(0) (61)

Britain has been rocked this past week by shocking and totally unexpected revelations that have ripped apart the fabric of our national complacency and destablised our settled worldviews.

Prior to this week, it was an unquestioned given that the British National Party was an organisation that was fully committed, both in principle and practice, to multiculturalism and ethnic diversity.

But this article of faith has now been torn to shreds, thanks to the efforts of brave, crusading BBC reporter who went undercover to join the BNP and discovered (brace yourselves, please) that some BNP members are racist!!!!

The evidence he collected includes one BNP member, Steve Barkham, confessing to a violent assault on an Asian man, and a prospective election candidate admitting to a campaign of pushing dog excrement through the front door of an Asian takeaway.

I can hardly believe my own eyes and ears but I have to accept the terrible truth. We must be grateful to the BBC without whom we would all still be wallowing in ignorance and delusion.

But now for the fallout. First to plummet to earth is the BNP's bankers, Barclays, which, doubtless reeling from the shock of discovering the awful reality, have closed the the BNP accounts:

Barclays Bank moved to close accounts held by the British National party last night after its members were secretly filmed delivering racist tirades and admitting violence against Muslims.

There is an argument that Barclays are entitled to refuse business on whatever basis they see fit but that argument only really works in a free market and there is nothing like a free market in banking services in this country. At best it is a state-backed cartel. If Barclays refuse to provide banking services to the BNP then it is going to prove next to impossible for the BNP to bank anywhere at all.

The BNP can get along just fine without a bank account but what they cannot do is put candidates up for election, as they will not be able to comply with the requirements of the Electoral Commission. In effect, they will have been expunged from the democratic process.

The absence of a BNP candidates on the ballot for the next election will not, of itself, cause me to lose much sleep but the disturbing implications could well keep me awake at night. First, there is the dangerous precedent. Anyone who thinks that Barclays action is merely coincidental with the BBC report is probably also the kind of person who is genuinely shocked to discover that the BNP are not an anti-racist group. No, this whole things smacks of coordination and, if it succeeds in removing the BNP from the political map, then it is surely a procedure that will be used again. The UK Independence Party is the obvious next target.

Secondly, they may just make a mountain out of a molehill. Something like 800,000 people voted for the BNP in last month's regional elections. That is not an insignificant number. Their heads may well be stuffed full of odious and stupid ideas but their allegiance to the BNP is driven by their feelings of resentment and persecution; feelings which are only going to be reinforced and justified by their being (as they will surely see it) disenfranchised and robbed of their votes. Elections, whether local or national, are a safety valve whereby these people can let off steam without anyone getting hurt. Seal off that valve and the steam will find other outlets.

If you think that BNP supporters are dangerous now....

(0) (11)

As a general rule, I am not a huge fan of Microsoft. I am not tremendously keen on their software from a design or reliability point of view, and I find their business practices at times to be a bit dubious.

However, yesterday they won 3.95 million dollars in damages from a spammer in Washington DC, who sent out huge numbers of e-mail messages that claimed to come from Microsoft in order to encourage people to download a toolbar that then downloaded all manner of nasty spyware and advertising.

Microsoft have won a total of $54m in recent judgements in their campaign against spammers. Generally the judgements have not been against the practice of spam per se but against the deceptive practices of the spammers (ie the spams have been full of lies).

Might I wish Bill and the boys continued success in this campaign.

(1) (4)

And now the important news of the summer: a record crop is expected of grapes in the Champagne region [French link]. The absence of frost last Winter and mild weather in Spring is a hopeful sign for a good vintage, although quantity and quality do not necessarily follow. Over the coming weeks vines will be pruned of some of the grape bunches to ensure a greater concentration of sugar and acidity.

So the next time some tree-hugging Greens moan about penguin habitats, they can console themselves with a nice bottle of Veuve Cliquot.

(0) (3)

"Minister rejects Bush reliance on abstinence, and backs use of generic drugs"

If I did not know this was about treating AIDS in the Third World, this would be very funny. Spotted in Salon.com.

(0) (6)

I suddenly find myself writing more and more about the Middle East.

Kidnappers demand less corruption.

Only in Palestine...

(0) (3)

There is a tax strike in Lebanon against government levies on mobile phone charges.

This is pure supply-side economics coming from Zuheir Berro, the president of Consumers Lebanon:

Berro also refuted allegations that the government needed to charge high fees to insure more income. "This is a random policy which will get us nowhere," he said. We still have a very high capacity for subscriptions and if they lower the fees, then subscriptions will multiply," he added.

Lebanon has a 24 percent level of subscribers, compared to over 80 percent in industrialized countries, according to Berro.

The high subscription and communication fees, according to the group, are hindering the country's development and investments.

Meanwhile British MPs are demanding extra local taxes, in addition to the existing local property and business taxes because it is the key to 'democracy'.

(6) (14)

By now of course, all right (read 'left') thinking people are fully conversant with the theory that the Moon landings were faked by the US government in a warehouse decorated with papier-mache and pieces of screwed-up tinfoil somewhere in the Nevada desert. This elaborate hoax was perpetrated as an underhand PR attack on the Soviets, who would never have indulged in any such below-the-belt behaviour, being too busy with stuff like this (hat tip: The Bleat).

I don't know this for sure, but I am guessing that probably most of America's nukes were fake as well, and possibly even some of their presidents. We already know that Star Wars was fraudulent (the strategic defense initiative, not the popular sci-fi movie series, which was, of course, entirely true to life) and it has been suggested in the past that Ronald Reagan himself was actually a puppet from 'Spitting Image'. Although I suspect that particular theory may have arisen from some confusion about the difference between real life and what one sees on television. Clearly human evolution still has work to do.

Anyway, for those of you who have not seen this already (not new itself, but possibly new to others than just me) irrefutable proof of the faking of the moon-landings can be found right here. Those of British origin will particularly appreciate these pictures. Essential viewing for all human beings who still have brains.

(hat tip: Chicago Boyz)

(0) (16)

I have a confession to make.

In May 1990, I contested a local election as a Conservative candidate for Fortune Green Ward in the London Borough of Camden. Had I won, I would have been a Borough councillor representing about 4,500 electors as a Conservative politician.

