

Chruchill's mother was an American. In his youth Churchill roamed the earth in the service of the British Empire and of his own fame and glory. When the time came for him to write his historical magnum opus, he called it The History of the English Speaking Peoples.

It was Churchill's political adversaries, like Chamberlain and like Halifax (his rival in 1940 for the British Prime Ministership), who were the real British nationalists. It was they who spoke to each other in 1940 of the beauties of the English countryside and of how it was now threatened with being turned into scorched earth. Churchill was willing to fight, and they were not. And as soon as Churchill got into power, he orated about blood on the beaches and set about organising an anti-German resistance-to-the-death scorched-British-earth policy, for the "defence" of Britain. Some defence.

Churchill was able to do this because Britain, for him, was not the ultimate point. Britain was, in the end, merely a slab of territory near the front line in the fight. And it was, ultimately, expendable.

I'm not saying that Churchill wanted to expend it, that he would have been happy if it had been expended. Far from it. But in the final analysis he did not regard Britain as the ultimate object being defended. The object being defended was the Anglosphere, and the Anglosphere would continue (and Churchill with it) to confront Hitler even if Britain had been conquered in 1940. The Anglosphere could still eventually be persuaded to take a military stand against Hitler, which sooner or later, Churchill believed, it would have had to, despite whatever guarantees it might have received in the meantime (see Ralph Richardson above).

This is why Churchill was willing to bet Britain in 1940. For this was a bet which, ultimately, he was willing to contemplate losing. The Halifax tendency could not bear the thought of losing such a bet, and even to take the risk of losing it was, for them, an unendurable folly. I think that as ironies go, this is a pretty big one. To repeat it: the nationalists couldn’t defend their nation. The non-nationalist could. And I think it says something about the sentiments of the British people that they followed Churchill so contentedly in 1940. Maybe they even got all this at the time, and realised that if they squared up to Hitler on behalf of "civilisation", they could get the best possible outcome for their nation, whereas if they merely fought for their nation, the fight would make no sense and they would lose everything.

And maybe Halifax himself also got this. He didn't press his case in 1940. He stepped aside and allowed Churchill to fight his war.

It's a game theory point, I think. It's like the oft repeated observation that the soldiers who are willing to die in battle are, paradoxically, more likely to survive than the soldiers who will, when things get desperate, try to run away.

Britain stood firm in 1940, and thus made it possible for Anglosphere allies to carry on fighting also (in the USA's case it allowed other non-nationalists to inveigle their nation into the conflict), and eventually to use Britain as the launching pad for the final attack on Germany.

As a general observation it seems to me that the twentieth century has been an era of pseudo-nationalism, that is to say of people like Churchill (and like FDR). The twentieth century's nationalists, time and again, under cross examination so to speak (i.e. in a crisis), turned out to be people who were ultimately willing to risk any rational definition of the national interest of the nation they claimed to be serving, in the service instead of multinational or even global ends. The communists weren't the only ones doing this. Almost everyone was. Partly they did it out of ideological conviction. But partly they did it because, paradoxically, it made them more effective "nationalists".

Hitler, apparently such a rabid German nationalist, proved himself willing, Churchill-like, to sacrifice Germany itself on the altar of his peculiar vision of how the world ought to be, the difference being that in this case the sacrifice actually happened. He died believing that his country had betrayed him, and his countrymen spent the last few months of his life realising that he was betraying them.

Now I'm sure that, for many samizdata readers, all this is very obvious. But I have grown up in a world in which British nationalists who were willing retrospectively to support Halifax rather than Churchill (or even to sympathise with Halifax!) could be counted on the fingers of one hand, but in which regular British nationalists simply took it for granted that Winston Churchill was one of them. It was the slowly dawning realisation that Churchill was not one of them, combined with the fact that Churchill had nevertheless served British national interests so very well (assuming you go along with Ralph Richardson, as most Brits do nowadays), that I found myself having to explain. What was going on? It seemed like a contradiction. Now I see that the contradiction is actually the explanation.

I hope I have not bored everyone by rediscovering the obvious, but to me all this came as something of a revelation. But that's samizdata for you. You don't have to be interested by everything here, just interested every so often.

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Reading David Carr's criticism of the Galileo system reminds me of the Lord of the Rings.

