I always thought Burke’s metaphor of the English oxen ignoring the buzzing political insects was a good thing, however in the present situation placidity in the doorway of the abattoir may not be a virtue.
– Doug Collins
|
|||||
|
June 2nd, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
 With Orwellian double-think, the preamble to the European Convention begins with a quote from Thucydides:
So should we not vote on it? It is�about as ‘democratic’ as the Warsaw Pact Treaty. May 30th, 2003 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
It seems that the United States government has decided to disarm the Iraqi populace as part of its newly found desire to restore order. This smells like the sort of thing that could lead to disaster, for all the usual reasons – only outlaws will have guns and whatnot. And if any population needs to be armed as a check on a potentially tyrannical government, it is the population of Iraq. It almost seems like a clerical error – surely the guys who were the driving force behind the invasion over at Central Command aren’t gun control nuts, are they? This seems like a good basis for a lively discussion here at Samizdata. Robert Theron Brockman II May 21st, 2003 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is becoming increasingly clear that Europe’s economic problems are a year or so away from becoming nightmarish. The international economic establishment is getting worried, G7 finance ministers, the OECD and the IMF are making increasingly gloomy noises. Deflation approaches like a glacier, slowly but almost impossible to stop without radical measures. The ECB’s constitution is inadequate to deal with the problem. It is charged with holding down inflation and maintaining price stability, not with encouraging economic growth. Inflation is not a threat, deflation is a real threat. Japan has had 41 consecutive months with no inflation, Germany is going the same way pulling Europe with it. The US has abandoned the strong dollar policy in order to reflate, devalue its debt and cheapen exports. Consequently the Euro has now strengthed over 40% from its lows, adding to the woes of exporters. Germany is mired in high taxes, social costs and rigid structural problems – Eurozone unemployment rates are nearly double that of the Anglosphere countries. Real interest rates (base rate – inflation) in the Eurozone are punishing compared to the US. Don’t even think about the unfunded pension problems. So what does the ECB do? Nothing. Last year many people laughed when 90 year-old Milton Friedman joked that he would outlive the Euro. If the ECB does not re-invent itself as a growth orientated central bank, Milton may yet have the last laugh. May 19th, 2003 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
The bete noir of much of the left, Ariel Sharon, appears to be ‘doing a Nixon’. Just as only Nixon could go to China without a collapse of domestic support, perhaps Sharon can make peace with the PLO, secure Israel’s pre-1967 borders and compromise on the settlements. He is being branded a traitor by Jewish settlers, a war criminal by pro-Palestinians and a pariah by the usual suspects. So he must be doing something good. He clearly has a difficult task in balancing Israel’s security against peaceful compromise, but with the new strategic reality in the Middle-East, his task might be easier. May 13th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Quite an old story (end of April) but interesting. Write a protest on your own property: get warned off by the police.
“Police failed to see the funny side”. Well obviously that’s because:
So the German police warn a guy off who writes anti-government statements on his own property (so he must presumably have been breaking some law), the French now have laws against booing the national anthem or insulting the flag (no, really)… and apparently also against insulting the president, and the EU is concocting assorted speech-crime laws to cure “online xenophobia”. What a fine state of affairs. May 12th, 2003 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
I fear the debate over the cause of the Civil War will never be resolved. This is because there was no single cause. There was not even a predominant cause. The various participants in the war fought for a myriad of different reasons. On the Southern side, it is true that many advocates of secession argued that slavery was threatened if the South remained in the Union. This view was strongest in the Deep South (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas), were most of the slaves were located. But is must be remembered that there were two waves of secessions. The states of the Deep South seceded in the early months of 1861 and many of their articles of secession did claim slavery as a major issue. The Upper South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas) did not secede until after Lincoln called for a levy of state militias to put down the “rebellion”. It was their view that the Federal government was abusing the sovereign rights of the seceding states that drove the Upper South out of the Union. In fact, prior to Ft. Sumter, Virginia voted against secession. Also, both Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson, two Virginians who were unarguably the Confederacy’s two best generals, viewed slavery as an abomination and wouldn’t have taken up arms simply to fight for slavery. They were fighting to defend their home and hearth from what they viewed as a foreign invasion. Even this dichotomy between the motivations of the Deep South and Upper South over simplifies the issue. The South also had other grievances against the North, particularly over the tariff. The Republican Party, representing the manufacturing interests of the North-Eastern States, was highly protectionist at that time. Lincoln had written quite extensively on the benefits of high tariffs. The South, with few manufacturers, generally supported free trade. → Continue reading: The Civil War rumbles on May 10th, 2003 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Bringing Democracy to Iraq may prove difficult if the Americans are wary of the potential result; namely Iraq voting to become Iran-lite. But bringing prosperity should prove easier. The dispatch of a corrupt gangster-regime of looters can only assist. David Plotz writing over at Slate makes some good market orientated points. But why do I have the suspicion that a Washington written program devised by the likes of the World Bank and IMF might be less than turbo-charged. If we go from warfare to welfare for Iraq, the outcome will be a burden on Coalition nation taxpayers as well as Iraqi proto-capitalists. Privatisation of the oil fields is being painted by those who marched against a ‘war for oil’ as if its Bush’s personal peace dividend. But it seems to me eminently sensible and appropriate. Split the oil fields up by region, privatise ’em and give ’em to the people. If it can not be done by direct mass privatisation via a Thatcherite give-away, with every Iraqi citizen/stock holder receiving an annual dividend check, then set up trust funds chartered to pay dividends for infra-structure capital projects that directly benefit the people. Maybe they can securitise the trust’s future earnings to get up front capital to finance urgently needed projects immediately: Iraqi owned and inviting to badly needed foreign capital, a win-win for everyone. Just make sure that the oil trusts are transparent, with contracts public knowledge so that corruption can be thwarted. George Soros’ Publish What You Pay NGO is one of his best ideas. As for Iraq’s debts, its obviously a matter for the future government of Iraq whether they honour them or not. But I suggest they repay Russian debts with easily and cheaply sourced Czarist bonds. Chirac’s contracts will of course be subject to some ‘re-negotiation’ by the newly democratically elected government of Iraq. Payback can take many forms, monsieur. May 8th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
There are a lot of libertarians who are modest and in the closet. Often they just find it awkward to explain there views on politics, philosophy or economics if, for example, they work for the Inland Revenue. I can sympathise. Its hard for a libertarian to justify working as a civil servant of any kind, but such are the compromises of real life. It can embarrassing to questioned as to your attitude to a number of issues in many situations, drugs, gun ownership, and the abolition of the National Health Service may not assist your job application to become the over-paid Chief Executive of the local Health Trust. I disapproved of Tatchell’s ‘outing’ of closet gays so it would be hypocritical to advocate outing closet libertarians. It strikes me that it still might be beneficial to point out those people who have publicly identified themselves as libertarians. It would highlight that there are more of us about, that we are not all obsessed with arguments about lunar property rights and may even assist in networking. So I’ll kick off with the first of what I suspect will be a huge number of self-identified but unrecognised right-wing libertarians with Tony Parsons, ex-husband of Julie Burchill and author of “Man and Boy”… and Hans Snook, Orange Telecom’s visionary CEO who is a Randian… and Microsoft bashing Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems is one of us. Any more? May 8th, 2003 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here’s S. Weasel’s handy guide to American voting:
It’s an imperfect system, but it’s my own. April 30th, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Four years ago, I alerted the US Department of Defense about $20M grossly mismanaged and/or stolen from Defense Enterprise Fund (DEF), a US-financed program to convert the former Russian producers of weapons of mass destruction (anthrax, nuclear, etc). A Department of Defense Audit proved the theft, but the guilty American managers were not even reprimanded. When Vector Plant of Novossibirsk, the Soviet Army’s prime facility for producing militarized anthrax and smallpox spores, asked for just $1M to convert itself – DEF did not have the money. When DEF COO was purchasing his private apartment in Moscow, DEF had a million dollars to finance it. Just recently, I caused Defense Threat Reduction Agency to lower the number former Soviet WMD scientists said to be converted by DEF to peaceful pursuits from 3370 to 1250, a 66% reduction! But the real figure is no more than 200 scientists, not a good result for a $67M program. A more complete description is here. For the full story, please go here and then click on “DEF”. After my letter of concern, I was immediately blacklisted for US-financed assistance jobs in the NIS which was a professional and financial catastrophe for me. I am extremely frustrated that there has been four (!) intentionally inconclusive investigations of DEF, each refusing to look into my allegations. The Pentagon admits that the money is gone and that a $67M program is dead, victim of gross mismanagement, they do not disprove my letter, but they do not remove my name from the blacklist either. April 21st, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
I can hardly turn on the TV without some talking head from the UN, one of its many agencies and adjuncts, or a European diplomat talking about the UN’s legitimacy or credibility. This is a recent phenomena and I am curious as to where the UN has acquired its supplies of legitimacy and credibility. Certainly not from its member states – many of whom can hardly keep the road to the airport open without help from French paratroopers. Nor does it get it from the work of its agencies, which while on paper are well intentioned, in practice are dens of corruption, incompetence and cronyism, relegated to ‘coordinating’ roles because they are incapable of doing any thing useful. Perhaps it is from the UN’s work in intervening in crises and helping states achieve legitimate democratic government. OK, the UN did pull its troops out of Rwanda prior to perhaps a million people being massacred, failed to anything about Kosovo and left NATO to intervene, and appears to be making a complete mess of ‘helping’ East Timor transition to democracy. A state of affairs which even the UN’s senior person in East Timor admits to. Sorry, no signs of legitimacy and credibility here! I must therefore conclude that United Nations has discovered a means of manufacturing these precious commodities. This is a major scientific breakthrough, a philosophers stone for the twenty-first century. The UN is keeping tight-lipped on the details of this breakthrough. So it’s not clear as to how much legitimacy and credibility they can manufacture. But think of implications if they can produce a large supply (doubtless it is expensive to produce, but then everything at the UN is vastly more expense than it should be). Clearly the UN and its member states constitute a major market for both products, but the potential is huge, especially for credibility which the recent war in Iraq has shown there is a world-wide shortage, notably in the news-rooms of CNN and the BBC, as well as in some European and Arab capitals. And to think, I always thought the United Nations was a complete waste of time and money, filled with corrupt bureaucrats only interested in first-class air travel and their expense accounts. Shows how wrong you can be! Phil Bradley April 18th, 2003 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||