Blogs
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
This week
Blogging will be light owing to a variety of DIY projects coming to a head!
posted by James
Sunday, July 27, 2003
Frustration
Via Instapundit, is this interview with Christopher Hitchens on Fox following his trip to Iraq. Essentially its the picture of pretty impressive progress in Iraq which those who read blogs are familiar with, but those who rely on the regular media are completely unaware of. Read the whole thing, but the line I think that summed the situation up was:
HITCHENS: [after detailing what Iraq is really like] I felt a sense of annoyance that I had to go there myself to find any of that out.
posted by James
Friday, July 25, 2003
The sneer
Look at this, from the usually sensible Atlantic Monthly. (Source from their prepublication e-mail so no link):
"The good news, according to a recent study by the Brookings Institution, is that the number of U.S. neighborhoods with a high poverty rate declined dramatically in the 1990s. The bad news is . . . that America's cities may have entered a period of transition, in which the poor are gradually shifting out of a gentrifying urban core only to become clustered elsewhere. Indeed poverty rates in some inner-ring suburbs rose during the 1990s, creating something of a bull's-eye pattern when plotted on a map—and hinting at a future for suburbia that is far more dismal than the strip malls and SUVs of today."[Emphasis Mine]
Normally I would let that slide and not comment, but I've heard just about enough of this sort of arrogant elitist sneering at suburbia, shopping at the Mall (or Wal*Mart), SUVs, and all the other plain simple aspects of modern middle class life. What the hell is so wrong with the 'burbs? Compared with most of the rest of the world the average American suburb is a vision of heaven on earth.
The suburbs, and outer suburbs remain as popular as ever - people are still moving into them when they can. Wal*Mart is hardly dragging people in off the street at gunpoint. And no one is forcing suburbanites to drive SUVs - has it occurred to the arrogant snobs who write this sort of piece that ... people might actually want to live that way?? Yes, living in suburbia is probably not the best place to be if you like going out every night to bars or clubs, or the opera, or ballet or whatever, but guess what, lots of people are more concerned with finding a nice environment where their children can grow up safely and they can just get on with their lives away from all the hustle and bustle of the city. Should they be picked on for that? Why can't a little tolerance be shown for people who choose not to immerse themselves in the dramas of city life?
And don't get me started on the way the popular media chooses to describe those who live out beyond the suburbs, in the (shudder) countryside!
posted by James
Thursday, July 24, 2003
What liberal media?
Now I hold no brief for Ms Flowers, and have no stake in the fuss and chaos of the Clinton Wars, but this is pathetic:
Suit accuses Cheney, firm of fraudulent accounting. CNN July 2002
Judicial Watch, a group that investigates alleged corruption by government officials, filed the suit in federal court in Dallas against Cheney and Halliburton, a company that supplies products and services to the petroleum and energy industries.
Flowers' conspiracy suit against Sen. Clinton allowed. CNN July 2003
Judicial Watch, a conservative group representing Flowers, said Wednesday it will seek the senator's testimony in the case
posted by James
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
There is just a tiny bit less evil in the world today
posted by James
No bias
This is the alternative explanation for why the media is so resolutely useless at reporting the situation in Iraq. Sensationalism versus explicit bias. I think this explains part of it but in some quarters at least there is an agenda as well.
posted by James
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Don't fall this way
I have been in the somewhat uncomfortable position over the past few days of finding myself agreeing with Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell as the row between the government and the BBC escalates.
Ultimately my take on Blair is that he has been a disastrous Prime Minister who has inflicted a massive amount of damage on the United Kingdom by his willingness to give away our sovereignty to the incipient despotism of Brussels, his half-baked constitutional tinkering, his acceptance of damaging internationalist treaties such as Kyoto or the ICC and his tax and spend policies which threaten to beggar the lot of us. Add to this the rampant corruption of this government, where the lobbying of a foreign state was hired out to a Labour donor, or government policy changed in return for cash for the party.
