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When Ronnie wrote his letter to the people telling them that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, I didn't really know or understand what that meant. I really didn't. But I found out. Those with Alzheimer's are on a rocky path that only goes downhill. Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him. We can't share the wonderful memories of our 52 years together, and I think that's probably the hardest part. And because of this, I'm determined to do what I can to save other families from this pain. And now science has presented us with a hope called stem cell research, which may provide our scientists with many answers that have for so long been beyond our grasp. I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this.

- Nancy Reagan, speaking last month.

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President Ronald Reagan has just passed away about an hour ago.

One of the few politicians that went into politics because they believed in something. This was a president who in his inaugural address in 1981 said:

Government is not the solution, it's the problem.

He will also be remembered as the Vanquisher of Soviet Communism, whatever the revisionists of all flavours may say.

Rest in peace.

Update: For more information here. Some notable quotations from Reagan here.

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Totalitarianism is any political system in which a citizen is totally subject to state authority in all aspects of day-to-day life. - free-definition.com

Britain and the United States are not what could be reasonably called totalitarian states. The 'modern' understanding of what a totalitarian state is falls within frames of reference conjuring up the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany: national systems which believed that the state was an all encompassing thing that superseded society, in fact replacing civil society, in the manner advocated by Rousseau and others. To be a totalitarian means a total state in which quite simply no aspect of human life is beyond the remit of the political state.

Because both of these well known forms of totalitarianism enforced their political will via mass murder on a biblical scale, that disguises the fact that National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union differed quite significantly in many ways. Just being 'total states' does not mean they were the same kind of total state. Whereas the Soviets simply nationalised literally everything (i.e. took direct political control of all means of production) and maintained control via the supply of, well, everything, Nazi Germany retained large numbers of privately owned companies which were 'free' to trade and make several profits provided they did so in ways which complied with regulations and essential national strategic objectives: Willi Messerschmitt was free to run his company, provided he did not decide to stop making aircraft and instead become a refrigerator manufacturing company.

Reasonable commentators have often pointed out that in modern times, totalitarian states have always come about due to cataclysmic events... it was the slaughter, privations and aftermath of World War One which lead to both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union after all. However is this understanding of how a total state comes about the only way Totalitarianism one can come about?

Read more.

We in the First World live in a state of absolute abundance in which poverty is now little more than a relative measure of wealth. To find absolute objective poverty without a great deal of looking, one needs to look at the underdeveloped nations of the world. There is no risk whatsoever of starvation in the developed world (other than within highly paid sections of the fashion industry) even at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder. So does that mean a total state is quite simply something that cannot happen to us in the absence of a nuclear war or sudden unforeseen economic melt-down?

Far from it.

And whilst there are also (thankfully) countervailing trends to be seen, that we are indeed on the march towards a total state in the Western World is almost indisputable.

It is now hard to find any area of life which the state does not regulate. Ever more areas which were once 'regulated' by the evolving and emergent mores of civil society are increasingly being politicised (though the usual term used is 'democratized', which means the same thing) and interactions forced to conform to politically derived formulae. That governments feel they can ban advertising for certain types of 'bad' food, or ban the use of tobacco on privately owned property shows the extend to which nothing is now beyond the remit of the political state, which I would argue is a clear precursor to a total state. Does anyone seriously think 'bad' foods will not eventually be banned outright or (first) taxed into exclusivity in the long run? I can eventually see parents losing their children to the state for not sticking to government approved dietary directives. Absurd? Extreme? Yes, at the moment it is, but you do not need a tinfoil hat to see how that could happen.

And just as both the German National Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party were greeted with considerable and broadly based enthusiasm at their outset, do you really think the next total state(s) will be greeted with any less acclaim by considerable swathes of the Guardian and New York Times reading classes?

So when someone says to you "everything is political", they are in fact suggesting they (and you) already live in a total state. They are wrong now but they might not always be so. A 'total democracy' in which the political completely replaces the social would be in no way less of a totalitarian state than the other forms of totalitarianism which have existed in the past. It would be interesting to see what future generations would call it. Suggestions anyone?