It seems a Folkestone, Kent Conservative councillor also has some confessions to make.

He said his convictions included death by dangerous driving, indecent assault, drugs possession, carrying a weapon and forgery.

Richdale, an unemployed chef, confessed to using cannabis and amphetamines to control his alcoholic cravings, saying: "I am an alcoholic and I always will be but I haven't had a drink for 11 years."

He admitted having sex with a girl of 14 and said: "She told me she was 15 but she was 14. She stayed at mine (home) and I woke up to find her having sex with me.

"But I am not a sex case and I am not motivated by lust. I wish everyone was like me."

Now I should point out that the lawful age of consent in England is 16, not 15 or 14. The language used by Councillor Robert Richdale in an interview to his local newspaper does not suggest the calibre of candidate that I would vote for. I also find the last two sentences of the quote completely at odds with any sense of personal responsibility. It never had occured to me before now that the closure of the Conservative Party's youth sections over the past 15 years might be a good idea, as a way of preventing child abuse.

So next time a Conservative complains about the 'loony' ideas of libertarians I will not be thinking, perhaps we go a bit too far. The more I see them, the more I like my denunciation of "an unelectable shambles comprised largely of cretins, petty crooks, pompous buffoons and in-bred yahoos. I will take no lessons in morality or "coherent political philosophy" from a Tory.

And that is before I look at the deplorable results in the by-elections tonight, where the Conservatives have made no headway whatsoever against Labour in the Midlands. The Conservatives cannot get one fifth of the vote in a Birmingham constitutency and cannot remotely challenge in Leicester, a city where three out of four MPs were Conservative during the 1980s.

(0) (14)

As regular Samizdata readers will know, many of the authors here have been enthralled by the development of a nascent commercial space flight industry, given a vital kick-start by the X-Prize and demonstrated in thrilling fashion by Bert Rutan's Space Ship One.

As I said at the time, the cultural Luddites in our midst will mock, but ventures like this inspire the open-minded, scientifically curious and plain ornery speed freaks like yours truly. They show that the boundaries we accept as given are anything but. The demonstration that private enterprise can produce real results in space flight is an important one, and I reckon that a growing competitive market in this area should help bring long-term costs down and free the industry from the dead hand of NASA and other state institutions with multi-billion budgets and limited visions.

In the years leading up to the first phase of manned space flight, there was a good deal of fiction pointing to some of the ideas and developments which later translated into fact. Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and Poul Anderson are among those who spring to mind. But I had not come across a lot of recent fiction (ie, written in the past 20 years) which had played with ideas of how space flight would be borne on the wings of buccaneering free market capitalism. Well, in the past couple of years, I came across two good books, one I regard as solid, if perhaps a little wooden in its style, and another which simply blew me away with its sweep, drama and all-round believability. The first is Firestar, by Michael Flynn and the second, and in my view better, book, is Kings of the High Frontier, by Victor Koman. The Koman book is my favourite.

What is depressing, given the present amount of crud sold in bookshops these days, is that Koman's book is not easily available. The publishers thought fit to produce a small run. Considering the revival of interest in space flight which I detect at the moment, and the deeds of the SSI flight, this book deserves a bigger audience. I have contacted the publishers to make this very point. Perhaps if they don't want to produce more, then another publisher with more flair will take up the challenge. Screw Harry Potter and nonsense about wizards - this is the real stuff of real, achievable adventure.

(0) (12)

Attentive libertarians know, of course, that statists routinely lie in the pursuit of their objectives. A couple of revealing posts show how they lie about economic reality in pursuit of a multitude of policies that boil down to the state taking your stuff and giving it to others via various redistribution schemes, just as the need for redistribution is left on the dust-heap of history.

First, Mickey Kaus takes long-time lefty and temporary NYT columnist Barbara Ehrenreich to task for falsely claiming that it is impossible for a single mom to escape poverty by marrying a productive blue collar worker (implying that we therefor need greater transfers of your wealth to single moms and blue collar workers). The annoying facts:

Even at the current minimum wage, a full-time worker earns $10,700 a year and an Earned Income Tax Credit of $2,500 (three person family) to $4,200 (four person family). Add in $4000-5,000 of food stamps and subsidized Medicaid or CHIP health care for the children, and you're well above the poverty line even with a single breadwinner and a stay-at-home mom.

Next, Arnold Kling posts more annoying facts to rebut the commonly heard mantra from the redistributionists that wage earners have lost ground since the '70s. This is, of course, obviously and intuitively absurd, but its nice to have some numbers. While most of the essay defies excerpt, one of the long-term trends is particularly striking:

One of the most important trends of the past century is the reduction in the average work week. Contrary to another popular myth, Americans are working much less than they used to. Fogel writes:

"in 1890, retirement was a rare phenomenon. Virtually all workers died while still in the labor force. Today, half of those in the labor force, supported by generous pensions, retire in their fifties."

Furthermore, Americans work many fewer days than they did a century ago. Using as a benchmark a 365 day work-year, Fogel calculates that in 1880 on average male household head worked 8.5 hours per day, but only 4.7 hours per day in 1995. With less time spent working and somewhat better health, total leisure available has more than tripled, from 1.8 hours per day to 5.8 hours per day.

The policy implications should be obvious: Wealth frees a society from any need for the state to mandate minimally acceptable outcomes (to insure that no one starves or freezes), and so a wealthy society should be able to dispense with the redistributionist state.

However, the incredible wealth generated by the American economy has had the opposite effect, because people with more disposable income are not nearly as sensitive to taxation. One of the many things they can afford more of, in short, is taxes. With no shortage of people willing to take your money and spend it as they see fit, taxes and redistribution have increased just as any arguable need for them has all but disappeared. In the final irony, the most enormous wealth transfer scheme of all (Social Security and Medicare) transfer money from the poorest segment of society (wage earners) to the wealthiest (the elderly).

(0) (8)

Natalie's post below, referencing 'new age travellers' reminded me of something I saw on TV the other night: One of the reality TV programmes littering the Channel 4 schedule is Wife Swap. This features two families of contrasting lifestyles swapping wives for a couple of weeks. This week saw unabashed 'consumerist' Joanna exchange with soi-disant 'eco-warrior', Emily.