Labour has dumbed down the education system to the point that children leave school less intelligent than when they go in, politicised the civil service and introduced greater peacetime curbs on our English Liberties than any government since the Glorious Revolution. It has governed with all its attention focussed on the media, and as such has hidden the fact that it has been utterly incompetent when actually dealing with something other than spinning a yarn, but the bungled appropriation of Railtrack and the fiasco that is its successor gives ample proof of this failing too.
This is a government which if it weren't for the appalling incompetence of the Tory party would be 20 points down in the polls and sinking fast. It deserves to be ruthlessly ejected from power and unceremoniously dumped into the trashcan of history etc etc.
And yet...
It will fill me with rage and despair if Blair falls because of this non-story about hyping the case for War in Iraq, or because of the ancillary story of Dr David Kelly. It is sad that Dr Kelly felt the need to kill himself, and everyone's thoughts should be with his family, but the responsibility for that act is his alone. He became caught up in a high stakes political game but that can hardly have come as a surprise - he must have known that the gloves were off when the BBC "sexed up" his story into an attack on the governement. Undoubtably both the BBC and the Government will need to reflect long and hard about how they treated him. But this should not distract us from the fact that we are in the middle of a war, a war which was declared on us some 20 years ago but which we steadfastly ignored despite the rising bodycount on our side until the events of two years ago shocked us into acknowledging the fact.
And on this, the issue of the day, Blair has been right almost all along - perhaps he puts too much faith in compromise, and the likes of the UN, but I think he has learned that lesson now. And ultimately that is what matters. Blair understands what the stakes are. Most people don't. Most people have fooled themselves into thinking this is about "oil" or "imperialism" or "revenge for September 11". It's not. It's not even about "spreading democracy", although that's reason enough for me and is a part of the strategy for winning the war. What this war is about, is a race against time to stop the enemy from detonating a nuclear bomb in a western city. September 11 showed that they would be willing to do such a thing. The objective now is to stop them, before they get the chance.
Some nations get this. Some don't. Some politicians get this. Some don't. Blair is one who does. Domestically he is little different to Brown how Brown would govern, and only slightly better than Cook, but on the central issue of the day replacing Blair with anyone other than a Tory [because I trust the Tory party to back Washington] runs the risk of at best changing Britain from being an active partner in the war into a passive one (Brown) and at worst (Cook) moving us into the Axis of Weasels. Now, I think that if Blair falls it will backfire horrendously on Labour, and make a Conservative victory at the next election certain, but frankly right now I don't care, because the war is more important. I want Blair to stay in power - whatever the consequences.
posted by James
The fog of peace
It has become apparent over recent months that the mainstream media (the major newspapers, news agencies and TV News) is pretty unreliable. That is not to say that there aren't excellent journalists, pundits and investigators out there, just that they are mixed in amongst mediocrities who repeat debunked claims, force stories into simplified templates (e.g. a guerilla war is always Vietnam) and report news in a biased manner.
This last factor varies. Some like the Telegraph, or the Guardian wear their prejudices on their sleeves. Others like the New York Times and the BBC are extremenly biased but deny it, but since everyone knows they are biased its not so bad. Others still deny allegations of bias and point to stories which are written with impeccable objectivity. Unfortunatlely that misses the point, because the bias is not so much a result of how the story is written but whether it is reported at all. Thus the news media feeds the environmentalist racket by reporting on the alarmist studies, not getting feedback from the sceptics and then failing to report on the sceptical studies. The same happens with guns - the media will report when a maniac goes on the rampage with a gun and mows down the innocent, but not when one tries to do the same but is stopped by other armed citizens. Similarly only the local paper is likely to report on when a householder having a weapon saved their life or their property. Thus it is this way in which the agenda is decided by the media that is the most dangerous aspect of media bias.
To some extent it has always been obvious that the media's accuracy leaves a lot to be desired but the extent of the problem has been revealed by the Iraq War and its aftermath. After an initial flurry of excitement in the first days of the war the press decided (and even pro-war media followed this line) that the war was going badly wrong. This slant was then ever present, right up until Baghdad fell after a 3 week campaign. Then reality intruded for a few days but after that the slant was changed back to the tales of a quagmire because everything wasn't immediately wonderful. And it pretty much has continued like that ever since.