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Is Gordon Brown the most irresponsible Chancellor the UK has ever had? So asks Michael Becket, author of Starting Your Own Business, in this month's issue of Director magazine, published by the Institute of Directors for its members - sorry, but there is no online version. According to Becket:

Despite promising not to raise income tax, Brown has done just that, by not increasing allowances in line with earnings, by raising [National Insurance] by 10 per cent, and by other stealthy changes...

Having enticed small businesses to incorporate by tax incentives, Brown has now closed the trap by imposing a 19 per cent tax on their dividends. Failing to reinvest profits instead of paying themselves was one reason given to directors. But how can the owner of a company with a £10,000 profit afford to eat and invest as well?

People are saving less and putting aside less money for their old age. By stopping pension funds from reclaiming tax on dividends, Brown extracted £5bn a year from the pensions industry. A typical 30-year-old now needs to put an extra £200 a year aside for the whole of his working life to offset that one move. Peps and Tessas were taxed and replaced with Isas, but the amount eligible for tax-free savings has been steadily whittled away...

What makes Brown's policies appear so irresponsible is that they are the opposite of what the country desperately needs. This grab-what-you-can attitude has many consequences, but few discuss the indirect effect on business.

Fewer savers and smaller pension funds mean less investment for industry... It could also mean less cash for buying shares. It is also possible that it will become more difficult to raise money, especially since business angels will also be taxed out of the market.

A more obvious consequence is the burden to the taxpayer of an increasingly aged population - particularly one that has not been able to save sufficiently for retirement. We are constantly being warned about the "demographic time bomb" when the baby boomers become pensioners in the next few years, with fewer young people to support them. If these people are forced to depend on public benefit, requiring a wide range of help from pensions to health care, the level of taxes on individuals and businesses will rise to an intolerable level.

Yet there seems no alternative prospect. Such policies could amount, in the long term, to our children labouring without return in an impoverished business environment. Pensioners will live on a pittance in ill-health as their pensions get eroded and the NHS turns from a sick joke to full-blown disaster.

Well, that's all very cheering for a British taxpayer to read. I take no convincing on the points that the government is bang out of order in what it takes from us, that the state is forcing people to rely on public benefit, and that the NHS sucks. What I want to know is whether Michael Becket is right: Is Gordon Brown the most irresponsible Chancellor this country has ever had?

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Whenever, as is happening just now, a small Political Party seems about to get a big result, the Big Parties orate loudly about how a vote for the Small [fill in the name of the small party] Party will be a "wasted vote". What does this mean?

To me what it means is that the Big Parties have run out of good arguments to stop people voting for this Small Party in embarassingly unsmall numbers, and are instead resorting to a ridiculous argument which they hope will pack a punch despite the fact that it makes no sense whatever.

A large number of people in Britain have just recently realised that Britain is in the process of becoming a small clutch of provinces of a new country, EUrope. They have never wanted this, but until recently they did not notice that it was happening, so they saw no need to vote against it. Now they realise that it is happening, despite all the mendacious protestations of the Big Parties, and a Small Party has stepped forward to enable them to register their disapproval. And depending on how many people vote for the Small Party, the Big Parties will either perhaps change their policy of British provincialism, or definitely not change it.

Read more.

If all they did at elections was announce the winner, like on Oscar night, this "wasted vote" argument might have some force. But as it is, every vote is not only counted, but every total is announced, and scrutinised, and analysed. Any detectable surges of opinion are most definitely taken into account, even if only by the Big Parties concocting some different lies to replace their old ones.

To get more serious, and to prove my point by taking it to an absurd extreme, suppose that UKIP got absolutely no votes at all at the forthcoming elections, local and European. Would this be a result no different from UKIP getting the number they are actually going to get, namely quite a lot? Would that make no difference? You get my point, I hope. And if a large difference in the UKIP vote would definitely have a large consequence, then it surely follows that a small difference (the difference that one voter makes by voting UKIP or not or the case may be) makes a small difference.

It is being argued that more UKIP Members of the EUroParliament will not be able to do anything of consequence there, on account of disbelieving in the place. Nonsense. They will gather reports and anecdotes galore about EUro-ghastliness. They will learn more about how the EUro-system works, and get that much cleverer at fouling it up. Of course they will be able to do things to serve the purposes of themselves and of those who vote for them.