Specifically the question is whether it is better for there to be one superpower, or several powers. David seems to take the view that the EU is evil, but the US is good... or at least less evil). As a centralised state emerges on the European continent, this may appear to some British Libertarians like nothing less than the re-emergence of the Dark Lord in Mordor.

Tolkien would possibly see as more complicated: the US acting perhaps like the doomed kingdom of Numenor. The US military hegemony as analogous to Galadriel taking the One Ring:

[Sam Speaks]
"But if you'll pardon my speaking out, I think my master was right. I wish you'd take his Ring. You'd put things to rights. You'd stop them digging up the gaffer and turning him adrift. You'd make some folks pay for their dirty work."

[Galadriel replies]
"I would" she said. "That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas! We will not speak more of it. Let us go!"

The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter Seven, The Mirror of Galadriel

How many American readers of Samizdata would agree that the British Empire was a force for world freedom? Not many judging by the numbers who think it was wrong for the US to intervene in both World Wars. The problem is that the British Empire was at times a force for free trade and at other times a mercantilist extortion racket.

The US empire to come is unlikely to be as restrained as the British Empire, because of the socialist ethos of state imposed education, and crusades such as ridding the Third World of cheap (child) labour, the War on Drugs, the War on Tax Evasion, trying to impose a worldwide age of sexual consent, banning alcohol before 21, but making it almost compulsory thereafter, the imposition of American patent law worldwide, and of course, global weapons control.

In other words, although US global supremacy starts better than the Soviet dream of a worldwide Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, it could end up the same:

"That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas!"

Which is why I hope the Galileo system works, and that other countries develop stealth bombers... and that nuclear weapons proliferate.

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The story so far: The Labour government which promised to nationalize the railways in 1996 has regulated (with massive public support) the private railway companies to the verge of bankrupcy. History repeating itself in other words, as this is exactly what happened between the 1880s and 1945.

What is new is the Conservative Party's reaction? If I understand this correctly, the Conservatives believe the following:

1. The government may have acted illegally in bankrupting Railtrack and in the accounting rules which allow the debt of the new company to remain outside the national debt.
   
2. Costs are spiralling out of control in the absence of any shareholder value or accountability.
   
3. Therefore the Conservative Party promises to leave things as they are for the foreseeable future.

I note that the world's best railway is privately owned (Japan) and that the French government is likely to move towards privatisation soon. Having pioneered privatisation the Conservative loss of nerve means that we could soon live in the only country in the developed world without a capitalist railway system. Unless of course that the Labour government decides to re-privatise, as it is doing with the Channel Rail link.

Conservative 'spokesperson' Tim Collins also has this dire threat for the government:

"When there were future accidents, he would not be calling automatically for a public inquiry or saying it was the fault of the government."

The government must be quaking in its boots with mirth. The railway fiasco of its own making will not be challenged by the opposition. The Tories are committed to matching Labour's wasted billions.

And this is the first transport policy of that new leader with the nervous cough the Tories elected a year ago... what compromises would they make if they actually won? (aargh!)

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Azedine Berkane, held in France for the stabbing of Bertrand Delanöe, the homosexual Mayor of Paris, in October this year, may be refused a trial on the grounds that he is a nutter.

Two psychiatrists have concluded that the Islamic fundamentalist who was assumed to have acted in accordance with Islamic hatred of homosexuality, is in fact suffering from a psychosis which often leads to violent behaviour "within a religious context".

A second opinion is expected before prosecutors have to decided whether Mr Berkhane, 39 years old unemployed and without fixed abode, can be considered mentally fit to stand trial for attempted murder.

In fairness to the psychiatrists, Mr Berkhane has a history of mental illness, and has allegedly claimed that he was being pursued by a "satanic cult". In 2001, Mr Berkhane was a voluntary patient at a psychiatric hospital in the Paris suburb of St Denis. In March 2002, he was reported missing to police by his mother.

If the French authorities deal with homophobic attacks by Muslims by shaking their heads, saying "poor chap, he's off his rocker", locking them up indefinitely, and giving them drugs or electroshock treatment, it doesn't seem a very glorious path for a young Mudjaheddin to follow. Might this be better than the death penalty? Or is it too cruel?