The violent disagreements frequently showcased in this series were notable by their absence but a source of intense irritation for me was the smug way that Emily's family presumed to lecture Joanna's family about the 'unsustainability' of their 'consumerist' lifestyle. This was to be set in contrast to the supposedly sustainable, humble way of life enjoyed by the environmentally friendly family. Yet it seemed clear to me that it was the lifestyle of the latter which was truly unsustainable. After all, this particular eco-family, eke out an idyllic idle existence in their forest house... courtesy of state benefits!

If all of us capitalists downed our tools to live in the woods and embrace the eco-lifestyle there would be nobody paying the taxes which fund these 'alternative' lifestyles, nor indeed would there be an economy to provide all those things you can't just grow. Whatever chance a self-supporting eco-warrior has of convincing me of the superiority of that lifestyle, when one attempts to do so from a position of state-funded idleness, the proper reaction is derision.

The principal reason this is worth noting is that guilty consumerists prove notoriously receptive to the kind of nonsense peddled by the likes of Emily, probably imagine that the greater virtue lies in the faux-sustainable lifestyle and provide insufficient defense of the capitalism which actually 'sustains' all of us.

(1) (5)

Unless he was lying on national television again, or changes his mind like he did several times over the Maastricht Treaty, Saddam Hussein's best chum has announced that the French (and colonies) will be given a chance to vote on the proposed European Union constitution.

Lucky, we know all the dirty tricks that can be used in such a referendum campaign, they were all used last time by the Florentine François Mitterand, to get the Maastricht Treaty through. So we shall be campaigning in Guadeloupe, and Martinique, and the Isle de la Réunion, and French Polynesia, St Pierre et Miquelon and New Caledonia, and Wallis et Futuna if necessary to avoid losing by 40,000 votes. Get the Atlas out!

I am starting a voter registration guide among the French refugees living in London. I am also checking whether foreign EU citizens living in France can vote and how to arrange this. My new blog Combat (named after the WWII Resistance magazine against the Nazi occupation) launched today will be tracking the campaign in French.

Instead of the national anthem's "aux armes citoyens!", let us "aux urnes citoyens!"

*"To the ballot boxes citizens!"

(0) (6)

You may remember this sad incident in the opening days of the Iraq Campaign: a US Patriot battery engaged and shot down a returning British Tornado. The official report on the incident is finally out:

IFF failure led to destruction of RAF Tornado

A Royal Air Force (RAF) Board of Inquiry investigating the destruction of an RAF Tornado GR.4A by a US Army Patriot missile during the March 2003 invasion of Iraq has concluded that the aircraft's identification friend-or-foe (IFF) system had failed. However, it also criticised the missile-classification criteria used by the Patriot system, and the US Army's Patriot rules of engagement, firing doctrine and crew training. [Jane's Missiles and Rockets - 28 June 2004]

If any of our readers has a link to a pdf of the original report - if such exists - I would be happy to include it here.

Editor: Kudos to Julian Taylor for the link to the MoD pdf file.

(0) (13)

It is always refreshing to read an article trashing state intervention only to read in the by-line at the end that the author is a candidate for the State of Massachusetts' Senate.

Going back to look up James D. Miller's bio details, I see that he is 'Assistant Professor of Economics, Smith College'. My ignorance of the American education system is profound. Yet it seems to me that this is not the profile I would expect for a British economics professor. A candidate for political office who publicly calls for less state intervention, and does not even ask for more tax money in education! We used to have one or two or those.

I am especially intrigued by Mr Miller's references (linking to Thomas Sowell) to the two earthquakes in California and Iran during 2003. The reason fewer than 10 people were killed in a Californian earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale, whereas 28,000 were killed by a 6.6 Richter earthquake in Iran? One word: wealth.

I really must read more Sowell. And thank you James D. Miller for an educational article.

(11) (21)

My friend Robert J Avrech, the Hollywood screenwriter behind such productions as Body Double and The Devil's Arithmetic, lost his 22-year-old son Ariel to pulmonary fibrosis last July. Ariel, like the rest of his family, was a devout Orthodox Jew, and was also a rabbinical candidate and an incredibly learned Talmudic scholar.

Ariel was just a kid when his family found themselves trapped in a cinema besieged by thugs during the Los Angeles riots of 1992, and as he grew older and studied the Torah more closely, he turned his attention to the case made in Jewish texts for the right to private ownership of guns. He eventually grew too weak and ill to put the case down on paper, just as he never did have the chance to go to the shooting range with his father as he dreamed of doing. But Robert has written about the matter himself, and it makes for compelling reading whether you are Jewish or not. I reproduce his essay, in its entirety, with Robert's kind permission.

Ariel was always amazed at how many Jews - Shomer Shabbos Jews - aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a movement to banish the private ownership of guns by lawful citizens. During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, Karen and I, Ariel and Leda were inside a film theatre. Abruptly, an angry mob congregated outside; soon they were trying to break down the doors. Trapped inside, we were all terrified. I held Leda in my arms; she shivered like a frightened rabbit. Karen held Ariel's hand.

"Don't worry," I said with false confidence, "the police will be here soon."

But the police did not arrive that night, nor did they protect the city from arson and widespread looting. In fact, we watched in disbelief as news cameras captured images of police officers standing idly by while looters gleefully committed their crimes.

A few days later, I bought a gun.

I bought a gun because I realized that the day might come again when the people who were sworn to protect us would once again choose not to.

As Ariel's conservative political opinions began to cohere, he logically fell on the side of legal gun ownership. But because he was first and foremost a Torah Jew, first and foremost a Talmudic scholar, Ariel sat down and put gun ownership into a Halachic framework. We talked often about his ideas. Ariel wanted to put them down on paper. Unfortunately, he never had the opportunity.

And so I humbly jot down a few of Ariel's ideas on the Second Amendment.

Ariel pointed out that in his commentary on Beresheis 4:23, Ramban says: "The sword is not the cause of murder, and there is no sin upon him who made it." In other words, a weapon, be it a sword or a gun, is neutral. It can be used for good or for evil. Thus to label a gun as "bad" makes no sense, for a gun can be used in self-defense which the Torah sees as a primary right.