And besides, is a vote for a Big Party any less of a "wasted" vote than for a Small Party? Voting is not betting on a horse in a horse race, where you get actual money back if you back the winner, but nothing if you do not. So, you voted for The Government, did you? Well con bleeding gratulations. Try not to spend it all at once.

More fundamentally, why would voting for what you do believe in, and being counted and seen to have voted for what you believe in, be more of a "waste" than voting for what you do not believe in, merely because what you do not believe in is more likely to win? How in the world is that getting more of what you want?

In short, and not for the first time in my life (or the last time in my life I dare say), I agree with Perry de Havilland.

Read less.

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I recently gave a presentation in Bratislava, Slovakia, on the evils of 'competition policy' and the 'entry and exit costs' economic model, which is little more than an excuse for more business-killing government intervention.

My first trip there in 1991 had been as economic and political adviser to that country's Prime Minister when Slovakia was part of the Czech & Slovak Federal Republic (1989-1992). In those days, talking about a single tax band, a competitive advantage of Slovakia compared with Germany, why an independent Slovakia would actally reform better than under Prague tutelage and so forth was often like trying to explain Switzerland to a Pol Pot survivor.

The first photo that I took in 1991 was of the Iron Curtain seen from the Austrian side, a forest of trees leading up to the jagged line of a forest of rotting concrete.

This time on the way back I took a coach from Bratislava to Vienna airport. The following photos show the turnaround.

Slovakia’s ruling coalition: conservatives and libertarians
(photo taken at Bratislava bus station)



This Slovak election poster for the EU parliament
seems to get the message. (Sorry about the
quality but I snapped it out of a coach window
on a bend, outskirts of Bratislava)



Austrian Social Democrats know what they stand for:
No privatisation!
(dotted all over the Austrian countryside North of Vienna)

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I am watching a television show on Channel 4 at the moment about how an English couple fare in foresaking the home comforts and routine of life in Essex for the risk-taking venture of running a sailing school in the Canary Islands. As a keen yachtsman myself, I identified quite a lot with the guy who became fed up with a routine day job and dreamed of making a living in the sun. This television show, called No Going Back, has featured a number of couples, mostly young, who have emigrated in the search for a dream job.

In many cases, the people selected for the shows chose to go overseas either because they were bored with life in Britain, fed up with their jobs, their neighourhood, and tempted by the glossy magazine images of life abroad. But the programme makers never directly asked any of them if other factors drove them abroad, such as rising domestic taxes and regulations on business, or the rising level of crime and sliding quality of schooling for their children. Maybe this sort of stuff was considered a bit too political in what are essentially 'fly on the wall' documentaries about ordinary folk striving after a dream.

What is clear, more broadly, is that a lot of my fellow Britons have had enough of life in this damp little island off the European continent and want out. Some of the issues I mentioned in the previous paragraph have something to do with it. There have in the past, and indeed now, been examples of some of Britain's best scientists and entrepreneurs leaving the UK for friendlier and more lucrative places abroad. There is also the simple fact that Britain is so densely populated. It is hard to convey to those who have never been here and who live in big nations just how crowded the UK is, particularly in the economically vibrant bits, such as London and the southeast.

I would love to go and work abroad, if only to savour the experience of living in another land and broadening my horizons. I would, however, like to think that I take such a step for the positive reasons of spreading my wings, rather than because I have been pushed to despair by the state of this nation.

Of course, in years to come, Channel 4 may be screening a show about how a young couple from Essex packed up their belongings and decided to 'start over' in the recently terraformed Mars.

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In case anyone was wondering why the Republican Party is known as "the stupid party," it turns out that the Bushies, those erstwhile evil geniuses, have scheduled themselves to nominate W as the Republican candidate after the deadline set by several states for placing a nominee on the ballot.

Sadly, every state but one has scrambled to accomodate these patent screw-up. Now, I can understand Republican state legislatures amending their statutes in this circumstance, but why on earth would anyone expect the Democrats in Illinois to do so?

