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The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has called an election for October 9. So we get to choose once again between a fuzzy right-wing statism, or a "Blair wannabe" statism. You will excuse me if I do not get ferociously excited about this choice.

One of the worst things about Australian elections is the placards that political parties insist on hanging on street poles. At no other time of the year are any other organisation permitted to do this, but political parties do like their perks; inflicting an eyesore I call it.

I am not going to vote- I will defy the State, and not vote. That is an offence which will cost me a parking ticket fine. It is actually also illegal for me to advocate not voting to other people as well.

As to who will win, I think the "Blair Wannabe" Party will win; I wrote about this back in June and nothing has happened since to make me change my mind. In the great scheme of things, this is a small matter but it will consume the local media and blogs here for the next six weeks.

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Power and Glory: Jacobean England and the Making of the King James Bible
Adam Nicolson
HarperCollins Publishers 2003

A claim on the dustjacket states:"The King James Bible is the
greatest work of prose ever written," and the message of the book,
while not repeating it, is an elaboration of this claim; Nicolson,
though not quite a believer or an unbeliever, is obviously besotted
with the King James Bible, often called The Authorised Version,
though it was never officially authorised by King or Parliament. It
is now rarely to be found in the pews and on the lecterns of most
churches, and hardly ever heard in public worship, where its
language, already deliberately archaic even in its predecessors, has
also been discarded and God, just like everyone else, is addressed as
"you". If Christians are a minority in the English- speaking world,
then KJB readers and users are a minority within a minority. Does
this matter? The Centenary of its publication in 1611 is approaching
and is unlikely to be celebrated, or commemorated by as much as a
postage stamp, the excuse being that this would be 'controversial' or
'divisive', in the way that 1588, 1688, 1603, 1605, and 1707 were or
will be. Adam Nicolson has written a fine book, of interest to all of
us brought up on the King James Bible, quotations from which resonate
in the memory, even when not at once identifiable, while those from
all other subsequent translations set the teeth on edge. Here we are
told part of the story - for most of it is lost - of how this seminal
work was produced.

Why lost? The Translators (then and now capitalised), organized into
six 'companies' of nine men, left few clues as to their working
methods, their deliberations, discussions or disagreements and the
manuscript sent to the printers has disappeared, possibly burnt in
the Great Fire of London in 1666 (p. 225). Just as the whole
scaffolding to build a great edifice is taken down and dispersed, so
notes and drafts of the great translation ended up in the wastepaper
basket, with some intriguing exceptions, and the fifty workers (four
short of what there should have been) got on with their lives
afterwards, leaving no memoirs, let alone diaries, of what it was
like to have been on the project and not dreaming they had written
the world's bestseller, the Bible to dominate the English-speaking
world for four centuries and help shape the English language. Only a
few, fascinating scraps remain. Like the copy of the Bishops' Bible
(the text the Translators were supposed to revise) which the Bodleian
bought from one of them (or someone) for 13/4 (pre-decimal for 2/3 of
a pound), with his suggested emendations for the new translation
marked in it. Or John Bois, the rather humble, impoverished but very
learned Translator, who took notes of the revisers-translators'
discussions of the complete work and whose notebook has somehow
survived - everything in it written in Latin, bar Greek, of course.
This leads Nicolson to speculate whether the discussions were carried
out in Latin.

Read more.

It is almost certain that had not King James desired it, 'his' Bible
would not have been produced, and England, and Scotland too, would
have made do with one of the versions already extant, either the
'official', Elizabethan Bishops' Bible of 1568 or the Geneva Bible of
the late 1550s, favourite of the Puritans and heavily annotated
politically - and subversively so in the opinion of the King, a good
reason for replacing it; he banned its printing in England in 1616,
though it continued to be produced on the Continent. It is fair to
say that this was not his only reason. After he came to the throne he
made a real attempt to promote peace and unity in his kingdoms. He
ended the war with Spain, which had dragged on irrelevantly, but was
unable to unite Scotland with England into a single Kingdom with one
Parliament (the English objected). He also attempted - he was, after
all, its Head - to reconcile the two factions within the Church of
England, though this meant retaining the penal laws against Roman
Catholics, now, however, less strictly enforced. The King was used to
the Puritan faction; he had been up against its like all his life in
Scotland, where he was certainly not the head of the Church, with its
lack of bishops, its Presbyterianism and its Calvinism. The
reconciliation was only partially successful; bishops were
non-negotiable ("No bishops... no king"), and hard-line opponents
were excluded from the start from the Hampton Court Conference,
designed to bring concord. Indeed, with the king bringing out all the
disagreements, to some extent fudged by Elizabeth, the Conference was
a stormy affair and seemed to make things worse. But his wish to have
a new version of the Bible prevailed, and even though Bancroft, the
Archbishop of Canterbury had been an opponent of the idea, he took
charge of the operation to bring it about, perhaps to ensure the
Puritan element was excluded. Even so, men with Puritan leanings were
included amongst the Translators.