The Torah (Exodus 22.2) teaches that, when necessary a householder may kill a burglar to save his own life.

Gemara Sanhedrin (72A) says: "He who rises to kill you, you must kill first." It seems odd to have to defend the most basic notion of self-defense, but in America today, the shrill and self-righteous voices of pacifism and appeasement have become alarmingly prominent. Ariel told me that if gun control advocates had their way, the only people with access to guns would be the police, who cannot be counted on for security, and criminals, who can be counted on to be, well, criminals and to have absolutely no respect for the hundreds of gun laws already on the books.

Ariel also pointed out that on Purim the Jews were given royal permission to defend their lives. The King's edict did not order the army to protect the Jews, no; the Jews were allowed to purchase arms in order to defend themselves. Obviously, as a minority in the Persian Empire, Jews were forbidden weapon ownership. This is not unique in Jewish history. During the Roman occupation of Judea, Jews were forbidden to own swords, spears or any implements of war. What better way for a ruling empire to control an unruly and rebellious population? And of course, in Europe, one of the first laws that Hitler imposed was an all-encompassing weapons ban. Imagine how different Jewish history would be if every Jewish family in Europe owned at least one gun that had six bullets in the chamber.

One of the hallmarks of modern Liberalism, Ariel suggested, is an astonishing inability to recognize, much less confront, evil. Therefore it is psychologically necessary for the liberal to place the blame on an inanimate object - the gun - rather than the person who pulls the trigger. It is easier to fault the gun manufacturer for the horror at Columbine, rather than admit that two sixteen-year-old boys are capable of such evil. The Jewish attitude, Ariel said, is to place the blame where it squarely belongs: on the two young men; to declare their evil, and never to utter their names. For just as goodness is a reality, so is evil. Try and imagine, said Ariel, if one or two Columbine teachers had guns with them. Imagine if these armed teachers had been able to protect the students who were shot down like defenseless animals.

There was another aspect to these stories that Ariel detected and deeply troubled him. The news always referred to Columbine and even 9-11 as "tragedies." "They're not tragedies," Ariel held. "They are outrages." A tragedy is when people are killed in a fire or an earthquake. But when people are murdered in cold blood, it is an atrocity. Again, Ariel pointed out, the media, overwhelmingly liberal, is unable to distinguish malevolent acts from natural disasters.

Ariel concluded that Jews in America should be at the forefront of the right to bear arms. Jews should join the National Rifle Association. For Jews to rely on the power of the state for protection is sheer foolishness. Time and again, Jewish history reveals governments cruelly betraying their Jewish citizens. And though Ariel felt that America was "different," he still maintained that allowing the state to make the ownership of weapons illegal is an unwise policy. But like so much else in American Jewish life, Jews have signed on to aggressively utopian ideologies that go against their self-interest. Instead, countless Jews espouse principles that feed their need to feel virtuous. But in the end, these are beliefs that defy common sense and display an appalling ignorance of Jewish history and Halacha.

Ariel looked forward to the day when he and I would go to the shooting range together for some target practice.

"Let's shoot at a picture of Arafat," I said.

"And Osama," said Ariel.

"And Saddam Hussein."

"And the President of France," Ariel added with his wry smile.

Robert J. Avrech
Los Angeles, California
March 2004

(0) (41)

Some time ago President Bush offered 15 billion dollars of American taxpayers money for 'the fight against AIDS' in various nations.

Yesterday the Secretary General of the UN denounced the United States for not spending enough money. Now this anger could be dismissed as the Secretary General being upset that so much of the money was going to be spent 'direct' in the nations concerned rather than put through the UN (where the Secretary General's son and his friends could steal some of the money), however this does not explain all the anger directed against the United States at the AIDS conference in Bangkok.

I think the explanation for the anger is very simple - people are never grateful for loot.

Everyone knows that President Bush is not giving his own money when he hands out the 15 billion dollars (assuming that Congress goes along with this idea), he is just taking (by the threat of violence) money from the taxpayers and dishing it out.

Why should anyone be grateful to him? He is not making a sacrifice; he is just handing out the money of the taxpayers. Why should he give 15 billion dollars to the third world, why not 50 billion or 500 hundred billion? It is not costing him anything.

So the various political activists feel no reason to thank President Bush.

It is the old story of 'conservatives' and government spending. No matter how much they spend the activists will always think they can get more money from the 'progressive' politicians and so will shout and scream and stamp their feet.

(2) (44)

Joseph Brennan, one of my regularly occasional Brian's Friday's attenders, has taken to emailing me with useful links to things that he thinks might be bloggable. It was he who told me about these great photographs, so that I could tell you. Well, now Joe Brennan he has sent me a link to a piece by Chris Bennett, about the possibility that the world's oil reserves may not be going to run out any time soon after all.

Personally, on the basis of zero scientific knowledge, I have never been very convinced by the idea that oil has its origins in living organisms. There just seems to be too damn much of it for that. Why has this particular life relic hung around when so much else has just vanished? And why is it all so yuckily similar looking? Life is not like that, even when it is dead. Why could oil have not bubbled up from below, on the same basis that lava does? Such were my ignorant suspicions.

Chris Bennett supplies a more scientifically educated speculation to this same effect. Oil, it is apparently now being thought, may indeed have seeped up and be seeping up still, from the depths of the earth. The organic look that it acquires is because bugs merely like to swim in it, rather than because bugs (or any other living thing) actually perished to create the stuff. From time to time, for example, oil bursts upwards into the caverns otherwise known as the regular oil fields where humans have characteristically tended to find oil before, which results in certain ever dwindling reserves mysteriously refusing to dwindle as much as they should. And so on.

If this theory comes to be accepted, this does not necessarily mean that oil companies will immediately be drilling in new ways and in new places, to new depths. It may merely, to start with, result in a general willingness to commit to continuing oil exploration and to oil-based industry, more than would otherwise have happened. It may be many decades before anyone actually gets a direct tube installed to these vast - and no doubt vastly deep and inaccessible - new oil reserves. For the time being, the oil companies may merely rely on Mother Earth having an occasional attack of the squirts into her underwear, so to speak. And on her farting too, if I understand the theory correctly. Gas is also involved in all this.

