We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
I think Tom Burroughes is far to genteel with his treatment of EU Commissioner Chris Patten‘s remarks in the Financial Times.
My answer is not that the unilateralist urge is wicked but that it is ultimately ineffective and self-defeating.
Here is the core of the crypto-socialist beliefs of purported conservatives like Chris Patten. Only the collective approach works.
The attacks of September 11, in which citizens of more than 80 countries lost their lives, brought home in a terrifying way the vulnerability of the US and the rest of us to the actions of extremists plotting from safe places in failed states such as Afghanistan.
Indeed. That is why the ‘failed state’ which harboured and succored Al Qaeda was overthrown by force of arms and replaced with one more to America’s liking.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, it seemed that the US had rediscovered its need for allies to confront this common menace. The stunning and un-expectedly rapid success of the military campaign in Afghanistan was a tribute to American capacity. But it has perhaps reinforced some dangerous instincts: that the projection of military power is the only basis of true security; that the US can rely only on itself; and that allies may be useful as an optional extra but that the US is big and strong enough to manage without them if it must.
I suspect in fact the US actions were based on the quaint notion that a dead enemy tends not to plan further attacks against you and that time was of the essence, given that attack by Al Qaeda was not just a possibility but had actually occurred. Expeditious action was unlikely to have been served by waited for the participation of Belgian, Portuguese and Greek para-commandos. How long did it take for the Europeans to acquiesce in the tepid military action against the Bosnian Serbs who had been randomly shelling civilians in Sarajevo? Is that how long Patten expected the Americans to wait after September 11th?
I hope those instincts will not prevail, because I believe them to be profoundly misguided. The lesson of September 11 is that we need both American leadership and international co-operation on an unprecedented scale. It is in the world’s interest, as it is in the interests of the world’s greatest power, that leadership should be exercised in partnership.
The US said ‘you are either with us or with the terrorists’, which sounds like leadership to me. They then proceeded to blow seven shades of crap out of Afghanistan… at which point nations such as Syria, Sudan and Yemen started ‘co-operation on an unprecedented scale’ with the US. Sounds like leadership and co-operation to me. The problem lies in the Islamic world and this it is the co-operation of the relavent bits of the Islamic world that matters. If the people who flew the aircraft into the WTC were mostly French and German, no doubt there would be more of an imperitive to secure French and German co-operation. Of course partnership is pretty much the antithesis of leadership so quite what Patten means by leadership should be exercised in partnership is unclear to me.
Why is that so? Let me offer five reasons. First, every day makes us more aware of the interconnectedness of the modern world: a world in which America is at the centre of an increasingly integrated web, in which modern technology is corrosive of national boundaries and national jurisdictions. That makes it all the more important to work with those who share your values in order to protect them.
Exactly. Which is why the US worked with the UK and not Brussels. The US and the UK share values. The US and the EU do not.
Second, while globalisation – the combination of open trade, capitalism and technology – creates unparalleled opportunities, it also has a dark side. The European Union symbolises the ability of countries to come together to tackle common problems.
The ‘dark side’ of globalisation is creating global capitalist wealth generating networks which stasis based institutions like the EU and repressive regimes everywhere have great difficulty controlling. The ‘common problems’ Patten refers to are common to trade unions, subsidised farmers and protected national industries. The ‘problem’ they have is that they are trying to sunbathe and finding themselves in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. Patten said a few days after September 11th that the attack was ‘due to globalization’. So presumably if we restrict trade to within national borders and subject all economic activity to state regulation, Al-Qaeda would not have attacked the USA. Here is an alternate thesis: if for the last 50 years the EU and other trading nations had not protected their markets from Third World/Middle Eastern people trying to trade with them, the Islamic world would be far more prosperous and secular and integrated into the world economy and thus much less of a stagnant swamp of repressive governments and epistemologically crippled civil societies than they are now.In short, the September 11th attacks happened because people like Christopher Patten have limited globalization by trying to only let it happen on controlled statist terms.
