On the night of All Saints, 1954, a young honeymooning couple of French school teachers, dedicated to their work among underprivileged children, were dragged off a bus in the Aurès Mountains of Algeria and shot down. Their murder by the newly created FLN (National Liberation Front) marked the beginning of organised revolt against the French colonial ‘occupiers’. The eight-year-long Algerian war was to bring down six French prime ministers, open the door to de Gaulle — and come close to destroying him too.
The war was the last of the grand-style colonial struggles, but, perhaps more to the point, it was also the first campaign in which poorly equipped Muslim mujahedin licked one of the top Western armies. The echoes of la guerre d’Algérie still reverberate across the Islamic world, especially in Iraq.
As in Iraq today, the struggle in Algeria was hydra-headed. In fact, there were several wars going on at the same time: the counter-insurgency; a civil war between Algerians; the external battle fought for public opinion in metropolitan France, and on the platforms of the UN; the struggle between the pieds noirs and Paris, culminating in army revolt, followed by open, white terrorism under the aegis of the brutal killers of the OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète).
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There is a lot to this is seems to me. Certainly the violence in Iraq is reminiscent of both the liberation struggle in Algeria and the more recent fighting by the GIA and FIS. If you have a terrorist insrugency that seeks to inspire fear and powerlessness in the general population then it is very hard to combat by regular means and irregular means are generally considered inappropriate by civilized society (and me).
However it seems to me that there is no need to be utterly pessimistic about Iraq. The insurgents have numerous advantages such as easy access to weapons and apparently lots of money, but they also face significant disadvantages. The most important of these is that they clearly have limited support in much of the country and thus in the Kurdish north and Shia south there are very few incidents. The trick therefore is to remove the support in the Sunni triangle. Despite the bad news (such as the execution of those poor Iraqi recruits) this seems to be occuring as the Sunnis are able to compare their less successful redevelopment with the better progress elsewhere and draw the appropriate lessons.
There is a theory that without a secure base any terrorist force is limted to about 100 people. More than that and your command and control is stretched too much to prevent infiltration or eavesdropping. As I said a month or so ago I believe that on Wednesday the main Iraqi base of insurgency - Fallujah - will be attacked and thus the insurgency will lose its base in Iraq and hence I expect any subsequent insurgency be to much smaller.
Another advantage is the advantage of surveillance. Unlike the French in Algeria, the Americans have excellent electronic surveillance methods and almost as good visual surveillance which means that once they identify a possible suspect they can track him for a while. They can also use a precision guided missile or bomb to kill him without causing massive collateral damage. This is very similar to Israel's war in the occupied territories but with one difference, the Americans have local allies who are motivated to actively help rather than just provide intelligence.
Unfortunately as all other wars have shown, defeat of the Iraqi insurgency is likely to be a long process. It may be reduced significantly by (say) attacking Fallujah but it is unlikely to be ended until the vast amjority of Sunnis agree that it is against their interests.
"Indeed, I was at a similar dinner, listening to the same conversation, and said: 'If all else fails, you can vote for Bush.' People looked at me as if I had just said: 'Oh, I forgot to tell you, I am a child molester.' I would vote for Bush if for no other reason than to be at the airport waving off all the people who say they are going to London if he wins again. Someone has got to stay behind."
I hope there will be a large number of Americans who decide emigrate tomorrow. Maybe we should try and keep track of them?
The interview makes some other very very good points, and would apply just as well to the masses of Grauniad readers and their ilk in public life in the UK and Europe. For example:
"I think support for Bush is about not wanting to be led by East-coast pretensions. It is about not wanting to be led by people who are forever trying to force their twisted sense of morality onto us, which is a non-morality. That is constantly done, and there is real resentment. Support for Bush is about resentment in the so-called 'red states' ...
Tim Worstall links to a piece in the Torygraph where the British Government is considering trying to ban Happy Hours and other cut price drinking offerings at pubs and clubs to limit binge drinking. We have an object demonstration in Scandinavia that high alcohol prices lead, if anything, to more binge drinking rather than less because people save their money for one good fling a week instead of a little every day.
Of course the people who propose this sort of measure have never visited Helsinki, they take their holidays in Tuscany instead and so have no clue about other nations experience of binge drinking. Permalink
Yahoo news / AP has a report that the US soldier who deserted to N Korea, where met and married a kidnapped Japanese woman, and who got out of N Korea earlier this year has pleaded guilty to desertion and got 30 days in the clink.
CAMP ZAMA, Japan - Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins pleaded guilty Wednesday to deserting the U.S. Army in 1965 and aiding the enemy, saying that he wanted to avoid hazardous duty on the Korean peninsula and Vietnam.
Jenkins was given a 30-day jail sentence, but the judge recommended that it be suspended. The suspension was to be ruled on by military authorities soon.
The plea was apparently part of a bargain with U.S. military officials to win the frail 64-year-old a lesser sentence. The North Carolina native vanished from his post and lived in North Korea (news - web sites) for 39 years before coming to Japan this year.
"I walked away from my squad ... for the purpose of going to North Korea," Jenkins told the court, adding that had planned this desertion for 10 days and had tied a white tee-shirt to his rifle to signal his surrender.
Watch for this story to get buried under all the election stories ...
In fact come to think of it there is something fishy about a lot of the timing to this story. He showed up to Camp Zama to turn himself in on September 11 and he gets his sentence on US election day. Both of which are days when major news organizations have had a lot of other things to discuss.
Still IMO there isn't much point in complaining about any leniancy - put it down to diplomacy - Japan wants him free - and anyway he seems to have spent about 20-30 years regretting his action and discovering that N Korea is not as easy to leave as it is to enter. Permalink
Unfortunately Europe has shown (again) that it fails to grasp the problem of radical Islam in its society. Thus another brave and outspoken critic is silenced, this time for good. I have a few thoughts, some of which may seem tasteless.
Firstly, as Norm Geras reports, there was a significant public demonstration in Amsterdam to protest this killing. And as he delicately hints this does precisely what? How exactly are potential intolerant muderers deterred from murdering people who vocally disagree with their point of view by having 20,000 people stand up and bang saucepans? Amazingly, as EURSOC noted recently, the European country that deals most robustly with intolerance is France, where those who preach intolerance are bundled out of the country pronto.
Secondly, unlike the claims of the Bushitler brigade, no one in America has been killed recently for their outspoken political views. Theo's fellow filmmaker Michael Moore has utterly failed to receive death threats or, indeed, any physical attack from all the right-wing bush fascist gun nuts whom he has insulted, smeared and ridiculed in one film after another. The main response to Moore from his critics has been to critique his films, list his falsehoods and make their own films concentrating on him. As Irshad Manji points out the death threat, sometimes attempted and sometimes carried out, is the standard response to criticism of Islam. Those on the left who ally with Islamists against the perceived rightwing US might want to think about this.
Thirdly this story illustrates modern progress and the difference between America and Europe. In Europe a witness takes a picture of the victim on his camera phone. In the US with its concealed carry laws the chances are that the witness would have shot at the attacker. And of course Theo himself might have shot at his attacker. Of course he might still have died and he might not have got his attacker but surely the biggest deterrent to gunning someone down in the street is the possibility that the target decides to shoot back?
The Theo case shows quite clearly that despite all its claims to value human rigts including the right to self expression and free speech Europe cannot in general protect those of its people who say something critical of radical minorities. Permalink
Over at the Motley Fool a commentator - Ivangrowth - wrote:
1. Sea of red - the south. Gone. Went blue. The people haven't changed; the party has. I voted for tons of strong, socially progressive Dem's in Alabama and Florida thruout the 70s and 80s who exercised fiscal restraint, social progress, and moral leadership.
The people haven't changed -- the party has. John Kerry. Give the south John Kerry...heavens.
Some blogosphere comments / links that seem to sum up the same thing:
Courtesy of Michelle Malkin is a county by county map of dem vs repub. The dems are a patchy party. Even in states where they won (such as California) they are limited to certain, mainly urban, areas.
Howard Dean said he wanted to appeal to the guys in pickup trucks. He's correct, the dems need this vote, although he might have phrased the desire a bit better. One way to get it is suggested to be a retreat on gun control another is that they need to get the message out in a way that resonates with "blue collar" workers.
Both ideas have merit. Zell Miller was a Democrat who spoke at the Republican convention. Zell Miller style democrats would undoubtedly seduce a lot of the "McCain" republicans. Unfortunately the Democrats seem beholden to an leftist elite whose beliefs are driving out the moderates. There ought to be a third way that represents these people. People who are generally for fiscal responsibility and personal responsibility but who generally think that what you do in your bedroom is your choice and no one else's business (other than the person with you)...
Update:Roxanne has a link to an editorial in the Memphis Flyer that makes the point even better: ...while the President carried the state by 15 percentage points, Senator Kerry carried Tennessee's two most populous counties by 14. The divisions in this country are not as simple as the colors on a map might suggest; we are divided by neighborhoods, not states. And unless we're prepared to indulge in our own version of ethnic cleansing, over-simplifying these divisions, as the national media is wont to do, does no one any good.
A commenter there puts it down to (lack of) eddycashun, which is in fact remarkably condescending and precisely the wrong attitude. Just maybe the Democrats should try listening to why rural voters vote Republican and start thinking what policies they should support that would be appreciated by such rural voters... Permalink
The word schadenfreude describes precisely my feeling when reading her latest effort. To save you the effort of reading through the bile let me summarise: How could the US electorate be so stupid as to fall for the tricks of the Evil Lord Kkkarl?
Some of the more priceless comments:
W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or "values voters," as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
Mr. Bush, whose administration drummed up fake evidence to trick us into war with Iraq, sticking our troops in an immoral position with no exit strategy, won on "moral issues."
The evidence was FAKE I tell you FAKE. Look Bush lost 377 TONs of deadly explosive designed for nuclear bombs but Saddam Hussein didn't have any WMD. And don't you love the scare quotes around "moral issues"? You see only democrats understand the true morality and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded therefore these moral issues are in fact racist, sexist, homophobic etc. etc. The idea tha in a democracy some of hoi polloi might have different moral standards is apparently quite ridiculous if not streng verboten (to demonstrate my multilingual education).
Just listen to Dick (Oh, lordy, is this cuckoo clock still vice president?) Cheney, introducing the Man for his victory speech: "This has been a consequential presidency which has revitalized our economy and reasserted a confident American role in the world." Well, it has revitalized the Halliburton segment of the economy, anyhow. And "confident" is not the first word that comes to mind for the foreign policy of a country that has alienated everyone except Fiji.
Personally if I were you, Maureen, I'd be cautious comparing other people to cuckoo clocks, it strongly calls to mind a phrase concerning kettles pots and the colour black.
But then we get to the crticism of the speech. Gosh how can I put it, Maureen darling? in 2004 the economy is at least as healthy as it was in 1996/7 and probably has fewer structural overhangs (though I admit I still worry about the US housing market). Perhaps you didn't notice there was this teeny little thing called a stock market bubble that ended in 2000/2001? Oh and did you also notice the event a few blocks further south of the NY Times building in Spetember 2001? Compared to, say, Germany (1.5% growth/year >10% unemployment), the US economy is glowingly healthy (5-6% unemployment, 3-5% growth/year) and its doing that with oild prices at $50 instead of $15 as they were in the 1990s.
The alienated everyone except Fiji comment is rather rich too. I'd prefer to phrase it as "alientated France and the other whiny faux amis". Perhaps it escaped your notice that there are 30-odd countries involved in Iraq and more in Afghanistan?
