We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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I have visited this topic about forest/open heathland fires, the positive externalities of private property ownership, Tragedy of the Commons and the unintended consequences of Green not-so-benign neglect before (remember those bad fires in Australia?), but here’s a reminder, given recent fires in Spain, France, Greece and my native Suffolk in the UK:
Wall Street Journal:
Under its Green Deal and related policies, the European Union is designating 30% of the continent as nature-protected by 2030. Goals include increasing the amount of deadwood and the density of tree cover in forests. Whatever their environmental merit, such measures increase the amount of highly flammable fuel for fires, make it easier for blazes to spread and harder to extinguish.
The EU also wants at least a third of this protected land to fall under “strict protection,” which means it will be left “essentially undisturbed from human pressures and threats,” according to European Commission guidance. It allows for some natural disaster prevention measures, but only “when such activities are compatible with the conservation objectives of the areas on the basis of a case-by-case assessment,” the guidance says.
Ranchers and farmers in Spain and France have historically managed their land to mitigate the risk of megafires. But the EU’s regulations have made it harder for small farms to survive across Europe, accelerating a rural exodus. Red tape often hinders those who remain from carrying out preventive actions like controlled burns.
The European Forest Fire Information System publishes maps and data, updated daily, on the current blazes. They show considerable overlap between the protected nature areas in Spain and France and the wildfires. That suggests in addition to the vagaries of weather, a policy failure.
Blaming climate change is the default explanation these days for any natural disaster, but Europe’s costly solutions will make little difference to global temperatures. Better forest management and fire prevention can make a difference, however. And they would reduce the CO2 emissions from fires that now overwhelm much of the reduction from electric vehicles or other climate nostrums.
Some advocates of “rewilding” claim that fires are part of nature, and that over time, fires will trigger a response in the form, for example, of more fire-resistant species (also, certain seeds are only germinated once a fire has happened). That sounds plausible, but the problem is that in a densely populated part of the world, such as the UK southeast, people want the loveliness of nature but without a raging fire nearby, however “natural” that is. And it is worth remembering that even if you take out the Man-made global warming argument and accept that fires are part of nature – they are – that much of our visually attractive landscape is not the result of Man leaving nature alone, but of crafting and caring for it. (This all makes sense once, like good students of Aristotle, we recognise that Man is as much part of nature as a beetle, shark or buzzard).
In the meantime, I am doing the very non-atheist thing and praying for rain.
“Half of Belgium sees the US as a bigger adversary than China”, reports EuroNews.
The poll also found that China is viewed less negatively than the US. Between 40% and 44% of respondents described China as an adversary. However, very few Belgians consider China an ally, with many respondents choosing the option “neither ally nor adversary”.
Despite that, concerns about Beijing remain. Nearly 60% of respondents said they believe a Chinese military attack on Taiwan is likely in the near future, reflecting continued unease about China’s growing military influence.
The survey also suggests that Belgians generally feel secure within their own country. Only a small minority believe Belgium itself could face a direct military attack, with 12% of respondents in Flanders and 21% in Wallonia expressing that concern.
At the same time, respondents supported greater European independence in both defence and economic policy. More than 80% said Europe should become militarily self-sufficient, while a majority backed stronger European responses to US trade measures and tariffs.
The poll also found strong support for limiting foreign influence in Belgian affairs. Nearly 90% of respondents said Belgium should not allow the US to interfere in its domestic matters, reflecting recent controversy surrounding comments made by the US ambassador to Belgium.
Despite growing scepticism towards Washington, Belgians remain broadly supportive of Western institutions. Around 80% said Belgium should remain a member of NATO under all circumstances. Many respondents view the alliance as a collective European security shield rather than an instrument of US influence.
Like it or not, the opinion of an increasing proportion of Belgians as revealed in this survey is shared by other European countries. Like it or not, the corresponding opinion of an increasing proportion of Americans is “Okay, bye”.
Quite possibly, this is all just a spat that brought on by the fact that, to use Scott Alexander’s formulation, Xi’s China is the “fargroup” you hardly ever think about, whereas Trump’s America is the “outgroup” whose antics irritate you every day.
But if these attitudes are real, the Belgians and other Europeans need to get equally real about the cost of the changes they say they want. “More than 80% said Europe should become militarily self-sufficient”. Europe being militarily self-sufficient would make Belgium safer, but also poorer. It would require more Belgians to be ready to fight and die for their country at a moment’s notice. I am not sure they even realise that that is what Trump has been asking them to do for years.
Today please remember the victims of the Katyn Massacre. In 1940, thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals were executed by the Soviet paramilitaries.
We will never let this be forgotten.
J.D. Vance, who is the Vice President of the USA, goes to Hungary, an EU member state, and delivers a campaign speech for Victor Orban, the president of Hungary, in which Vance accuses the EU of… interference in Hungary’s elections.
Am I the only one who finds that absolutely hilarious?
The other day I found this Swedish video giving a perspective (from around 2018) on radical feminism. Tip is to set the video to give you English subtitles if you aren’t fluent in Swedish.
Assuming that it is satire, let it be put in the balance when one assesses the contribution of the land of Olaf Palme and Gunnar Myrdal to the World,
And again, if this was so obvious in 2018, why did it take so long for these types to be called out for what they are elsewhere?
It is not a victim of the collapse of the ‘rules-based order’, but of its own terrible decisions.