But in amongst the morass of reports of doom and despair a handful of reports have surfaced implying that if the western press corps were to venture from Central Baghdad a completely different story would be told. It seems life in Iraq is actually a lot better than is reported. Does this mean that the reports of demonstrations and gunfights are being made up by those reporters who report them? No, just that the hidden bias of selective reporting is in play on a massive scale.
And this means that it is almost impossible to have a clue about what is going on in Iraq. The same people who report doom and gloom now reported disaster everytime a soldier stubbed their toe during the march on Baghdad. I didn't believe them then, so I find it very difficult to believe them now.
Thus we need a tool to filter the news and verify it. By looking at things like:
Is this reporter reliable? or a hysterical moron?
Were this pundit's predictions borne out by events? or were they repeatedly wrong?
Is this source biased to the left? or the right?
How has this story been reported elsewhere?
and most importantly
Is there another point of view on this topic which the reporter failed to mention?
and
Is there some big news that big media is not reporting?
This is exactly what the blogosphere (or rather the news/opinion section of the blogosphere) is capable of doing, quickly and for free. Its not yet perfect at doing that, and does bring a whole range of new biases into play, but its sheer variety and the fact that these biases are in plain sight is a vast improvement on the status quo. In addition to this, the notion of reliability and accuracy applies to blogs just as much as mainstream media. If a blogger is repeatedly wrong in their preduictions, then the fact that they slam the New York Times carries less weight than if they are usually right.
posted by James
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
This is cool
posted by James
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Porpoising
Today, we have this piece of news:
Retail Sales Up 0.5 Percent
Gain better than expected, raising hopes for economic recovery
The Commerce Department (search) said retail sales grew by 0.5 percent to $310.42 billion in June after being flat in May. It was the strongest gain since March. June sales excluding motor vehicles were up a stronger 0.7 percent after rising 0.1 percent in May.
A couple of weeks ago it was a different story:
Last month's 6.4 percent rate — the highest since the aftershocks of the September 11, 2001 (search) terror attacks — was up 0.3 percentage point from May. That surprised analysts who had predicted a slight rise to 6.2 percent. The last time the rate was higher was in April 1994.
The pattern repeats with quarterly growth figures and other economic indicators. A good period comes in, people regain confidence, spend more, then the previous bad quarters results come out and people rein in their spending. They spend less, then the good numbers get reported and the cycle repeats. It gives me the impression that the economy will take off as soon as it can get a run of good figures - e.g. good growth figures for 2 or 3 quarters, since that will bring back confidence. Until then the economy will keep porpoising along the bottom.
Of course, the media is responsible for some of the doom and gloom. The US was briefly in recession a couple of years ago. Since then it has grown, albeit slowly. A little perspective also is valuable here: what the US terms "low growth" is sometimes more than Britain enjoyed in the late 90s boom.
posted by James
Ancient Universities vs. New Labour
The headline on this Times piece "Oxbridge told: shape up or lose freedom" is a bit livelier than seems justified by the article which follows. The opening of the article basically covers what is being hinted at:
OXFORD and Cambridge universities were yesterday told to modernise or face government intervention in the way they manage their affairs.
The threat of state interference in the running of Britain’s oldest universities followed a review ordered by Gordon Brown into relations between business and higher education.
It said that their success was so vital to Britain’s economic future that academics could not be allowed to avoid changes necessary to streamline decision-making and cut bureaucracy.
But it promptly dissolves into management-speak and New Labour gobbledegook ("modernisation strategies" etc), that doesn't do the above justice.
That means that either the paragraphs above are a hook to get people to read what is essentially a dull story on a slow news day, or that is what is being said behind closed doors by New Labour types who do not want to go on record. Personally, I think the latter is more likely (particularly given the Times' current position as virtually the New Labour House Journal).