Bancroft's instructions are still extant; a copy of the first of its
two pages is printed as an end paper (why not the other?) and
Nicolson discusses each fifteen of their headings. As for the
translation itself, the Bible, including the Apocrypha, was divided
up into six sections for the six 'companies' of nine to translate -
and there, for the next four years, the information largely runs out.
The first instruction directs that the translation should be founded
on the Bishops' Bible, for it had been far from the intention of
anyone for almost the last eighty years to make a translation de
novo. The Bishops' Bible was descended, through the Great Bible
commissioned by Henry VIII in 1539, back through Coverdale to
Tyndale, who might have translated the whole Bible if he had not been
caught and burnt in Flanders. In fact, the translators looked at all
the versions that had been produced, including (without
acknowledgement) the one produced by the English Catholics in Rheims
and Douai in 1609. This backward gaze was to invite an archaic style
and there is every reason to believe that this was accepted as
desirable, and the Gothic font of the early editions deliberate.
Departing from Tyndale's spare, vernacular style, the Jacobean verges
on the rhetorical and orotund, or, as Nicolson prefers to put it,
majestical. But can one, if brought up on it, subject it to any sort
of literary criticism? Nicolson emphasises very much the reverence
for the original texts, translated with far less freedom than was
countenanced in rendering the secular classics into English, where
even the translator's own views might be allowed to obtrude. Yet this
did not mean literalness, or always using the same English word for
the original one in different contexts.

Perhaps from lack of information about the procedures and meetings
and discussions that the Translators must have endured, Nicolson
instead describes some of them, in order to give us an insight into
their characters and ways of thinking. It would have been nice to
have had more portraits; those he has included are most interesting.
Unfortunately, none of the eleven men in the painting reproduced on
the back of the dust jacket is identified (though one is plainly
Robert Cecil) in a picture entitled "The Somerset House
Conference, 1604", a Conference not mentioned in the book and
possibly a mistake for the one at Hampton Court. This is entirely in
keeping with the cavalier and slipshod way dust jacket pictures are
generally presented by publishers. In this fine, but anonymous work,
all have turned to face the painter except two who sit opposite each
other, in mild confrontation, the only ones with their right hands
just resting on the rich table covering, meticulously painted. Were
the two sides "Establishment" (obviously on the right, with Robert
Cecil at the front, notepad and inkstand in front of him) and
"Puritans"? And why was this picture not included in the book itself?

All fifty Translators (there were a few drop-outs from the
projected fifty four) are listed by their "companies" at the end of
the book. Most had comfortable ecclesiastical positions; eight were
or became bishops, eight were heads and twelve were professors of
university colleges; others had, or were given, prebenderies or
vicarages. The actual funding of the project is uncertain, but it
seems to have been understood that the actual Translators did the
work as part of the duties implicit in their positions. The printer
could be expected to make a profit from his work, having paid
£3,500 for the privilege, but in fact he went bankrupt. James's
chief minister, Cecil, probably eased the matter of expenses; he was
excellent with what would now be called 'stealth taxes', but James
was almost equally prodigal with what he secured.

The Translator Nicolson obviously found most interesting is Lancelot
Andrewes, Dean of Westminster Abbey, later successively Bishop of
Ely, Chichester and Winchester, whose manifold and often
contradictory qualities are listed like a threnody from page 26 to
27; at once sensitive, even saintly, and yet callous, he could
regularly spend five hours every morning in prayer (and in tears),
but sneer at a stubborn Puritan, incarcerated in a filthy dungeon,
who would later be executed, obviously with his approval (p. 92).
Known for the wonderful prose of his sermons (see p. 191, for the
passage borrowed by T.S. Eliot), he was just the man to make the new
Bible "shine as gold more brightly, being rubbed and polished", as
the Preface to the finished work, The Translators to the Reader,
probably written by Miles Smith, puts it. For the Translators were
careful not to impugn any previous translation, probably one reason
why all were revisions. Nicolson suggests that Andrewes may have
revised the bulk of the first twelve books of the Bible: "Most of our
company are negligent", he wrote dismissively, and Nicolson produces
some evidence to back this (p. 192).

The only lay Translator was Sir Henry Savile (price of knighthood:
£1000) who was lucky to survive his complicity in the Earl of
Essex's rebellion at the end of Elizabeth's reign. He was very much a
Renaissance Man and, as such, unscrupulous as well as learned (he
produced, with help, the definitive edition of St Chrysostom, at
enormous cost, which did not sell well), with an eye for a good
billet - Eton, despite the fact that the Provost was supposed to be a
cleric - and at the same time an unreliable patron, as John Bois, the
Latin note-taker mentioned above, found out. By another quirk of
survival, we know more about Bois than of most of the other
Translators, for a close friend wrote a memoir of this absent-minded
husband, devoted father and financially careless brilliant scholar,
and Nicolson uses it to illuminate one niche of the environment in
which the translations took place (pp. 203-215).

Early in 1609 all the nine sections were brought together for
revision by twelve unnamed scholars, meeting in the new Stationers'
Hall, for whom Bois was the note-taker. There is evidence, though
from a later source, that the whole Bible was read through: "one read
the translation, the rest holding in their hands some Bible, either
of the learned tongues, or French, Spanish, Italian, etc. If they
found any fault, they spoke up; if not, he read on (p. 209)." Nothing
could make clearer that the sound was as important as the sense.
Perhaps this procedure also accounts for the fact that two years
passed before a complete manuscript was ready for the printer.