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Every so often I rearrange my books to make them take up less space in my home than they actually do take up, and during my latest rearrangement I came across a book called Catastrophe by David Keys. The central claim of this book is that in the year 535 AD there was a truly enormous volcanic eruption in South East Asia, filling the sky with dirt so dense that the sun was hardly visible for several years, unleashing plague, famine and the fall (and rise) of empires all over the world.

I remember being quite severely convinced. Now that I am a blogger I am able to ask the big wide world: Was I right to be impressed by this book? Did this really happen? And whether it did or not, what do the official, academic historians think about all this? David Keys' book is not academic; it is midddlebrow at best. He's a journalist, and I first heard about his notions by watching a TV show on Channel 4 a few years ago, and we all know that TV and truth don't always go together. Did TV get it right this time?

To put my question another way, which of these two reviews of Catastophe is correct? This one?:

That the Earth suffered catastrophic weather conditions starting around 535AD and lasting for many years thereafter, is becoming a scientifically accepted "fact." As explained in "Catastrophe: a Quest for the Origins of the Modern World," these conditions weakened the Eastern Roman Empire; created horrendous living conditions in the western part of Great Britain that were remembered and later incorporated into the Arthurian legend; contributed through drought in the America's to the fall of the Teotihuacan civilization in Mexico; and through flooding to the collapse of a major center of civilization in Yemen.

Almost wherever in the world that there was significant use of writing in the 6th century AD, from Constantinople to China, references to this catastrophe have shown up in contemporary documents. Many such documents are cited in this book. In the 20th century, the occurrence of the catastrophe and its worldwide impact has been confirmed by the analysis of ice-cores from Greenland and Antarctica and by the study of annual growth rings in wood from across the world that can be safely dated to the 6th century.

Or this one?:

I enjoyed reading Catastrophe, but I took it with a large grain of salt. …

First, Keys covers a great deal of ground for someone who is described on the book jacket as an "archaeology correspondent" for The Independent, a London daily paper. He makes a number of important judgments about ancient Chinese, Indonesian, American, British, European and Middle Eastern sources, as well as about geology, meteorology and even physics. His book suggests that he consulted specialists before drawing his conclusions, but I can't avoid the impression that some of his claims might be hotly disputed by experts in the relevant field. In short, it's a little hard for the lay person to judge whether Keys has the qualifications needed to make the judgments upon which his arguments ultimately depend.

Second, Keys has a disturbing tendency to use words like "undoubtedly" and "certainly" when describing the ancient world. I've read a great deal of history, and I have learned that nothing is ever really "certain" or "undoubted," especially if we're talking about events that happened 1500 years ago. Rather, such words often reflect an author's uncouncious effort to shore up a weak argument.

Finally, Keys gets a little swept away by his thesis, constantly re-asserting that whatever happened in 535 caused (however indirectly) the birth of the modern world. …

You'll probably enjoy Catastrophe, but don't be surprised if the experts (for whatever they're worth) roll their eyes when they read and write about this book.

The relationship between amateurs and professionals interests me a lot, and of course amateurs have been trading blows with pros long before the Internet came along and made this an order of magnitude easier. There have been a string of amateur best sellers challenging official scientific explanations. But, they have been extremely variable in quality.

The thing that populariser and journalists (such as David Keys) are well placed to do, unlike the typical scientist who is an extreme specialist, is to gather evidence from a wide range of fields and pull it all together into a single hypothesis, often of a kind which does indeed challenge many scientific orthodoxies. I'm tempted at once to launch into a rhapsody concerning the particular contribution of amateurs to the advance of knowledge.

But first things first. Is this particular piece of amateurism (a) right or wrong, and (b) how is it regarded by serious, professional historians?

Is 535 now an official history date, of the sort I might have memorised at school (but did not) alongside 1066 (Battle of Hastings), 1215 (Magna Carta), 1688 (Glorious Revolution) and 1815 (Battle of Waterloo)? Or is it still just a date like any other?

I await any comments anyone can supply with interest.

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And by the way, gun rights supporters are frequently mocked when they say it deters foreign invasion - after all, come on, grow up, be realistic: Who's nuts enough to invade America? Exactly. It's unthinkable. Good. 2nd Amendment Mission 1 accomplished.
- Bill Whittle (in his essay Freedom – at his new blog Eject! Eject! Eject!)

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I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Saddam-free New Year!