Third, the international institutional architecture – from the United Nations to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organisation – owes more to the genius of American statesmen than to any other source. But these institutions are under threat. Their rulings are challenged with increasing truculence and impunity. They lack democratic legitimacy, which fuels the muddled movement against globalisation. They need to be nurtured or they will lose their authority – and we shall all be the poorer for it.
The UN, IMF, World Bank and WTO are idiotic institutions. Not because they are not ‘democratic’, which is just another way of saying ‘politicized’ , but because they are statist, which is to say, they are based on the premise that trade occurs between states rather than people and free associations (companies). Legitimacy does not come from democracy, it comes from non-coercion and free choice. And so does prosperity. Left to their own devises and without layer upon layer of regulations and tariffs, would companies trade more or less? Obviously more, and as more trade means more wealth is created, the problem is not how can states facilitate companies trading but how can companies prevent states and the whole alphabet soup of state-based organisations they create, from getting in the way.
Fourth, Europe cannot hope to match US military spending – nor should it even aspire to do so. Like Lord Robertson, the secretary-general of Nato, I feel strongly that European governments should increase their national military budgets, shouldering more of the burden for their own defence. But “security” is a wider concept. The EU, with its member states, is a massive provider of development assistance. We provide about 55 per cent of total international assistance and as much as two-thirds of all grant aid. That too is a contribution to international security. No one disputes the need for tough military action to destroy the al-Qaeda network and its bases. But if we are to deny al-Qaeda, and other networks, the territory from which to plan future atrocities, we have to do all we can to bolster weak or failing states and prevent them falling into the clutches of the bin Ladens of this world.
By providing “55 per cent of total international assistance and as much as two-thirds of all grant aid”…TO STATES the EU underwrites 55% of the problem, not the solution. It takes money confiscated from EU taxpayers and gives it to kleptocratic regimes across the world, who allocate the money on socialist-statist principles. Far from adding to global security, the EU undermines it. Far better would be to take that ‘aid’ money, which only aids the very regimes which lock-in the self reinforcing doom loop of politicized economics, and leaving it with the individual EU taxpayers to whom it belongs. If the EU insists on stealing it however, they would do a hell of a lot more for global security by spending the money on aircraft carriers rather than supporting flawed third world governance.
There is a final point. I need hardly say that as well as affection and admiration for America around the world, there is also fear and resentment. As the world’s only superpower, the US carries a particular responsibility to maintain moral authority for her leadership. Do your own thing and everything seems clear and purposeful; but there is a cost in terms of legitimacy and long-term effectiveness. That cost accumulates over time.
Almost invariably when someone says “I need hardly say that as well as affection and admiration for America around the world” it means nothing could be further from the truth and they are about to say something that proves quite the contrary. Patten represents a fundamentally illegitimate organisation which even by his own standards of advocating legitimacy-by-democracy is illegitimate. Who elected EU Commissioner Chris Patten.
So where does this leave us? It leaves me, at least, uneasy. I look to America – as I have always looked to America – to engage with a complex and dangerous world. There is much that is evil in that world. But to brand a disparate group of countries as an “axis of evil” did not strike me as the finest phrase ever produced by the president’s speechwriters. Of course we must oppose what is evil. But we must also build on what is good – and on what offers hope of a better future.
And what exactly is the good that ‘we’ must build on in North Korea, Iraq and Iran?
In Iraq, for example, we must redouble our efforts to get the inspectors back in and to support the opposition to Saddam Hussein. But in Iran? When some in Washington say that European policy in Iran has failed, my immediate reaction is that we need to find new ways to support reform there, not that we should put up the shutters.
Militarily crushing the entire political and military apparatus of Iran and Iraq would be pretty much an unmatchable way of ‘supporting reform’. That is no more ‘putting up shutters’ than the manner in which the US and UK interacted with Nazi Germany. We did not remove the ‘problem’ of Auschwitz and Belsen by prevailing upon the Nazis to allow inspectors to visit. If Iran and Iraq do indeed pose a clear and present danger, then it must be made clear to them in no uncertain terms that such actions will lead the USA to pose a clear and present danger to them. Publicly calling them part of an ‘axis of evil’ seems to achieve that pretty well.