It might be expected that after all the care taken in its production
- "three hundred and fifty scholar-years" Nicolson estimates - it
would be a great publishing success, but this was not the case. Only
after the Restoration in 1660, almost fifty years later, did it come
to take its place as the only Bible in English that all Protestants
read. Even the Translators were too accustomed to the Geneva Bible:
Andrewes' sermons are sprinkled with quotations from it and Smith (or
whoever wrote its Preface) did not quote from the Bible he was
presenting to the Reader, but from the Geneva, though in mitigation
it may be said that he would not have a copy of the new text readily
available. Likewise, a generation later, Archbishop Laud, scourge of
the Puritans, used the same Geneva Bible they favoured. There seems
to have been no definitive first edition and careless printing
ensured that editions were produced littered with misprints, the most
notorious being the 'Wicked Bible' where the Seventh Commandment
enjoins "Thou shalt commit adultery."

Nicolson obviously has little time for subsequent translations, but,
though he gives examples from both earlier and later versions to
point the KJB's superiority, he has to admit that Jacobean
scholarship was sometimes inadequate, particularly for tackling the
knotty prose of St Paul, and that superior original manuscripts than
those used have since come to light, or were even available at the
time. Oddly, he stigmatises the Revised Version, produced in 1885,
claiming that "it introduced a string of Jacobethanisms which had not
been in the 1611 text", though the words he lists are all
well-represented in Cruden's Concordance of the KJB, published in
1737.

The Bible, however translated, has not made a successful transition
from a religious to a literary work, though there have been several
attempts using the KJB, with titles such as The Reader's
Bible and The Bible Designed to be Read as Literature.
Though probably unknown today, Arthur Mee's lavishly illustrated
Children's Bible, is a fine example of editing, pruning the
KJB's 775,000 words down to 250,000. Nor is it likely that the Bible
could be taught as an example of Eng. Lit. without there being a
demand that other religious works should be admitted for 'balance',
though probably nothing would be able to compete with it for
narrative interest and comprehensibility.

Other books I can recommend on this topic are In
the beginning: The story of the King James Bible by Alister McGrath;The
Making of The English Bible by Benson Bobrick; and David Daniell's massive The
Bible in English.

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The problem I see with the libertarian pro-war position is that libertarians don't have recourse to the most powerful argument for the war: that it made the world a better place. Non-libertarians can yammer on about freeing poor Iraqis who were crushed under the thumb of Saddam Hussein, and that's definitely a benefit. But Libertarians don't believe it is OK to steal money via taxes and spend it on other people. Hence they can't use this argument.
- Patri Friedman

There has been a lively discussion in the comments section of Johnathan Pearce's article here on Samizdata.net When libertarians disagree. It has thrown up so many interesting points that I felt a new article on the issues might be a good idea. It is pleasure to see so much intelligent discussion of strongly held views without the acrimony and name-calling that so often characterises debate on the internet.

We have a problem that the label 'libertarian' sometimes it does not really inform as to what a person thinks, something which September 11th 2001 brought starkly into view, and I am not just referring to the more absurd uses of the term. For example a frequent commenter here on Samizdata.net, Paul Coulam, is a prominent libertarian and anarchist, well known in pro-liberty circles in London. He is also a friend of mine and has been known to get plastered at Samizdata.net blogger bashes. I too am fairly well known in the same circles and describe myself as a 'minarchist', or social individualist or 'classical liberal' or a... libertarian. I see Paul as a 'fellow traveller' of mine but clearly we have fairly major disagreements of where we would like to end up. We just agree on the direction we need to move from where we are now. I regard the state as probably indispensable, albeit a vastly smaller state than we have now, whereas Paul sees no state as the final destination.

In my view the minarchist 'classical liberal' view to which I subscribe means the only legitimate state functions which can be funded via some form of coercive taxation are those which can only realistically be carried out by a state, and which are essential to the survival of several liberty. The military seems a fairly clear cut example of that to me (with the proviso I would like to see the state military as only 'first amongst many') and possibly a very limited number of other roles, such as (maybe) a centre for disease control function to prevent plagues, and some form of superior court function.

So once you get over that core issue of small state or no state (no small feat), the rest is arguing over magnitude (also not a trivial issue), rather that whether or not you even have a military funded by some form of coercive action: that also means 'how you use that miltary' is an argument over degree rather than existence. In short I see the difference between a 'libertarian' (or whatever) of my non-anarchist ilk, and sundry types of non-libertarian statist as being one of the degree to which the state is allowed to accumulate coercive power.

Read more.

Certainly some libertarians fall at the trap labelled 'magnitude' as they cannot bring themselves to see the moral or sometimes even practical differences between the USA and Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. As I want a 'vastly better state' rather than 'no state', and as I also regard the process of getting a vastly better state involves holding 'the state' and its borders in considerably less regard, the idea of using' less bad states' to overthrow 'much worse states' does not really pose a great moral dilemma for me, particularly in the here and now of 2004.