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Do you have left-wing friends and relations? Are you stuck for ideas on what to buy for them this Christmas? Then fret no longer. Just hurry along to your nearest major retail outlet and pick up the latest version of 'EEZI-SCREED', the fast and trouble-free method of constructing perfect left-wing articles.

The EEZI-SCREED kit comes with a drawstring bag and a series of small plastic tablets printed with words like:

'BUSH', 'CORPORATE', 'GREED', 'RACIST', 'ENRON', 'ZIONIST', 'RIGHT-WING', 'IMPERIALIST', 'OIL', 'SELFISH', 'AFRICA', 'SOCIAL', 'JUSTICE', 'INEQUALITY', 'CARING', 'ENVIRONMENT' and 'THIRD-WORLD'

together with a generous supply of prepositions and definite and indefinite articles.

All you have to do is to put all the tablets into the drawstring bag, give them a good shake and then empty the bag of its contents onto a table or other flat surface to create the perfect left-wing rant ready for publication in the Guardian, the Independent or the Democratic Underground.

'EEZI-SCREED' is the ideal Christmas present for the journalist, college professor or activist that you love. It's the gift that's guaranteed to provide endless hours of malcontented wailing and defeatist misery.

Get 'EEZI-SCREED' now, while stocks last!

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If you're going to bet, then always bet on a sure thing. Modest gains made on short odds are generally preferable to the large losses threatened by longer odds. It is with that philopsophy in mind that I comment upon the boondoggles of Brussels. I never expect anything good to emerge from the EU and I am seldom disappointed.

Back in April of this fast-fading year, I passed a few less-than-enthusiastic comments upon the EU plans for the launch of a European GPS system called 'Galileo' and during the course of which I made it clear that it might cause some transatlantic friction:

"There is some small chink of light at the end of this particular worm-hole, though. The US government has expressed concern that should Galileo become operational it could be used by terrorist cells to plan attacks on the US. Now, personally, I think that the Americans, the Russians, the Indians, the Israelis, the Australians, the Japanese and just about everybody else will have functioning colonies on Mars before that happens, but, in the event that it does, the US just might find itself in a position where they have to shoot the bloody thing out of the sky (chortle, snigger, stuff handkerchief in mouth). What a tragedy!!"

Now, there are some people who would charge that my cynicism is merely a reflection of my personal prejudice and they would be quite right. However, an article published in a US web-zine called 'Space Equity' has given me cause to believe that I might have been quite prescient. The article in question was published in October which renders it archaeological in blog terms but that didn't prevent it from slapping me around the head like a wet sock:

"It is now evident that by reserving a frequency in close proximity to the frequency used by code M, the Europeans have put themselves in a position to veto the effective use of GPS by America's armed forces. They believe that once they have begun transmitting on this frequency, the US will have no choice but to ask their permission before conducting any GPS supported military operations. This, in effect, means all US operations anywhere in the world. For example, in case of a North Korean attack, the US would have to ask the EU for permission before it could begin flying close air support missions against invading North Korean troops . This would give the EU enormous leverage whenever the EU wanted the US to concede something in the Middle East or elsewhere."

Voila! Of course, I also postulated that 'Galileo' would prove to be nothing except a Eurocratic wet-dream, so perhaps the brass hats in the Pentagon should cool their heels. For now.

[My thanks to James C. Bennett for the link]

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Season's greetings to all our readers from all of us at Samizdata.net!

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The dependably insightful Melanie McDonagh has a refreshingly clear view of one of the two 'Home Alone' items currently clogging up the British media until some domestic or foreign disaster provides some real news.

In case you are unfamiliar with the story, a middle class mother in London somewhat deranged by depression walked out of her house, abandoning Rufus, her 12 year old child, leaving him to fend for himself. He managed to do so for two weeks before someone noticed and reported him to Social Services, in spite of his attempts to hide the fact of his mother's absence. It was the fact that Rufus tried to conceal his mother's dereliction which caught Melanie's eye.

There is one further element of this story that stands out. It's the villain. It's the thing that Rufus does everything to avoid, that looms in his imagination like some sort of nightmare.

That is the fear that he will end up in the hands of Wandsworth social services. And I can't have been alone in feeling my spirits sink at the news that Rufus ends his adventure in the hands of social workers, to whom he's been turned in by the police, even though they pass him on to family friends rather than to an institution.

