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.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
US Army Generals have been much discussed lately, and not for the right reasons. For the most part, discussion has been based on the criticism of US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, by a faction of recently retired officers who have lost confidence in his handling of the insurgency. Discussion has taken two tacks- firstly the etiquiette of senior officers criticising their political superiors, and then the actual merits or otherwise of Rumsfeld. I haven’t been following recent events in Iraq that closely. However for a good description of the case for the prosecution (of Rusmfeld) The Belgravia Despatch has been all over the story.
However, my ruminations were triggered by a story in the Daily Telegraph where American commanders have been criticised for their style and operational methods by British Brigadier Alan Sharpe. There is a long and not entirely honourable tradition of British officers looking down on US Army commanders, going back to the Second World War if not earlier, motived partly by the different traditions of the two Armies, and partly by envy. However, after thinking about this story, I think the thrust of British views on the US Army might have a point.
Since the Second World War, the British Army has changed radically. It has changed from being a force which was designed to defeat an enemy army on a battlefield to a force designed as often as not to keep the peace, and to use military means to create a political climate in which a political solution can be used to solve disputed issues. This means that there has been a great deal of change in the way in which the British Army operates. The United States Army, however, has not changed in this way. It remains designed mostly to defeat an enemy army in battle. It is frighteningly good at this job, as witnessed by the mauling it gave the Iraqi Army in the invasion of 2003. However it is not so good at being a force that uses military means to create the desired political climate.
This is not to be critical of the US Army. It is simply a rumination about why the British Army is perceived as being better then the US Army at one particular style of military operations. The British Army has evolved in this way because it suits the strategic requirements of the United Kingdom to do so. However, in the long term, it is likely that the US Army is going to be increasingly involved in Iraq style counter-insurgencies. If the US political establishment continues to require the US Army to serve as a sort of ‘firefighting’ role in strategic hotspots around the world, then we might see the US Army evolve into a force with an operating ethos more in the style of the British Army.
Government spending, taxes and regulations are all on the rise in this country and have been for quite some time. This has happened many times before in history, but there is a odd thing about this time.
Most people seem to think that we have a ‘free market’ government, and that Mr Blair is very ‘pro-business’. I can understand people thinking the government is very close to some businessmen (the people who are connected politically), but there is a view that this is a general ‘free enterprise’ regime.
In the past Marxists held that various Labour governments were “really pro-capitalist” because these administrations were not as collectivist as Maxists would like. However, it is more than a few Marxists today. It does seem to be a common view that a state of affairs where way over 40% of the economy is spent by the state and what is left is controlled by a vast web of regulations is a ‘New Labour’ system where the government has turned its back on ‘social justice’ and is not doing enough to ‘help the poor’.
In the United States the wild spending Bush administration (responsible for the Medicare extension, “no child left behind” and the biggest increase in ‘entitlement’ spending since the days of L.B.J. and Richard Nixon) is held, by some people, to be ‘free market’. But then (like Nixon) Mr Bush is a Republican (who are supposed to be free market – even if they often not so) and has actually cut taxes (by some definitions).
In this country there should be no such confusion – the government is from the Labour party, and taxes (as well as spending and regulations) have been increased and are increasing – yet the view persists that this is somehow a pro free enterprise administration.
Many in the Conservative party seem deeply confused. For example Michael Gove MP writes in Forward! (the journal of Conservative Way Forward – I wonder if the people who control this journal know that ‘Forward’ [in various languages] was the name for first Marxist and then Fascist newspapers in 20th century Europe) that President Bush is not “concerned” enough about the “very poorest” and should have more of a “one nation social obligation” (supposedly John McCain would be more collectivist than George Bush and would, therefore, make a better President)
If this waffle means that President Bush should have spent even more money on the various health, education and welfare programs then Mr Gove knows nothing about what has been happening in the United States (but then Mr Gove has little interest in the United States, other than his desire that it should make war in various places). However, it is clear that Mr Gove (and his master Mr Cameron – the leader of the Conservative party) also think that there is not enough statism here.
