God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay…
Warmest Christmas greetings to all readers of the Libertarian Samizdata.
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Regarding the latest ‘close call’ terrorist mid air incident, News Max reports, with more than a hint of irony:
Nothing eh? Now call me churlish, but when a suicidal Islamic person gets on a US civilian airliner, with a three-week-old passport of dubious provenance, and who looks like Osama bin Laden on a ‘bad hair day’… and who then tries to blow himself up over a fuel tank mid-air using his ‘shoes-of-death’ filled not with improvised explosives but with MilSpec C-4 (not something one commonly finds in French drugstores), I would have to say there is indeed ‘something’ rather than ‘nothing’ linking him to what came to pass on September 11. Does that mean I am convinced he is an Al Qaeda terrorists? No, not completely, but if I were a betting man I sure as hell know where my money would be going. December 24th, 2001 | Comments are closed
 Our esteemed fellow blogista, Adil Farooq of Muslimpundit has been taken prisoner and forced into servitude by his crazed capitalist employer, no doubt driven insane by reams of government regulations and finally unhinged by one EU directive too many… ‘Military sources’ have informed DEBKA that this deranged employer may in fact have links to Osama bin Laden‘s brother’s aunt’s sister’s cousin from Manchester, Hilda bin Laden. I propose forming a militia of concerned libertarian bloggers to mount a rescue mission… using sound military principals of deception and misdirection: 1. We lure his boss away by burning a pile of tax regulation forms in the street in front of his premises. 2. When he comes out to dance maniacally around the bonfire, a second snatch squad will enter from the rear of the premises, moving with cat-like tread. 3. The snatch squad will stun any lackeys on guard that they encounter with blows to the back of the head with a hardback edition of Murray Rothbard’s ‘Ethics of Liberty’. 4. They will grab Adil, egress from the combat zone and retreat for helicopter extraction at the LZ next to the Fish and Chip Shop down the road, possibly stopping off at a nearby pub for lunch en route before embarking. I love it when a plan comes together. December 22nd, 2001 | Comments are closed
Way back when, I pointed out that DEBKA were making some highly questionable contentions about thousands of Al Qaeda soldiers being airlifted out of Konduz before it fell to the Northern Alliance forces of Generals Daoud Khan and Rashid Dostam. World Net Daily has belatedly picked up on this DEBKA theory. First of all let me lay my cards on the table and say I think DEBKA are by and large a waste of pixels. Almost nothing they say cannot be deduced from open source data that is also available to anyone with a search engine and a working computer. Their analysis ranges from ‘okay’ to ‘wild conjecture’. What is more, to put it bluntly I am not sure I really trust them or their alleged ‘military sources’ given the quantity of dubious calls they have made in the past.
My objections to this whole weird scenario remain unchanged from when I first suggested my interpretation of what probably happened in Konduz, which I posted to the Samizdata on November 27th. This section is relevant and nothing I have read has changed my mind since I wrote it
DEBKA does not explain where the ‘Al Qaeda’ air assets came from, how they avoided detection by the USAF/USN and how they managed this feat of night time airmanship with the larger Antonov’s than an AN-26 that would be required to get those sort of numbers out of the Konduz pocket. In two other articles on November 28 th, I discussed DEBKA’s view that it was the Pakistani ISI behind it (and I agreed) but pointed out their numbers did not really add up. In the very next Samizdata article after that, I pondered the views of Tunku Varadarajan of the WSJ, who was saying much the same, only on the basis of sources probably far more reliable than DEBKA’s. Like Tunku Varadarajan, I felt (and still do) that it is hard to believe that the airlift of Pakistanis trapped there was not done with American acquiescence…and therefore indirect observation by sensor (not to mention nearby US and UK Special Forces). Thus it becomes even more fantastical to think a veritable airfleet was going in and out of Konduz unnoticed and unhindered, when all the US was acquiescing to was a limited airlift out of ‘sensitive’ ISI people. I think we can assume AWACS and JSTARS crews are fairly numerate folks. Unless we see some evidence other than DEBKA’s alleged ‘military sources’, I would recommend treating their story of 3000 Al Qaeda folks winging their way to freedom with considerable skepticism, to put it mildly. December 22nd, 2001 | Comments are closed
Dependable as ever, Peronists in Argentina are claiming that the economic meltdown in their nation is due to the failure of the ‘free market’. Now let’s not mince words, the Peronists are neo-fascists (and not very neo at that) and thus to get a right-socialist critique of free markets from them is hardly a surprise.