If this is the case then this threat will backfire badly. To paraphrase Frank J: in a fight between Oxbridge and New Labour, Oxbridge would win because almost alone of UK Universities Oxford and the Other Place have the clout and the status to pull out of the state funded education system and go private. In doing so they would solve most of the financial problems that are the real threat to their elite reputation, and wreck the government's Higher Education Strategy.
posted by James
Friday, July 11, 2003
Suicide
posted by James
Thursday, July 10, 2003
Liberia - agreement
Someone on the right agrees with me about Liberia!
posted by James
Democracy
I know this is probably terribly unsophisticated of me, but doesn't the fact that the Iranian Government intimidated the protesters into abandoning their demonstrations yesterday, with threats of a massacre finally settle the argument over whether Iran is or isn't a democracy?
posted by James
Deja vu
Good article by Hugh Hewitt in the Weekly Standard, pointing out that the post war occupation of Germany wasn't all that different to the current occupation of Iraq.
posted by James
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
Synchronicity
Seems I'm not the only one thinking about Africa! For a similar take on things, with a different conclusion see Vodkapundit. [Via Carnival of the Vanities 42]
posted by James
The world beyond the walls
The current situation in Liberia is just one aspect of a wider problem. A vast section of the world is not free, and apart from a few organised despotisms (such as China), most of this unfree world is not organised either. This latter point is harder to comprehend – oppression is easier to empathise with than the utter chaotic mess of a lot of the third world. But understand it we must, because in an age of mass travel, we cannot ignore what is going on.
If we look at a map of Africa (though this argument applies to a much wider section of the world, Africa is where the difference to the West is starkest) the first thing we see is borders. Lines on a map, which to us make some kind of sense. For example, we think that on one side of that line, the person we need to talk to is the President of Niger, on the other side it is the President of Nigeria. And seeing the world through these lines blinds us to the truth of the distribution of power in Africa. The way to get a handle on what is actually going on is to scrub the lines out, and then look again.
When one does this, things look a lot less familiar, but they make a lot more sense. The continent is dotted with population centres: the cities and their hinterlands, where some semblance of order prevails. This order is enforced by some local power structure - the usual term for these regional and urban leaders is "warlord" but it is misleading since it implies some state of constant warfare is required to produce these conditions, which is not the case. A better term in my opinion is "chief" or even "noble", since these power structures tend to coalesce into regional entities in a kind of feudal relationship to some local “overlord”. In many places this Overlord is the titular president of the country, in many other cases he is the head of some rebel faction, or the titular head of the neighbouring country, of which more anon.
Between these centres of power are rural and lightly populated areas, where effectively power and order are absent. Life in these areas is not some libertarian bliss though, if anything it is worse than the cities, for the people who live in these areas are subject to the vagaries of the seasons, and without a central state to assist in times of shortages they starve. Local junior versions of the nobility sometimes gain control over these areas, normally for short periods of time. At other times the neighbouring power centres might interfere, demand tribute or protection money. At other times bandits might gain control. Unlike the cities, where a change of regime comes well advertised in advance, these transfers of power are unpredictable and fleeting. In some parts you never know who is the "boss", so you keep your head down and try and get on with life as best you can.
This mass of wilderness and power centres looks very familiar when one strips out the walkie-talkies and AK-47s the militia / gangs / armies carry. In fact it looks like everywhere has at some time or another. Europe in the dark ages, pre-Colombian North America, Feudal Japan etc.
When one sees that the world beyond the city walls looks like this, it becomes less surprising to find unsavoury characters from one part of the unfree world popping up in another. The route from say Cairo to Monrovia may be a long one, but the borders crossed are meaningless - for the only visa you need out in the back woods of such places is a $100 bill. In fact the only "border" that has any noticeable effect on the culture is that between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world. Your Islamic fanatic making this trip would probably fly from Cairo to Niamey (Niger), and then disappear off by land to foment trouble in or exploit the resources of the Christian/Animist parts of West Africa. And it makes a lot of sense for them to do this, irrespective of the lack of western interests in those parts since all along the outer boundary of Islam, the fanatics are pushing out, seeking to expand their domain.