The words ‘social justice’ are often used by some people in the Conservative party, as if there was no knowledge that basic point of being a Conservative is to oppose ‘social justice’ (statism – specifically the “redistribution of income and wealth”) and to support justice (private property – to each their own). The virtue of benevolence (what used to be called the virtue of charity) is indeed a good thing – but it is a different thing from the virtue of justice. It does no good (indeed it does vast harm) to confuse the concepts.
So we have a government that is greatly increasing the size and scope of the state and an opposition that seems to think that the government has not gone far enough. I suppose it might be claimed that Mr Gove and Mr Cameron are so deeply moved by the thought that there are poor people that they are willing to try anything, even “social justice”, in the misguided hope that it will reduce (rather than increase) poverty.
However, I am poor and I have not noted Mr Gove or Mr Cameron rushing to me and offering me a job or other aid. I know of no evidence that they have some deep feeling for the poor. At the base of their words does seem to be a belief that they well get more votes by talking and writing in this way – i.e. they think that even after the orgy of spending, taxes and regulations of the last few years, the people of this land are still in love with the “public services” and with “social justice”.
Perhaps they are right. As I have noted, many people do seem to think of Labour statism as ‘New Labour’ free enterprise. It is very odd.
This morning Andy Burnham MP was quoted by the Financial Times as saying that the government intends to make the British ID card an unrepealable fait accompli before the next general election:
I’m keen to see plenty of ID cards in circulation come the next election” […] The whole landscape will have changed by the time if – and it’s a big if – the Tories ever get anywhere near power.
This evening the NO2ID campaign launched its response:
I see that the Labour Party has decided to bash the Conservatives, led by David Cameron, using the image of a chameleon riding a bicycle. Ouch. I am not sure what is more damning: the chameleon image or the bike. Of course, this blog has already vented a fair deal about the supposed limitations of Cameron, so I will not tarry long on this point, other than to say that some of the fizz seems to have gone out of the Cameron charge of late, although it may be that he is simply waiting and watching while Blair, enmeshed in scandal and policy paralysis, meets his political Waterloo. I am still unconvinced whether Cameron will play a convincing Wellington, however.
There has been a chain email doing the rounds. It seems to have caught the public imagination to the extent of being used as a source by at least three well-known national columnists to my knowledge.
There are some unwarranted speculations in it, however, and it is worth going through and picking out what’s not true, because what’s left is quite frightening enough. This is long, sorry.
You may have heard that legislation creating compulsory ID Cards passed a crucial stage in the House of Commons.
Actually it is now the Identity Cards Act 2006, and (after a strange and unprecedented delay in getting the final text published, and, unlike all other Acts at time of writing, only in pdf) is now available on the Cabinet Office website here (pdf).
You may feel that ID cards are not something to worry about, since we already have Photo ID for our Passport and Driving License and an ID Card will be no different to that. What you have not been told is the full scope of this proposed ID Card, and what it will mean to you personally.
The proposed ID Card will be different from any card you now hold. It will be connected to a database called the NIR, (National Identity Register)., where all of your personal details will be stored.
Not, quite, all. → Continue reading: Fisking ‘the anonymous email’
Not content with bullying its own population, the British Government is now spending taxpayers’ money to export the culture of fear. This from the website of Her Britannic Majesty’s Embassy to Romania:
With approximately 100 illegal immigrants deported from Britain to Romania every month and 250 Romanian asylum seekers registered last year in the UK, the Home Office and the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) decided to launch this publicity campaign in March 2005.
The existence of the IOM ‘Managing migration for the welfare of all’ is unwelcome news to me.
[…] But how does a state achieve the balance between the need for control of its borders and the need to facilitate movement across its borders for legitimate purposes such as trade, tourism, family reunion and education?