No its too painful to continue. If I were Maureen's doctor I'd prescribe a daily whacking around the head with a cluebat and dose of reality, as I'm not all I can do is shake my head in amazement.
The red tree is (obviously I trust) NOT an olive tree and the tree behind is. But I like the contrast of the colours as they bask in the last few minutes of afternoon sun.
One of the ladies on my blogroll, Eden, has an excellent article about how hard it is to pigeonhole those of us who are atheist libertarians. Her conclusion sums me up in penultimate paragraph and then goes on to correctly nail the "liberals" in the final one. I agree with practically the entire article but the last two paras are the best.
I am increasingly disenfranchised from the mainstream in my country. I hate top 40 radio, watch very little network television, don't read many bestselling authors, and can't recognize the people considered celebrities. I've never seen a NASCAR race and most country music makes my ears bleed. It's easy to be patronizing of the people who are pleased by such simple things. It's harder to realize that they're the majority and you are not.
It's not really a surprise when someone from the Bible Belt displays intolerance. That's unfortunate, but you liberals: what's your excuse? You rant about the small-mindedness of the religious right, but most of what I've seen from your side in the past few days has been despicable. You don't own the United States. You are not the majority in this country. Neither are people with my beliefs. Bitching about it like petulant teenagers who think everyone else is stupid is a ridiculous way to behave.
I have personally witnessed more visible toleration for others with divergent lifestyles/views in "red state" places such as Utah or Kentucky than in the liberal heartlands of San Franciso/Berkeley or Bahston. The problem with the atheit liberals in particular is that they seem to fail to recognise that in many cases liberalism has become their religion. They therefore demonstrate all the intolerance of a fundamentalist religion without apparently seeing the irony in that position.
PS A happy Guy Fawkes day to all - enjoy the fireworks in Fallujah and I was surprised to see that the Palestinians still maintain the tradition of a penny for the guy Permalink
Stephen Pollard quotes an article by Daniel Finkelstein about a Chomsky rule, which is efffectively that you can save yourself a lot of time by seeing if something is recommended by Comrade Noam, and if so avoiding. He then explains his own "Jenkins Rule"
I myself apply another rule: the Jenkins rule. If I am unsure about a subject, I pretty much know straight away what I think by finding out Sir Simon’s views. And putting a ‘not’ in front of them.
Finally he has a poll where he has a selection of alteratives who may be better guides than Sir Simon Jenkins. He ruled as inadmissible large numbers of Guardianistas such as Comrade Moonbiot and Americans such as darling Maureen as being too easy but there are still plenty of juicy plausible options. I was tempted to go for "French Foreign Policy" but decided that Yasmin Alibi-Brownshirt showed more promise since "French Foreign Policy" by definition rules out discussion of things in France.
Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell almost certainly have never read my blog - and if they have I seriously doubt they read the essay I posted about Blogs and the Technology Adoption Life Cycle - but it is interesting how they have come to similar conclusions in their current Foreign Affairs article. Blogs have knocked over enough bowling pins that they have begun to enter mainstream and hence the snarky comments about Pyjamas by those threatened the most... Permalink
The Powerline blog finds an outrageous editorial in the New York Times about the Van Gogh murder (see my earlier comments). The prescription I suggested yesterday for Maureen apparently needs to be taken by some other members of the NY Times staff. The editorial is almost right but just when you think they get it, it all goes horribly wrong
Deadly Hatreds in the Netherlands
Something sad and terrible is happening to the Netherlands, long one of Europe's most tolerant, decent and multicultural societies. The latest warning sign is this week's brazen murder of Theo van Gogh, a daring filmmaker and columnist descended from the same family as Vincent van Gogh. This summer, Dutch television showed a 10-minute film by Theo van Gogh calling attention to the horrific violence that Muslim women can be subjected to by family members in the name of religion. The chief suspect is believed to be an Islamist extremist, as are eight other men also arrested in connection with the case.
So let's see now a rational person would then expect the editorial to talk about how an intolerant immigrant community has wrecked the country's tolerance and decency.
The Netherlands used to be a country where artists and politicians dared to raise even the most controversial issues without fear of physical retaliation. But the screenwriter who worked with Mr. van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who was elected as a member of the Dutch Parliament, is now under police protection. It's just been a little more than two years since a Dutch extremist shot Pim Fortuyn, a rising populist politician who portrayed Muslim immigration as a grave threat to the nation's traditions of tolerance.
OK so a brief excursion into history and examples of how intolerant the intolerant immigrants seems fair given how likely it is that most readers will associate the Netherlands with Amsterdam "coffeeshops", canals, clogs and carnal delights. Mind you the bit about "without fear of physical retaliation" is remarkably snarky, freedom of speech is not in fact a purely American concept (although sometimes it looks like it these days) it has been present in much of Western Europe too for a long time.
Urgent efforts are needed to better manage the cultural tensions perilously close to the surface of Dutch public life. The problem is not Muslim immigration, but a failure to plan for a smoother transition to a more diverse society. One very real danger is that the public trauma over the van Gogh murder may lead to a clamor for anti-Muslim policies that could victimize thousands of innocent refugees and immigrants.
True again the problem is not Muslim immigration per se, it is lack of assimilation by Muslim immigrants. But this is where we start to lose the plot. Does transistion to a "diverse society" mean that we permit some people to beat their wives while others are forbidden to? do we have diverse standards for criticism, where criticising a white criminal is OK but not a dusky one? And then there is the potential "clamour for anti.Muslim policies" as if this is ab definitio a bad thing. Perhaps it has not occured to the NY Times that the many people in the Muslim community (you know the female half for example) might actually also like it if their abusers were punished.
Go back to the documentary which covered wife beating by Muslims, if this documentary were utterly false do you not think there would have been a demonstration by thousands of Muslim women protesting it? of course actually no one heard a peep from anyone in the Muslim community except for a few community leaders crying "racist" as they did about this artwork required to be removed (via by Roger L Simon) and you do in fact get the picture of a tincy wincy double standard in the "diverse society". Get real please and consider that neither skin colour nor religion excuses you from obeying the law of the land, There is no need for additional laws or policies other than basic one of ensuring that Muslims also obey the law. Surely that's not a controversial idea?
The challenge for Dutch political leaders is to find ways to reverse this disturbing trend of politically motivated violence without making it harder to achieve cultural harmony.
What part of arresting the perps and not letting political correctness get in the way of the truth is so hard to understand? "Cultural harmony" - talk about mealy mouthed BS. One suspects that worries about "cultural harmony" are why the situation has got so out of hand in the first place. And "politically motivated" seems a little odd. If you read the news about what the message left on the body said, it's clearly NOT political but religiously inspired. Calling it political is just another way to try and hide the ugly fact that some Muslims are intolerant bigots who can't stand having home truths pointed out.
On behalf of all right thinging chaps (and chapesses) I would like to thank the barking moonbats of the world for their dedicated work in causing GW Bush to be re-elected. It couldn't have been done without you. Your frothing at the mouth and general loopiness firstly caused the Dimocrats to chose a dumb cardboard candidate instead of someone electable and then you managed to frame the election in terms of "do you want to vote for someone supported by a load of deranged Mooreons?"
As a resident of the Kleptopublic of Cheese Easting Surrender Monkeys, may I say it was an absolute unadulterated pleasure to see our political and journalistic elites have to eat their words, along with crow, humble pie and the like while holding their noses as if they had trodden in doggie poo.
Especial thanks need to go first to the Grauniad for swinging Clark County decisively in favour of Bush (when the rest of the state of Ohio swung more Kerrywards) and secondly to Michael Moore for being the living example of bile plastered all over the media everywhere.
On the other hand no thanks to the Jesus loving homophobes - you were useless. As this article comprehensively proves the claim that Bush was re-elected thanks to fundamentalist christians who are anti-gay, anti-abortion etc etc is untrue. The election was lost because Kerry was an unappealing candidate with unappealing supporters. He energised his base while Bush widened his base. The result shold not be a vast surprise to those with a grasp of basic mathematics. Permalink
Drug war latest score (Mother Nature 1 Government 0)
We have some good news and some bad news. First the good news - the US Coast Guard has captured 37 tonnes of cocaine in the last two months and 110 tonnes in the last year, a figure similar to previous years. This means that the US is intercepting between 10% and 20% of the global supply each year.
Now the bad news - the Columbian cartels have developed an improved "Roundup Ready"® Coca plant which is also a higher yielding plant.
A toxicologist, Camilo Uribe, who studied the coca, said: "The quality and percentage of hydrochloride from each leaf is much better, between 97 and 98 per cent. A normal plant does not get more than 25 per cent, meaning that more drugs and of a higher purity can be extracted."
Experts estimate that the drugs traffickers spent £60 million to develop the new plant, using strains from Peru and crossbreeding them with potent Colombian varieties, as well as engaging in genetic engineering
More on the latter and its implications for the "war on drugs" in Wired which also this ironic comment:
But experts in herbicide resistance suspect that there is another, more intriguing possibility: The coca plant may have been genetically modified in a lab. The technology is fairly trivial. In 1996, Monsanto commercialized its patented Roundup Ready soybean - a genetically modified plant impervious to glyphosate. The innovation ushered in an era of hyperefficient soybean production: Farmers were able to spray entire fields, killing all the weeds and leaving behind a thriving soybean crop. The arrival of Roundup Ready coca would have a similar effect - except that in this case, it would be the US doing the weed killing for the drug lords.
However if you read the entire article it looks like this time the coca was not GM, just produced by natural selection so maybe that is slightly good news although as the arcicle concludes it probably isn't
The reality is that a smoothly functioning selective-breeding system is a greater threat to US antidrug efforts. Certainly government agents can switch to Fusarium and enjoy some short-term results. But after a few years - during which legal crops could be devastated - a new strain of Fusarium-resistant coca would likely emerge, one just as robust as the glyphosate-resistant strain.
The drug war (as far as Cocaine goes at least) is lost - we might as well legalise the damn thing, pay the farmers properly and regulate its sale in the same was as we do for other intoxicants. As this, possibly biased, article says, illegal drugs are funding rebellions and terrorists throughout Latin America. If the Bush administration wants to be tough on terrorists and tough on the causes of terror then perhaps the best thing it could do would be to legalise drugs
In the military hospital in France, Yassir Arafat has finally died.
The medical orderlies are told to dress his body with a jersey from Newcastle United, shorts from Tottenham Hotspur and socks from Middlesborough. Then he gets a Lazio football scarf around his neck and a Glasgow Rangers hat on his head. The orderlies ask why his corpse is being dressed in this bizarre fashion and they are told:
"Its simple his last words were that he wanted to be burried in the Gazza strip"
Wives and girlfriends: How would you like to know when your husband was cruising for prostitutes, engaging in lewd acts, parked outside message parlors known for prostitution or taking a hooker to a hotel room? Well now you can.
Employers: How would you like to know when your vehicle is being used to pick up hookers? Well now you can.
Register a family member's or company vehicle on this site and you will be notified by email when and if that vehicle is seen to be engaged in the following suspicious activity:
1. Cruising for prostitutes in areas known for prostitution
2. Picking up street prostitutes
3. Consorting with known prostitutes
4. Taking a prostitute to a hotel
5. Is parked outside a massage parlor that is known for prostitution activities (as according to 3 major web sites that allow members to post "reviews" on such establishments).
6. When "professional" escorts or prostitutes visit our city (after advertising on the above mentioned websites) we will be taping their clients and car tags (covertly) as they enter and leave the escort's hotel rooms.