I, of course, want to believe that this is all true, if only to see the look on the faces of the environmentalists when they are eventually persuaded that the internal combustion engine is here for ever. And there is now also the fact that I have here tipped this idea as a cheap intellectual share bet, so to speak. So I am sceptical also of my scepticism about the oil-is-dead-bugs theory – or whatever is the official theory now. But this is certainly a fun fence to be sitting on.

Chris Bennett's article was published as long ago as May 25 of this year. Has there been much discussion sparked by it? What did anyone think? Is there any truth to this notion that oil is of an entirely different origin to the one now generally accepted, and consequently that it is massively more abundant than previously assumed?

(0) (2)

Last post for awhile on US Presidential politics. I promise. Having set the table on the domestic side below, a post came along from Mr. Bevan at Real Clear Politics (an invaluable site for US political junkies, by the way) which does a nice job of framing the choice facing American voters this fall on the foreign policy side:

[N]o Democrat, with only one or two exceptions in the entire elected party, would have looked at the exact same intelligence Bush looked at with respect to Iraq after 9/11 and done much of anything - even though they agreed with Bush at the time that Hussein was a serious threat.

And:

Indeed, far more damning than Bush acting on evidence almost everyone in the world believed to be true is to look at a hypothetical in reverse: What if all of the WMD intelligence on Iraq had been spot on and John Kerry were President at the time and chose not to act because of pressure from his party or the objections of allies? I think most Americans would find that prospect deeply disturbing.

Kerry and his fellow Democrats are, for the most part, transnational progressivists committed to having international institutions to deal with bad actors like Saddam. Mr. Bevan provides a useful reminder of how such institutions actually fared, in the real world:

Saddam played cat-and-mouse with the U.S. and the U.N. for nearly a year before finally booting UNSCOM out of Iraq altogether in August 1998.

The response? On September 9, 1998 the UN Security Council passed yet another resolutioncondemning Iraq's lack of cooperation with inspectors.

On December 16, 1998 the U.S. launched Operation Desert Fox, a four-day [ineffectual] bombing campaign against military targets in Iraq.

[On December 21, 1998, the NYT reported that:] Sunday in Paris, President Jacques Chirac of France called for a prompt lifting of the oil embargo. His country's major oil companies have for years been eager to return to work in Iraq, although record low oil prices make this less attractive now.

In fact, three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (France, Russia, & China) responded to the limited use of military force against Saddam for his continued violation of UNSC resolutions by calling to lift the economic sanctions against Iraq and disband UNSCOM completely. And that was basically the end of the whole affair.

Americans tend to prefer leaders who take decisive and effective action against known threats. The media, of course, favors Kerry, and is trying to obscure Kerry's catastrophic weakness as a leader with the side issue of whether the universally accepted intelligence on Iraq from several years ago was any good.

No leader can afford to wait for perfect information before acting - in the real world, where inaction has consequences, you have to do the best you can with what you have. It is pretty clear that the best Kerry can do, even with the kind of international consensus that existed on Saddam Hussein two years ago, is look around for someone else to take charge.

(0) (8)

News of large scale arrests of criminals in Baghdad carried out by Iraqi police are welcome, provided there is due process and it is not simply a trawling operation. It does however demonstrate the differing priorities of an army of occupation versus a police force.

The International Herald Tribune article taken from the New York Times also mentions a drop in 'spectacular' terrorist attacks over the past three weeks. Those of us who consider that terrorist groups usually prosper in a climate of lawlessness will ponder the Iraqi situation and reflect on Northern Ireland.

There is little doubt that massive police activity will uncover some terrorist networks and disrupt potential attacks: for example raiding the home of a criminal can turn up equipment intended for terrorist actions.

In Northern Ireland all sorts of crimes, from welfare benefit fraud, fraudulent elections, fire insurance scams, drug dealing, protection rackets, unlicensed gambling and alcohol premises, contract killings and woundings, are tolerated on the grounds that the 'peace process' must be kept going.

For the first time in months, I get the sense that Iraq may be going in the right direction. I wish this were the case of Londonderry and Belfast. I have felt for a long time that the violence in Northern Ireland should be considered a law-enforcement problem, separate from politics.

(0) (13)

The nuances of Japan's langauge can be found even in the title of this book, as Hagakure can be rendered as 'hidden leaves' or 'hidden by the leaves'. But this collection of 300 musings and anecdotes, of the 1,300 taken down from the retired samurai retainer Yamamoto Tsuenetono (1659-1719) are close enough to give the Western reader a taste of the ethical ideas, philosophy and moral ideas of the Japanese samurai class.

In 1660 the Shogun prohibited the practice of tsuifuku where a retainer committed suicide at the death of his master. So when Yamamoto's Master died, he retired to a Buddist monastary, and younger samurai gathered to hear his views. They were transcribed, and these were collected as a book, some excerpts of which can be read here.

They are, to say the least, radically different to anything in the Western moral tradition. This is not a book of essays, many of the precepts are but a paragraph in length, and deal with the ways of the samurai. What preoccupied them was war and death, and the correct way to inflict and recieve them. It is, to our eyes, a gruesome code.

The samurai were the warriors who served their Lords, the daimyo, who were the real rulers of Japan, under the Shoguns and Emperors. Yamamoto Tsuentono devotes much of his work to the conduct and behavior of the samurai retainers. He extolls an ideal of absolute unquestioning obedience; to me it seems like voluntary slavery. And death, of course, is the ideal. The retainer should consider himself as a dead man walking, and should also be ready to die even at his own hand, should his Master require it of him.

Nakano Jin'emon constantly said, "A person who serves when treated kindly by the master is not a retainer. But a person who serves when the master is being heartless and unreasonable is a retainer. You should understand this principal well."

But of course, the main business of the samurai was to inflict death, and this they did on a constant basis. The 'Way of the Samurai' is a military code, designed to discipline men into serving as soliders in a hostile, pre-technological environment. Notions of class and honour evolved into concepts which overpowered other sentiments. Yamamoto scorns women and the 'lower classes' when he thinks of them at all. For him, life is death, service is freedom, and killing is love.