I am not suggesting wars and struggles between states are a generally Good Thing but at the ends of the continuum, the moral and practical calculus does not seem that hard to me. Sure, the justification 'it makes the world a better place' is used by left and right statists all the time for all manner of things and sometimes they are even correct... but for me the test is 'but would the world be an even better place if the state had got out of the way and left private individuals to sort things out?' On that test, the state fails pretty consistently, which is why my 'ideal state' is one where it is permitted to act in only those very few core functions where private non-coercively funded action cannot do what must be done for the survival of life and liberty.

So yes, I supported war by the bloated regulatory nation-states of the USA and UK (and others) against Ba'athist Iraq and doubly so against the hideous national socialist regime in Belgrade, whose works I saw first hand in Croatia and Bosnia (a process that not only inoculated me against the Murray Rothbard virus once I was exposed to it years later but also left me with an abiding hatred for ethnic nationalism, a fondness for 338 Lapua and 'smile reflex' whenever I see an F-16). My view is that it is only a matter of practical consideration whether or not one should be shooting at tyrants and their servants and using other people's money to do that. My friend Paul is not a pacifist so I am sure we would agree that ideally tyrants should be overthrown locally and, ideally, for profit: where we depart is over when it needs to be done on the taxpayers dime.

Left to their own devices, tyrants accumulate to themselves the means to spread tyranny and so the notion that offensive war against a tyrant is morally wrong seems bizarre to me, particularly as I am not too hung up on the whole national borders thing when it comes to spreading liberty. The utilitarian consideration of 'are they too strong to just attack' is rather important of course, which is why I rather like the idea of attacking North Korea before they get nuclear weapons.

Why? Because it makes the world a better place.

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I recall, shortly after I first got myself on-line, frequently seeing the phrase 'ROFLMAO' appear on various chat rooms and fora. I had not a clue what this term meant but, after a little judicious detective work, I discovered that is was an acronym for the phrase 'Rolling On the Floor Laughing My Arse Off'.

Well, I was ROFLMAO when I read this:

TORY leader Michael Howard has been barred from the White House and told he will never meet President George Bush, it emerged last night.

The bombshell ban was slapped on Mr Howard after he called for Tony Blair to quit over the Iraq War....

What particularly upset the White House was Mr Howard’s comment: “If I were Prime Minister I would seriously be considering my position.”

They were also angered when the Tory leader accused the PM of "serious dereliction of duty".

Mr Rove, who speaks with the President’s full authority, said: "You can forget about meeting the President full stop. Don’t bother coming, you are not meeting him...."

And it has deeply damaged the decades-long alliance between the Republicans and the Conservative Party.

Senior US Right-wingers blame Mr Howard for undermining the coalition in Iraq and say they are privately rooting for a Labour victory in the next election.

A Tory source said: "They see Tony Blair as a true ally against terror and the Tories as a bunch of w*****s."

Wherever would they get that idea??!!

Although the cause of this spat is laid at the door of Mr Howard's apparent equivocation over Iraq, I get the feeling that the real friction lies elsewhere. Strange as it may sound, I have been reading what sound like reasonably reliable reports in the UK press about squadrons of young British Conservative activists hot-footing it off to the USA to work in the Presidential election campaign...for the Democrats!.

In the interests of accuracy, I think it ought to be said that this is far more about the Tories trying to pull some sort of rug from under 'Teflon Tony' than establishing any sort of link with either the US Democrat Party or Mr Kerry. But in any event, it is still a deeply ill-judged political blunder. The article alludes to an 'alliance' between US Republicans and British Conservatives and while I think that 'alliance' is too strong a term, there certainly has been a traditional affinity between these two centre-right Anglo-Saxon political tribes.

That being the case, one wonders what these jet-setting young Tories were hoping to achieve by throwing their lot in with Mr Kerry? There is nothing to suggest that a President Kerry would somehow undermine Tony Blair. If the Tories cannot make a dent in him at home, then how are they going to land any meaningful punches on him via Washington? And if they imagine that they are going to be the subject of any outreach by either the US Democrats of the Guardian-reading classes at home then all I can say is that they are even stupider than they look (and they look fairly stupid).

In short, the British Tories have managed to alienate one of their few powerful friends for no gain whatsoever and, since I assume that the leadership either gave their blessing to these transatlantic jaunts or, at the very least, turned a blind eye, then it merely reinforces my view that the British Conservatve Party is in the hands of buffoons and political pygmies.

I understand that the streets of New York will be plagues this week by throngs of the Great American Unwashed wearing 'George Bush=Hitler' T-shirts. I do not imagine that any such items of radical apparel will be making an appearance at the next Tory Party convention. However, I do wonder if would get any sales with a 'Michael Howard = Chief Wiggum' version?

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Time and time again,
translation seems to sabotage the words,
you know what is said,
is not what is heard...
- Soulwax, song: Conversation Intercom

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While shuffling through a stack of magazines at the barber shop yesterday, I came across the August 9th issue of The New York Magazine. While not particularly familiar with the publication, one of the articles caught my eye. It was a conversation between Norman Mailer (NM) and his son John (JBM) entitled What I've Learned About Rage.