It wasn't irrational fear that made him do anything to keep himself out of their hands. He'd been in care before - another thing that sets him apart from the other pupils at Emanuel School - for some months after his father died and his mother succumbed to depression.

Melanie McDonagh is always good at spotting the 'off message' angles to stories such as these. I have followed her career with interest ever since she wrote about the war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina that was a head and a half better than most of the dreck which passed for reporting there. It has always puzzled me why she is not a better known journalist than many of the blowhard Idiotarians that infest the British media with one tenth her talent.

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I've been busy doing normal life for the last couple of days. On Sunday I gave a Christmas party to as many of my friends as I could remember the names of and had the phone numbers of, and could round up. Sorry if you reckon you're a friend and you weren't invited. You probably are still, that's if you still want to be. Anyway, first I had to get it ready, then I had to have it, then I had to recover from it, and while doing that latter thing I had also to sort out a Christmas present for my goddaughter in time for her mother to take it with her tomorrow morning to France, me having forgotten about it until now. Lucky escape there.

So this is a very quicky posting, really just to make sure that, what with Perry still being techno-blighted, David Carr knows he's not being totally relied upon, like the mug who does all the washing up in a shared student lodging because he has the most team spirit and responsibility.

The posting consists, basically, of the most remarkable single sentence I have read on the web during the last few days of trying to find something quick to comment on here, but mostly failing, until I realised that this thing had really stuck in my head and wouldn't go away. It first surfaced towards the end of a piece in Scotland on Sunday by Richard Northedge as long ago as Sunday 15th of this month, and it was immediately noticed and reproduced by David Farrer. Here it is:

"The Inland Revenue deals with the widest customer base in the UK. This makes us to all intends and purposes the UK’s number-one service brand."

Customer base? Service brand? Who and what the hell do these people think they are?

What this most reminds me of is the firing squad sent to execute Captain Blackadder in the First World War manifestation of that great comedy personage enacted on British TV in recent years by Rowan Atkinson. (Blackadder Goes Forth is the generic title, and the episode is called "Private Plane". Blackadder has been sentenced to death for killing a army message-delivering pigeon.) The firing squad are played nice. They drop by the night before to introduce themselves and to pay their respects. Their leader speaks ingratiatingly of the "terminatory service" which they supply to their "customers".

But that was a comedy show. This creep really seems to believe that the people of Britain are "customers" for the "service" he and his pals are oh-so-sportingly providing for them. No doubt he imagines that we are all oozing with "brand loyalty" towards him and his partners in state administered robbery.

This quote captures an awful (and I do mean awful) lot about the atmosphere in Britain now, where all manner of institutions boom forth with the language of business, that is to say the language of freedom, while not in fact doing business, that is to say while actually buggering us around in ways we would never consent to if we had any choice about it.

Does this kind of crap get talked in the USA?

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The truth is out there. It has been for some time. Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the brute thuggery endured by the Eastern Europeans and the poverty and despoilation to which they subjected, are common knowledge. Likewise the pitiful carnage of Cambodia's 'Killing Fields'. The blood-chilling stories of cannibalism in North Korea are corroborated by too many sources to be regarded as mere speculation.

Of course, we crusading capitalists knew all along and made no secret of it, while our left-wing compatriots waspishly accused us of being, well, 'capitalists'. It was the very worst insult they could muster and carried with the implication that we were liars and wreckers. For so long as they could avoid being confronted with the terrible truth, they could dance ecstatically in the Elysian Fields of La-La Land.

But no longer do they have any excuses. They may still swoon for the nostalgia of heady, revolutionary days gone by but no longer can they plausibly deny the life-sapping horror that the philosophy of Karl Marx has wrought upon mankind.

Nonetheless, and to my abject disbelief, students pound the streets of Seattle and Genoa waving 'Hammer & Sickle' flags while, emblazoned on their T-shirts, are the images of Mao, Lenin and Che Guevarra. Just what is going on inside their addled brains? It is as if they are suffering from some grievous malady that has struck them completely blind to the glaring lessons of very recent and eminantly accessible history.