This is an important document for the historian who turns to look at Japan. This moral code enabled the conquest of Japan and the destruction of its original inhabitants, over 2,000 years ago, and seems to have evolved until the end of the pre-technological age. As new precepts and ideas emerged in this culture, they survived by winning victory, or were killed in battle, so a form of social Darwinism dominated. For the Japanese were constantly fighting each other.

One meme that did survive was the need to be adaptable to new military ideas. So when the West impinged on the Japanese culture with a decisive technological edge in the 1850's, the Japanese ruling class embraced the new concepts quite quickly, and within 50 years had totally discarded their old techniques for new. However, they had not changed their ideas on how wars should be fought- they felt that the old ethical considerations and ideas of valour
and honour were quite adequate for the new age.

This is why the brutal ideas of the Hagakure survived into the 20th century. In reading this book, one can see the ideas of the old samurai in full view against the might of Western industrial power. But it was decisively defeated by the US with their own ethical code, and since then, the Japanese have eschewed war for other pursuits. A reading of the Hagakure is enough to remind any reader that this is something we should all be thankful for.

Concerning martial valour, merit lies more in dying for one's master then in striking down the enemy.

(0) (22)

I think I may have stumbled upon (or possibly even coined) a counter-cultural smear word for deployment by the good guys against the bad.

I was having lunch with a business associate today and, at some point, conversation turned to discussion of a mutual acquaintance. While groping for the right words to describe this persons character, the word "liberophobe" just seemed to pop out of my mouth.

Liberophobia - an irrational fear of freedom.

I do not not know whether this word popped out of my brain prior to popping out of mouth or whether is was lying subliminally in wait as a result of my having heard the word elsewhere. In any event, I am far more concerned about spreading this meme than I am about claiming any moral rights to the term.

'Liberophobic'. I like it and I recommend that it be put to good use by whoever feels so inclined.

(0) (9)

Blogger and friend Russell E. Whitaker links to and quotes from an article citing the increasingly intrusive, impertinent and downright rude questions which compilers of the U.S. national census deem is fit to ask citizens of Jefferson's Republic once every ten years.

It is scarcely better in Britain, as far as I can tell. Oh well, I do recall with amusement reading somewhere that in response to questions about matters of religious belief, a number of folk now give their answer as 'Jedi'. Even funnier, it is now a recognised category. I wonder if I ought to go through my collection of science fiction novels and come up with a new category or two.

(1) (25)

The often intemperate Jesse Walker lists 10 reasons to throw Bush out of the White House. I tend to agree with the majority of his complaints, but his last one really points up the dilemma posed to libertarians by the US major parties.

The Democrats have nominated a senator who—just sticking to the points listed above—voted for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, McCain-Feingold, and the TSA; who endorses the assault on "indecency"; who thinks the government should be spending even more than it is now. I didn't have room in my top ten for the terrible No Child Left Behind Act, which further centralized control of the country's public schools—but for the record, Kerry voted for that one too. It's far from clear that he'd be any less protectionist than Bush is, and he's also got problems that Bush doesn't have, like his support for stricter gun controls. True, Kerry doesn't owe anything to the religious right, and you can't blame him for the torture at Abu Ghraib. Other than that, he's not much of an improvement.

Yet I find myself hoping the guy wins. Not because I'm sure he'll be better than the current executive, but because the incumbent so richly deserves to be punished at the polls. Making me root for a sanctimonious statist blowhard like Kerry isn't the worst thing Bush has done to the country. But it's the offense that I take most personally.

(0) (12)

My former flatmate Drew Johnson has estimated what a John Kerry win in the US would cost American taxpayers (but also points out that Bush's record "includes a 29 percent increase in the size of the federal budget during his first term").

(0) (14)

They are not artefacts, they are not animals, they are not a tourist attraction, they are people. They do not belong where animals do, they belong in settlements, villages, towns and cities like you and me. - Sydney Tshepiso Pilane

This is an account of my wildly fluctuating sympathies as I gradually found out more about a legal case launched by the Bushmen of Botswana.

I first saw the story on Ceefax. It's disappeared from there, so I can not quote, but I got the impression that the Bushmen had been evicted from the Kalahari game reserve and that the (possibly dishonest) reason the Bostwana government had given for evicting them was that it could not afford to provide services. Riiight. I powered up for Welfare Rant #2 on the way that welfare systems start by offering their clients services and end by making the 'services' compulsory and demanding that people live their lives in such a way as to allow the government to fulfil its side of the forced exchange with minimum inconvenience.

Then I thought, not so fast, Natalie.

Turning from Ceefax to the BBC Online story linked to above, it now appeared that the Botswanan government wasn't evicting the Bushmen but merely refusing on cost grounds to continue to provide services to remote places. Not the same thing at all. The Bushmen were free to continue to dwell in the same place and manner as their ancestors, they just had to jettison modern conveniences to do it. Well, said I, there is no reason why other Botswanans, themselves most likely poor, should subsidise the Bushmen's lifestyle choice, is there?

In the 1980s there was vast resentment here in Britain at the supine way in which mobile social security offices were set up to follow New Age traveller convoys to keep paying them their benefits; resentment redoubled when it was reported that the travellers seemed immune from many burdens that the state imposes on the rest of us. Their vehicles were frequently untaxed, and the drug laws and the requirement to be 'actively seeking work' if on benefits were left unenforced. (For something of the other side of the story, see the account by a traveller linked to further down.) The Bushmen seemed a similar case. They wanted it both ways: piped water even though they had chosen to live in the back end of nowhere.

But the ride was not over yet. My sympathies swung back once more to the Bushmen as I read another BBC account: 'Botswana's bushmen battle for land.' Maybe I had been revving up for the wrong rant. Now it seemed like a case of Welfare Rant #1: Dependency. Maiteela Segwaba, the old chief profiled here, presents a sad picture; a man for whom the first sip at a government-provided waterhole turned out to be almost the equivalent of the first injection of heroin.

Thousands of bushmen used to live traditional hunter-gatherer lives inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, but now there are just a handful. And few still wear their loincloths or use bows and arrows to hunt game.

The waterholes the government provided years ago changed them gradually into farmers - ironically the authorities' refusal to continue supplying that water is now driving the bushmen from their land.