The Peronists are people who are trapped in the 1940’s in their thinking. Yet at the risk of starting to sound like a broken record given my recent posts, the Argentine economy was never, by any stretch of the imagination, a free market…it was just less unfree than under the Peronists, who ran things along full fat, non-diet real McCoy fascist lines. The biggest problem for the economy is not foreign competition but a massive borrowing spree by the Government (surprise, surprise). Exactly how were they expecting to repay its most recent loans, let alone the staggering $132 billion outstanding? The Argentine Government was quite successful in curbing the hyperinflation that was ravaging the country in the early 1990’s, introducing wide reforms and pegging the Argentine peso to the US dollar. A useful comparison could be made with Croatia in 1992-3. Croatia found itself collapsing economically due to the Balkan War and it’s currency, the Croatian Dinar, was hyper-inflating as the Government printed money to keep its army running. When I was there in 1992, after having been in the country for less than one month I took my dollars to a bank in Zagreb and found they had gained 30% in value against the local money in 25 days. To prevent complete economic melt-down, the Croatians scrapped the Dinar completely, replacing it with a new currency called the Kunar, pegged to the Deutschmark. As in Argentina, this drastic move rapidly brought things back from the brink. Yet unlike Argentina, Croatia did not embark upon delusionary spending sprees. Whilst I would hardly call Croatia a paragon of fiscal rectitude (I know Natalija is very critical of Croatian economic policies) they were certainly restrained by comparison in spite of having had huge amounts of national infrastructure destroyed during the war. What Argentina has done was cure the problem of hyperinflation with strong medicine but they kept taking the drug for that particular ailment after the patient had recovered. What they should have done was either re-float the currency again or go the hole hog and dollarize (i.e. simply adopt the US dollar as Argentina’s national currency). The latter was rejected by the ruling Radical Civic Union Party, never staunch ‘free marketeers’ to begin with, as it would take away a powerful tool of economic control from the government, which of course is exactly why they should have done it! But even just allowing the peso to free float once inflation was at tolerable levels again, say in 1996, would have prevented the build up of pressures that can be seen today, by allowing devaluation of the peso to be spread out over many years. What we will see now is a huge traumatic crash in value of the peso that will take vast chunks of the economy down with it as dollar denominated loans become unserviceable with worthless Argentine money. The fascist Peronists will reintroduce trade barriers, compel all exporting businesses to submit to de facto state management and simply impose debt restructuring on foreign banks. A measure of stability will eventually return but the Argentina’s first world pretensions will be exposed for the absurdity they are. Only banks run by madmen (i.e. about 20% of them) will even consider lending more money to Argentina for the foreseeable future and therein lies the silver lining to this dark and stormy cloud… no more loans, the economic equivalent of crack cocaine, means eventually reality will reassert itself even through the thick skulls of the Peronists who are about to preside over the third-worldization of Argentina. I for one shall not be crying for Argentina over what is largely a self inflicted wound, albeit one inflicted with a weapon sharpened by the buffoons at the IMF. Reforms require courage and vision and sufficient social evolution to grasp objective realities. Argentina had none of the above I am sad to say. December 22nd, 2001 | Comments are closed
Breathtaking, mind boggling, abject stupidity as well. In today’s London Evening Standard, Labour Members of Parliament Glenda Jackson, Tony Colman, Jeremy Corbyn, LibDem Members of Parliament Jenny Tonge and Vince Cable and Oxfam Campaigns Officer Rajinder Dadry write in to say.
So let us analyse what is being said:
Now read that again, gentle reader, before we continue… are you making the causal links that elude this chorus of clowns? The Tanzanian Government entered into loans with Western and Japanese Banks in the 1980’s and 1990’s. This money financed years of highly inefficient socialist centrally planned spending (plus a bonanza for the Swiss bankers working for a few inexplicably wealthy ‘retired’ Tanzanian ministers) that resulted in far less of an increase in Tanzania’s ability to produce wealth than was required to service the debt on the funds borrowed. Years later, well meaning and largely socialist elements in the West decide that somehow the actions of an African sovereign government are a ‘stain on Western capitalism’ and a large chunk of the debts are written off (at Western tax payers expense). And the lesson that we have taught the Governing classes in Tanzania is…?