If I was more into the political scene in New York I probably would have realized what was coming but I somehow confused the name Norman Mailer with Norman Rockwell (heh), so I read on preparing to receive some fatherly advice about managing emotions. I got a lesson, alright, but certainly not the one I was expecting.

From the article, I gather that the Mailers are insiders with the New York Democratic (Socialist) Party. Besides being further proof that the mainstream media is in the tank for Kerry, the article was mostly how the Democratic Party can arrange protests during the upcoming Republican (Conservative) National Convention in New York. Those protests have already begun. The goal is to cause the most disruption to the Convention while simultaneously gaining the most favorable press for the Democrats. Disgusting, but dirty political tricks are nothing new to either side. The elder Mailer even suggested those sneaky Republicans really, really want lots of nasty riots and so will be secretly stirring up protests against their own Convention. I can not speak for the Republican planners, but that thought certainly gave me a rather nauseating glimpse into Mr. Mailer’s political mind.

Anyway, what really flabbergasted me was a something only a few paragraphs into the article where the younger Mailer dropped this little bombshell:

JBM I feel we've entered a realm where the question is, whose propaganda is better? The left (Democrat) is beginning to figure out that they can't beat the right (Republican) with intelligent argument. They need punch phrases that get to the heart of the average American...

Excuse me? Your party can not win with intelligent argument? Is that because you have no intelligent arguments to make or because the majority of people are too stupid to understand? This suggests either a very deep flaw with your basic tenets or a very dim view of the population in general. JBM continued with:

... If that's the case, what is the future for our country?

What indeed? The elder Mailer had a ready answer.

NM That’s not my first worry right now...

Double excuse me? You do not care what happens to the country as long as you win? I am beginning to understand why your party is bereft of intelligent argument!

Now, maybe I am just naïve. Maybe this is really how all politicos feel. But when was the last time you supported a group who proudly proclaimed: "Our side is wrong. We do not care. If we make enough noise, you idiots will still vote for us"?

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A smart and thought-provoking blogger I have recently come across, Perry Metzger, who seems to hail from the anarcho-capitalist bit of the libertarian intellectual universe, does not like the way this blog has supported the military ouster of Saddam Hussein. Now, of course another certain Perry (de Havilland) of this parish thinks rather differently.

Metzger asks how it is that folk who are so ardently opposed to the State can possibly countenance the use of force, including appropriation of wealth via taxation, to topple another regime deemed to be dangerous. Well, it is actually quite easy to answer that question in my view. First of all, not all libertarians believe a free society can exist without a minimal state, including one with the ability to provide external and internal security, which may include the need to take out violent and hostile foreign regimes.

Second, the supposedly sacred libertarian principle that thou shalt not initiate force against another is not very useful when it comes to judging whether regime X or Y poses your country a particular threat or not, and whether action of a Bush-style pre-emptive sort is justified and perhaps even more important, whether it is prudent. Good people will and do differ a lot about that.

Such disagreements cannot in my view be arbitrated solely by referring to abstract moral principles - although principles are of course crucial - but have to be also judged on events, by weighing up the possible consequences of an action or taking no action. In fact, taking no action and adopting a purely reactive approach to defence will also have consequences, not all of them necessarily good ones. There is no easy way to say which approach will always be better. So even two ardent libertarians who read a situation in the Middle East, say, could differ on fine points and end up having precisely the sort of heated debates we get in the comments sections.

I have changed my mind on so many aspects of the current war in Iraq that my head will probably explode at some point. At one point I felt the whole affair was a dumb mistake and we would have been better off leaving Saddam in his palaces and let things run on awhile. But regardless of what I thought about facts on the ground and the news reports I read, I honestly do not feel that appeals to higher tenets of libertarian theory really ever decisively swayed my mind about the particulars one way or the other.

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It appears that Sadr and his Islamo-fascist militia will be allowed to slip away from the Mosque of Ali in Najaf without further harm. Even if they are indeed disarmed (yeah, right) before they withdraw, the fact their organisational infrastructure will be left intact calls into question the whole point of opposing him in the first place.

It seems to me that there are really only two sensible ways to see this:

Either conclude that following a policy of using force to confront Islamic extremism is too bloody to stomach, leading inevitably to adopting a policy of withdrawal from wherever Islamic terrorism threatens modern global civilisation...

...or conclude that once a decision to use force is taken, it will be followed through robustly and ruthlessly with the intention of killing fundamentalists leaders like Sadr and ideally as many of his hardcore supporters as is practical as well.

In reality I expect neither clear conclusion will be reached in the corridors of power in Washington DC (and do not get me going about the buffoons who run the Foreign Office) and a middle-way fudge that is already being offered up in the established media will be the perceived wisdom as key elements of the political classes work to keep the world safe for Sharia, legally enforced burquas, clitoridectomy and judicial amputations.