If you have been as astounded by all this as I have, then this (somewhat lengthy) article in the Economist may be of interest:

"Books on Marx aimed at undergraduates and non-specialists continue to sell steadily in Western Europe and the United States. And new ones keep coming. For instance, Verso has just published, to warm reviews, “Marx's Revenge” by Meghnad Desai, a professor of economics at the London School of Economics. Mr Desai argues that Marx was misunderstood and that the great man was right about far more than he is given credit for. In August, Oxford University Press published “Why Read Marx Today?” by Jonathan Wolff. It too is an engaging read. The author, a professor at University College London, is a particularly skilful elucidator of political philosophy. In his book, he argues that Marx was misunderstood and that the great man was right about far more than he is given credit for."

Well, with all due respect to the writer, this is not shocking news. For those of us who do keep abreast of current events, it sometimes feels as if the academic and cultural spheres are dedicated to nothing except the promotion of marxist thought.

Marx has been thoroughly debunked and discredited (as the article sets out in some detail) yet capitalists and conservatives still have to fight tooth-and-nail to get even their most modest viewpoints across amid an intellectual atmosphere which Marx still dominates. Marxism not only manages to effortlessly re-invent itself but it's flickering flame still draws hordes of helplessly entranced moths from each successive generation. It is the death-cult that will not die.

"It is striking that today's militant critics of globalisation, whether declared Marxists or otherwise, proceed in much the same way. They present no worked-out alternative to the present economic order. Instead, they invoke a Utopia free of environmental stress, social injustice and branded sportswear, harking back to a pre-industrial golden age that did not actually exist. Never is this alternative future given clear shape or offered up for examination.

And anti-globalists have inherited more from Marx besides this. Note the self-righteous anger, the violent rhetoric, the willing resort to actual violence (in response to the “violence” of the other side), the demonisation of big business, the division of the world into exploiters and victims, the contempt for piecemeal reform, the zeal for activism, the impatience with democracy, the disdain for liberal “rights” and “freedoms”, the suspicion of compromise, the presumption of hypocrisy (or childish naivety) in arguments that defend the market order.

And herein lies a clue: marxism holds no truths for those who examine the world rationally, but it is extremely seductive for those who do not. Capitalists and right-wingers are rightfully contemptuous of the incoherence of marxism but, perhaps, they fail to appreciate that marxism is so attractive to so many precisely because of it's incoherence. It may be gibberish to left-brain objectivists but, by the same token, it is attractively intuitive and holistic to right-brain subjectivists. Marxism is a means of abdicating from the weighty responsibility of applying intellectual rigour in solving socio-economic problems.

"Anti-globalism has been aptly described as a secular religion. So is Marxism: a creed complete with prophet, sacred texts and the promise of a heaven shrouded in mystery. Marx was not a scientist, as he claimed. He founded a faith. The economic and political systems he inspired are dead or dying. But his religion is a broad church, and lives on."

A conclusion which may appear trite but one which I feel goes some way to shedding light on this problem. Marxism continues to thrive because it is impervious to rude reality. It is a fundamentalist religious fervour that, by it's very nature, is logic-proof and common-sense-resistant. Perhaps we have failed to fell this beast because our tactics consist entirely of saturation-bombing with facts; it is like trying to kill a virus with anti-biotics. It is never going to work.

If we regard marxism not as a cogent political worldview, but as an ecstatic faith then that, of itself, is not an answer to the problem. Rather it is a recognition of the true nature of the problem and, with that in mind, it is possible to re-tool our armies in readiness for a final, victorious assault.

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Youthful policeman are a standard yardstick of personal maturity and you really know that middle age is looming when politicians begin to look 'fresh-faced'. However, there is nothing quite like the passing of your teenage rock 'n' roll idols to have you looking in the mirror and counting those grey hairs.

"Joe Strummer, lead singer of seventies punk band The Clash, has died at the age of 50."

'The Clash' provided the background music for my student years. I loved them. R.I.P Joe and thankyou.

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Since we at Samizdata are only too aware that most of our readers are not British, we take a particular relish in introducing our readers to the rich and fruity idioms of British slang. We see this as a kind of cultural export.

In this tradition, may I refer you to the expression 'Taking the Piss'. It means being disrespectful to the point of effrontery or the process whereby, having caused injury or offence to someone, the 'piss-taker' then goes on to compound said injury or offence for no obvious reason except contempt.

As always, these terms are best illustrated by a real-life example, so here is quite the most blatant example of 'taking the piss' that I can imagine:

"The burglar injured by Tony Martin after he broke into the farmer's home is suing him for £15,000 compensation for loss of earnings."