When a car tag is entered into our database and matches a registered tag, the individual who registered that tag will be sent an email with specific information on when, where and what they were seen engaging in. In many cases a link to photographs and/or video evidence will be provided.
This is one of the many cases where I'm unsure if I am in favour of this or not. On the whole I think I am in favour of it since it seems to me that while I'm not against prostitution I am against it on the street and I am against people abusing other's trust in them. I think I'm going to slightly split the difference here. Streetwalkers are bad, prostitution in bothels and/or call girls in hotels are not so bad. Why? because the former is extremely dangerous for the prostitute, bad for the neighbourhood and so on. Irrespective of the legality of prostitution it should be banned on health and safety grounds and I am all in favour of someone filming those using streetwalkers and then publicising it.
On the other hand the health and safety grounds do not apply to the other two cases. And, from personal observation in Germany, it doesn't seem to me that a brothel need be more offensive than any other entertainment business. Sure I'd prefer not to have a brothel at the end of the road, but I'd also prefer not to have a cinema, a disco or a football stadium and for much the same reasons i.e. noise, lowering the tone of the neighbourhood etc. Some might complain that the brothel has a large neon sign flashing "XXX" or whathaveyou but it seems to me that this is precisely the sort of thing that local planning authorities and the like regulate. Flashing neon signs are generally unpleasant whether they say XXX or
Technologically this is an interesting use of the internet and cheap digital cameras. The technology (camera phones etc.) to make this even easier are available too. This is very easy to replicate and could be one good way to crack down on some forms of crime or antisocial activity. Of course it only affects those activities where at least one person is going to be embarassed by the publishing of the information, but in these cases it is another example of a niche that the Internet can conquer which is not well served today.
It is similar to the massive numbers of CCTV cameras that have sprouted up in the UK in particulalr but with two difference, anyone can view the results and no one has paid an cent in taxes for it. It is in some ways an invasion of privacy and no doubt one could insinuate false claims by photoshopping pictures but neither of these objections are limited to this idea and both can be fought in the courts if necessary. The key thing that it does bring home, and which should be no surprise to anyone, is that you have no right to privacy in a public place and with digital imaging technology the chances of someone catching you and publicising the result is much greater.
Rather than fisk Maureen Dowd's latest effort which reminds me strongly of the, possibly apocryphal, employee review comment "since last time she has hit a new low and continues to dig", I thought I should fisk this Bob Herbert one pointed out to me by Michelle Malkin.
Voting Without the Facts
By BOB HERBERT Published: November 8, 2004
I prefer my title
The so-called values issue, at least as it's being popularly tossed around, is overrated.
Yep it is, I like starting off agreeing with my fiskee and I'm glad to say that I agree with your first line. Mind you David Brooks said it better a couple of days earlier in the same newspaper but that's merely quibbling
Last week's election was extremely close and a modest shift in any number of factors might have changed the outcome. If the weather had been better in Ohio. ...If the wait to get into the voting booth hadn't been so ungodly long in certain Democratic precincts. ... Or maybe if those younger voters had actually voted. ...
Ok end of agreement. The election was close but given the increased proportion of eligeable people who voted blaming it on low turnout seems rather silly. Michelle demolished that argument and I can't beat her demolition, I'll just point out that the insinuation that the Democrats had longer polling waits than their Republican fellow voters requires some justification to be more than just a groundless smear.
I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.
Surprisingly I agree with the first sentence in this paragraph. But I think the ignorance applied more to the anti-war voters and hacks like Mr Herbert than those who voted for Bush. Despite Mr Herbert's denials there is evidence (as reported in the Sept 11 enquiry) that Iraq did have ties with Al Qaeda and the Iraq Survey Group found all sorts of WMD precursors and other things prohibited under the various UN resolutions. Not to mention the sarin shell used as an IED, the mustard gas found by the Poles etc. etc. So unlike Mr Herbert those who believe these facts are not in fact ignorant.
This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.
Indeed Mr Herbert. When people like you have put their brain on hold it is indeed impossible to make a rational political argument that will be listened to.
The survey, and an accompanying report, showed that there's a fair amount of cluelessness in the ranks of the values crowd. The report said, "It is clear that supporters of the president are more likely to have misperceptions than those who oppose him."
Of course you don't say what the misperceptions are. Fortunately Mr Google comes to the rescue of the inquiring mind and shows us the document at a site called pipa.org. That document has the following interesting indroductory paragraph which makes me realise that the rest of it is clearly written with a certain attitude... Since shortly after the Iraq war, PIPA has regularly asked Americans about their perceptions as to whether before the war Iraq had WMD, and whether it provided substantial support to al Qaeda. To a striking extent, majorities have believed that Iraq did have WMD or at least a major program for developing them, and that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. With the reports of David Kay, the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and, most recently, Charles Duelfer all refuting these beliefs, they have only modestly diminished, and are still held by approximately half of the public. It is interesting that I was able to read "the reports of David Kay, the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and, most recently, Charles Duelfer" and find evidence supporting precisely those beliefs which PIPA and Bob Herbert say are misperceptions.
I haven't heard any of the postelection commentators talk about ignorance and its effect on the outcome. It's all values, all the time. Traumatized Democrats are wringing their hands and trying to figure out how to appeal to voters who have arrogantly claimed the moral high ground and can't stop babbling about their self-proclaimed superiority. Potential candidates are boning up on new prayers and purchasing time-shares in front-row-center pews.
This is interesting, in that while it is true that few mainstream commentators have been st00pid enough to call 51% of Americans ignorant, that hasn't stopped numerous Dimocratic weblogs and the like from doing precisely that. And of course as well as being insulting it is also flat out wrong in its proposed solution: Kerry's frequent visits to churches during tha campaign didn't exactly help him...
A more practical approach might be for Democrats to add teach-ins to their outreach efforts. Anything that shrinks the ranks of the clueless would be helpful.
One could restate that as "Ve have vays of makink you belief us" aka forcing the proles into re-education camps filled with propaganda. Of course seeing as Democrats have tried doing precisely that with free copies of Tubby Riefenstahl's Fahrenheit 911 and it didn't work one wonders just how this tactic is expected to work for the next time.
If you don't think this values thing has gotten out of control, consider the lead paragraph of an op-ed article that ran in The LA. Times on Friday. It was written by Frank Pastore, a former major league pitcher who is now a host on the Christian talk-radio station KKLA.
"Christians, in politics as in evangelism," said Mr. Pastore, "are not against people or the world. But we are against false ideas that hold good people captive. On Tuesday, this nation rejected liberalism, primarily because liberalism has been taken captive by the left. Since 1968, the left has taken millions captive, and we must help those Democrats who truly want to be free to actually break free of this evil ideology."
Mr. Pastore goes on to exhort Christian conservatives to reject any and all voices that might urge them "to compromise with the vanquished." How's that for values?
In The New York Times on Thursday, Richard Viguerie, the dean of conservative direct mail, declared, "Now comes the revolution." He said, "Liberals, many in the media and inside the Republican Party, are urging the president to 'unite' the country by discarding the allies that earned him another four years."
Mr. Viguerie, it is clear, will stand four-square against any such dangerous moves toward reconciliation.
Unfortunately it has to be admitted that their are indeed Rightwingnuts around although it is unclear how much influence these people actually have on Kkkarl Rove and his puppet, who seem to be ever so slightly more rational. On the other hand neither of the statements quoted above is exactly saying what Bob Herbert thinks it is and one rather suspects that had Kerry won, some very similar comments would be emanating from Messrs Herbert, Krugman etc.
You have to be careful when you toss the word values around. All values are not created equal. Some Democrats are casting covetous eyes on voters whose values, in many cases, are frankly repellent. Does it make sense for the progressive elements in our society to undermine their own deeply held beliefs in tolerance, fairness and justice in an effort to embrace those who deliberately seek to divide?
From the evidence of the last couple of years it seems that those voters with repellant views were A.N.S.W.E.R and the other appeasniks. I agree the Democrats should not be going after such voters.
What the Democratic Party needs above all is a clear message and a bold and compelling candidate. The message has to convince Americans that they would be better off following a progressive Democratic vision of the future. The candidate has to be a person of integrity capable of earning the respect and the affection of the American people.
Again I agree. This was precisely the problem with Kerry and his candidacy. He showed no integrity, failed to earn any respect or affection and he couldn't ennunciate a clear message if his life depended on it.
This is doable. Al Gore and John Kerry were less than sparkling candidates, and both came within a hair of defeating Mr. Bush.
What the Democrats don't need is a candidate who is willing to shape his or her values to fit the pundits' probably incorrect analysis of the last election. Values that pivot on a dime were not really values to begin with.
The conclusion has points that I can only agree with. Gore and Kerry were horrible candidates and Bush was emminently beatable. So why spend 90% of the column telling us that Bush's supporters are ignorant and that they are nasty? Oh yes of course, because it helps fill out the column so you can be paid and because insulting people is standard practise for "liberals" apparently, silly me how could I have forgotten. Permalink
The Belgians have decided that democracy needs to be protected from people who rock the boat and are too popular. The right wing Vlaams Blok has been banned for being "racist". This was not precisely unexpected since the other Belgian parties have been looking desperately for a way to get rid of the Blok for years and they have managed to write laws that now permit the prosecution and banning of it.
Although the Vlaams Blok is claimed to be racist, the evidence suggests that racism is in the eye of the beholder. Their main position is a protest at the perceived victimization of the Flemings within the Belgian state. Arguably this victimization is itself racism and thus they are fighting racism and the loss of their native culture not perpetuating racism themselves. The real problem seems to be that the Blok is popular - holding approval from something like 50% of the voters in Flanders - and thus threatens the cozy rules of the current Belgian rulers.
If a party is so beyond the pale as the Blok then one wonders just how it can gain such high approval unless it is responding to widely felt grievances. There is no doubt that some Vlaams Blok supporters are racists, but tarring the entire organization for the statements of a few supporters is very dangerous ground to tread on. There are very few successful political parties who have no extremists within them and the doctrine of collective responsibility is one not normally seen outside of tyrannies. The stated policies of the Blok are not in fact much different from those of President Bush's republican party, indeed in many ways one suspects the Blok would consider Bush to be a dangerous right-winger, and that they would themselves see parties such as Bavaria's CSU, Spain's Popular Party or the Berlusconi coalition in Italy as being most similar to their own.
The largest irony is that this banning comes just days after the murder of Theo Van Gogh a few miles to the north of Flanders. As the local Belgian historian and journalist Peter Belian writes there is a connection between the Blok and both Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands. All are concerned by the failure to assimilate of some of the newly immigrant communities to the region. The problem is fundamentally that toleration has to be a two way street. Tolerating people who are intolerant of you and your beliefs is not a viable policy and if the political elite attempts to enforce such an unequal bargain on you then it should be no surprise that it is rejected.
To me there is also considerable transatlantic resonance in that I see much of the same complaints about Bush made about the Blok by much the same set of people. There is, it seems to me, a significant chunk of people within the western world who are coming to the end of their patience with the "political correctness" crowd. Since these people are generally law abiding and quiet the rumblings of their discontent can be hard to discern. Flanders may turn out to be a flash point because banning a party that has a third of the seats in the assembly shows a contempt for the views of the electorate that is simply stunning in its insensitivity. I can hardly think of a better way to encourage more people to vote for the Blok or its successor.
The movie which appears to have led to Theo Van Gogh's murder is frequently summarised in the various news articles about his murder and subsequent events in the Netherlands. The differences in the summaries are rather interesting. AP describes the film as follows in an article:
Van Gogh, who received death threats for his film, "Submission," that criticized the treatment of women under Islam, was shot and stabbed while bicycling on a busy Amsterdam street.