Surely the best way to ensure the survival of a tolerable regime in Iraq is to fill the graveyards with as many Islamic extremists as possible. If that policy is not acceptable, then surely one has no business using force to begin with as it seems perverse to kill people unless you are willing to do so for a damn good reason... either fight a war or do not, the middle way just gets you the worst of both worlds: you are hated for the people you kill and held in contempt for the people you would not kill.

The opportunity was there to turn the mosque of Ali into a funeral pyre of Islamic political aspirations. Today was the very last chance to do exactly that but it looks like the opportunity will drift away by this evening.

What a pity.

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Perry de Havilland has pointed out previously that film critics seem to regard it as safer to sneer at films than to praise them.

Praise a film (at least praise a serious but non knee-jerk leftist film) and you run the risk of being considered weak minded. Sneer at the film - and you are a sophisticated person who is not taken in by commercial tricks.

The film critic of the Daily Telegraph is one of the sneering school of critics (that a Conservative newspaper allows its cultural coverage to be dominated by the standard knee-jerk crowd is, sadly, normal). In his review of The Village he duly sneered at the film - and, for good measure, sneered at The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable as well.

Well this got my attention (which, I suppose, is the point of a review) as I liked both of these films. Many people got to see the Sixth Sense - but, and in my opinion unfortunately, most people followed the far stronger and more unified critical attacks on Unbreakable and did not see the film.

Recently Unbreakable has been shown on British television and many people have said to me that they thought it was a good film. "Did you go and see Unbreakable when it was on at the cinema?" - "No, because the critics said..."

It seems to me that what the critics really hated about Unbreakable was that it was not 'tongue in cheek' or a 'good romp for the kids' but also did not make any 'serious' (i.e. leftist) political points. Unbreakable was essentially a non political but serious film which examined the question of what if a man really did have 'special powers', why would he deny them - and what would make him not deny them.

Of course one could say "Of course old Paul Marks liked the film - the hero is a bald security guard" as I am a bald security guard. However, the film stands up in the view of most people who have seen it (and most of these people are not bald security guards).

As for The Village itself:

Well yes, I liked the film (so thank you to Daily Telegraph reviewer for sneering at it - otherwise I would not have gone to see it). There are a couple of twists in the film (one fairly mild another more radical), but the film is well made, does make sense (and the more you think about the film, the more sense it makes that certain things happen the way they do) and was a good film to watch.

If you go to see the film (because of what I write here) and do not like it - well I am sorry to have badly advised you. However, at least I am giving my honest opinion - not just sneering to seem hip.

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I have not really managed to develop much of an interest in the Olympic Games currently underway in Greece. I am watching the television right now. A bunch of Greek 'fans' are objecting to some US athletes for reasons I cannot quite seem to understand, judging by the less than helpful BBC commentator team.

The Games are not supposed to be about nationalism, and yet the constant focus seems to be on how many of 'our' (British) athletes have won how many gold, silver and bronze medals. When the Games are completed, there will be the usual bleating/gloating over how well 'our' men and women did. If 'we' do badly, be ready and primed for a great wailing about the unsportiness, unfitness, lack of moral fibre blah blah of young British folk.

It is easy to forget that the Olympics were originally envisioned as celebrating the value of individual achievement and struggle over nationalistic competition. I think it is fair to say that this hope has been well and truly thwarted.

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Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
- H.L. Mencken

Which is what is so great about blogs and the blogosphere. Got a view about something? Set up your own 'press' and blog it.

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The one thing I know government is good for is countervailing against monopoly. It's not great at that either, but it is the only force I know that is fairly reliable. But if you've got a truly free market you only have a free market for a while before it becomes completely regulated by those aspects of it that have employed power laws to gain a complete monopoly.

The above paragraph appears in the latest edition of libertarian magazine Reason, one of the best and most thought-provoking mags out there in my opinion. The quote is taken from John Perry Barlow, veteran campaigner for civil liberties issues, scourge of government attempts to invade privacy, and a writer of lyrics for none other than the Grateful Dead.

And yet the above quotation is to my mind a piece of economic illiteracy so bad that I was rather surprised that the Reason interviewer, Brian Doherty, let him get away with his assertion about the free market so easily. However, where Reason failed, Samizdata can step in.

First off, when Barlow talks of 'power laws', what exactly does he mean? If he means stuff like draconian copyright laws, or licencing privileges to shaft potential competitors, then surely such things are the creation of governments and not a feature of a 'free market'! Most of the restrictions on competition which bar entrepreneurs from entering a field were created by governments in response to business lobbying. That is clearly a bad thing, but it is weird for Barlow to suggest that the remedy to such abuse of power is to 're-regulate' the market to somehow make it freer. The solution to the problem is surely to cut the state down to size so that it cannot disburse such corporate welfare privileges to vested interests in the first place.

In holding this view, Barlow makes the classic mistake of so many folk who think they have discovered a fatal flaw in capitalism in that some sectors of an economy get to be dominated by one or two major businesses such as Microsoft or the aluminium firm Alcoa. "Monopoly!", they cry, before demanding anti-trust style laws to break up businesses into smaller, supposedly more 'perfectly' competing bits. (Yes, I know Microsoft's particular circumstances are open to many legitimate attacks - I am not an apologist for them, in case commenters bring this up). This view is based on the failure to grasp that just because a firm has X percent of a market share and is very big, it is therefore somehow able to coerce folk into buying its products. However inconvenient it may be for me to avoid using the products of Bill Gates, say, I can do so. Microsoft or General Motors do not force me to buy their services at the point of a gun.