Not ironically. Predictably. Furthermore this account says that my first impression was right after all: the Bushmen were forcibly evicted, with threats and violence, possibly because there may be diamonds under their land and certainly because the government wants to tidy them up and make them proper modern Botswanans. Rants #1 and #2 fused into one when I read this attempt at justification by a government official, Sydney Tshepiso Pilane. It is sickening.

"Every government in every country formulates a policy for the development of all its people. They are not artefacts, they are not animals, they are not a tourist attraction, they are people. They do not belong where animals do, they belong in settlements, villages, towns and cities like you and me," he said.

Doublethink is not dead: the use of force to make a minority live like the majority is dressed up as a pseudo-indignant declaration of their equality with that majority.

One of the myriad reasons for thinking that it is an evil for the government to lay on services for one is that when the services are withdrawn it hurts, just as part of the evil of drugs is that withdrawal from them hurts. The hurt has two components: first the fact that something you have come to depend on goes away at all, and secondly that the way that the end comes tends to be chaotic and acrimonious.

The reason that withdrawal is rarely phased and planned comes from the politics of the attempt to make services universal. At first the government provides some service or other to most people, those it can reach easily. Then it gets a little richer and has enough spare capacity to get logical. It makes strenuous efforts to provide the service to everyone, whatever the expense. Officials often display a sort of manic determination akin to that of a mother determined to ensure none of her children will ever have cause to complain of fewer ballet lessons or football coaching sessions than another. The first stirrings of resentment from the paying majority start now. They will be ignored because the principle of universality seems so important. But resentments ignored have a way of building up. The pressure rises and rises and then explodes. Suddenly politicians are clutching their parliamentary majorities. Something has to be done to appease the ordinary folk, and quick! But because the minister placed in charge of withdrawal does not wish to have his own universalist platitudes of ten months earlier quoted back at him he has a strong motive to avoid debate. Thus it is Cold Turkey when you are lucky, force and fraud (as seems to be going on in Botswana) when you are not.

Some of the same themes emerge in this account of the New Age travellers (pdf document) by a man who was and is proud to be one. (The author, known as "Tash", would very much dispute some of my interpretation below.) The traveller movement seems much reduced since the eighties. Do those mobile Social Security vans still trundle devotedly on? I doubt it - and that may have been the gentlest of the methods the State used to break up the peace convoys and the festivals. One does not have to be sympathetic to New Age stuff to feel disturbed by accounts of police brutality at the "Battle of the Beanfield."

'Tash' also contends that in the early halcyon days the travellers had a functioning mini-economy of their own that was broken up by government action, pushing them onto benefits. Frankly I do not believe that they kept going solely by handicrafts, barter and busking. I did not dream those mobile social security offices, and a Joseph Rowntree foundation study says a later generation of travellers are somewhat welfare-dependent - but perhaps not as much as the press make out.

On the one hand, state welfare, along with the indifference to trespass, undermined the travellers' claim to be living sustainably and independently. On the other hand, many travellers were liberated and sustained by the freedom to choose their own neighbours and live in their own way and who can argue with that? (Answer: loads of people, starting with Sydney Tshepiso Pilane, but not me.) I can well believe that politically-motivated disruption of the festivals circuit did push people who had been making something for and of themselves into complete dependency. Then that dependency was used to stoke up more anger against them and that in turn embittered the travellers.

Something like the traveller life ought to be an option. But for it to work it has to be visibly non-parasitical. It is not fair that this requirement should be so much stronger for them than for settled people - any libertarian worth his or her salt will point out that people in houses and boardrooms often have their noses in the government trough more deeply than the travellers. It is not fair, but it is true. Metaphorically, those mobile social security vans carried the riot police and the bailiffs within them. They rankled too much to last.

Turning to the Bushmen, perhaps their ancient way of life was doomed anyway by contact with modernity, but any slight chance it may have had to either adapt organically or fade away by consent was finished, and its end made more bitter, by government efforts to help.

(0) (22)

A mugger jumps out and threatens a well-dressed man with a knife, and shouts:
"Hand over your money!"

"You can't do this," says the outraged man. "I'm a local councillor!"

"In that case," replies the mugger, "hand over my money!"

(via the Adam Smith Institute)

(0) (1)

Over at the Social Affairs Unit, there is an interesting digital publication called Butler's Dilemma: Lord Butler's Inquiry and the Re-Assessment of Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, by Professor Anthony Glees and Dr Philip Davies.

Although the Butler Report comes out tomorrow, this interesting analysis actually explains the issues at hand. The first section is called The Whitewash Blues...

(0) (14)

Not that I need to preach to the converted here, but I love the internet. How else could I read every daily edition of my hometown newspaper back in the US if not for the web? I like keeping up on who is engaged and who got married, who got arrested and which baseball coach got sent to prison for selling crack cocaine - it is local gossip news through a global channel, and I can never resist tuning in.

It is also interesting to note the range of opinions that co-exist in my largely conservative hometown. It is a wonderful place to grow up, and a wonderful place to grow old, full of lovely people, but I was somewhat surprised to read an editorial in Monday's edition which stated that taxpayers have to be willing to foot the bill for public schools' physical education classes. What surprised me was not that such an unquestioning, statist line could be uttered in the kind of place that was built on a can-do attitude and pride in one's own ability to do for oneself; what surprised me was how the editorial writer did not even bother to craft an argument in favour of his or her opinion.

So I wrote my first ever letter to the editor. I do not think it will be published, and I would hate to have totally wasted the one minute it took me to read the article and the five minutes it took me to dash off a response, so I reproduce it here.

According to Monday's Gazette editorial on gym classes in public education, "Schools cannot turn their backs on students' health, and the state and taxpayers have to be willing to foot the bill." This is nonsense, at least if you accept the fact that it is up to individuals to decide to be fit or to be unfit. In the case of children, it is parents - not school systems - who must bear that responsibility. It is a scary state of affairs indeed when the notion that parents ought to be the ones taking responsibility for the food their children consume and the activities in which their children participate strikes so many as strange and unthinkable. "But it's the schools' job to teach that!" comes the cry. No, actually, it is not.