But that does not mean that order is expanding, because while the Islamic world fares better than sub-Saharan Africa, it too follows the neo-feudal mode. The states are a little stronger, and the borders a little more crystallised, particularly in and around the “infertile crescent” from Mecca to Tehran, but set against that should be the fact that culturally Islam does not recognise nationalism.
And beyond the true world of Islam, stretching into the heart of Asia is another zone of neo-feudalism. In central Asia, the people are slowly regaining their lost religion, but it has yet to make a real impact on life. The wreckage of communism and a myriad of ethnic nationalisms is what is driving the collapse of order here.
Most of South East Asia is untouched by this, though some fellows out in the jungles of Burma or Cambodia might disagree. Around the coast functioning, if not truly free (or not at all free) states abound. The mass of Red China falls into this category. A crisis in central authority, such as might follow the fall of the communist leadership, could destabilize it, and it should be remembered that it is exactly this sort anarchistic mess that the communists emerged triumphant from after the war. In contrast India, prospers both as a free country and as a centralised state, though she is a target of Islamic expansionism.
Russia, parts of its former Empire, parts of the Balkans and Latin America teeter on the brink, and the Pacific is a patchwork of successful states and those slipping over the edge.
Having seen the true nature of large parts of the world, we should conclude the thought experiment by putting those borders back into place. Because, for some bizarre reason, the West still gets a bit huffy about the idea of changing these meaningless lines, and while we are rather unpredictable about where we make a stand, the risk that our ire might be roused by an outright annexation tends to place limits on what an ambitious noble or Overlord might do. In practice this has resulted in a set of rules for life beyond the frontier.
The first general rule is, that if you seize the "capital" of a "country" (normally the former colonial administrative centre), you gain the right to appoint ambassadors and send delegations to the UN or the World Bank. The second general rule is that you are only ever allowed one of these capitals. You can't take over the "capital" of "country" A and the "capital" of "country" B. The third general rule is that you have lots of competition. The net result of this is that while a given Overlord might appoint himself President of one country, and be recognised as such throughout the world. He will likely be the de facto ruler of a portion of the neighbouring "country", or “countries”, while large parts of the "country" he is the de jure ruler of are under the actual control of someone else.
It should surprise no one that we need to keep an eye on what is going on beyond the frontiers, both to keep tabs on our current opponents and to try to spot the next threat a bit sooner than we did the current one. Our diplomatic corps are a valuable tool for getting this information, but are focussed on the world of communiqués and stable governments, of capital cities and nation states, or even trans-national groupings. In much of the neo-feudal world, we persist in following this model, even though it harks back to a world (immediately post-independence) that no longer exists in these areas. We need to develop a new diplomacy so that instead of appointing ambassadors to countries we appoint ambassadors and delegates to factions, ignore the whole thorny issue of "recognition" (if an Overlord is well organised enough to send a deputation to the West, let him, even if that means trebling the number of “states” in Africa) and above all forget about those borders, and think instead in terms of the real boundaries between power centres. If we do that, we will actually stand a decent chance of being able to see the whole picture and act accordingly.
posted by James
OK
The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories will then be posted here.
Pretty cool, but it still doesn't answer the question "why?".
posted by James
Liberia
The horrific mess in Liberia is not unique, and it is not pretty. The USA is currently prevaricating about whether to intervene or not, as well it might since Liberia appears to be of little relevance to America's strategic concerns, and therefore not worth the risk inherent in a military intervention.
I well understand this line of logic, but I personally disagree with it. I favour the exercise of Anglospheric power everywhere on earth it is possible, because we have the opportunity to spread our values throughout the world unconstrained by rival powers. Such an activity - call it imperialism if you will - would be a manifest benefit to humanity as a whole, and would enrich everyone involved by realising the potential in resources and people that places like Africa have. Potential that will never be realised while it is funnelled into the pockets of despots.
