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]
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On November 19, 1941, the light cruiser HMAS Sydney of the Royal Australian Navy was returning to the port of Fremantle after escorting the troopship Zealandia to Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. The Sydney spotted what appeared to be a merchant vessel about 150km off Shark Bay on the coast of Western Australia. As it happened, the vessel in question was the quite heavily armed German merchant raider HSK Kormoran, painted black and disguised as the Dutch vessel Straat Malakka. The Kormoran had been responsible for sinking ten merchant ships in the previous year in the South Atlantic and Indian oceans, but it was not initially identified by the Sydney.
Whilst attempting to identify the unknown vessel, which was sending out deliberately unclear and ambiguous flag signals, the Sydney chased and overhauled the Kormoran, approaching to a distance of approximately 1000 metres from the Kormoran. At this point, the Kormoran opened fire. Sydney was hit approximately 50 times, causing severe casualties on her bridge and open decks, damage to her gun turrets, and apparently damage to both sides of her superstructure that caused complete destruction of her lifeboats and rafts, and setting the ship on fire. Sydney retaliated, and caused severe damage to the funnel and engine room of the Kormoran. Sydney then left the scene, heading south. Kormoran was so badly damaged that the ship had to be abandoned. Sydney was last seen listing and on fire, and flames were seen and explosions heard from the crew who had abandoned the Kormoran as the evening progressed.
The bulk of the crew of the Kormoran (over 300 people) were either rescued by Australian ships, or managed to sail their lifeboats to the Australian mainland. They were imprisoned in Prisoner of War camps, where they remained until 1947. The crew of the Sydney were not so lucky, however. Neither the ship or anyone on it were ever seen again. Apparently the destruction of the lifeboats and rafts meant that when the ship sank it went down with its entire crew of 645 people.
For people in Australia who lived through the Second World War, the loss of the Sydney is a moment that is always remembered and recalled. Losing one of the largest vessels in the Australian Navy did terrible things to Australian morale, and the mystery of where the ship went down and exactly how it was lost is something that has led to controversy, disagreement, and even the odd conspiracy theory involving the Japanese. The Sydney went down two weeks before Pearl Harbor. The fact that the only knowledge of the battle and how the Sydney was lost came from the enemy has heightened this sense.
The next six months were very bleak ones for Australia in the war. Eight ships (including the Zealandia) were sunk and there was much loss of life and property when a massive Japanese air raid attacked the Australian city of Darwin on 19 February 1942. More bombs were dropped in this raid than had been dropped on Pearl Harbor two months ealier. This was the first of over 100 air raids on Northern Australia in 1942 and 1943. The 8th Division, which the Zealandia had transported to various parts of tropical Asia as the Japanese threat loomed (but which had been trained for desert warfare against Nazi Germany) suffered a series of terrible defeats, and was essentially destroyed as a fighting unit by the middle of 1942. The Japanese Navy made serious incursions into the water off the east coast of Australia, culminating in the midget submarine raid on Sydney Harbour and shelling of Sydney and Newcastle by Japanese submarines in May and June of 1942. At the time if was feared by many that a Japanese invasion of Australia was imminent.
Of course, this did not happen, but it was a terrible moment in Australia’s history, and one that largely took Australia by surprise. In my mind that six month period from the sinking of the Sydney is when Australia ceased to be British. That Australia was in a different part of the world, and had different interests and different priorities and potentially different allies from Britain was something that could no longer be denied by anyone. While for most practical purposes Australia had been an independent country for decades by this time, a law was passed (The Statute of Westminster Adoption Act of 1942) that made this unambiguously clear. Those symbols of nationhood that Australia had not adopted for itself prior to this time were adopted soon after the war. Australia’s foreign policy ever since this moment, including Australia’s very close alliance with the United States and Australia’s decision to keep relatively small but extremely modern and well trained armed forces are really a consequence of what happened in this six month period of the Second World War. The loss of the Sydney was in a way an atypical part of this terrible six months. It was sunk by a German vessel, and the war was ultimately with Japan. However, the loss of the Sydney was a landmark event in Australian minds.
Which is why the mystery of what had happened to Sydney has been a long-standing and long-running one in the Australian psyche. It was one of two mysteries from the Second World War, the other being what happened to the third midget submarine that entered Sydney Harbour on May 31, 1942. That submarine was eventually found just north of Sydney, but not until November 2006.
And people kept looking for the Sydney, despite the fact that it was lost a long way to sea, and at that the sea off Australia’s very inhospitable north-western coast. $3.9 million of government money was directed towards a search for the wreck of the vessel that commenced at the beginning of this month, headed by American shipwreck hunter David Mearns. On the 16th of March it was announced that the wreck of the Kormoran had been found on 12 March. On the 17th March, it was announced that Sydney had been found at 26°05”²49.4”³S 111°04”²27.5”³E, and the wreck was still largely intact. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that both wrecks would officially be designated as war graves, and thus protected under Australian law. Presumably it will be possible to examine the wreck of the Sydney further and learn a little more about how she was damaged and sank. Still, though, the question of what happened in her final few hours will always remain supposition.