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Our own Natalie Solent posted a really good piece at her personal blog last night, about the fact that many, many bad things continue to be done to the world, but that the difference is that they are soon liable to be done with equal relentlessness everywhere, spread around the world evenly, in a way that will make it much harder to notice and complain. Time was when evil was done with maximum ferocity in country A, but hardly done at all in countries B and C, and the evil done by the evil was eventually obvious to all, even to those at first most inclined to support it. Sometimes it was even easier than that:

… To help you along to this conclusion the goddess History primly laid out several countries split into communist and non-communist sections so that you could watch one half sink and one half rise and draw appropriate morals. …

But not any more. Will the day come when that same goddess ordains that we are all to be governed by the same benign, suffocating, righteous, repressive elite, and no comparisons between them ruling and them not ruling will possible, because everywhere will be theirs?

What I fear is that a time will come when there will be no significant examples of difference left in the world. That possibility is still far off but for the first time in history the technology is in place for it to happen. Think about that. …

She mentions that extraordinary moment in history, notable for the fact that hugely important and portentous things were made to not happen:

I am haunted by the tale of the fleets of Zheng He, recounted in Guns, Germs and Steel. China's vast program of exploration, greater than anything Europe ever had, was turned off click! because of some otherwise obscure quarrel between two factions at court. The reason that there was only one switch was that China was unified.

And the worry is that, unlike the blood-sodden grindings and thrashings of evil in the twentieth century, the clicks we are about to be subjected to will be inaudible.

It is a beautiful and melancholy piece. David Carr rewritten by Jane Austen. It contains at least another half dozen sentences I wanted to copy and paste here, but since it is all there, go there, and read it all.

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The United Nations is seen by many, idiotarians and some otherwise quite reasonable people, as the nearest thing we have, in these modern times, to some sort of institution with 'divine' authority. I am sick of hearing about how the United States or UK or any other country is evil because it is acting without authorisation from the UN. It is therefore with glee that I relay any news showing that behind the edifice of self-righteousness and vast amounts of funds is all too human and corrupt an institution.

The Inter Press Service News Agency reports that the United Nations has been hit by a rash of new complaints about sexual abuse of women and children by peacekeepers, civilian staff and humanitarian organisations operating either with the blessings of the world body or under the U.N. flag. In May the news wrote about a UN probe into reports of sexual abuse by Congo staff, but things have 'progressed' since then.

A system-wide investigation was triggered by a report from Annan, who says that six out of 48 U.N. agencies operating in the field have received reports of new cases of sexual exploitation or abuse, mostly by blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers, during 2003.

The agencies that received the complaints include the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the U.N. Children's Fund, the World Food Programme and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Margaret Stanley of Ireland said:

Sexual exploitation, including all forms of trafficking and related offences, particularly in the case of vulnerable persons dependent on international aid, is completely unacceptable.

Rosemary McCreery, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management, specifically singled out the sexual abuse perpetrated by civilian, police and military contingents in Kosovo and in the Bunia region in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). McCreery said preliminary internal investigations this year had revealed ''widespread abuses'' in DRC.

The 'Washington Times' also reported that a soon-to-be-released book by current and former U.N. employees contends that Bulgarian peacekeepers in Cambodia in the mid-1990s were actually former convicts who agreed to serve six months in the Southeast country in exchange for their freedom at the end of their term. The Bulgarians were "drunk as sailors" and "rape vulnerable Cambodian women", according to the book, Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story From Hell on Earth. Bulgaria's ambassador to the United States has denied the allegations.

The investigation into such allegations are not examplary either and several delegates are complaining that the world body is not doing enough. Karen Lock of South Africa said:

The secretary-general's report had not elaborated extensively on measures taken to improve the conditions of refugees and vulnerable communities. It was hoped that those measures would be reported in greater detail to the appropriate inter-governmental bodies.

So we have oil for food or rather oil-for-terror and money for UN officials and assorted politicians, humanitarian aid that dare not speak its name and a sanctimonious veneer that gives tranzis and Guardianistas of all shades opportunity to draw on moral 'authority' for their deranged vision for the world.

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It's a tough job but somebody has to do it.

I have been doing my bit for the War against woman-hating, religious bigotry by checking out the Miss Universe finalists. Personally I think the registered Republican Miss USA looked much better than Miss Australia, the eventual winner.