The incontestable fact of the matter is that our ability to do things for ourselves - including the ability to think, in some cases - is diminished when the government does those things for us. (Anyone who doubts this should look to those countries where Communism was not so long ago the order of the day, where people who lived under those brutal régimes quite literally struggle to make basic choices for themselves after years of having the government make almost all of life's decisions for them.) This also diminishes us as human beings. The question we must really answer is whether we give priority to a population that may overeat and under-exercise and that consequently does not live as long as it may, or to taking away citizens' autonomy "for the common good". Such collectivist thinking ignores individual rights and responsibilities, and in doing so encourages moral and intellectual passivity. It is also, not coincidentally, the kind of sentiment with which any proud Communist would agree.

As for the question of Medicare and Medicaid, not everyone swallows the statist line that citizens must submit to having our finances looted by the government in order to pay for such services.

On the same note, it is a regrettably radical concept in this day and age, but I do not believe - as the Gazette editorial stated - that I or any other citizen must be willing to foot the bill for any other parent's child's physical education. Our schools have their work cut out for them as it is when it comes to guiding children in academic disciplines. There is no reason to pin the blame on them if Johnny and Susie do not realize that physical activity is a good thing. Of course the fact is that Johnny and Susie and any person with a functioning brain knows this; it is - and must be - up to them to decide whether or not to act on this knowledge. If Johnny and Susie's parents wish to be let off the hook for parenting their children in this area, they need only look to editorials like the one in Monday's Gazette to feel absolved of any such responsibility.

What I did not mention in my letter is that I experienced in two local school districts, as a child and teenager, downright lousy phys ed programs. In high school, it was so bad that your phys ed grade was based solely on whether or not you bothered to bring a change of clothes for the class. The teacher, who also served as athletic director and head basketball coach of the high school, would give you 50 per cent credit just for showing up. Calling that "physical education" was nothing short of a joke, especially as most of us used the period to do the homework we'd neglected to do for the next period's class.

Is this really the reason why some kids are overweight? Hardly. But if I have learned one thing from growing up in an area with very little in the way of fee-paying schools, it is that the parents of kids who attend state (public) schools will always complain about all the things the schools are not teaching their kids that they are entirely capable of teaching their children themselves, be it how not to get pregnant, how not to catch a sexually transmitted disease, or how not to grow obese. It is time someone started making parents feel as crummy as they should for this attitude, so get guilt-tripping today.

(0) (37)

At last. George W. Bush starts telling it like it is, instead of issuing defensive justifications that only reinforce the petty slights and slanders that give rise to them.

We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take.

This is exactly what some of us have been saying for a long time. Finding WMDs was never the point. We knew Saddam had the capability, otherwise he could not have done this. We knew he could not be trusted on WMDs because he kept doing this. We knew he sensed no moral obligation to stay on his own ground because he did this. And we knew Bin Laden had declared war on the West, and we knew Saddam was sympathetic to that cause because... well,

Bin Laden: Any chance you could help out with this next big attack on the States I was thinking about, Mr Saddam?
Saddam: Certainly not! What you are suggesting is immoral! Live and let live, that's my philosophy!

As if.

So I had a choice to make: either take the word of a madman or defend America. Given that choice I will defend America.

The only reason the game of Hunt-the-WMDs got so much publicity was that America used it in their attempt to appease the United Nations; Saddam's non-compliance with weapons inspections was supposed to be the legitimate (ie UN-friendly) reason for launching war, therefore, finding WMDs after the event would have "justified" the invasion with hard evidence.

Bad idea. The UN is evil too. It issues terrorism-encouraging statements that inspire people to blow up public-transport users. The UN would not have approved war on Iraq if Saddam had invited the UN and Bin Laden round together for chicken a-la-king, raspberry pavlova and an after-dinner game of launch-the-nuke. It would have suggested waiting a bit longer in case the decimation of California was a mistake rather than a precedent.

No more Mr Nice Guy, please, Mr Bush. The UN is not our friend.

(0) (1)

Today, watching television often means fighting, violence, and foul language - and that's just deciding who gets to hold the remote control.
- Donna Gephart

(0) (15)

I have a problem with Rowan Atkinson. He only has to open his mouth to set me off laughing. Bob.

Maybe we should start taking him seriously. Every few years Mr Blunkett takes it into his head to publicly demonstrate that he is not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican, by making a new law against incitement to religious hatred and Mr Atkinson stands up to argue against him. This is what happened in 2001 and that is what happened again the other day in the pages of the Times, and on Radio 4's Today programme where I heard him, waiting for a joke that never came.

The joke is indeed a long time coming. Freedom of speech in this country did not merely arise during a period of violent religious divisions but because those divisions were insurmountable by any means other than allowing liberty for all.

(0) (9)

We at Samizdata are always happy to awe. When the occasion merits we also do our best to agitate, derange and discommode.

Basically the only tenable defence against our collective awesomenosity is to flatter our socks off. What a very sweet thing to say, Mr Goldberg, and me likey you fine.

(0) (12)

A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.
- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

(0) (24)

The British Army is getting butchered.

In a rare display of acknowledgment by the mainstream press of what is going on in the British forces, John Keegan lays the blame not only at politicians' feet but accuses the top military commanders who fail to impress the rank and file, and fail to stand up to their political masters.

We have always had a thing or two to say on the current state of the British Army here, here and here. We tend not to mince words and yet feel that we cannot adequately convey just how serious and harmful the dismantling of the British forces has been since the end of the Cold War.

John Keegan is a measured writer, the Defence Editor of the Daily Telegraph, which means that for him to come out so strongly against both the political and military masters in his opinion piece suggests that the situation is desperate and serious.

Why, then, does the Government contemplate - apparently so blithely - reducing yet further the number of regiments, the only really efficient instruments of power that it controls? All sorts of reasons can be cited. The Parliamentary Labour Party is anti-military, to a degree that prevents it acknowledging the favour done to the Government by the Armed Forces. The chattering classes are also anti-military, as they will remain until some terrible terrorist outrage shakes their complacency. Key ministers are either anti-military, such as Mr Brown, or uncomprehending, as is the Prime Minister. The media, besotted by football and celebrity, are also uncomprehending. The Armed Forces have, outside the constituency of ordinary British people who admire and support their Servicemen, no friends.

Read the whole thing, as they say.