In the case of North Korea, the sunshine policy of Kim Dae-jung offers the best prospect in years of bringing real change. In the Middle East, we need dialogue, not isolation and further radicalisation of the Palestinians.
Patten ended up by quoting Henry Kissinger:
“America’s challenge is to transfer its power into moral consensus, promoting its values not by imposition but by their willing acceptance in a world that, for all its seeming resistance, desperately needs enlightening leadership.” That sentence is not mine but the final paragraph of a recent book by Henry Kissinger. Is it overly candid of this friend of America’s to say that I agree with every word?
Finally I agree with Patten… or more accurately, with Henry Kissinger. Although the US should not seek to impose them, the sooner the US realises its policy of benign neglect is a mistake the better: it does indeed needs to encourage the willing acceptance of its values… by Europe.
I’ve just had one of those “builders nightmare” conversations. You know the one. “We paid them X thousand pounds and the roof had a hole in it and the floor caved in, and then we waited Y months, and paid Z more thousand pounds …” This particular story ended up in the High Court of the Isle of Man, where my friend did at least get himself a semi-happy ending and isn’t too much out of pocket. But until then, it must have indeed been a nightmare. (I decided to do this blog even as I talked with him, and told him to expect this piece here, and that I would email him how to get to it, which I did. So watch out for a surge in our viewing figure from 90 million to 90 million and one, any day now.)
Why are there so many stories like this, and especially in Britain? First, is it only a British thing? Do Croatian builders do this to Croat householders? Is it like this in Belfast (which is still, just, part of the “UK and Northern Ireland” state)?
Possible answer: UK tax law bullies everyone into “buying” somewhere to live if they can possibly afford this (by going deep into debt), and into not renting as soon as they can afford to buy. If there was no tax advantage in buying rather than renting, much more building repair work would be supervised by large, specialist home-owners whose repeat business would not be something to piss on, the way it is with the wretched individual, building-ignorant UK home-owner.
In general, the relationship between owning-or-renting and freedom is surely the opposite of what it is so often said to be by British Conservatives. Renting equals freedom, not owning. Most home “owners” in Britain are about as free as a bird locked in a cage, which is why your British Conservative so loves his “property-owning democracy”. It puts him and his friends in command of British society. (Or it would, if only they could get the democracy bit right.)
Did you know that during his one lifetime Ludwig Van Beethoven moved house over fifty times? In Victorian England, it is said that people would decide to move, load all their possession onto a cart, and then go looking for a new place. In that order.
He still doesn’t get it, does he? ‘Sophisticated’ Chris Patten, the EU Commissioner about whom I waxed indignant the other day due to his attack on George W. Bush for labelling certain states as evil, has not only defended himself today he claims he is not anti-American, but also repeats the daft idea that U.S. and the EU must deal with terrorism by tackling poverty, human trafficking and autocratic regimes without actually saying exactly how, or indeed reflecting on how such ‘jaw-jaw’ approaches have failed in the past.
Surely the point is that countries such as Iran or North Korea are poor because they are closed societies, and so are not likely to be improved by disbursements of aid from the Western taxpayer (has the EU approach improved things by giving money to Yassir Arafat?). Patten is playing a dangerous game. He gives the impression that he is privy to Bush plans for some kind of crazed military rampage throughout the globe even though so far the US has not shown its hand and certainly not to the likes of him. It is hard to escape the suspicion Patten’s depreciation of US ‘unilateralism’ is as much due to annoyance of being left out of the loop in matters that are none of his business anyway.
The EU political class must stop talking about the US as if it were some kind of immature adolescent incapable of acting intelligently without the input of their wisdom. Apart from being downright rude and bad diplomacy, it reveals a profound ignorance. I don’t know what goes on inside Patten’s head but I can help feeling he has not grasped the degree to which Americans have been shocked and changed by September 11th. Get out of the Brussels bunker, Mr Patten, you are not doing yourself or anyone else a lot of favours right now.