Useful sociological experiment: check out Miss Sweden and try to focus on horrible tax rates in that country. So if Sweden had the burqah, perhaps they would have lower taxes. Tough call.

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Cecile Dubois begins a longish post here with a discussion of the fact that her classmates, teachers, etc., have now found out about her blog, and are all reading it. Where will that lead? Somewhere interesting, I feel sure. Her English teacher is reading all of it.

So what will her English teacher make of this, which comes at the end of the very same post? Here's Cecile taking a pin to the Great Blimp bimself:

… Michael Moore is my idol. His posters plaster my walls, and I'm dying to see his next film. I seriously like want peace in the world, and we should so elect him as president. Kerry is such a Nazi for me – we should kick his arse, man! We shouldn't have any enemies at all! I think we should instate Muslim traditions so another 911 doesn't happen, that way those funny people (heh heh) over there don't nuke us, and can freely migrate over here. Don't you just love France? I want to bring their culture here! I love America – but to make it even better, we should have more diversity! Let's celebrate the Palestinians – I'm going to dress up as a suicide bomber – it would fit me so cool. Don't I look sexy in that belt? I'm da bomb! (Tee hee!) Ah, Michael Moore. Amen to him. We shouldn't have guns. If a burglar comes in with one, I'll just roast him a pig and kiss him on the cheek – let him come in and steal my TV set – I so don't deserve it. We should also welcome the proletariat to power! We rich people are scum. Yo dude? Yeah, I'll meet you in front with your Mercedes Benz. OMG, did I say Mercedes Benz? Whoa! I meant electric car – gas kills! Peace out! …

What she should make of it is that Cecile must be encouraged to stick with the writing.

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The federal court sitting in (of course) San Francisco has struck down the recent federal ban on "partial-birth abortion."

First, I agree with this decision, but on federalism grounds, not the privacy grounds cited by the Court. Nowhere does the US Constitution grant the national government the power to ban any medical procedure, as far as I can tell. It is interesting that this particular basis for overturning the statute apparently never occurred to the (liberal/statist) federal court in San Fran. Liberal statists are horrified by any reference to the fact that the Constitution grants the national government very limited powers, as taking these limitations seriously would probably require either extensive amendment of the Constitution or the junking of over half of what the national government does.

Second, it is interesting to observe the politics around this decision. The statement by the abortion rights spokesman that whether a fetus feels pain is irrelevant to a woman's right to choose is utterly tone-deaf, and seems to be telegraphing a belief that at no point does a fetus acquire personhood that would negate or need to be balanced off against the woman's right to choose. That is a losing position with the American electorate, and probably explains the rather noticeable silence from the Kerry camp.

The doctors probably have the law, and the morality of it, about right according to this article. The seminal Roe decision granted/recognized a right to choose abortion up until the point of viability, and was basically silent after that. I am no abortion scholar, but I do not think that the Supreme Court has ever really expanded on this time period in any explicit way, although it has danced around it in a number of decisions on ancillary and peripheral issues. Doubtless the inveterate Samizdata commenters will refine my understanding of the law, but I think that viability is not a bad place to draw a line on abortion rights. The difficulty is, of course, that technology constantly pushes the point of viability backwards, but that is a discussion for another day.

However, whether the common medical understanding of abortion rights is correct in turn begs the Constitutional question of whether the US Supreme Court had any business overturning state laws on abortion in the first place. The underlying reasoning, relying as it does on "emanations" and "penumbras," has been endlessly mocked, and rightly so, for it signalled a Court that no longer cared much what the words on the page said, but rather what they wished the words on the page said.

This in turn showed a Court much less concerned with what the Constitution says than with what the Court says. This disregard for the plain meaning of the Constitution, although arguably employed in the service of individual rights in the abortion cases, paved the way for such utter travesties as a Court upholding extensive and explicit restrictions on political speech. Very little of the US Constitution's substantive provisions concerning the powers of government and the rights of citizens are still operative in any meaningful way, because the primary enforcer of the Constitution no longer cares to apply the plain language of that document.

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While researching for my weekly CNE Environment column I came across a barking mad website. This led me to another loony story. Unfortunately, neither of these would do for an environment column that is meant to present a credible analysis of the eco-fascist movement.