The BBC on the other hand adds a bit in its description like this (my bolding) :
Van Gogh, murdered in Amsterdam a week ago, had received death threats after the release of his latest film controversially portraying domestic violence in Muslim societies. It showed images of a semi-naked woman with Koranic script daubed on her body.
It is not at all clear to me why the BBC should feel it necessary to add this sentence about the semi-naked woman, which is something that the BBC have used repeatedly in their radio news items as well as on the web
Without a further description of why the semi-naked woman is depicted this statement in inexplicable. It fails to add anything important to the readers knowledge of the content of the film and thus seems to be there purely as an attempt to excuse the murder - after all the Koran is a sacred work and so therefore writing verses on a woman would seem to be somehow basphemous and thus potentially deserving of revenge. If you read a fuller description of the film (such as this one below in the Telegraph) then the reason for the imagery is plain but that fails to come across in the BBC description.
What it does is to denounce the barbaric treatment of women in many Islamic societies, focusing attention on forced marriage and the penalisation of rape victims under the guise of adultery. The imagery is deliberately provocative: verses from the Koran are inscribed on a naked woman, to drive home the message that Muslim women are human, too, beneath the veil.
Of course one would normally assume these little foibles are due shoddy editing except for the fact that the BBC has persistently showed sympathy for Arab murderers such as the almost late terrorist leader Yassir Arafat. There is a classic statement in combat that "Once is happenstance, twice in coincidence but thrice is enemy action". The BBC has consistently showed pro-Arab and pro-Islamist bias, this is just the latest example and indicates that the BBC is indeed in submission to Allah. You can watch Submission yourself here but don't hold your breath expecting the BBC to show it.
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
PS These poppies are actually in Provence and, in case it isn't obvious, this has nothing whatever to do with the death of that terrorist scumbag. Permalink
Thanks to Harry's Place my attention is drawn to this remarkable editorial from "Index on Censorship" who seem to have failed to understand that Free Speech by definition means support of insulting and unpleasant speech. The entire piece, which comes across as mealy mouthed BS justifying the murder of Theo Van Gogh, is extensively critiqued at Harry's Place and by Andrew Sullivan so I'll just quote one paragraph:
Together they made a furiously provocative film that featured actresses portraying battered Muslim women, naked under transparent Islamic-style shawls, their bodies marked with texts from the Koran that supposedly justify their repression. Van Gogh then roared his Muslim critics into silence with obscenities. An abuse of his right to free speech, it added injury to insult by effectively censorsing their moderate views as well.
(Sidenote - this brief description is better than the BBC one)
How precisely Theo Van Gogh's roaring of obscenities is an abuse of his right to free speech is beyond me. Generally speaking it is the censors who try to remove the obscenities not those clamouring for free speech. The way that this censors his critics is also less than perfectly explained - usually obscenity laden tirades mean that the audience is more receptive to reasoned speech critical of the view of the person making the tirade not less.
There is a famous statement that no woman is ever "a little bit pregnant", the same applies to censorship, even self-censorship. Either you have Freedom of Speech or you have Censorship. There is no halfway house despite the desires of hundreds of governments throughout history to find precisely that midpoint so it seems somewhat odd that a website that says it is for free expression should seek to find the same limit. Dare I suggest that Index on Censorship believes that Muslims are perfect and thus ineleigable for criticism?
[Additional comment at Zacht Ei making a good comparison to the famous emperor and his new clothing] Update: Buzz Machine shows the traditional viewpoint of how obscenity is usually censored by governments Second Update: In Las Vegas the ACLU shows by example what "Index on Censorship" seems to have misunderstood - namely that fighting for free speech means fighting for the speech of people who say things you personalyl disagree with. Permalink
"By ‘belonging to’ a group or society is meant that the culprit [...] is a part of the group or society [...]. It is not necessary for him to have conducted any activities within the group or society. Similarly, ‘cooperating,’ by which is meant any form of support for the functioning of the group or society, does not imply the execution of criminal acts. The punishability of ‘belonging to’ and ‘cooperating’ follows from the mere knowledge that the group or society, to which one belongs or with which one cooperates, [...] commits discrimination."
I was looking back at pictures I took earlier this year in order to find the poppy photos that I posted yesterday at this blog and at my Fotolog when I found this As always click on the picture to see it full size and if you missed it here is last Friday's olive tree photo
Dwindling Fish Supply Promotes Bushmeat Consumption
In many tropical countries, fish and terrestrial wildlife are the primary and secondary sources of animal protein for humans. Brashares et al. (p. 1180) use 30 years of data from West Africa to show a direct link between marine harvests and human consumption of terrestrial wildlife at a regional scale. Rates of wildlife decline are also related to fluctuations in bushmeat hunting and fish supply. An examination of prices and supply and demand data for fish and bushmeat from 12 local markets revealed the mechanisms linking marine productivity and terrestrial conservation. The activities of the large and heavily subsidized European Union foreign fleet may contribute to the declines in West Africa's fish supply and thereby contribute to associated increases in consumption of terrestrial wildlife.
The article merely discusses the effect that the EU fishing subsidies have on the consuption of bushmeat, however there is considerable evidence that eating Bushmeat has been tied to the development of HIV/AIDS and at least one Ebola outbreak. Hence if, as the article claims, the EU's subsidised fishing fleets are indeed driving Africans to consume more bushmeat then the EU can also take the blame for diseases that cross species from whatever bushmeat is eaten because fish were unavailable.
How many other ways can the EU and its boneheaded subsidy schemes kill Africans? That was a rhetorical question I really don't want to know, but ceterum censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam.
I'm a libertarian, right wing sort of person who might be expected to be dismissive of pinkofeminist types and their ranting about the widespread abuse of women in society. Now there is a grain of truth in that in that I do think that many of their proposed solutions (which generally boil down to spend government money fixing the symptoms) are wrong-headed however I have links to a number of them on my blog-roll (those links above for example) because while they often get the solution wrong they frequently identify genuine problems that we rational right-wingers either overlook or ignore. A good example is Trish Wilson's tireless exposing of the morons called "Fathers 4 Justice".
However the lady who I most admire is none of those listed above, it is Ginmar, who is currently doing her bit to bring democracy to Iraq. In those periods when her fellow soldiers are not driving her nuts and she is not being shot at by "insurgents", she finds the time think deep thoughts about this and that. Her latest is a discussion of Prostitution and what it says about society. The essay and followupposts have made me rethink a few of my basic free market libertarian ideas and do a little bit of examining of the Male Chavinist Pig that is hidden away somewhere inside me and they will almost certainly do you a lot of good too so go read the Prostitution essay and then comeback and continue reading....
...back now?
OK so here's the deal. I've been commenting about the TheoVanGoghaffair a lot recently. Theo was killed essentially for daring to state the obvious truth that fundamentalist Islam is frequently very nasty towards the fairer sex. I think that the Middle Eastern treatment of women is something that needs improvement and that bringing free market democracy to the Middle East can only help to improve their position, but I also realise we have a a significant way to go here in the "civilised" West also.
Attitudes and Thought Crimes
In the Middle East it is clear that women are reated essentially as objects. Barefoot, pregnant and tied to the kitchen sink would pretty much describe the usual lot of a woman in Saudia Arabia or Afghanistan under the Taliban and its not that much better elsewhere. Ideas such as honour killings or punishing a rape victim for her adultery are commonplace - that latter was the subject of Submission. Women are not treated as sentient people they are treated as dumb animals or things and that is something that needs to be changed.
But here in the enlightened world we still see a double standard. Yes it's not as bad but that doesn't mean it isn't there. As the Haidl rape case in Orange County shows it is still a commonplace to think that "she asked for it" and therefore it is excused. Nothing illustrates this more that the sex trade. The vast majority of sex club dancers, prostitutes etc. are female, the even more overwhelming majority of clients are male. Ginmar argues persuasively that the clients are looking for what boilds down to a live, breathing sex toy. They don't want any coomunication with her, they just want the sex. To me this attitude is little better than the religious fundamentalist who thinks women are satan's traps. There undoubtedly cases where this is not strictly true - the classic example being sailors coming into port - where the client is willing to choose a second best substitute because he can't afford the time actually wooing his lady. However it seems to me that, depsite the mythology about the sex trade, the dirty secret is that for most men involved in it its all about power.
Hooker Myths
One of the links I have on my blogroll is to the former blog of Belle de Jour, the UK call girl. Her blog was popular, and no doubt forthcoming book will be a bestseller, because she panders to a certain stereotype: the idea of the hooker who just enjoys sex and who therefore is in the business by choice. Of course these women exist but if you read interviews with the average prostitute she is an exception. The Video Vigilante has a pretty accurate description of the usual prostitute as someone who is probably drug addicted, was abused by their (step)parents or other relatives and who is now trapped in a way of life that she hates but which she can find no escape from.
Another myth is of course the idea that someone can find true love by meeting the hooker with the heart of gold. OK so sometimes this happens, but as with Belle it is extraordinarily rare. The average client is not looking for the hooker's heart, or indeed any communication that would show her heart. In fact he really doesn't care what she is feeling like inside, all he wants is someone who will submit to him. And if you think that sounds rather like rape then you would probably be right. Needless to say the reverse myth of the client who rescues a "fallen lady" is just as rare. It happens because not all clients are abusers but it also fails to describe the majority of clients.
My experience with prostitutes
The sex trade is a very secretive one. People get embarassed talking about it or admitting to using it. Well since I'm writing an essay on the subject I probably ought to come clean. To be honest I have little to own up to. I've been to a couple of strip bars and been the recipient of a "special" massage in a seedy dive in Manila while drunk in the company of other debauched men. The only prostitute I've ever met socially was in Leningrad (as it was named then) and I think someone was trying to set me up for either some sort of blackmail or robbery. It didn't work out because the idea of casual sex doesn't really appeal to me and hence all I did was talk to the pleasant young lady and her escort (pimp) in a wild variety of languages.
Legalizing Prostitution
One big question is whether countries should legalize prostitution. My initial reaction was that it should be legal. Even though I think it comes close to rape in many cases I still believe it should be legal. To my mind it runs the same test as abortion and hence comes up with the same ideal solution "safe, legal, rare". As with abortion I think prostitution is a horrible thing, but that does not mean it should be illegal. As with abortion I feel that prostitution is one of those "least bad" options, when you get to the point in time where prostitution (or abortion) is an option then there are no "good" choices left so its a question of limiting the harm as opposed to avoiding it altogether. Let me be clear I think prostitution is a bad thing and that the world would be a better place without prostitutes, however this is another one of the cases where the key to stopping it is reducing demand not reducing supply.
The problem with making it illegal is that the women who are prostitutes find it hard to get any protection from the law. Thus they are frequently abused by their pimps and their clients. Probably the worst example is the organized Europe wide traffic in women who simply cannot escape because if they go to the police they are deported as illegal immigrants, but even without the possibility of deportation, prostitutes have a very hard time getting anyone to listen when they report abuse.
Ginmar makes a good point that prostitution is not the same as other professions or trades in that the client gets the use of the prostitutes body. I agree that prostitution is an ugly, sordid trade but that doesn't mean it should be illegal. Although they are rare there are women like Belle de Jour who actually enjoy it and seem content with the trade because the make a lot of money and if they don't mind then it seems churlish for others to complain. However by making it illegal you also condemn all those at the bottom of the pile to abuse because they cannot trust the law to recognise that they are being abused. If you make prostitution legal then abuse of a prostitute becomes standard rape or assault or even breach of contract. Strange though it sometimes seems the law works better in civil cases such as breach of contract than it does in criminal cases such as rape, however if the contract is for an illegal service then this option is not possible as an alternative.