Another mistake linked to this confusion about monopoly is the failure to see that competition is not a state of affairs desirable for its own sake, but rather a dynamic process in which economic actors like businessmen are trying to figure out new and better ways to satisfy demands and also to come up with goods and services previously unthought of. At any one freeze-frame of an economy, there will be big, mature businesses fighting to hold their ground and operating on thin profit margins; medium-scale firms still posting sharp growth, and embryonic small fry waiting to burst into the scene. If a big firm with a large market share takes its eye off the ball for a second, it quickly can be overtaken by a previously unkown upstart, as indeed happened to IBM and other firms once thought to be invincible by critics like Barlow.

Big businesses are often the worst defenders of free markets, and are often only too keen on spending millions of their shareholders' money in lobbying for tariffs and other cushy deals from the State. But to expect the State, given its terrible track record, to make the market more "free" is one of the dumbest delusions there is.

Addendum: Thomas Sowell's excellent Basic Economics is a good place to clear up the sort of economic fallacies such as Barlow's.

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As the French celebrate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Paris from Nazi occupation , it seems to me entirely appropriate to draw attention to a rather more sanguine view of French history.

French-bashing has always been something of an indulgent British cultural habit that appears to have caught on in the USA where I get the impression that it is fast becoming a national pastime. Speaking for myself, I find most of its manifestations to be crass and juvenile but that should not deter any serious and critical examination of the key role played by the French state in much of the darkness and turmoil that has so overshadowed the 20th Century.

Professor Christie Davies has done just that in a forthright and trenchant essay for the Bruges Group:

The French defeat in 1870 decisively confirmed France's decline from being the most powerful nation in Continental Europe to that of a feeble and unimportant country rapidly falling behind Germany in population, economic importance and military strength. A decent and sensible country would have accepted that its relegation to the second division was inevitable but the French now tried to drag every country they could find into fighting the Germans. The French threw enormous sums of money into the economic development and thus military strengthening of Russia, then lost it all and nearly ruined themselves. The French shamelessly manipulated the guileless British into thinking they ought to be at the heart of Europe even though they never got further than the Somme. This delusion of an enfeebled France that it somehow had a historic right to dominate Europe, if not by force then by chicanery, is still the source of many of our more recent problems.

As I am not a historian I cannot vouch for the accuracy (or otherwise) of the various factual claims and I suppose it behoves me to point out that the Bruges Group is a think-tank staffed mainly by Conservatives who take a famously hostile view of the European Union.

That caveat aside, Professor Davies essay makes for a compelling, tragic and utterly damning read.

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Well, since people don't want to talk about the really big issues (the mainstream media v. blogdom cage match), we might as well give 'em what they do want: the Kerry kerfuffle.

For agonizingly detailed analysis of the blow-by blow, then either Power Line or Captain's Quarters is probably the place to go.

My take:

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass what Kerry did as a soldier in Viet Nam all those years ago, just as I don't really care what George Bush did as a pilot in the National Guard. Both seem to have served adequately well, and I would be perfectly happy to let sleeping dogs lie. I am perfectly willing to stipulate that nothing either man did as a soldier has any relevance to their race for President.

End of story? Not really, because the Kerry kerfuffle is not really about what John Kerry did as a soldier. As far as I can tell, the Swifties are not accusing him of war crimes (Kerry handles that all by himself, not that anyone believes him). They are not even accusing him of incompetence, really. Even by the Swifties' account, he brought all his men home, killed a few bad guys, and generally carried out his mission as well as most young officers. Plenty good enough.

No, the current controversy is not about what Kerry did as a soldier, its about what he has done as a politician. Kerry's career as a politician predates and encompasses his brief military career. He was an anti-war activist before the war, something of a glory hound during the war, returned to anti-war activism after the war, and has been a professional politician just about ever since.

Once you put the Swifties' attack on Kerry in this context, they raise some very troubling questions. Kerry's entry into the military, framed as it is by anti-war and anti-military activity, begins to look like opportunistic ticket-punching. His medals look like more of the same, especially when you look at how they have been used by him as props for his political career ever since (he famously pretended to throw them over the White House fence, only he did not, and now hangs them on the wall of his office). Indeed, Kerry has built his career on the foundation of his four months in-country, and has done so in a way that highlights what many see as fundamental character flaws. Kerry has very characteristically tried to straddle the fence on Viet Nam, claiming on the one hand to be a war hero and on the other to be an anti-war activist.

The Swiftie attack is not on his service as a soldier, it is about how he has used that service (cynically and opportunistically, in their view) to advance his political career. The Swifties are saying that the anti-war side of the straddle disqualifies him from leading America in the current war, which is a purely political argument that does not touch on Kerry's service as a soldier.