So I ended up with this story from the French TV station TF1. In what has to be the most perfect economic suicide note since the 1920 Soviet Constitution, the French National Assembly has voted to amend the French constitution so as to enshrine the precautionary principle by 328 votes to 10. This could make any future government decision to deregulate anything illegal.

It is a shame that the precautionary principle is not applied to government regulation: in the absence of any overwhelming proof that it will work, such regulation ought to be prohibited. One might expect such lunacy in the French Assembly to be supported by the extreme left and the Green parties (there are several of these in France). But no.

The "centre-right" parties of the UMP and the UDF voted in favour, the Socialists and the Communists abstained, and the Greens voted against.

If this was appeasement, it failed. So which story was the barmiest?

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...but not for us. We want to see if we can get anyone to make contributions, however large or small (large is better, of course!) to help out Stefan Metzeler's good work evangelising liberty and capitalism in Eastern Europe.

I met Stefan recently in Switzerland and what a very fine and exuberant gentleman he is. Any assistance will be gratefully received and duly passed onto Stefan. We already have a couple contribution (thanks!) and would love to pass on more. Our PayPal buttons can be found for the currency of your choice in your left sidebar.

Really large donations just might get you dinner with the Samizdatista of your choice (subject to availability)

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Well, anyone reading the latest headlines will have realised by now that the price of oil, and hence petrol, is zooming higher, following the latest violence in the Middle East, in this case, the attacks on western oil workers in Saudi Arabia over the weekend. The price of Brent crude passed through the $42 per barrel level by the time I had switched off my price feeds in my City offices, and for all I can guess, it could go higher still.

In the near term, all this is bound to trigger a number of responses from politicians and certain quarters of the commentariat. We need a "Integrated Energy Strategy", drastic cuts to petrol taxes, etc, etc. (It has already started, judging by the stuff beamed into the television channels which I can watch while burning off some decidedly non-oil calories in the gym).

Well, it is good to know that that the chaotic and unplanned world we know and love as entrepreneurial capitalism is already cranking out possible solutions to present and future energy needs, whether it involves biomass, solar energy, hydrogen fuel cells, and other technologies. The venture capital industry, still recovering from the fading of the dotcom boom, may gain a new life from energy projects of the sort sketched out in Wired magazine. Longer term, things such as nanotechnology and continuing developments in materials sciences could help us make lighter, and hence much more energy-efficient cars and better insulated homes and workplaces.

All to the good. The prospect of entrepreneurial solutions would be even brighter were it not for the current Western angst about nuclear fission and fusion power, given that it may be possible in future to build nuclear plants at much cheaper cost than at present and perhaps deal far more effectively with some of the waste problems that have proven so ticklish in the past (side observation - there are obvious security issues to do with nuclear waste in the current geo-political situation).

Overall, however, it would be well to remember - not that readers need reminding, surely - that a high price for X may be a serious bug for some, but a raging opportunity for others. I'd wager that a lot of the calmer economists and analysts out there are poring over the possibilities that exist in the energy sector and related R&D. We could be in for a rough economic ride, but surely, if the price of petrol keeps rising, the market surely offers a better bet for figuring out some kind of solutions that anything we are likely to see from our political masters.

And at the risk of pulling the chains of some of this blog's most loyal readers, it may also mean sales of SUVs will decline and folk, not just in the United States, will have to turn to smaller, and in my 'umble opinion, aesthetically nicer forms of automobile instead. But fear not, the current situation won't stop me blogging about the latest hot bit of stuff to come out of the Ferrari factory. Oh no.

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The storm over the revelations of prisoners' abuse in Iraq may have subsided a bit, however, the events have prompted Our Man in Basra to come out and offer his personal comments. His perspective comes from working and talking to people who deal with Amnesty International (AI) and International Red Cross Commitee (ICRC) in Iraq and elsewhere and from knowing their reputation in the Army.

I actually support the concept of an independent civilian organisation that moderates us [ed. armed forces]. There are often unconscious pressures to slip into "abuse", and they are most effective because of "socialisation", the process by which you take your cue for acceptable behaviour from those around you - that is why it is easy when standards slip for all to gradually slide down. Armed forces are designed to reinforce this process, and if the standard is not set from the top (as military hierarchy is designed to ensure it is) then they can slip down quickly.