The cause of Europe’s shift into blandness and relative economic decline is not mysterious: it has developed into a top-down corporatist bureaucracy, where incumbents and well-connected lobbyists always push for ever more regulation until nimbler challengers do the rational thing and relocate to the United States. It is an awkward model for a continent whose historic edge was the opposite: dispersed power, fierce competition between jurisdictions, and constant pressure to innovate. Too often, the officials presiding over this drift are so far removed from the realities they regulate that, when growth stalls, they cannot talk intelligently about incentives, productivity, or risk-taking. So instead they reach for comforting abstractions about “values” and “leadership”.
– Mark Brolin (£)
This is a real tweet from the European Commission:
https://x.com/EU_Commission/status/2004462313508950137f
One port, one cable, one Europe.
This holiday, unwrap the power of one: USB-C for all.
Yes, not just phones, tablets, and laptops. In three years, every charger will be under the same tree.
Because less waste, smarter choices, mean more for everyone, all year long.
https://link.europa.eu/QDMFTh
This is an excerpt from a scholarly article about the history of Islam:
By the beginning of the fourth century of the hijra (about A.D. 900), however, the point had been reached when scholars of all schools felt that all essential questions had been thoroughly discussed and finally settled, and a consensus gradually established itself to the effect that from that time onwards no one might be deemed to have the necessary qualifications for independent reasoning in law, and that all future activity would have to be confined to the explanation, application, and, at the most, interpretation of the doctrine as it had been laid down once and for all. This ‘closing of the door of ijtihad‘, as it was called, amounted to the demand for taklid, a term which had originally denoted the kind of reference to Companions of the Prophet that had been customary in the ancient schools of law, and which now came to mean the unquestioning acceptance of the doctrines of established schools and authorities.
– Joseph Schacht, quoted by Wael B. Hallaq in Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?
If you think that the ability of the European Commission to recognise when something has reached a point where no improvement is possible is good enough to allow it to safely close the door of ijtihad on charger cable design, consider the evident fact that none of the multiple people in the Berlaymont building over whose desks the draft of that tweet must have passed knew enough history to veto that title.
Just a reminder that no matter how bad things get, this too shall pass
It almost sticks in the throat if I try to say it out loud but, as a progressive internationalist mugged by reality, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the key ordering principle of the success of Poland, and the way forward for the whole of the West, is a healthy dose of inclusive, positive-sum, moderate, calm and confident nationalism. Modern, first world, constructive patriotism. Not so much blood and soil as free-thinking European civilisation and open society, but, importantly, strict on those who refuse to contribute to its maintenance. Some call it muscular liberalism.
I am at pains here to draw a sharp contrast between the Polish version of temperate (some call it conservative) nationalism, and Hungary’s pro-Russia and pro-China variant. I also hasten to confirm up high in the article that I am not a sycophant of Poland in any way, and I have not taken any payment or gift from Polish interests. On the contrary, the government officials and ex officials I approached for comment were slightly disturbed by my open admiration and suggestion that Poland should be a leader of Europe in a way that Great Britain and France once were. Indeed, they rushed to point out that Poland, despite doing everything right and getting the best results, is routinely excluded from strategic meetings deciding the future of the continent, usually held between the UK, Germany, France and Italy. They were, alas, too polite to speculate about the reasons for this exclusion.
– Matei Rosca
DR, Denmark’s equivalent of the BBC, reports that:
The Danish presidency of the EU is currently working to gain support for the CSA regulation, which will open a backdoor to all Europeans’ phones in an attempt to trap and track down criminals who share sexual abuse material with children.
If the CSA regulation is voted through, police and judicial authorities will be able to access encrypted communication services such as WhatsApp and Signal – and thus the private communications of many millions of Europeans.
A leaked document from the European Council states that this will be done through client-side scanning . The technology works by scanning images, video and text on the user’s device before sending and encrypting them, including with the help of AI.
[…]
The CSA regulation was taken off the agenda of the EU Council of Ministers in June 2024 due to the risk of mass surveillance of EU citizens and a concern that the law could represent a setback for freedoms.
But two months later, the Minister of Justice [Peter Hummelgaard] stated to TV 2 that “we need to break with the completely erroneous perception that it is every man’s right to freedom to communicate on encrypted messaging services, which are used to facilitate many different serious forms of crime”.
The UK’s recent seemingly modest agreement with France over illegal migrants crossing the English Channel prompted this article at the CityAM news service:
Clearly this is an entirely inadequate response to the Channel crisis: five per cent of current numbers of illegal migrants, who are themselves only five per cent of overall immigration. The idea that this will move the dial on an issue which is now regularly cited as one of the public’s biggest concerns is positively outlandish.
But it is also a patently and laughably poor deal for Britain. It bears comparison with paying Mauritius billions of pounds to induce it to accept sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory, or in domestic terms awarding huge, above-inflation public sector pay deals with no conditions attached. I sometimes wonder whether civil servants now check that the Prime Minister still has his loose change, watch and shoelaces when he returns from the negotiating table.
I suppose the question that also lingers about Keir Starmer is this: is he “Sir Shifty” (to borrow the phrase of former Sun political editor, Trevor Kavanagh) or is he “Sir Stumbler” (Bruce Anderson)? Is he a berk or a knave?
(Correction: It is Trevor Kavanagh, not Patrick. My berk moment.)
Farage wants healthcare more like France, Netherlands or Switzerland, which all have a varying degree of insurance element. NHS was always a terrible way to do healthcare, which is why rest of Europe didn’t copy it
So, is it not ironic Reform party are open to at least exploring that kind of system, whereas the supposedly pro-European anti-Brexiteer elements who most depreciate Farage get the vapours at the notion of a more European healthcare system for the UK? 🤣
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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