To end corruption in high places, don’t try to end corruption, end high places
– from Matthew Edgar’s blog, source unknown
After a long night of theatre and very loud music I needed something before heading back to the flat. What else but a New York Subway sandwich with Jalapeno’s… yep. In Belfast.
But don’t worry. When I was working in Manhattan I drank Guinness before going out for a Subway. Just like I do here.
Fair’s fair.
Yes, you can find some really great electric blues here. Not to sound like an agent for the Northern Ireland Tourist Board or anything… although a women friend of mine does work there. Rab McCullough’s band is simply on a level with the best you will find anywhere. He can compete with the best in the USA, and in fact has. He took 3rd in an international blues competition in Memphis a couple years ago. I stopped in to their gig at the Empire after the play since I’d not seen Rab in a couple months, and I’d just gotten an SMS message from a mutual former bass player of ours. Which is not at all to put myself in the same league as the unnamed bass player…
This is not a huge city, nor is Northern Ireland altogether very large. But the place has more talent per square meter than any place I’ve ever been. And that includes Manhattan. I’ve lived in the Village too, and I agree there are more fine acts there than in Belfast. But then, there are 10,000,000 people in New York City… and 500,000 in Belfast.
We’ve got you on per capita talent, no ifs ands or buts about it.
I have to add some comments on the play I was talking about, things that are simply “so Belfast”.
The play was held in Culturlann, a lovely venue in the very heart of Republican West Belfast. You can buy books down stairs on the history of the IRA. John is a actor born on the Protestant side of town with certain preferences common to actors. He wrote a play about a British born actor who settled in Ireland and was closely related to the various figures of the Irish revolution.
If you don’t understand how this all fits together, I am not surprised. You have to live and take part in Belfast for many, many years before you can hope to understand it. This is why I am usually smirking into my beer along with my native born friends when Americans come over and explain us to us.
Belfast is comprehensible. You just have to keep your mouth shut and listen for awhile… something that all too many people find impossible to do.
One of the perks of the arts community is that you get invited to things without having to pay. Arts people take care of their friends because like themselves, their friends are always broke.
Tonight I went to the night after opening night of a one man show by John Keyes, a marvelous actor. One of the top actors in Ireland actually. It was a very small crowd in a small venue… this is the trial run, the warmup before he takes it to London.
John is the agent for a close friend of mine, and although I knew he was a top actor, I only knew him in a social environment and had not actually seen him doing his professional thing.
I was awed.
He wrote the play and performed the two acts. Solo. One man show. He didn’t need anyone else. From the first word to the last I was rivited.
Well, almost. To digress… I used to do a great deal of theatre myself. Mostly tech, although I used to do work in musicals. I knew I was a mediocre actor. I pushed choreographers to new levels as they strove to find moves for three left feet… I got the parts because I could belt, pure and simple. Nonetheless, I decided that I was better off doing tech… and then someone talked me into producing a play. It’s that demon rum, something like that. Devil made me do it and it was a bad idea. I can only say that I did *not* commit homicide upon the director; I even went so far as to stop the cast from stringing him up from House One… and I never did theatre again. I was already losing pleasure in theatre because instead of watching the show, I saw the detail. I’d note the light cues, catch the flaws in the fields, nod my head at the use of a particular fresnel… in other words, the magic was gone.
So to come back to our story… I was watching John in the midst of a brilliant monologue and caught myself analyzing the reflections of the straw gelled PAR reflecting off the grand piano strategically placed as a distant backdrop behind him… and caught myself before it was too late.
That was my only slip of the night.
I won’t give you a lot of detail, but the show is about Michael Mac Liammoir, originally from London, who was a founder of the Irish theatrical tradition. A man whose passport was signed by De Valera himself.
The monologues and acting are brilliant. When John hits London, look for it.
I’ve read the posts on the recent EU regulation that nowhere in Europe should a workplace exceed 83db and did not think a great deal about it until tonight when I was standing up near the stage at an electric blues gig. There is a section of the bar near the speakers that is “musician country”. Everyone there is either a head or part of the family. It struck me somewhere arount the 3rd or 4th pint that the decibal level where I was standing was a bit beyond 83. Well, let’s face it. it passed 83 when the first chord was struck and went up from there. For myself, I’d hardly noticed it. If I’m due for hearing loss, the damage was done and finished with over 20 years ago standing in front of a speaker stack with my Hagstrom III cranked up to eleven. 83db? Is for wimps!