Final thoughts
As with drugs the way to rid the world of the scourge of prostitution is to remove the demand. If the demand is there then the supply will be there to meet the demand. The only way to remove the demand is education and it is clear to me that the education must be aimed at changing the minds of the potential consumer - i.e. boys. Its not that they need to be taught that it is wrong (though that is true) they need to be taught why it is wrong. In other words we need to add some discussion of morals and ethics to Sex Education. When religions can overcome their prudishness and talk about sex they usually get this right whereas the liberal atheistic sex education tends to focus on the mechanics rather than on the feelings that should drive them.
There is a Thomas Hardy poem which still applies in the West today. When someone can look at this poem and need to have the terms explained then we, as a culture, will have got over our centuries old hang ups about sex and the position of women, but I expect it will be a long while coming
"Oh, 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?
"Oh, didn't you know I'd been ruined? said she.
—"You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks, Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks; And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!"
"Yes: That's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.
—"At home in the barton you said 'thee' and 'thou', And 'thik oon' and 'theas oon' and 't'other'; but now Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!"
"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.
—"Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek, And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!"
"We never do work when we're ruined," said she.
—"You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream, And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!"
"True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she.
—"I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown, And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!" "My dear—a raw country girl, such as you be,
Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she. Permalink
According to this Reuter's summary of a report by the International Crisis Group America is to blame for N Korea's nuclear weapons:
U.S. Needs to Offer More to N.Korea-Security Report
By Martin Nesirky
SEOUL (Reuters) - Divisions in President Bush (news - web sites)'s first administration gave North Korea (news - web sites) valuable time to develop weapons and he needs to put far more on the table to get it to end its nuclear plans, a security group said on Monday.
In a report offering an eight-stage plan to end the nuclear stand-off, the influential International Crisis Group said the increasingly urgent priority was to dismantle North Korea's nuclear program and put discussion of other problems on hold.
"It almost certainly has enough bombs to deter an attack and still have some to sell to other states or even terrorist groups," said the group, which is based in Brussels and used its recently opened Seoul office to help compile the report.
"The focus should remain on the nuclear issue, putting on hold other current policy concerns such as missile controls, human rights, reductions of conventional forces and economic reforms, important as they are in their own right, until this critical problem is resolved," it said.
The independent International Crisis Group -- set up in 1995 to try to prevent, contain and resolve conflicts -- is funded by foundations, governments and individual donations. It has high-level access to government policymakers.
The report said there were legitimate reasons to doubt that North Korea would agree to give up its nuclear deterrent. It has never given up a weapons system before, for example.
"But unless a serious effort is made to negotiate, we will never know," it said.
"So far divisions in the Bush administration have given North Korea more time to develop weapons and have done little to keep the positions of the other four parties in line."
I love the bit in bold though and I utterly fail to see how this can possibly imply that the lack of progress is due to "divisions in the Bush Administration". On the contrary from my outside viewpoint the Bush administration has been remarkably consistent in refusing to negotiate unilaterally or sucumb to extortion. Indeed I thought that our friends Jimmy "peanut" Carter and Bill "cigar" Clinton had been involved in what they believed to be "serious efforts to negotiate" all though the 1990s and all that happened was that N Korea ignored all their obligations. Given hat history I can't see how the Bush Administration should be expected to behave in a trusting manner.
How does that saying go "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me". It seems to me Bush doesn't want to get to "Fool me twice" and that would be a good thing. Permalink
A further link from Ginmar to Alas, a Blog which has information about what happened in Australia when they legalised prostitution and its not pretty. The result leads Ginmar to conclude that legalisation is a bad idea. I sympathise but tend to disagree because I think that the legalisation has been partially botched. Probably the main reason for the botching is that there is a lack of follow through. Just because prostitution is legalised does not mean that all activities in the sex trade are legal. Coercion, illegal immigration, drug-pushing etc. are still illegal and any brothel owner or pimp that does these things should be severely punished. Personally I reckon this is a case for public physical punishment. Stick them in the stocks and let the public do what they please to them would be a good way to reduce the enthusiasm for this sort of behaviour. Especially since in many cases it seems like these lowlife scum get a kick out of the powerlessness of their hookers.
However this excellent comment makes a good case for banning it:
Why should men be allowed this form of "entertainment" when it is clearly so very detrimental to the people involved as well as to all male perceptions of all women's worth? Using prostitutes is a male leisure activity, it is a very destructive one, and I don't understand arguments that place men's all holy right to shove their penises in and out of women's bodily holes over the rights of the UN's estimated 3-4 millions children, women and men held in sexual slavery and raped repeatedly for profit in a year.
I certainly agree that use of a prostitute typically indicates that the user is not au fait with the concept of the dignity of women or even the concept that women have feelings. I agree that this is bad but...
Supply vs Demand
The problem is that banning it doesn't alter the number of men who don't respect women. As I see it is the isuse is that, legal or not, the demand for sex services exceeds the supply of willing volunteers ready to receive money for services rendered. As a result, women are forced into the business through a variety of illegal methods. As I say above the legalisation of prostitution needs to go hand in hand with a dramatic increase in the punishment for those who coerce and public humiliation would be a good way to do this. Branding them with PIMP on the forehead might also help. If you make it so that the penalty for getting caught is a big deterrant and you increase the policing so that the chances of being caught are high then you will reduce the abuse. If you don't do this then I agree that legalisation is not good. The problem here is that enforcement of these rules is similar to the enforcment of rules against employment of illegal aliens and the like - i.e. universally spotty. If you want to stop the abuse you have to consistently apply the rules and do it sufficiently often that breaking them is not commercially viable. Moreover you have to set up incentives so that people are willing to rat on the scum and hence so that the law enforcement community doesn't have to do all the legwork.
Education to Reduce Demand
Bu the main way to reduce prostitution is to reduce the demand. John TV and so one may help but surely an even better way to do it is to try and teach the Johns or potential Johns why what they are doing is bad. As I said in my last post this needs to be done in school but it also needs to be repeated elsehere. One example that could be usefully studied is the way that HIV infection rates were dramatically reduced in Uganda. Since HIV is generally passed on by sex with strangers and this is generally a taboo topic, it took a great deal of courage for the Ugandan government to support the public education programs that explained in detail how and why such activities passed on HIV. I have no doubt that some Johns are callous scum who will not change their minds based on any advertising, but I also believe that many are in fact ignorant about how their lusts affect the hookers they use. It seems to me that in the way that modern society has generally made prostitution taboo it recognises that prostitution is a bad thing. The problem is that because it is taboo we are unwilling to have the reasons why it is bad detailed in poublic where everyone can see them. This is a bad thing.
Feminists and Christians Unite
Historically the people most willing to try and help prostitutes and censure their clients have been the (primarily evangelical) christians. I fear that the radical disagreement over things like abortion would make it hard for an alliance of Feminists and Evangelicals to work to together but I suspect if they did it would be a good thing for them (because they both might find out more about why the other side believes what it does) as well as for society as a whole. There would be significant benefits to such an alliance. After all an issue which unites people with such widely differing beliefs would be vound to get significant press coverage as people would be curious to know why each side was willing to "sup with the devil" as it were.
I believe that a campaign that used the plight of prostitutes as a centerpiece could change people's minds about just how unacceptable use of a prostitute is without further crimminalising the poor prostitutes themselves. I think that both Feminists and Evangelicals would agree that the prostitute is in the majority of cases "sinned against" and is therefore the victim. What the campaign really needs to do is to firstly debunk the myths and secondly make even the most hardened insensitive male understand what it is like ot be on the receiving end. I don't know precisely how to do that - but I guess that comparing it to a low paying tedious and unpleasant job where you are explited by your bosses might help. A third thing that the campaign ought to do is generally mobilise the decent majority. Most people dislike discussing sex and prostitution and hence shy away from expressing their disapproval of the clients of the sex trade, but a concerted campaign could make this much the same as drunk-driving. Something that is considered sufficiently beyond the pale that you won't let your friends do it.
Thanks to Phil Fraering making a post Baen's Bar, I have discovered another excellent lady blogger. She has a post chock full of amusing but politically incorrect images including this one which I rather like I also made my own attempt at an amusing juxtaposition. If I were any good at photoshop I'd actually figure out how to combine the pictures but I'm not - that task is left as an exercise for the reader... (Click to see a larger version) Update: [Via Junkyardblog]The juxtaposition above is remarkably suitable in the light of this statement Frère Jacques Permalink
Personally I don't regret this guy's death at all. As the Rev Donald Sensing put it the whole point of this war at present is to kill terrorists.
What I do regret is the way he died because it has managed to provide a propaganda coup for the enemy. Their propagandists will ignore the fact that in a reverse situation any terrorist who had found wounded US forces vulnerable would have attackedand tried to kill them the first time around and not left him to wait for 24 hours. They will now be able to claim to the world that the US is evil and uncaring. Even if this doesn't impress the ranks of terrorist recruits it will provide ammunitaion to the chattering classes who want the US out of Iraq.
The marine who killed him was undoubtedly correct tactically in his action especially given the propensity for terrorist wounded to fake it and blow themselves up along with those trying to help them. However to do it in view of an embedded journalist was strategically stupid, as a result I regret to say he'll most likely be hung out to dry as a scapegoat. As Murdoconline says:
The only thing worse than this that I can even imagine is if the Marine, instead of shooting the guy, had gone and put a pair of panties on the guy's head.
In case you hadn't noticed this year is the centenery of the year that the British Empire signed the "Entente Cordiale" with our froggy neighbours. There have been various celebrations of this bit of paper in both countries and now Frère Jacques is popping over to London to visit Her Majesty and say thanks for helping out again and again. Or not as the case may be as somehow I sort of wonder just how cordiale things really are,
Frère Jacques seems to have got his knickers in a twist about Iraq again (possibly because he's had to face the fact that he won't be getting any further share of the $20+ Billion rakeoff) and is bitching and moaning that Tony is Mr Bush's poodle not his own - "Eef 'e was my poodle I'd call 'im Fifi hand give 'im ze best feed". And then there is this:
"But it also provoked reactions, such as the mobilisation in a number of countries, of men and women of Islam, which has made the world more dangerous," Mr Chirac says.
"There's no doubt that there has been an increase in terrorism and one of the origins of that has been the situation in Iraq.
"I'm not at all sure that one can say that the world is safer," President Chirac says.
This is not precisely the words of a man who is willing to kiss and make up. One wonders if this has anything to do with the fact that he will be spending some time in Windsor Castle listening to music in a rather special room - The Waterloo Room - which is being referred to as "the Music Room". Fortunately, as the Torygraph notes,
Even after the subtle rebranding, the French President will not be able to avoid the reminder of his country's defeat on the battlefield. The chamber was built to commemorate a famous British victory.
It is adorned with the portraits of heads of state and military leaders who helped defeat Bonaparte.
There have been lots of excuses about why the room was chosen (too big an audience for another one blah blah blah) but one wonders whether this was intended as a subtle hint by Her Majesty and/or her ministers.
