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Reports coming in on the wires that about 2,500 Republican Guards have surrendered to American forces, while other US forces are closing in on Baghdad. Interesting to see that gold and oil prices are skidding down while stock markets are chugging higher. Amazingly volatile state of the financial markets. My prediction – if this war really looks to be won, expect the Dow to hit 9,000 by Labor Day. Meanwhile, shares in Robert Fisk plc are suspended, pending Chapter 11. April 4th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Next week we are due for the annual ritual of watching the British government’s finance minister (Chancellor of the Exchequer) tell us how far he intends to stick his fingers into our wallets. No doubt funding the cost of military campaigns in the Middle East will provide a convenient excuse, although I would guess that Gordon Brown’s huge public spending increases on health and education have more to do with it. Remember he made such increases against a backdrop of crumbling stock markets. A good article in the British weekly, The Spectator, lays out the lunacy of where public finances are currently headed. And an article at Reuters suggests that owners of property can expect another kick in the shins from Labour. Some nice things have been said about Premier Tony Blair in recent weeks from the right-wing side of the political tracks due to his hard-edged realism about dealing with Saddam. We all knew it could come at a cost in blood and treasure. But on pretty much everything else, this government, like 99 percent of them, remains a menace to liberty and property. Of course, non-interventionist libertarians would say that war is the health of the state and therefore advocates of military action vs Iraq like yours truly can have no complaints about the size of my tax bill. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Domestic spending, much of which is wasted, dwarfs UK spending on the military as a proportion of the total budget. Longer term, of course, any overhaul of public spending (ie, a stonking big cut) must include a willingness to look at private sector options in providing for our defence, including use of mercenaries, even. I’d be very interested in what readers have to say on the latter point. I’d guess even opponents of the current war might want to say how minarchists or even anarcho-capitalists should look at how military forces should be paid for. April 4th, 2003 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
I do believe that we may be witnessing the final days of Cuba’s squalid communist regime:
When governments start incarcerating their political opponents for life, it is because they are frightened and deeply worried and usually with good reason. I suspect the game is nearly up. And, just as an aside, doesn’t this show up the juvenile, publicity-seeking, egocentrism of the ‘Bush is Hitler’ mob in sharp relief? While genuine freedom fighters risk their very lives by taking on ‘Il Presidente’, the likes of Michael Moore can pose as ‘oppressed heroic victims’ while being chauffeured around to their various awards ceremonies and public speaking engagements. April 4th, 2003 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
The current Time Out (print edition) quotes a playwright, Nabil Shaban, attacking the government’s spending on war:
To show that this war is not in his name, Mr Shaban’s has publicly given back to the government a £24,800 grant awarded as funding for one of his plays. This publicity stunt, however, does raise an important question. If Mr Shaban objects to taxpayers’ money being spent on something he deems unnecessary – as opposed to hospitals and schools – why did he in the first place think it right to receive accept taxpayers’ money for his play? April 3rd, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
People often say that President George Herbert Walker Bush (the current President’s father) did a very wicked thing – that he called upon the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow the regime and then, when they did rebel, he betrayed them (left them to die in their tens of thousands). Now I am no fan of the first President Bush (I am not much of a fan of the second one either) – after all this was the President Bush of “read my lips” who then shoved up taxes, and this was the President Bush of the ‘Americans with Disabilities Act’ and all sorts of other regulations. However, many people say that Mr G.H.W. Bush was a nice man who would not have set out to call on people to rebel and then left them to die. I do not know whether the first President Bush was a ‘nice man’ or not – but there is a way he might have been, a possibility that has president in American policy. There is a view common in American (and other) ‘educated’ circles that dictatorships do not rest on force, but are instead based on ‘opinion’. And if ‘the people’ really want to they can overthrow tyranny. So United States government has gone around making calls for populations to rise up against tyrannical rule and when populations do rebel (as they did several times in Eastern Europe) it is found to have no plans to help – it does not need to help you see, ‘opinion’ is what matters. If the ‘the people’ want to do something they can. Where does this idea come from? It comes from David Hume. → Continue reading: One of the problems David Hume left us April 3rd, 2003 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
The fact Turkey did not allow a US ‘Northern Front’ to be launched from its territory could in the not-so-long-run prove very detrimental to what it views as its ‘national interests’. The Turkish state in very uneasy that in the aftermath of a collapse of the regime in Baghdad, Iraq itself may fall apart, with the Kurds in the north declaring an independent Kurdistan. The Turks (and Iranians) fear this as it will greatly embolden the Kurdish separatists in South-Eastern Turkey (and also in parts of Iran). So, ask yourself which scenario is more likely to lead to the collapse of Iraqi national integrity post-Saddam:
So hands up who thinks that option 2 is vastly more likely to lead to Kurdish separatists doing exactly what the Turks fear? If Mosul or Kirkuk fall to the Kurds alone, will the US be willing to shoot their way into those largely Kurdish cities if they are not invited in? What if the local (armed) Kurds politely say “Greetings honoured American soldiers! As we have taken care of the local Ba’athists, your noble, fraternal and well armed presence is not needed here, thank you very much, and have a nice journey home oh glorious brothers in arms”. I really doubt the US wants to fight the Kurds for what is a messy internal matter. Of course if the troops turning up at the outskirts of Mosul and Kirkuk are Turks, get ready for a war-within-a-war from the moment the two forces come within sight of each other. Only time will tell what the outcome will be but if the Turks do not get their nightmare scenario materializing, they should thank their lucky stars because their actions made it far more likely to occur. I suppose we will know in a few weeks! April 3rd, 2003 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Megan McArdle (linked to by Instpundit) probably speaks for many on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially in the USA, when she asks: what is Chirac up to? She doesn’t know. All he seems to be achieving is to antagonise the USA, to no apparent purpose. She’s right about what he’s doing. But maybe the answer is that he is doing this deliberately, for local reasons. It was said after 9/11 that you couldn’t understand Al-Qaeda’s thinking if you thought only about what they were trying to do to the USA. You had to look at their local picture. What if they were really trying to impress fellow Muslims, and to increase their power not so much in the world as a whole but within the Muslim world? I believe that something similar applies now to France. France’s main concern now is to get the sort of Europe it wants, namely a centralised European state, with France playing a very prominent part. → Continue reading: What France is playing at – a conjecture from and about L’Europe April 3rd, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
A follow up on the yesterday’s article about the EU constitution. In today’s Telegraph’s opinion section, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is concerned that “while we liberate Iraq, Europe is busy planning to enslave us”:
We can already see the impact of the EU fiasco in handling the Iraq crisis:
And there is a bit about, Tony Blair, our hero:
Scary stuff, please go and read the whole article.  April 3rd, 2003 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
A pal close to our hearts (and purses) comes into conflict with the authorities. More specifically, on-line auction company eBay said its PayPal auction payment unit is being investigated for possible violations of the USA Patriot Act. Shock! Horror! Last month eBay received a letter from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Missouri about the alleged violations. The letter states that PayPal’s earlier practice of providing payment services to online gambling merchants violated provisions in the Patriot Act that “prohibit the transmission of funds that are known to have been derived from a criminal offense or are intended to be used to promote or support unlawful activity.” Sound dangereous. I am so glad Americans are now protected by the Patriot Act against PayPal wretched practices. Apparently, the ‘crime’ happened almost 2 years ago, before eBay acquired PayPal. Part of the transaction was a committment to stop using the PayPal unit for gambling business. You can breath out now, it is not as if they were secretly raising funds for terrorists. The authorities offered to “rescind the allegations if PayPal pays the amount of money it earned by handling online gambling transactions from October 2001, through July, 2002, plus interest.” So justice will be done and the American public can sleep safely again. If I remember correctly, the Patriot Act, passed after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., was to give law enforcement authorities “expanded tools for investigating and deterring future terrorist acts”. We live in dangerous times, when on-line auction payment units can commit crimes under anti-terrorist legislation at will…! April 3rd, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Forgive this interruption to your scheduled programme of dark forebodings, war worries, terrorist threats, police state and impending civilisational collapse but I am taking a short break in order to bring you some good news. It would appear that the political landscape of Britain is not quite as barren as I had hitherto imagined it to be. Indeed, little oases of life-giving sanity are starting to spring up amidst the arid desert of top-down, tax-and-spend socialism. Case in point being Reform Britain, a campaign group consisting of loads of big-brained luminaries who describe themselves thus:
As I reflect upon the lowly and squalid state of public debate in this country over the last few years, the above words wash over me with all the fragrant and orgasmic tingle of a cool spring zephyr. And, as if that was not enough, these wonderful people have launched a related website called ‘Down the Drain’, a perfectly appropriate domain name for a site which is devoted to disclosing just how much money HMG syphons off of its productive citizens every day and, more pointedly, where it all ends up. Broadcast your seeds with gusto, you Great Sowers of Hope, and may those seeds be nurtured, fed, watered, grow and cover all the land with a golden harvest. Your normal service of doom, gloom, despair, gnashing of teeth, wailing and general despondency will now be resumed. Thank you. [My thanks to Stephen Pollard for the links.] April 3rd, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
I recall reading an article a few months ago – I think it was either in the Guardian or the Independent, I’m not sure which- bemoaning the low standards of British TV comedy. Neither am I able to remember precisely the conclusions drawn in said article or, indeed, if any conclusion was drawn at all. Personally, my prognosis is that British comedy is failing to inspire because life in Britain has surpassed any attempt at parody:
I wonder what type of ‘notice’ would have satisfied the Employment Tribunal?
Or do you think that such a letter might be construed as too judgemental? April 2nd, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
The result from tonight’s European Soccer Championship qualifying match between England and Turkey: On the battlefield, on the football field: Rosbeefs rule! April 2nd, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
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