I burgle your home then I sue you for trying to stop me. See, that's called 'taking the piss'.

"Brendon Fearon, 32, wants the compensation because he has supposedly been unable to find a job since suffering the gunshot injuries in the raid on Martin's Norfolk home.."

This thing is expecting the rest of us to believe that, had it not been for Tony Martin's buckshot lodged in his jacksy, he'd have been abroad actively seeking honest, gainful employment. Get the picture?

"The writ gives a number of reasons for Fearon's claim, including his leg injuries, which prevent him finding work, concern about his "long-term sexual functioning" and becoming "very tearful" when watching a film in which someone dies."

Woe, woe and, thrice, woe! Fearon may be unable to breed new Fearons. And I too, get 'very tearful' when I watch the world go stark, staring bonkers.

"He is also said to claim that he is afraid of fireworks, no longer enjoys ju-jitsu and kick-boxing and becomes depressed when TV shows contain gunfire."

I know exactly how he feels because I become depressed by the horrible feeling that his ludicrous claim will, like as not, succeed.

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I don't read cyrillic script, but I'm I'm told that this link takes one to a book by Yuri Muchin which is about the "murder" by "the Jews" of Beria and Stalin.

All I can say is, if it is true, where do I send my check to the global Zionist conspiracy. It is hard to think of a greater service to mankind.

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The Dnepr launch including the TransOrbital engineering test article for their coming Lunar Trailblazer vehicles has been orbited successfully. According to the Russian company's news section:

"The third launch of SS-18 missile under Dnepr Program with a group of 6 spacecraft belonging to several customers was performed at Baikonur Cosmodrome on 20 December 2002 at 20-00."

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"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."
- P. J. O'Rourke (from the rabble rabble rabble list of choice quotes at the top left)

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In so far as this slogan declares a beautiful and simple truth, it does not prompt me to go and read James Lileks. But that's because I already do read James Lileks. Avidly and regularly (doesn't everyone?).

All the more reason, then, for a particular phrase or position in his column to stand out for me and ignite a bonfire of ideas in my head. This time, the great man says:

"...make a crack about “Women’s Studies” departments, as I did in yesterday’s screed, and people think you’re opposed to women’s studies. I’m not."

It is taken from the screed that inspired the above-mentioned slogan and it is a view from which I beg to differ. I am opposed to 'Women's Studies'. I am opposed to all 'studies' be they women's, social, peace, gay, ethnic, media, vegan, enviro-mental or any other 'studies' one may care to mention.

'Studies' are not about studying. They are nothing whatsoever to do with pushing forth the frontiers of knowledge. It is not about learning, it is about anti-learning. 'Studies' are the colonies of the marxist academic imperium established to train future operatives in the principles and means of deconstruction and social engineering. They are the proving grounds of the middle-class kleptocrats that spend their lives absorbing wealth while serving in NGOs, committees and state bureaucracies, manipulating and publishing statistics and information in order to advance their naked political agendas.

'Studies' are a cancer, a rot. Cut open any 'studies' department of any university and a million saprophytic creepy-crawlies will pour out, scurrying frantically away from the light. 'Studies' are a leukemia attacking the healthy cells of a civil society. Cauterise them, remove them, incinerate them and let the body grow strong and healthy again.

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Poor, beleagured France! All they're trying to do in West Africa is to keep the peace and impose some semblance of order.

"A rebel group in the Ivory Coast has accused France of waging war after a battle with French troops who are trying to maintain a truce in the country's civil war."

Meanwhile, the EU Commission in Brussels has denounced French unilateralism. The country's 'intellectuals' are doing nothing except sneer at their leaders 'simplisme' foreign policy. The UN has passed a resolution condemning French aggression. Church leaders are urging the French to be more tolerant and understanding. Thousands of left-wing academics and celebrities have launched a 'Not In My Name' Petition. African leaders are calling upon the rest of the world to resist French militarism and both the Guardian and the Independent are running editorial columns focussing on France's right-wing, red-necked President, their dangerous and uncivilised obsession with gun-culture and the danger that their blind, one-sided foreign policy represents to the rest of the world community.

Okay, none of those things have actually happened yet. But I'm quite sure they will. Any day now. You mark my words. Just wait and see.