…asks the IOM, seeking to explain its purpose, but begging the question. The assumption is that states will naturally ban travel and trade (which is what ‘control their borders’ means) and then decide what are ‘legitimate purposes’ for permitted movements. But this is a convenient doctrine invented by states in the 20th century, a generalization of the conditions of the Tsarist police-state and the petty, nationalist bureaucracies that emerged in the 19th.
Where – let alone why – I choose to live or travel is no business of states, unless I am doing injury to their citizens. By going from place to place I do accept that places are different legally as well as culturally and physically. If there were no differences there would be no point in travel. But the natural condition of borders is openness. They are just lines on a map.
Just when I thought e-government couldn’t get any sillier, I happened upon this site.
“Anti-social behaviour practitioner” is a particularly glorious piece of tin-eared bureaucratic jargon. “Tackling alcohol disorder” is alternative to “Taking a Stand Awards”, suggests to me that many of those approaching this site are expected to be unable to stand.
But apart from being stupid and unintentionally funny, it is another scary glimpse into how unlimited is the appetite to regulate and manage social life in Britain.
When the British left is worried about getting its vote out, a standard tool in the box is the scare story about “the extreme right” (meaning not us but the racist parties), being about to break through. This is not generally convincing nationwide, but that does not stop it being tried. Before the general election the New Statesman published an absurd story/slur that 1 in 5 Britons could vote far right – which spintastic headline involved counting UKIP, Veritas, and the English Nationalist Party as the much the same thing as the BNP and the National Front.
Now they are at it again for the local elections. Margaret Hodge, an impeccably New Labour minister, is quoted more or less everywhere today. (Though, now the story is more or less everywhere, she seems to have resiled from it somewhat. Strange that, a highly experienced, high profile minister mis-speaking in a set-piece interview for a national.)
As the BBC has it:
White working class voters are being “tempted” by the British National Party as they feel Labour is not listening to their concerns, a minister has said. Employment minister Margaret Hodge said the BNP could win seats in her Barking constituency in May’s council polls. She told the Sunday Telegraph many constituents were angry at the lack of housing and asylum seekers being housed in the area by inner London councils. The BNP said Labour were ignoring fears over “mass immigration” to the UK
You might think she is trying to have it both ways – and succeeding – by pretending to worry about xenophobia, while simultaneously acknowledging it, and suggesting it may be catered to. As anyone who had read the Labour general election manifesto might suppose it would be, what with half a page on e-borders, asylum and ID cards as immigration control.
But there is another possibility. The working-class voters of Barking and Dagenham might genuinely prefer the BNP. Not for its racist tendencies, but because they would rather vote for a less authoritarian variety of socialism than that offered by Mrs Hodge and her colleagues.
Have a glorious and happy Easter.
Brits take note – see what happens when there is no decent succession plan for your monarchy?
[87 year old] King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, who lost $37 million of the kingdom’s money when he gave it to his American court jester, appears to be falling for a Nigerian-type scam.
Oh dear.
Talks were under way “to bring a billion dollars to invest in Tonga to help fund many projects in Tonga” and neighbouring countries, he said.
He would be involved in a telephone link with the investors to set a date to visit Tonga.
“Talks with this bank are for them to use the Reserve Bank of Tonga, to leave their money there and take the funds for the project from the Reserve Bank.
And you thought Prince Charles regularly dressing up like an Imam was a bit embarrassing.
(Via Silent Running)
In the years following the First Opium War and the (forced) Treaty of Nanking in 1842, and the consequent establishment of Shanghai as a treaty port, areas of Shanghai were conceded to the Britain, the United States, and France between 1846 and 1849. Extraterritoriality applied, and foreigners were not subject to Chinese law. The French Concession (which never contained all that many French people – there were actually more Russians) was ruled essentially as a French colony – officials were appointed in Paris to adminster it. On the other hand, the British and American concessions were merged in 1863 to form something called the “International Settlement”, which elected the “Shanghai Municipal Council” to govern the city. On this basis, Shanghai was close to being an independent city state (albeit with some use of the Brtish and American legal systems and military) until the second world war.