The Tanzanian Government is not acting foolishly in buying this radar, they are just playing by the rules of the game we have written. Have I missed something here or is Glenda Jackson MP and her ilk really as obtuse as I think they are? December 21st, 2001 | Comments are closed
Today I have read of outrage amongst the chattering classes in Britain over the UK government allowing Tanzania to purchase a £28 million (about $40 million US) air traffic radar system with some fascination. Now I must confess I have no opinion whatsoever on whether or not Tanzania actually needs such a system and the last time I was there was 20 years ago so I am rather out of touch with the realities on the ground. But what is astonishing to me is that statist British pundits and their NGO cheerleaders with Christian Aid, Oxfam etc. have directed their ire primarily at Britain. Now I am rarely one to come to the defense of any government purchasing baubles with their stolen tax monies, but last time I looked, Tanzania was a sovereign state, a member of the Commonwealth and their government presumes to speak for the people of that nation. Surely the question of Tanzanian need is a matter for Tanzania to determine. Might I suggest that what NGOs and sundry mouthing politicos really mean is “Africans are too stupid to decide what is in their own national interests and thus ‘we’ must save them from themselves and prevent their governments from actually governing.” To put it bluntly, the white bwana knows better. Of course it may well be that the government of Tanzania is venal, foolish and corrupt, highly likely in fact… but does that give the British government the right to block it from purchasing a radar from a private British company? Of course not. Argue with the Tanzanian government that the money is better spent elsewhere by all means, but where do these people get off attempting to get the British state to coerce them ‘for their own good’? December 21st, 2001 | Comments are closed
…when it was never actually operating in a free market? Over on AintNoBadDude, the indomitable Brian quotes part of an e-mail of mine but also takes the view regarding the Enron fiasco.
Well I certainly agree that incidents like Enron crashing and burning does not help the case for free markets, but the reason for that is folks do not seem to understand that heavily regulated markets, whilst they are certainly a form of capitalism, they are in fact not free markets, they are (obviously) regulated markets. Thus what Enron’s failure suggests is not that free markets do not work but rather regulating a market sector like energy in the way it is currently regulated is a failure. Here is a novel idea: how about actually completely deregulating the power sector (for starters) and make the market, er, free. What is the worst that can happen? Maybe Enron will go broke if subjected to the full force of market pressures… oh, I forgot, it already did. California’s power industry provides us with another lovely example of what happens when heavily regulated markets are required to respond to dynamic circumstances… and it ain’t pretty. Either abandon the pretence that the market is ‘free’ and in effect nationalise the power sector, or let the market do what it does best and stay the hell out of the way. The alternative, like so many half way measures, is to get the worst of both worlds: bloated corporations who do not fully control their own businesses and who are also not fully vulnerable to more agile corporate predators and new market entrants. Regulating fixed infrastructure sectors of an economy because they are said to either be ‘natural monopolies’ or because they are ‘strategic industries’ rather misses the point: they are actually not natural monopolies if you have a large (preferably global) market of power companies. Functioning fixed infrastructure for which there is a demand does not just vaporise if the owning company goes belly up in the fish tank… other people will most certainly leap into the breach and take over the assets (plus the associated revenue streams from users), hopefully at fire sale prices, and thus life goes on. That might not be the case in Nigeria or Romania or Myanmar, but in a sophisticated and well developed Western economy it most certainly is. If it is indeed a ‘strategic’ industry, then why encourage a few fat sluggish players to develop who, if they cock things up, fall with rather a big crash (i.e. Enron). Surely it is better to allow full global competition to ensure no player can get so damn important. Enron in the USA and RailTrack in the UK are two classic cases in point not of ‘free market failures’, but rather of regulated market failures. If all you have to do to make things work better is to impose layers of cunningly crafted regulations, then I suppose that explains the longevity of the Soviet Union and why China is the world’s wealthiest country… oops, sorry, wrong parallel universe. December 20th, 2001 | Comments are closed