The world is not ready for a resumption of imperialism. For the time being the left will argue for half-hearted humanitarian interventions under the auspices of the UN (which at best will stave off the crisis until the UN apponted order crumbles, and at worst simply funnel the profits from slavery, graft and prostitution into the pockets of UN officials and Red Cross nabobs). The right will caution against such activities on the grounds that they distract us from the proper use of military power in hunting down our enemies, and that they create risks without benefits.
There is however another argument in favour of intervention in Liberia, and it is one that the right should be comfortable with, and it is one which James Robbins is making right now on NRO. In essence it cites Liberia's geographic proximity to sources of US oil as a reason for acting to stabilise that country. From Liberia the US could project power into the rest of West Africa, and keep tabs on the various unsavoury characters who lurk round there. He also makes the very important point that absent US intervention, oversight of the region is being left to France.
In addition to these points it is important to add that in terms of political strategy it would make a lot of sense for the US to build up the political capital an intervention in Liberia would generate. While I am firmly of the opinion that the US should be a lot tougher with the rest of the world, the American people are just too plain polite to do that, and like to have allies going along with them - even though they have no need of them in pure military terms. An intervention in Liberia would build up support that could prove useful when the time comes to do something about Iran or Syria.
It also ought to be pointed out that a colonial expedition to Liberia will not use up many resources - I keep seeing ridiculous comments around the blogosphere which imply that Liberia would take tens of thousands of troops, which is rubbish. The US could restore order to Monrovia and its hinterland with the deployment of a half strength carrier battle group and two thousand marines. Why am I so sure? Because that is what the UK sent to Sierra Leone three years ago. In fact Sierra Leone is a template for what to do in Liberia:
1. Take the capital and organise it. It is slightly more complicated in Liberia as a new government needs to be created rather than the existing one staved up. But then again have a look at all the important non-political civilians in Freetown immediately after the UK intervened - Chief of Police, Harbormaster etc. They were all Brits. These non-political posts are actually more important than appointing a mayor, and being background jobs can more readily be filled by experts from overseas, without causing people to cry "colonialism".
2. Push out a little way into the wilderness, pacify a few locals, to create a stable perimeter around the occupation zone.
3. Reform the army. Train it. Then get the troops you trained to train the rest, but oversee it carefully.
4. Get the new army to roll up the rest of the countryside.
End result: moderately stable state in less than three years. Whether it stays that way is up to the locals, but with the job done the administrators can come home.
So Liberia can be fixed easily and cheaply, and would benefit the US in terms of a newly stable African country to trade with and a pile of goodwill from around the world to be put to use in the furtherence of other goals. It is one thing in world affairs to be wary about doing something just because it is right when the costs are going to be high - e.g. liberating North Korea, but when the costs would be low and national interest is served it becomes imperative to act.
posted by James
Tuesday, July 08, 2003
History as politics
Superb post from Anthony Wells about history teaching, following up on a great post from Peter Cuthbertson on the same subject.
Both posts lament the way in which history teaching has become devoid of narrative and focuses instead on empathy (which is of course always with a member of the downtrodden masses). As Anthony puts it:
My second criticism is the same as that which Peter raises - the insistence upon empathising with how Johnny Peasant felt living in a swamp and eating sewage. Sure, he felt awful, can we learn something useful now? As a little thirteen year old student I remember being bored to death imagining what it would be like being a Saxon peasant, being a Norman peasant, being a Roman slave, being a plague infested seventeenth century beggar, being a black slave on cotton plantation. Who cares? Can't I imagine what it would be like being a evil colonialist driving my bayonet through some innocent fruit wielding natives for a change? Can't I put myself in the shoes of Henry V addressing his army on the eve of Agincourt? Can't I empathise with Wellington commanding the troops at Waterloo? No - empathise back down the mines with the 7 year old proles.I don't really have anything to add to these posts, save that this is a byproduct of the capture of teaching by leftist ideologues. They are not interested in whether they actually transfer any useful historical knowledge to children. In fact I doubt they are even interested in teaching any serious social history (which of course deserves a place in amongst everything else). What this basically is about is turning every aspect of life into a part of the "political struggle" - which is of course a cornerstone of revolutionary marxist thought.