This peculiar status still remained somewhat intact even after it was controlled by the Japanese from 1937 (who had started trading in Shanghai along with the Europeans in the first half of the twentieth century, and had gradually taken control of the city and other parts of China by force), and as a consequence Shanghai was the only port in the world unconditionally open to Jewish refugees from Europe. By 1941 over twenty thousand mostly German and Austrian but also Polish and Lithuanian Jews had arrived in Shanghai, creating a new Jewish area in the Hongkou area of Shanghai, which had once been the American concession but in the 1920s and 1930s was a predominantly Chinese area of the International Settlement. As I wrote last month, I went for a wander around this area when I was in Shanghai last month.
The Japanese had nothing against Jews (Japanese brutality being largely reserved for the Chinese), and the Jews in this area built what of a community they could, including the Ohel Moishe Synagogue, schools, theatre and newspapers, and they received some aid from the existing (very weallthy) Jewish community in Shanghai and from (largely American) Jewish philanthropic organisations. If you look very carefully, you can still see one or two handwritten signs which date from that era.
After 1941, partly under pressure from their new German allies, the Japanese confined the “stateless refugees” in Shanghai to one relatively small area of Hongkow. Conditions in this “Shanghai Ghetto” were not good, and the area was somewhat disease ridden. In 1945, thirty odd Jews were killed by an American bombing that was attempting to destroy a Japanese radio station.
But the vast majority of the Jews in Shanghai were still alive when the Americans liberated the city shortly afterwards. Joy at the arrival of the Americans was followed by news of the Holocaust and that virtually all Jewish friends and relatives back in Europe had been murdered, so it must have been a strange liberations. Over the next few years the Jews in Shanghai were dispersed to Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, the United States and Palestine, and relatively few were there when the communists took over in 1949.
Still, visiting the former Shanghai ghetto is a far less depressing thing than visiting almost anywhere described as a former ghetto in Europe. In Warsaw a couple of months ago I reflected that half a million Jews had once been confined to a small area there, and that basically all of them were subsequently murdered, something just too depressing for words. The ghetto in Shanghai is a place where at least twenty thousand were saved, and the memorials commemorate that. The Ohel Moishe Synagogue is a museum to the events of the time, and if you go there a nice Chinese gentleman welcomes you, shows you a film about the events, and shows you around the exhibits of photographs and documents of the time. (He also gave me a parish bulletin from a local (modern) Jewish community, inviting me to join them for shul and other events, but I am alas not Jewish so it didn’t really apply).
Other memorials nearby suggest much the same thing. There is a certain amount of pride in the fact that this is a place where people were saved.
Yesterday afternoon I was out and about in the Parliament Square area, and saw yet another weird demonstration by Fathers for Justice, this version of them now known as Real Fathers for Justice. It would appear that they were a day early with their over-the-top visual metaphor, but maybe that was how they wrong-footed the authorities.
Click to get a bigger picture.
I genuinely do not know whether these people are publicity geniuses or publicity maniacs, forcing their case upon everyone’s attention, or just annoying everyone and proving how much better it would be if they were never allowed near their children again.
Much depends on what you think of their website, which they did at least advertise quite effectively with this demo, although most of the news pictures seem not to have included the banner that I chanced upon. No doubt their hit rate has been going off the top of the page.
So far it looks to be long on flashy graphics and feuding, and short on arguing their case. But, on balance, I suspect that they are doing quite well. This is how you do things these days.
It does make you wonder, though, how clever the system is for stopping people planting bombs in such places. That part of London has gone insane with physical barriers, armed policemen by the hundred, and numerous law changes from inside the buildings being protected. Yet still, a few nutters with a banner and a lurid piece of religious sculpture seem to be able to clamber about at will, and remain there for a couple of hours while all the world takes photos.
I reckon Real Fathers for Justice are an al-Qaeda front. (Come to think of it, those Islamists are also pretty obsessional about keeping hold of their children in the event of divorce, aren’t they? It fits.)
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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.
|
Recent Comments