Which got me thinking. Where is the EU going to find someone with the pure balls to walk up to a rock band and tell them they are playing too loud for EU law? Thinking back to my own self in a younger and wilder format, I know exactly what would happen. I’d have stopped playing long enough to beat the crap out of him. Jail? Who cares? For most young musicians trying to make it jail would be warmer, cleaner and have better food that they can afford. Artists live on the fringe. Many bloggers comment on artists who have “made it” and that they are socialist. That might be true when they’ve got the gig with real dosh… but for most artists politics is just words. The enemy is whoever threatens your art.
Would you like to imagine what songs will be written if the EU starts trying to shut down punk rock bands?
And can you imagine what the regulation enforcers will look like walking out of a gig with a drum stick rammed up their arse?
Although I make my living (sometimes and poorly) doing internet infrastructure, my true home is in the art’s scene. It may be hard for those who have not live the life of the artist to understand the world of the actor, the musician, the fine artist… but no matter how long or how well I program machines, that is my true home.
The entry into the arts world is not an easy one, and not one for those who are weak of heart or who do not truly love their art for its’ own sake. I’ve paid my dues over decades and it lets me move freely in the arts world, and most particularly in that global brotherhood of musicians. There is an assurance in knowing you could be dropped anywhere in the world and inside of an evening get yourself sorted for a place to crash and pointers to where the craic is.
I’ve been out on such a night and have decided I should compose several short stories rather than write one long and disjointed article.
Due to the format, you are reading the introduction last… so just pretend you started here.
As Sandline International proved in Sierra Leon once when they dramatically improved the security situation before their good work was largely undone by the amoral drones in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, private military organisations can be a valuable and stabilizing factor in many parts of the world. It is interesting that there are progressive elements in the British government who see this. Not surprisingly many socialist Labour MPs are horrified at the thought of non-state owned military formations even existing, as if somehow only being a state makes the use of force moral. Yet if the 20th century showed anything, it is that nations are far more likely to use force to murder their own citizens than to fight foreign wars. Third world armies in particular are notorious for endemic human rights abuses and rather than protecting the societies that fund them, in fact pose the primary threat to them.
Highly professional modern mercenary outfits could give many small nations the best of both worlds: first world capabilities without third world problems. Also the hiring nation is not forced into being a neo-colonial supplicant that results from accepting British, American or (particularly) French military ‘assistance’. Similarly for countries like Britain or the US to contract out certain military operations is not just a return to practices that were common in the 19th century but give more ‘casualty sensitive’ nations like the US a good way to bring stability without making worthy objectives hostage to opportunist politicians looking to boost their exposure with every returning flag draped coffin. Companies like Sandline and Executive Outcomes are almost certainly the face of low intensity warfare in the future regardless of short term opposition because they make such eminent sense.
Over on the Von Mises Institute site, there is a superb critique by Ralph Raico of the final installment of Robert Skidelsky‘s airbrushed biography, John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain, 1937-1946 (New York: Viking Press, 2001). Raico makes it clear the extent to which dishonesty and revisionism have characterised this and other hagiographies of Keynes
It is now clear that [Robert Skidelsky] refuses to confront these shameful comments of his hero. So, for all practical purposes, Keynes’s fawning words on Stalinism have been thrown down an Orwellian memory hole, rarely if ever to reappear in the literature.
[…]
But if Keynes was such a model champion of the free society, how can we account for his peculiar comments, in 1933, endorsing, though with reservations, the social “experiments” that were going on at the time in Italy, Germany, and Russia? And what about his strange introduction to the 1936 German translation of General Theory, where he writes that his approach to economic policy is much better suited to a totalitarian state such as that run by the Nazis than, for instance, to Britain?
Read the whole review. Highly recommended.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