posted by James
Friday, July 04, 2003
Bugs
This is an interesting article on Malaria, and the attempt to eradicate it globally in the 1950s, which failed in part due to incompetence and venality in some of the national programs to fight mosquitoes, and in part due to nascent environmentalism. What is staggering is how close they came to eliminating malaria once and for all. Any attempt to revive the program would be doomed however by the hysteria over DDT it would generate, in spite of the fact that the method for using DDT to eliminate malaria would have a very small environmental footprint. I think the most compelling passage in the article, cited to weigh against the fears about DDT's effects on wildlife is this passage from the diary of a mosquito killer in Egypt in the 1940s:
Most houses are without roofs. They are just a square of dirty earth. In those courtyards and behind the doors of these hovels were found whole families lying on the floor; some were just too weakened by illness to get up and others were lying doubled up shaking from head to foot with their teeth chattering and their violently trembling hands trying in vain to draw some dirty rags around them for warmth. They were in the middle of the malaria crisis. There was illness in every house. There was hardly a house which had not had its dead and those who were left were living skeletons, their old clothing in rags, their limbs swollen from undernourishment and too weak to go into the fields to work or even to get food.Malaria remains a scourge in large parts of the world, though a forgotten one because (conveniently) the banning of DDT came after we had eliminated it in the west. Perhaps those who claim to care about the world's poor should start lobbying for the renewal of the Eradication Program. Don't hold your breath.
posted by James
Jupiter like planet in a Jupiter like orbit around a star 90ly from here!
This is pretty cool.
posted by James
Thursday, July 03, 2003
Boris!
After being a bit whiny on the subject of Iraq lately, Boris Johnson returns to form in today's Telegraph.
Do you really think the Government has improved time-keeping, by smashing Railtrack? Has it made our lives better by pouring gigabucks into a not-for-profit morass called Network Rail, a leaderless, directionless, state-owned invertebrate, run with all the panache and market sensitivity of a gumboot factory in communist Bulgaria?
RTWT
posted by James
The last push
I've been meaning to comment on this Porphyrogenitus post for a while, but haven't got round to it until now. Commenting on the latest developments in the EU, he says:
My Advice for My European Readers: Get yourself dual-citizenship and the possession of a passport of a non-EU country. Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Belize, whatever. Even if you don't want to move now, get the passport now. That way, if things go tits up, well, you won't be trapped. Don't wait till you think you're going to need it. These things can take a long time to acquire and by the time you feel you have to rush to get one, it'll be too late. If you never need it, then rather than consider the effort wasted, count your blessings.
I think he is right by the way. There is a serious danger of the “European Project” degenerating into an anti-democratic tyranny. But irrespective of that there can be little doubt that the introduction of the Euro Constitution will result in fundamental changes to people’s way of life, particularly in countries like Britain and Ireland, whose customs and ancient liberties are outside of the European norm. And given a situation where an entire culture is wiped out in a short period of time, it is fairly likely in my opinion that some people will seek to leave, and find somewhere more to their liking. The question is how many people will feel this way.
If one looks at the 2001 General Election figures, 8.5m people voted Conservative and another half million voted for UKIP. Since the 2001 election was also the low water mark of the British Right, those voters are the die-hards and I think it is fair to say that a sizeable proportion of them would not want to remain in a post-British British Isles. Indeed there is already a steady stream of ex-Farmers who are leaving the UK primarily because of the baleful effect of the EU on agriculture policy. [This is backed up by the fact that right now, irrespective of politics 54% of Britons say they would emigrate if they could].
Now, not everyone who wants to can emigrate. For obvious reasons it is easier to emigrate when young, and immigration laws in the likely destinations are more likely to favour the young (ability to work, bring needed new skills etc), except in cases where a family member has already gone through the process. If this were some form of scientific survey, an adjustment would need to be made to account for lower turnout at the 2001 election among young people, tempered by the little-known fact that 18-35 year olds tend to be the most Eurosceptic demographic apart from the over 70s.