I finally settled on the driver of a minibus filled with an assortment of men, women and children. This is public transport. These guys buy these buses and run regular routes or do commission type things. He was an older guy with richly-wrinkled eyes and a patient look, plus a truly enormous white mustache. I caught his eye and waved. There was just a second while it registered. And then he jumped just a little, and gave this huge grin, and then...everyone else in the bus saw him and started waving and smiling too. Everyone pressed up against the windows and smiled and waved just as idiotically as I was doing. A dozen hands appeared here and there and little faces and big ones popped up in the windows. And they were all so friendly, so happy, that it took a while to sink in.
Read the whole thing.
Then there is Powerline which has an extract from the Wapping Times about Fallujah and a picture of more happy Iraqis. The extract reminds me a bit of the descriptions of Najaf after Moqtada Al Sadr had left.
"But we were happy you did what you did because Fallujah had been suffocated by the Mujahidin. Anyone considered suspicious would be slaughtered. We would see unknown corpses around the city all the time."
The same story of arbitrary executions was told by another resident, found by US troops cowering in his home with his brother and his family.
"They would wear black masks, carry rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs, and search streets and alleys," said Iyad Assam, 24. "I would hear stories, about how they executed five men one day and seven another for collaborating with the Americans. They made checkpoints on the roads. They put announcements on walls banning music and telling women to wear the veil from head to toe."
Feel free to compare and contrast with the remarks of Frère Jacques mentioned just below.
Just as in those far off days before the French Revolution, the one thing we can be sure about with the EU is that it isn't about representative democracy. As Janet Daly points out in this article, in Europe we don't trust the proles to get the answer right.
It may sound apocalyptic, but I do believe that the democratic experiment in continental Europe, begun just over 200 years or so ago, is coming to a close. The European Union is creating what it hopes will be a benign oligarchy. Real political power will reside once again within elite circles (as it does already in France) which will conduct their business in the corridors rather than in the assemblies.
I also believe the title above would make a decent if un-nuanced paraphrasing of the Chirac interviews with the BBC (see below) and elsewhere. Just as in those far off days before the French Revolution, the one thing we can be sure about with the EU is that it isn't about democracy. In fact the EU Referendum blog does its usual excellent job of summarising the Foreign Policy views of M. Le Président de la Republique Française:
President Chirac has sorrowfully announced that Saddam Hussein’s great victory was that he managed to drive a wedge between the various European countries. An interesting way of interpreting irreconcilable differences in outlook and an odd way of referring to Saddam’s preferred method of ensuring support for his regime through the food-for-oil funds. (Or, perhaps, that was not quite what President Chirac meant.)
Once again we heard the call for a “multipolar world”, whatever that may mean, where Europe is as strong as America. Two questions: what is that strong Europe intending to achieve and how is it going to be as strong as America without either spending money on its armed forces or ensuring that its economy functions reasonably well? To these, no doubt, President Chirac would answer that we need to build up the structures of a strong state, even if we do not have the reality and agree on a “European”, that is, French foreign policy.
Of course as Tim Worstall reminded us today, the EU is good at grand gestures but not quite so hot at the menial tasks of actually balancing its budget or detecting fraud.
The European Union's financial watchdog refused to sign off the Brussels budget yesterday for the tenth year in a row, finding that 93.4 per cent of spending was either unsafe or riddled with errors.It rebuked Brussels in its annual report for failing to "satisfy the legitimate expectations of the citizens of the union".Spot checks found fraud or error – leading to demands for repayment – in 25 per cent of farm aid in Italy, 23 per cent in Greece, 21 per cent in Spain and 14 per cent in France, but most abuses remain undiscovered. But he said commission insiders set a dreadful tone by behaving like "rats in a bag seeking to evade responsibility".
Quelle Surprise! The EU always seems to think that words speak louder than actions whihc no doubt explains why it doesn't take any actions - except against individuals who can't fight back or who question the idea that sucking at the public teat and p [Hat-tip: Both Tim and Richard at the EU Referendum blog linked to the Janet Daly article referred to above and I agree it is an absolute must read .]
As I demonstrated below I'm no photoshop wizard, but seeing as I keep on writing posts about the EU and its manymanyfailures it seemed to me that I really ought to try and make some logos for Tim Worstall's list. Therefore with much treipidation I present the following four logos...
This one is for Tim at An Englishman's Castle. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy David Kopel reports that in Illinois you are allowed to use a handgun on your own property to defend yourself, even if the place where you live bans handgun posession:
Chicago and several of its suburbs ban the possession of handguns. A new law in Illinois prevents the conviction of a person for violating the handgun ban, if the person used the handgun for lawful self-defense on his property. ... Although vehemently anti-gun Governor Rod Blagojevich vetoed the bill, the Senate over-rode the bill narrowly, and yesterday the House voted to 85-30 to over-ride. The reform was the result of the prosecution of a man who violated the Wilmette handgun gun, and whose violation was discovered after he shot a burglar during the burglar's second invasion of the man's home.
(OK Saturday Olive Blogging - I was travelling) This is a picture of the comb/rake used to pluck the olives out of the tree in those cases where you can't reach the things yourself and shaking just won't work.
Thanks to the invaluable Tim Worstall, I read in the Torygraph that 8 month foetuses are aborted in Spain and that British doctors arrange for pregnant women to pop over there for the procedure.
... She said that even she had been surprised at how late Ginemedex were prepared to carry out abortions: "We told them [the clinic] a lie that she was 29 weeks when she was 31-plus weeks."
Dr Adlakha also made it clear that she realised Ginemedex was performing illegal abortions, saying: "They write down, and they tell you [that they will do this], that she is 22 weeks pregnant and there is a physical abnormality."
It is possible that this is an isolated case but the article inidcates that it probably isn't. One would hope there would be outrage at the idea that doctors - who are usually supposed to preserve life - would condone this murder (a baby born at 8 months or so has a 99% chance of survival), but it seems more likely that the government, the medical profession and the grauniad reading parts of the population will do their best to ignore the whole thing. Although the Telegraph reports that the Health Minister has requested full details of this investigation, one gets the feeling that he will do nothing more than slap the wrist of the doctor concerned and tell her not to get caught again. And one suspects that the chattering classes would prefer it this way. Certainly a quick scan of the BBC's website shows no mention of this story, prefering instead to concentrate on a new law that has been passed. As noted allovertheplace, however, unlike an 8 month old foetus, a small orange animal is now being protected from being killed in an inefficient manner and anyone who attempts to kill one in this way will be prosecuted.
If you think this shows a certain confusion of priorities then you would probably be correct. Of course it is worse than this. Rural property crime levels are soaring in the UK and rural inhabitants are likely to find themselevs in jail if they try and protect themselves or their property from thieves. Even if it makes some sense in an urban setting to just call the police and expect them to show up before the intruder has had his way, it makes almost no sense to do the same thing in the countryside where a quick response is going to take half an hour and a more usual one would take two or three times that. This means that the burglar who decides to visit an isolated house in the countryside has almost no risk of being either stopped or caught later.
To New Labour foxes are more important that unborn babies or rural householders. Does that seem right to you? Permalink
A certain French EU commissioner who shall remain nameless for legal reasons - the author resides in France where mention of this affair is "strictement interdit" - was pardoned for his involvement in a scheme to take steal a large chunk of government money to use as political party funds. Interestingly under French law one is not allowed to mention the crime for which someone was convicted once the offense has been pardoned. This is truly bizarre and has some interesting side-effects.
In this case the beneficiary of the pardon is now claiming that he would have appealed his conviction except for the fact that he knew a pardon was in the offing so he didn't bother. Now of course if this is true (and if he really was innocent) because he was pardoned he is now in a worse position than before because everyone assumes, not without reason, that he is in fact a thieving politician with his hand in the till who has been let off in some quid pro quo by M L'escroc Le Président J Chirac, a gentleman who is undoubtledly hoping for the same favour when he gets to face the music about having his hand in the till.
Another interesting question is how many other crookspolicitians have also been pardoned for having their hands in the till. Since the French news is prohibited from mentioning their now spotless record none of them have any need to worry until they get selected for some international post or other, however as the comissioner has learned, in the age of Internet stopping that knowledge entering France is rather difficult, indeed a google search turns up rather alotofsites mentioning the fact. If it were to turn out, as seems rather likely, that future Frnech nominations to international bodies will undergo the same background checks one wonders whether French former politicians will be quite so keen to get on board so many international gravy-trains...
One of the interesting defenses of the widespread corruption scandals in France is that the crookspolicitians concerned have never personally benefitted from the dosh that they have stolen, rather it has gone into party funds to help re-election. Funnily enough though the people whom thee party funds help re-elect are - guess what - the aforementioned crooks. So while it is true that the money itself didn't pay for the châteaux, yachts and mistresses of the politicians it did enable them to continue to benefit from their generous governmental salaries instead of being forced onto the chômage (dole) or, God forbid, actually getting a job as a productive member of society.
Of course this routine criminality in the ranks of the rulers of France may possibly explain why they saw nothing wrong with chaps like Arafat or Saddam Hussein pocketing billions of dollars themselves. One suspects that the primary emotion felt in French political circles to the revelations that Hussein looks to have trousered some $21 billion is envy and jealousy that he managed to get away with it and may also explain why they seem to like Mrs Arafat so much.
It occured to me that there could be another reason why French, Belgian and EU politicians seem to love Islamic militants. Neither group is prepared to tolerate dissent or criticism. Admitedly it seems that it is only the Islamofascists who kill their critics. The French don't kill people who point out that a certain EU comissioner was pardoned for stealing money from the French government, but do make such criticism a crime. Likewise the Belgians don't kill Flemish nationalists, they just ban them and Eurocrats just sack whistleblowers and hassle investigative journalists.
However, as our lefty friends do point out so frequently when raving about the Patriot Act and Bushitler, it's a slippery slope. First you start gagging your critics through the courts, then perhaps you decide that literal gagging is necessary, then you decide that gagging is too hard and its easier to kill them pour encourager les autres.
Of course this intolerance for free speech and criticism isn't the only point of similarity between the Euro-elite and the Islamic terrorists. Neither likes the US, nor Israel and both lots seem to believe that US style capitalism and materalism are unmitagated evils.
Thanks to Harry's Place I bring you the Autorantic Virtual Moonbat which has appeared at the top of the page. I expect I'll get tired of it after a while but for now its hours and hours of fun....
I have to say that it passes the turing test at least as well as some of our favourite Grauniad columnists Permalink
Comparing three recent stories from Africa with stories from Iraq makes me wonder whether, just possibly, the world's journalists would rather concentrate on news that they can use against President Bush instead of the UN, France or African dictators.
First up is the UN rape and abuse scandal in the Congo, which Michelle Malkin calls the UN's Abu Ghraib.Funnily enough this is not getting story after story coverage by the BBC, Reuters, AP etc. Most of them have one article which has now slid down the bottom of the page. As Reuters notes somewhere in the middle of its piece:
The revelations of peacekeeping abuses is usually kept quiet at the United Nations until reporters or individual countries disclose the news, as happened in Cambodia in the early 1990s and later in Somalia, Bosnia and Ethiopia. But in this case the world body released some details.
This has happened before. Many times apparently. Does anyone give a toss? apparently not. And yet we saw month long wall to wall coverage of the Abu Ghraib affair even though by the time the story broke the US military had already produced a report and begun appropriate criminal proceedings.
Next up we have the situation in Zimbabwe where Comrage Bob is busily starving his people and lying about it as well as banning sports journalists from coming to cover the cricket. Admittedly the BBC has done a fairly good job of getting out the word about Comrade Bob, most other news organisations seem more concerned about malnutrition in Iraq, where the rate has risen and aid agencies are targetted by ungrateful Iraqi "insurgents". Somehow this is the fault of the US and is therefore more important that Comrade Bob's driving out of aid agencies and journalists from Zimbabwe.