That is exactly what happened in Abu Ghraib. There is therefore a need for an independent organisations such as Amnesty International or ICRC monitoring Army (and civilian) activity. They are a separate group, not subject to same socialisation, and so can act as a brake and ensure standards are maintained even if military's own system fails.

This relates to a more general point about Anglosphere intuitions being less corrupt in general and more effective. This is not because of better people, but better systems. This is why the United States as a country works so well with so many non-Anglo-Saxon people. In this context, one could think of Amnesty International checks as a sort of moral separation of powers.

However, Amnesty International and International Committee of the Red Cross have completely lost perspective, which in the long run is a pity for all of us. These organisations rely upon their moral authority, and in the past their most important and influential supporters have been people in the west with a strong moral sense and anti-despotic beliefs - whose faith in the ICRC and AI will be undermined once details of some current claims come out. As an anecdotal example that know of from a man working on the reports AI compile on us: They complained that Iraqis in Umm Qasr (British/US administered detention facility in the South) where being degraded because their food was handed out in plastic bags rather than delivered on some kind of trolley or plate. The Iraqis were not bothered, the food was perfectly good, but this was thought to be "degrading". This is an important point - when one of these reports comes out and accuses anyone of "degrading" or "humiliating" behaviour, etc, it is essential to dig deeper and see exactly what they mean.

The interesting question is why has this happened? I think there are a whole host of reasons feeding off each other:

1. Ignorance. The AI and ICRC are not monolithic, they have different people reporting in different places. It is a fair bet that the overwhelming majority people reporting on Iraq were not there before the war, because Saddam sure as hell would not let them. The same applies to every other Arab country. The investigators are therefore every bit as ignorant as the average journalist reporting on the country, with whom they share a lot in common, such as probably the same general meta-context and the same belief (with rather more justification) that they are there to uphold their view of civilisation. Not the local one.



2. The investigators are civilians (as they must be) but therefore often poorly equipped to put things in to relevant tactical perspective. These are not weasel words - to give a concrete example, suppose an Iraqi man has been "beaten up" by British troops; a clear case of abuse? This depends upon the circumstances. There is a world of difference between beating up a helpless prisoner once back in camp (this is clearly abuse), and, for example, using physical force to subdue a struggling looter, or an armed rioter. The whole purpose of Armies is to use violence, which cannot be defined as abuse every time they do without rendering the term pointless. It is moral infantilism to say that the context does not affect the morality of the act, and it is not clear that all of the reports or accusations take this in to account.



3. The above is essential to the most important point - Iraqis lie. This is not at all a criticism of Iraqis in a racial sense - being born Iraqi does not make you a liar. But lying reflexively to strangers is an entirely rational, indeed inevitable, response to living your entire life under a brutal and intrusive police state, in which the only efficient institution were the secret police forces. Therefore Iraqis have a neutral attitude to truth at best - they feel no automatic inclination to tell it the way westerners do.

   In addition most Iraqis have a strong sense of pride that prevents them from admitting ignorance. They will consistently claim knowledge they do not have, rather than admit that they do not know something. It is a matter of face, especially for the more important Iraqis. This was and is a constant source of frustration for anyone trying to gather information from them. They have lived their whole lives by exploiting any small opportunities the state bureaucracy may have given them.

   Most importantly, there is no punishment for lying to an investigator - what are we going to do, sue them for libel? Bear in mind as well that the vast majority of detainees were either looters, rioters, criminals of some kind (as the military, against its wishes, was stuck with running basic law and order) or actual ex-Ba'athists or terrorists. This does not give the slightest justification for abusing them, but it does suggest that they are not the most objective or reliable of witnesses.

   Now consider the following scenario:

   AI (or ICRC) investigator: We are investigating claims of brutality by British soldiers. We are deeply ashamed of such things, and want to assure you that we are not like the last regime; we will investigate any complaints, and we will compensate anyone who was unjustly harmed; do you know of any such incidents?

   Iraqi ex-prisoner (or even not): Why, yes I do I was beaten up, and so was my brother, and my cousin, and my father was shot, and all my family, and how much did you say the compensation was?