That sort of detail is beyond what I am attempting here, but it would be interesting to see someone attempt a professional estimate. Because, plucking some reasonable sounding numbers out of the air, such as 10% of Tory voters and half of UKIP voters wanting to and being able to emigrate one comes up with more than a million potential emigrants. Factoring for non-voters (the 2001 election had a very low turnout) and children even this conservative estimate approaches 2 million people.
Now I should not be surprised if those numbers were too low (particularly as EU inflicted changes continue to take place). If a number closer to a third of 2001 Conservative voters sought to move from the UK in the decade or so following the introduction of an EU constitution one ends up with an estimate approaching 5m people.
That is a lot of people. Small by the standards of the 19th Century mass migrations, but nevertheless one that would have significant demographic effects if it was allowed to happen. For a start it would carry a lot of capital out of Europe, for this would be a case of affluent huddled masses yearning to breath free. Secondly, depending upon where the emigrants went there would be potential for a large effect on politics.
Where would they go?
If one tries to work out where British migrants would gravitate to, a pretty predictable list of countries comes up: the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. This is simply based on where most British expats are now (for obvious reasons, the other two big destinations, Spain and France are not relevant to this discussion). The electorates of these countries are approximately:
Canada: 23m
Aus: 17m
NZ: 3m
SA: 30m
USA 220m
Thus except for the USA, the arrival of British immigrants in significant numbers would be likely to have a noticeable political effect, particularly given that those motivated to move by the introduction of the EU Constitution would be likely to be fairly right of centre and suspicious of internationalist institutions in the wake of the destruction of their homeland.
This will obviously happen over a long period of time. It takes people time to come to this sort of decision, to put their affairs in order, to leave, to go through the immigration and finally naturalisation procedures. Some people will start making plans the instant it is clear that the Euro Constitution is going to become law. Others will take longer to decide. Another factor which it is hard to predict is that with western immigration laws set up on the supposition that the only people wishing to immigrate are the world's poor, it may be a while before large numbers of relatively affluent Britons are able to enter their chosen countries. It will probably not even show up until the census after next.
The ultimate lesson of immigration policy however is that “where there is a will, there is a way”. If the Euro Constitution is implemented Britain may well end up providing one final mass migration of people, once again with profound effects on the world, before she fades into the European twilight.
Quid pro quo
Of course, another thing to bear in mind with this is that the political effect of such a movement would be just as marked in the former UK, propelling it leftwards and making it a fully signed up member of the European Empire.
posted by James
Liberty
With July 4th coming up we have been watching an excellent programme about the American War of Independence. Anyone with cable, digital or satellite in the UK should take a look.
posted by James
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
Falling Out
There seems to have been something of a tiff between members of the original Axis.
posted by James
Erm
Here's a piece by Ramesh Ponnuru in which he advises Republicans not to get too excited at the prospect of Howard Dean. His reason?:
Well thats OK so far as it goes, but it ignores just two factors. The first is kind of minor, but important: Nixon did not win in 1972, McGovern lost, and therefore the Democrats did not suffer in the accompanying Congressional Election. The second is a whopper, though: surely the leftward lurch of the Democrats in 1972 would have had less of a long term impact had they not won massively in the Watergate election of 1974?
One of the reasons that parties benefit when the other party becomes extreme is that it allows it to hug the center. But if Republicans are moving to the center and Democrats to the left, that means both parties are moving leftward-that the center of gravity of American politics is moving leftward. Isn't that, too, part of the story of 1972?
Looking back 30 years, is it really clear that the McGovernites would have achieved more of their agenda by not taking over the Democratic party? If you were a liberal who wanted to move the country leftward, should you really be backing someone like Joe Lieberman? Conservatives who want the Democrats to move left have to believe that.
posted by James
Military Spending
This is a good article about the need for the US to increase the size of its army. Of course, the same arguments hold true for the British Army as is clear from the piece.
posted by James
Someone agrees with me
...about the "filibustered" nominees. Bring in the Cots.
posted by James