Finally there is the ongoing "Blood for Chocolate" war in Côte d'Ivroie. In this case all sorts of insurgents are protesting the high handed actions of the French peacekeeping force who are alleged to have committed various war crimes. Now I suspect that the French are actually justified in most of their actions but they have been remarkably unilateral about the whole thing. Likewise I seriously doubt their soldiers have in fact done any of the acts allaged but I do wonder why we can see front page after headline scoop about a marine in Fallujah and bugger all about the French.
I was going to add this as an update - but then I thought it was worth publishing spearately. Here is another Africa vs Iraq comparison
Melanie Phillips has a link to an Australian journalist who does some back of the envelope analysis of the Lancet's notorious 100,000 Iraqi civilian dead claim. Needless to say the words and phrases like "implausible", "load of cobblers" and "utter BS" spring to mind as one seeks ways to describe the Lancet article. Of course this hasn't been the only analysis, manyothers thought it just as "implausible" etc.
On the other hand there is Darfur where the Sudanese government has been far nastier that the Americans and where anywhere from 70,000 up have died since March 2004. Oh and of course there are 1.5 million or more refugess etc. etc.
If you do google queries on "iraqi 100,000 dead" you get back some 362,000 hits whereas if you do an equivalent Darfur search you get a mere 22,400 hits. Even better is that the top Iraq hits all seem to be reporting the debunked claim uncritically while a large number of the Sudan hits (including the fourth one - from Fox news) are reports of Sudanese government denials of the death toll.
Take a wild guess at which country has a US led coalition involved versus a UN inspired peacekeeping force.
Michael Totten has written an insightful TCS column about the banning of the Vlaams Blok and the Theo Van Gogh murder and the resultant feedback. He makes a number of excellent points (so go read the whole thing) but at one point he utters what would seem to be blindingly obvious but seems to have got lost somewhere in translation by the cozy Eurorulers:
Nothing breeds that sort of freelance violence like the perception that the duly constituted authorities aren't willing to protect the citizenry. People in the United States didn't doubt that; people in the Netherlands have had reason to.
If Europe's mainstream parties can't come to grips with this they're toast. There is no shortage of political maniacs on the margins -- who are totally uninhibited by political correctness -- who can always propose a "solution" if no one else will.
This is something that seems to have been forgotten by governments all over Europe. We citizens pay our taxes for services like the police to protect us and catch thieves, murderers and rapists. It is true that this is not the only thing we pay for but it is a highly visible use of our tax money and one that we consider to be a basic threshold of governance. If it isn't met then there isn't too much point in paying for the rest of the government. Melanie Phillips has a story about how Political Correctness appears to have impacted the (lack of) police investigation of Asian gangs in Scotland. I have no doubt that swift googling would show other similar stories elsewhere - certainly I recall seeing similar stories at Zacht Ei.
Insecurity and Diversity
In an article sparked off a comment I made (go read it too), Michael Gordon aka the Buggy Professor makes some excellent points about how there is no single cause for the rise of right wing populism in Europe and implies that I thought there was a single cause - immigration and Islamic fuundamentaism. I appreciate his emphasis on the fact that the rise is due to multiple factors and agree with him on that and on his further perceptive note that freedom of speech and religious toleration is not nearly as well embedded in the European mainstream as it is in the English speaking world. I did not in fact believe that there was a single cause to explain right wing popularity and remain of that belief. However where I disagree with the perceptive professor is that I think his multitude of causes are in fact interlinked. The problem here is that, like the US, citizens feel insecure. They feel threatened by globalization, by an uncertain retirement, by rising crime, terrorism and so on. Each of these elements has its own causes and itself leads to other problems but it seems to me that there is one underlying problem and that is that discussion of these problems or of certain viewpoints is generally speaking taboo. The taboo doesn't hold so much in bars, clubs and so on but it very much holds in terms of public discourse. There is very limited debate permitted in the national media - indeed in much of Europe there is very little choice in terms of viewpoint available in the national media - and this, I believe, is the key difference.
In the US, despite the general liberal bias of the chattering classes (as documented in Bernard Goldberg's Bias), there are alternative viewpoints readily available. Rush Limbaugh and his fellow talk radio hosts, not to mention Fox, provide a right wing view to complement the liberal mainstream. Likewise, as the professor notes, in the UK there is a wide variety of viewpoints expressed with (for example) the Torygraph and the Times being more conservative and the Grauniad and Independant being more left wing. This doesn't really exist in mainland Europe and the national debate is weaker as a result.
Brief aside: I was at a party on Sunday where I disclosed that I was becoming more and more of a Torygraph reader and would soon be writing letters as "Disgusted of Mouans Sartoux". To my surprise a significant proportion of the crowd (mainly expat Brits but with a wide variety of professions, ages and wealth) was in general agreement with what I might call the Torygraph viewpoint. While there was disagreement with my pro-Bush views there was considerable agreement with the anti-Labour, anti-Chirac, anti-PLO, anti-EU viewpoints. I have noted similar reactions back in the UK from people whom I would normally put in the "moonbat" camp. Extrapolating from this meager anecdotal evidence, the UK Independance Party, if it can get its act together, is likely to be a more significant force in UK politics than the mainstream media imagines.
The lack of diverse viewpoints doesn't matter when times are good, but it is critical at times when things are not so rosy. The average European feels insecure for good reason. Crime is rising, the EU (or at least the Eurozone) is in poor economic shape, and there seems no good reason to expect that this will improve.
Political Denial
The problem, as elucidated so well by Michael Totten above, is that the mainstream politicians in Europe are in a state of denial. They simply do not want to admit that their policies have failed utterly and that Europe is now in a real mess with an unintegrated and increasingly radical Islamic minority as well as high structural unemployment and an upcoming pensions crisis that makes worries about the US budget deficit look like a storm in a teacup. To cap it all, rather than allow an EU commisioner who stated that he would not allow his religious personal beliefs to interfere with his public acts, they prefer to have ones who are convicted (but pardoned so that's all right) bribe-takers and fraudsters.
The result of this process, also stated by the Buggy Professor in the article mentioned above is that more and more people become alienated from mainstream politicians who either ignore or fail to provide convincing solutions to genuine problems felt by their voters. The natural result is that extremist parties, who are not afraid to mention these problems (and who generally have solutions to them that are simplistic, racist and wrong), pick up votes from people who do not in general share their more extremist beliefs. This I believe is precisely why the Vlaams Blok has become so hugely popular, it has identified a couple of majpor problems with Belgium - essentially non-assimilated immigrants, crime and a large wealth transfer through taxation from the Flemish north to the Walloon south - that resonate strongly with Flemish voters. Ironically, apart from their professed free market nature, the party they remind me most of is the Bloc Québécois, a party that one suspects receives quite a lot of support in the Francophone parts of the world including Walloon Belgium.
It is notable that in France Nicolas Sarkozy has become immensely popular because he has admitted what no previous minister had the intestinal fortitude to admit - namely that France has a huge crime problem and (now that he has moved to the treasury) a serious budget problem. I have some serious reservations about some of his proposed solutions but compared to his predecessors and colleagues he is outstanding, simply because he states problems and then not only suggests solutions but actually goes and implements them. Compared to the usual European style of stating a problem , having a large amount of "consultation" with interested parties and then passing a law deploring the problem that no one will obey anyway this is quite revolutionary. As a result he is not very popular with M. L'Escroc who is doing his best to sink the Sarkozy bandwagon and seems to forget that he was elected in large part due to a campaign to "Vote for the crook not the fascist". If, as is not impossible, a fascist such as Le Pen faces off either M. L'Escroc or another corrupt inneffective traditional politician at the next election it is by no means certain that the fascist will lose. However if the fascist faces off against Sarkozy there is no doubt who will win and it won't be the fascist.
There is another political problem that is also denied, and that is political corruption. Now I am being slightly unfair here because I do believe that the majority of national politicians in Europe are not directly and overtly corrupt. They do not generally take money under the table from some shady businessman and they probably see the all expenses paid fact finding tour to the beaches of Slobistania as a perk rather than a bribe. Indeed they may be no worse than their fellow politicians in N America, Japan etc. except for one detail: they twist the laws so that their corruption is hidden and if it is found out it rarely seems to affect their future careers. In the UK, the US and even in Japan or Korea, politicians who are caught on the take face years of investigative journalists, angry electorates as well as criminal trials that result in serious sentences. In continental Europe, as we discover with the current French commisioner, the penalty is generally a few months notoriety followed by a quiet job in some international body or other. Even though this works for the politician concerned in the short term, in the long term it undermines trust in the political system and reinforces the view that the elite consider themselves above the law.
Anarchy or Tyranny?
There is a logical conclusion here which really worries me. Mainstream European politicians are generally considered inneffective and corrupt. They don't seem to respond to the beliefs of their electorate and there seems to be one law for the politically conected and another for everyone else. I am not sure of prevailing European opinion but I suspect that, as in the UK, the general public wants far harsher sentences for criminals, however politicians and the media seem more concerned with the rights of criminals than their victims and so on. To put it bluntly the law-abiding tax-paying man in the street is not having his needs met by his rulers and to add insult to injury he has to pay large amounts of tax to support this state of affairs. This is not a stable situation and means that the "law-abiding tax-paying man in the street" will look for alternatives.
If the only alternatives are extremist politicians then it is quite possible that just as the chaos of the 1920s and 1930s led to Hitler and the like the same will happen today. It is also quite possible that we will see some sort of anarchy and breakdown of the rule of law, especially if the ruling elites seem to remain above the law. Whether this then leads to tyranny or not we cannot know. The one thing that I am sure of is that without radical reform the current situation is not going to last.
This is surely a first. Maureen Dowd - known for her liberal rants masquerading as NY Times Columns - writes things today that Michelle Malkin has stated many times. Here's part of Maureen's column:
...Somebody tell me what quantity of explosive material they have found through these strip searches, because I've got a hunch it's zero. How many billions are they wasting on this?
Maybe we're not at the Philip K. Dick level of technology yet. But how about some positive profiling?
...
Only 3 to 5 percent of containers coming into ports are checked, and only a tiny percentage of air, rail and truck cargo is inspected. Congress is turning homeland security money into another avenue of pork. Tom Ridge is still making fuzzy ads telling people to have a plan of action and referring them to his Web site, which hasn't gotten much beyond duct tape.
If we were buttoning up the borders and making the airlines safer, unbuttoning in public would be more bearable.
You know what makes me nervous about President Bush? It's not his facial expressions. Nor his verbal clumsiness. I don't care about his alleged weakness at the podium. What concerns me more than anything else is his demonstrated weakness at our borders.
Immigration enforcement is the six-ton elephant in the room. Barely two sentences were devoted to border control in the first presidential debate, despite the fact that the major issue of the showdown was leadership on national security. Both President Bush and Sen. Kerry bloviated about throwing more money at the Department of Homeland Security, while ignoring the fundamental problem: Our immigration laws are being broken en masse because America is unwilling to enforce them -- clearly, consistently and unapologetically -- until it is too late.
As someone who has generally considered Maureen Dowd to be the US equivalent of Yasmin Alibi-Brownshirt - a prime example of the Stephen Pollard's Jenkins Rule that when that person speaks in favour of X you know it is bad and vice versa - this is worrying. Still I suppose that even stopped clocks are right twice a day so just possibly November 25th is Maureen's day to be right. Of course she doesn't get it completely right - there is bit that shows that she hasn't quite grasped the way that the moronic TSA is not in fact profling people, negatively or positively or at least not doing it properly as we learned when reading about the Annie Jacobsen story earlier this year.