   It is an entirely rational economic act if you feel no obligation to the truth, a no-brainer gamble - money if you are believed, no cost if you are not.




4. All this is not helped by the seeming automatic tendency of the AI and ICRC to disbelieve anything the soldiers or military tell them but to believe anything an Iraqi tells them. I do not really object to their scepticism towards the military, wearying as it is - after all, in a sense that is their job. But to do a good job they should apply the same standards of proof and scepticism to both sides, not just one. If anything, the benefit of the doubt should belong to the military, who have a better record of honesty. Abu Ghraib, in the US military response actually demonstrates this. It was an entirely US military internal investigation that uncovered and closed down the Abu Ghraib abuses, not an AI or ICRC one.



5. Abu Ghraib has not helped, as it enables the AI, ICRC and everyone else to say "Look, these abuses have happened here, they could happen elsewhere, and the possibility must be investigated". Although it is fair to say that most of the reports currently in the press were prepared before Abu Ghraib became public knowledge. I have no problem with that conclusion - we are all appalled by Abu Ghraib, the military probably more than most.

   However, that is not the same as assuming that these things did happen elsewhere. Let's see proof, or at least strong evidence, before accusations are taken as smearing the whole military. Note to the media: Could we please distinguish between reservists, often great people but basically civilians with minimal training in uniform and who seem to have been almost solely responsible for Abu Ghraib, and the professional regular military? And if, as I suspect, poorly trained reservists are found to be involved in any other cases of abuse, can we consider how that reflects on the moral responsibility of politicians who try to cut corners on the armed forces by sending out civilians to do their job?




6. In conclusion, accusations must be investigated, but they are not proper evidence, let alone proof in themselves. They should be investigated by people with some understanding of the relevant factors, i.e. culture, situation at time of event, tactical realities, medical knowledge, etc; and with at least some parity of scepticism between the locals and the military.

In this case, they are so keen to be, and to be seen to be, impartial between different governments and people, and between Arabs and the 'West' that they seem to feel they must give equal reports of abuses by both sides, when in fact there is no remote comparison of treatment. Such reports are a disservice to objective truth by giving the false impression of a broad comparability of moral standing. Shades of the Cold War anyone?

I said at the start of this post, the current state of affairs is regrettable, because in the long run it will undermine the most important resource of both AI and ICRC, their credibility. And there may be times when we will still need them.

(5) (33)

The Libertarian National Convention may have reminded a few observers of Sartre's "No Exit" - each faction selected the candidate that would deny their rival faction victory, producing a nominee with little broad-based support. Or maybe it was more like the 1969 blaxploitation classic Putney Swope, in which a wildly unlikely darkhorse emerges out of similar circumstances at an advertising agency's board meeting. At any rate, the Convention certainly produced an unlikely candidate, Texas-based computer guru Michael Badnarik.

Badnarik entered the convention as a distant challenger to two better-financed candidates, Hollywood producer Aaron Russo and Ohio-based talk show host Gary Nolan. But acrimony between Russo's and Nolan's camps led Nolan, who fell behind in early balloting, to withdraw and endorse Badnarik, with the intention of tilting the election away from Russo. Badnarik finally carried a majority on the third ballot and became the LP's unlikely nominee.

Badnarik's campaign website, as of the time of this post, apparently has not been updated in 'weeks', as you are greeted with this message on the home page:

With the National Convention mere weeks away, we owe it to you to finish up our drive to the presidential nomination in style. Please consider NOW to be the optimum time to make a difference! (emphasis mine)

Moreover, it appears that Badnarik has not raised much money to date, and has not even had a professionally managed campaign, although I understand that a team is being mobilized rapidly. Candidate websites can be powerful fundraising tools, but right now, the only way to contribute online is (egad) via PayPal.

Badnarik's website also contains a link to a speech given at Washington University in St. Louis that contains, well, comments about the United Nations that he would probably rather have back. But there they are, out on the web for the whole world to see. (Scroll down toward the bottom, or just do a Ctrl-F search for "detonate.") Astute readers may find other causes for concern as they read through his position statements.

The election is still five months away, and Badnarik will have time to refine his campaign between now and November. I will keep an eye on the situation and provide updates (with the best intentions of objectivity.)