They are also saying that the war hero side of the straddle is a fraud. Note that their quarrel is not really with what he did on the ground, it is with what he claims he did (in the military paperwork that resulted in his medals, and in his admittedly exaggerated accounts since then). What happened in the actions that resulted in his medals will be hard to sort out, but I would say the Swifties have landed some telling blows. Principally, Kerry has abandoned "Christmas in Cambodia," the critical turning point that allowed his brave soldier and anti-war activist personae to co-exist.

Good lawyers know that nothing is more important than framing the debate. The Swifties, in their rage at Kerry for, in their view, stabbing them in the back, have not done a very good job of clearly framing this debate as being about Kerry the Cynical and Opportunistic Politico, rather than being about Kerry the Brave and Noble Swabbie. That will probably, in the end, rob their campaign of much of its power.

The folks who want Kerry to take power want to frame the debate as being about Kerry's service as a soldier, so they can delegitimize and confuse the issues raised by Kerry's career as a politican. Just because the mainstream media, who are pretty comprehensively in the tank for Kerry, are falling for and enabling this strategy, does not mean you have to.

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There are many annoying things about computing but one of those things that is most likely to reduce me to screaming at the monitor and firing up Google to hunt down the home addresses of certain programmers is rude software.

Yahoo is a particular offender. Download and install their Yahoo Instant Messenger (or better yet, do not) and you get, unasked for, an icon in the taskbar and two more in Internet Explorer, all without so much as a 'by your leave'. Install the whole suite of Yahoo products and you get even more. This is 'interruption marketing' and contravenes the cardinal rule of 'do not piss off the customer'. If I wanted the frigging icons taking up my screen real estate, I would have damn well asked for them. So if you find that as intolerable as I do, download Trillian and use Yahoo Instant Messenger's services without actually having to sully your machine with Yahoo Instant Messenger. Hey Yahoo, my response to you trying to shove your products in front of me? Let's try "Screw you, I am going to use your more congenial competitor". I am willing to pay to be treated more to my liking.

Read more.

The same 'interruption' ethos can be found all over the internet. The most extreme form is practiced (mostly by porn sites) via complete browser hijacking, persistent pop-up windows and the criminal practice of trying to covertly download diallers and other adware/malware onto your computer. Less extreme but more common are simple intermediate link hijacks. For example if you are a gamer, you might want to check out the well known site Gamespy for up to date news on the subject. But every now and again, you will find yourself confronted not with the Gamespy page whose link you just clicked but rather a bright green page with an advertisement that will eventually release you and send you to where you actually want to go on the site. No doubt Gamespy thinks hijacking some of your valuable eyeball time is a small price to pay for their well informed site.

No, I beg to differ. In fact not just "no" but "get stuffed" is my real reply. If you want to subject me to advertisements, bloody well ask me if I mind first. And my answer will be "No thanks, I mind very much". Not an option? Fine, then I will take my eyeballs to Worthplaying.com, whose coverage of games is just as good and whose advertisements are far less intrusive.

If popup advertisements and link hijacks do not bother you, all well and good, you see things the way 'they' wish we all did. Speaking for myself, my time is far too valuable to waste on information I was not looking for. The internet is filled with many choices and that means there is no need to tolerate that sort of 'push advertising' approach. Internet advertising is cheap so the cost of indifference is far lower per pair of eyeballs than, say, a magazine advert. But that is not true if the advertisement has the opposite effect you want. If your company tried that on me, the consequences will be negative value for your money. Not only does interruptive advertising not work on me, it actively makes me your enemy and induces me to spend some of my valuable time to seek out alternative ways to achieve my objectives that will definitely not include you. And I am far from the only one who feels that way... your competitors are only a few clicks away.

Read less.

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James Lileks, riffing on John Kerry's nomination speech last month:

My life today would have been much easier if I hadn’t been struck with the vision of a former president taking the podium in Boston to announce “I’m Bill Clinton, and I’m reporting for booty!”

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I would guess not, because he was complaining bitterly about the regulatory nature of the British government, in an article which drew a dry smile.

After making the confident predicition that the world as we know it will end, on the grounds we are running out of oil, Monbiot presents for our admiration a commune in Somerset. But our hippy heroes found to their dismay that regulations thwarted them at every turn:

Peasant farming, the settlers have found, is effectively illegal in the UK.

The first hazard is the planning system. The model is viable only if you build your own home from your own materials on your own land: you can't live like this and support a mortgage. So the settlers imposed more rules on themselves: their houses, built of timber, straw bales, wattle and daub and thatch, would have the minimum visual and environmental impact.

But the planning system makes no provision for this. It is unable to distinguish between an eight-bedroom blot on the landscape and a home which can be seen only when you blunder into it.

...Then the environmental health inspectors struck...

... Tinkers' Bubble, which has never poisoned anyone, is now forbidden to sell any kind of processed food or drink: its cheese, bacon, juice and cider have been banned.

I think it is just hilarious that the hippies of Tinker's Bubble, who have imposed all manner of self-regulations on themselves, find themselves so hindered.

The State is not your friend, even if you are a hippy on a commune.