Tim Worstall points to this Grauniad piece by Woy Hattersley. When I started reading it I assumed it was a serious claim that the government has the right to tell parents how to look after their children.
Last Friday, I switched on The World at One when it was half over. So I do not know the name of the egregious ass who announced that the government plans "to nationalise the family".
Then, in the next few sentences, when he started digging at Margaret Hodge I assumed it was satire.
... It was Margaret Hodge, commissar emeritus of Islington, more recently super-Blairite and now children's minister. To my delight and surprise, I agreed with almost every word she said.
Ms Hodge may regard my support as worthless. Years ago, she told the parliamentary Labour party that, since I had no children, I was not qualified to voice an opinion on the iniquities of 11-plus selection. But I insist on showering my, probably unwelcome, praise upon her. At last a member of the government has described the "state" - which is no more than the collective will of the people - as "a force for good". It was a mistake to use the verb "intrude" to describe the help that the community can give to families, but that was a minor flaw in an otherwise impeccable performance, and must be excused on the grounds that Ms Hodge did not enjoy the benefits of a comprehensive education.
Then I wondered when he was going to stop the damning with faint praise and get out the stilleto but he continued to heap scorn on the alternatives
A common complaint - voiced most vociferously by the newspapers that also glory in the good old cliche about the nanny state - is that the authorities do too little to protect desperately vulnerable children. I agree. Perhaps Ms Hodge's critics forget that the constant defence of social workers who fail in their jobs is the claim that they did not want to intrude into family relationships. Some of the children who were left to rot were victims of the prejudice against public intervention that has been promoted by neo-liberal fanatics.
Now I've got to the bottom and I think he is actually serious.
How much more sensible it would have been to proselytise about healthy diets 20 years ago. Failed families add to the tax bills. That, I suspect, is the argument most likely to convince Ms Hodge's critics of what the reasonable rightly regard as no more than common sense.
He truly believes that the average British parent is too stupid to bring up his(her) child without handholding and training by the state. Given that cildren have been brought up for centuries, if not millennia, without the intervention of the state one wonders just why this has suddenly become a problem. But (ha!) look at that bit in the concluding paragraph - "Failed families add to tax bills". What we see here is a government inspired problem. Up until 50 years ago families, failed or otherwise, didn't get anything from the government. Hence (duh) parents had a fairly large incentive to bring up their children properly becuase they were the ones who would pay if they didn't. Heck up until 100 years ago bringing up children was a large part of a parent's pension scheme - if you brought up ungrateful snots or layabouts you starved in short order when you become old and decrepit - but thanks to the wonders of government inspired social security all the risks of "bad" childrearing have been outsourced to the state. Indeed what with HMG passing laws about how hard you may smack your child and with EU pieties about the rights of the child to express him(her)self and not be repressed the risk would seem greater to actually try and bring up a disciplined child.
Is it any surprise that with the incentive skewed away from bringing up children responsibly parents don't? Permalink
I was plannning on a brief article about the Ugandan Discussions going on at the Spectator and what a red hot throbbing magazine it is these days but got distracted by the link to old Private Eye covers that the first link above refers to. So rather than talk about bonking and how certain government ministers seem to trying to reverse that famous Mother's law that self-abuse makes you blind I thought I'd show you this nice picture of Macmillan and De Gaulle from 1963... (for those with limited vision both thought bubbles say "Course he doesn't understand our problems, the bloody foreigner")
Hugh Hewitt asks apropos a Tom Wolfereview, for recommendations of books to read moe than once. Somehow he omits then entire field of Science Fiction, which has more re-readable books than you could shake a neutronium plated stick at.
So if you haven't read any Heinlein or Le Guin or Arthur C Clark or Andre Norton then the short answer is why not? but because these are well known I'm going to recommend two more modern authors. Once better known than the other.
The first and better known is Lois McMaster Bujold - in particular the Vorkosigan series which is strongly recommended from first to last and is chock full of juicy epigrams and thought provoking concepts such as:
Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.
As for which one to read - just follow Alice's advice and start at the beginning with Shards of Honor or Cordelia's Honor, the omnibus book that contains both it and its sequel.
The second and less well known author is Michael Z Williamson. He has only published one SF book on his own so far so the choice is simple - Freehold - which I raved on this blog about a couple of months ago.
PS Many of the book links link to the Baen website which contains free downloadable books and parts of books and is almost as addictive as crack cocaine. I have no connection with Baen other than as addictconsumer. Permalink
Some people, of the sort who confuse (or who like to pretend for propaganda purposes that they confuse) libertarianism with libertinism, might expect a libertarian like me to rejoice at any collapse in marital fidelity. But my libertarianism is about the right to choose what promises you make, not about the right to break them with impunity, to the point where you are not even to be criticised for such cheating
In fact I go a bit further: the offense that really gets us is hypocrisy and this latest O'Reilly column is full of hypocrisy. Dan Rather, just like Bill O'Reilly, acted like he knew what was best for us. It was OK for real TV investigative journalists to investigate things and find out things, but it was unfair for bloggers to investigate the TV journalists.
We all make mistakes, the big question is do we come clean and admit them or do we attempt to hide it and shift the blame. Dan Rather did the latter during the bogus memo scandal. O'Reilly did the same when he tried to accuse his accuser of extortion. Both attempts failed. Compare President GW Bush, who has never denied that he was a drunk at one pont in his life, with his predecessor, who denied having "sex with that woman". Who is more credible?
There is a lesson here. It is not what O'Reilly thinks is it though:
Let me ask you something: In the future, do you think potential public servants and social crusaders are going to risk being brutally attacked within this insane system? I don't. I think many good people are simply going to walk away from the public arena.
Dan Rather did not get what he deserved in this case. He made a mistake, as we all do, but he is not a dishonest man.
Unfair freedom of speech did him in. This is not your grandfather's country anymore.
There was no unfair freedom of speech. There was a hitherto respected news anchor who attempted a sloppy hit piece and got caught when the sloppiness was fund out in a couple of hours. Just like there was a TV host who sexually harassed his underlings and got slapped with a sexual harassment suit. The lesson is that the general public doesn't like hypodrites and the pyjamahadeen can and does expose the hypocrisy of public figures in a way that the mainstream media doesn't.
It seems to me that Prof William Stuntz' advice to fellow academics, suggesting that they might learn from evangelicals, also applies to "potential public servants and social crusaders" as well:
Evangelicals like "testimonies"; it's common for talks to Christian groups to begin with a little autobiography, as the speaker describes the path he has traveled on his road to faith. Somewhere in the course of that testimony, the speaker always talks about what a mess he is: how many things he has gotten wrong, why the people sitting in the chairs should really be teaching him, not the other way around. This isn't a pose; the evangelicals I know really do believe that they -- we (I'm in this camp too) -- are half-blind fools, stumbling our way toward truth, regularly falling off the right path and, by God's grace, picking ourselves up and trying to get back on. But while humility is more a virtue than a tactic, it turns out to be a pretty good tactic. Ideas and arguments go down a lot easier when accompanied by the admission that the speaker might, after all, be wrong.
Bloggers, it seems to me, instinctively understand this. Bill O'Reilly doesn't.
Stephen Gardner spoke out against John Kerry - he was the only crewmember of Kerry's boats to do so - he was fired from his job and now he's broke.
Twenty-four hours later, Gardner got an e-mail from his company, Millennium Information Services, informing him that his services would no longer be necessary. He was laid off in an e-mail -- by the same man who only days before had congratulated him for his exemplary work in a territory which covered North and South Carolina. The e-mail stated that his position was being eliminated. Since then, he's seen the company advertising for his old position. Gardner doesn't have the money to sue to get the job back.
"I'm broke. I've been hurt every way I can be hurt. I have no money in the bank but am doing little bits here and there to pay the bills," he said.
Various bloggers such as Powerline & Captains Quarters have got the information about how to help him. Easiest way would be sending some money to his paypal account ([email protected]) or vis snail mail - P.O. Box 908; Clover, SC 29710.
Roger L Simon points to an Independant article about the precarious state of French newspapers, especially at the quality end, and asks for comment from France. To put it bluntly I know almost no one who regularly reads any national French newspaper. Now it is true that I am an expat and therefore biased because many of my acquaintainces are not French, but contrariwise my French acquaintances are generally speaking the more educated sort who ought to read newspapers so that ought to balance.
This general lack of readership is reflected in the abysmal circulation figures - Le Monde and Le Figaro both sell 350,000-400,000 (figures from this source) and Liberation sells less than half that. Even if you throw in La Croix and L'Humanité (<100,000 each) the full "highbrow" newspaper sales is about 1 million per day, a large chunk of which seems to given away for free by Air France and other airlines - certainly that's the only time I ever either read a French newspaper or see anyone else reading one.
There are lowerbrow papers such as L'Equipe for sports and France Soir, as well as the various regional papers such as my local (and abysmal) Nice Matin, but throwing all those in together still gives a total circulation of all French newspapers of around 3 million - maybe 4 million if you're lucky and include absolutely everything that attempts to be a daily newspaper. The weeklies, such as L'Express and Paris Match do a bit better, but still have a fairly dire penetration rate.
For comparison the UK equivalent highrows - Times, Grauniad, Torygraph and Independant - sell over 2 million, double that of France, and that excludes the middle brow Mail and Express (another 3 million combined). Adding the low brow Sun, Star and Mirror (over 5 million more), the London Evening Standard, the various free and regional papers and anything else that counts as a daily paper you have a total circulation of well over 11 million. I'm guessing the total would be over 12 million. I admit to some rounding and WAGs in that number, but the 11 million is definitely a lowball number given these figures. The UK and France have roughly similar total populations (approx 60 million) so the difference in numbers - France having 50% of the UK circulation of highbrows and about a third of the total circulation - is rather striking.
Who Pays for the Press?
In the UK the newspapers are owned by a variety of different companies that if they do not own purely UK newspapers are still media companies, for example Rupert Murdoch's News Corp owns the Times and the Sun and until recently the Torygraph was owned by Conrad Black's Hollinger group. There are very few, if any, tax breaks, no subsidies and no price limits.
In France, the French state subsidizes its newspapers to the tune of around €50-60 million (or possibly more) and fixes their prices. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the French press is less likely to be critical of its government seeing as the government pays a significant chunk of its revenue. Likewise the ownership of the French newspapers is in groups such as Hachette which are linked to the major bastions of French industry. If you think that this might possibly influence the depth and breadth of reporting then you would not be alone. The lack of competition between news groups and the fact that many French journalists attended the same universities as French politicians and bureaucrats (and captains of industry for that matter) is just icing on the cake for those seatching for an explanation of why the French press is so docile compared to its cross-channel peers.
A vicious circle
So a tame press fails to provide interesting news which leads to a declining readership which leads to low advertising rates which leads to less money which makes the journalist even less likely to take a risk investgating something controversial. Is it any surprise that the French public is remarkably cynical about their journalists? and is it any wonder that the journalists appear so spineless?
I forgot to mention that archaic union rules and the like of the sort that Mr Murdoch got rid of some 20 years ago in England don't precisely help matters but really it hardly seems sporting to mention these issues, given that the press is so dire anyway.
Blog Home : November 2004 : Permalink
Jenkins was given a 30-day jail sentence, but the judge recommended that it be suspended. The suspension was to be ruled on by military authorities soon. 