Actually I do not mean Sauron at all, I mean Noam Chomsky (I know, I know, same thing). What do they have in common? Flit, an interesting new blog run by Bruce R., that is what. I found this polished looking little jewel via Dawson, whom I was checking out to see if he had any new Ann Coulter pictures <snigger>. There is an excellent article critiquing the Horowitz attacks on Chomsky and I must say I largely agree with him on all but a few minor points. I think Christopher Hitchens‘ attacks were far more damaging to Chomsky than those of Horowitz, though he does indeed land a few blows on the Vile One too. In an earlier Flit article, had I started blogging sooner than November, I would have made much the same points regarding the historical analogies in Afghanistan. Much of the ill informed punditry fretting US involvement in view of the disastrous Soviet and before them, British Afghan wars missed something rather importent… Britain learned the lessons of the horrendous First Afghan War and kicked the crap out of the Pashtun in the Second Afghan War. Likewise the military ‘template’ of successful colonial style warfare, namely using the synergy of friendly local forces and a smaller but highly professional British force with higher technology (the famous mountain warfare ‘screw gun’ light artillery) is exactly what we have seen in Afghanistan once again with the Americans (and some Brits too) operating with the various anti-Taliban forces. It is gratifying to see someone else make those points. However it also backs up what I have also pointed out myself in earlier Samizdata articles, the trick after victory in the Second Afghan War was to install ‘friendly’ local leaders and then get the hell out before an insurgency developed…so why oh why does that cretin Tony Blair want to stick around ‘peacekeeping’? The Americans clearly understand the relevance of British military history better than the half-wits in the Foreign Office… no surprise there I suppose. But Bruce, as for Kylie and that song… resistance is futile, you have been assimilated. December 20th, 2001 | Comments are closed
Generally rational content, sheer variety and remarkable quality, that is why. Although sometimes certain stories get widely blogged, the differences in style and perspective makes it interesting to read them all. Überblog Instapundit‘s often sardonic style contrasts with The Fly Bottle‘s head-on philosophical deconstructions. Natalie Solent‘s irony intensive and highly ideological approach makes an interesting juxtaposition with Dawson‘s anarchic Ann Coulter fixated streams of consciousness. Over on Where HipHop and Libertarianism meet we are just likely to be presented with a statement of home truths as we are to read a brief exegesis of some rap singer that I have never heard of. Tim Blair‘s dependably hilarious daily roundup of the sundry ruminations in blogland is an absolute ‘must see’. Combative Ken Layne is a treat as he ‘fact-checks the asses’ of the talking heads in medialand… and he may well have introduced a new verb into contemporary on-line English. Muslimpundit delivers intermittently updated but chunky analysis from a perspective that is Muslim and yet unmistakably British. Mind over what matters ponders with a style that is often querulous and analytical in equal measure. Transterrestrial Musings displays a style reminiscent to Instapundit (no bad thing) but tends to target different subject matter. Matthew Edgar reminds me of a splendid economics professor I knew, but hopped up on far too much caffeine. Daimnation heaps expletive ladened abuse upon moral relativists and would-be invaders of Canada. What is it about Canada that it produces so many pissed off bloggers? And the list goes on and on and on and on… December 20th, 2001 | Comments are closed
Receiving junk snail-mail and spam e-mails can certainly be irritating, particularly when it is yet another pyramiding scam/’teen-slutathon’/debt consolidation/shyster solicitation/weepy group-hug chain letter or whatever the annoyance-of-the-week is. As a result the urge to legislate over what is frankly a pretty trivial matter is on the agenda on both sides of the Atlantic. Matthew Edgar wrote a worthwhile piece on this as it pertains to the USA. In Britain, ever since 1832, Election Rolls have been for sale and have been used by marketing professionals as a source of information and ‘list cleaning’ ever since. In this age of spam, we sometimes forget that marketing is an essential aspect of capitalist economics. Restricting it with regulations that go beyond anti-fraud measures adds unnecessary costs that we, the consumer, inevitably end up paying in the end via more expensive products. Under the absurd British Data Protection Act, the recording of marketing data has been made subject to ever more bureaucratic red tape and imposed cost. This has made Election Rolls a particularly valuable source of reliable data. Yet now there are plans to require local authorities to produce a severely edited version of the Electoral Roll, which will be available for sale, whilst the unexpurgated version will be available only to the government and for ‘election purposes’… in other words, parties will have unrestricted access to your personal information in order to market their political candidates, yet people who want to sell you something you might actually need are told to get stuffed. If I dislike a piece of junk mail I can bin it; if I an annoyed by e-mail spam I can delete it… oh how I wish we could remove the intrusions of our political ‘masters’ so easily. December 19th, 2001 | Comments are closed
Over on muslimpundit there is an interesting analysis of Arafat‘s self-serving objectives for Palestine and his ‘credibility gap’. Adil Farooq administers boot-to-groin therapy where it is needed as usual. December 19th, 2001 | Comments are closed
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