There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state, that which happens when you don’t do anything. If you want to experience poverty, just do nothing and it will come.
– Madsen Pirie explaining the folly of Common Error No. 61
The other day I pointed to an article by David Mamet, the US playwright who has become drawn to classical liberalism in his later life. As the Cato Institute blog points out, the great British playright Tom Stoppard has been, in his quiet way, thoroughly sound for years.
This quote is great:
“The whole notion that we’re all responsible for ourselves and we don’t actually have to have nannies busybodying all around us, that’s all going now. And I don’t even know in whose interest it’s supposed to be or who wishes it to be so. It seems to be like a lava flow, which nobody ordered up. Of course, one does know in whose interest it is. It’s in the interests of battalions of civil servants in jobs that never existed 10 years ago.”
Definitely an improvement on Harold Pinter.
Al Gore, call your office:
Forecasters are predicting a cold and windy Easter weekend, with snow, gales and heavy downpours in some regions. With snow expected to blanket the north, temperatures will drop as low as -8C in some areas, with particularly treacherous conditions possible over the Scottish mountains.
From the Independent newspaper, ironically one of the most vociferous advocates of the idea that the Earth is doomed from global warming, killer bees or whatever.
Of course, as Dale Amon said the other day, it makes sense to think how free marketeers should address the question of “what if man-made global warming really is a problem?” rather than just poke fun at it, as I am doing here. Dale is right, of course, just in the same way that advocates of civil liberties need to recognise that we face a terrorist threat and not, as one or two libertarians of my acquaintance can do, deny it. Changing ocean currents, caused by movements in the Arctic ice shelf, might, for example, explain why the Gulf Stream is not working its balmy magic on the British climate this time of year. But you can see how perplexing all this must be to people constantly harangued about the need to drastically cut down on carbon usage. The earth does not seem to be getting hotter, at least not around here. It is bloody cold, in fact. But then, my parents and grandparents will point out to me that Easters have often been terrible in the past; they can even remember it snowing in late April.
The rioting in Lhasa seems to be continuing and now it has been reported that some discontent is boiling over elsewhere in Chinese occupied Tibet. Of course if the official death toll says:
only that 10 “innocent civilians” had died, mostly in fires set by rioters, and that 12 police officers had been seriously wounded.
It is safe to say it is probably ten times that, at least on the side of the resistors. It seems that Chinese colonists have also been involved in attacking Tibetans, so this does appear to be far from over. Sadly I cannot see China having any serious trouble remaining in control given the sheer size of their security apparatus.
So, all you activists out there who have made a career out of excoriating Israel, do you have anything to say about this?
Update: I received the following e-mail from a person called Lee Ming:
Why not China defend itself from separatisms? What if parts of Britain want to be separatists? China has rule this since long ago!
Some Chinese claims assert they have ruled Tibet since the 13th century (the Peace Treaty between Tibet and Britain in 1904 is strangely forgotten):
1. Chinese rule was always debatable
2. The historical claim is largely irrelevant. Scotland has been part of the UK since 1707 and it was in a loose de union with England since 1603… yet if a majority in Scotland vote to become independent now, do you think UKGov will send in the riot cops and troops? No. Hell, if a majority in Wessex want to go their own way, I quite like the idea of that too. There is nothing sacred about nation states.
The fact a majority of Tibetans want to be independent of China rather than live under colonial occupation is all the justification needed.
It was always a mistake to think that the demise of UK mortgage lender Northern Rock, entailing a massive bailout of the bank by the UK taxpayer, would be the only major example of a financial institution getting into dire trouble. Investors have woken up this morning to the news that JP Morgan, the blue-blooded US bank, has bought US bank Bear Stearns for less than a tenth of what Bear was worth, based on its share price, late on Friday. Wow. Bear Stearns, which has been building a fancy new European HQ in London’s Canary Wharf (that is a often a bad sign), was one of the earliest victims of the credit crunch. Two of its hedge funds were smashed last year by heavy losses linked to US mortgage-backed debt that has turned out to be worthless. The Fed has stepped into the JPMorgan/Bear Stearns deal with a £30 billion (don’t you just love these big round numbers?) funding facility. The dollar is in free-fall, which might be great for US exporters, not so marvellous for Germany, France or other countries. There is a whiff of panic in the air.
One of the more thoughtful, if sobering, analyses comes from The Times (of London) columnist William Rees-Mogg. He points out that once again, the late Milton Friedman has been proven correct: we have been through a period, since the 1990s, of rapid monetary growth. The inflationary impact of that growth had been temporarily masked in the High Street and the labour market by the deflationary effect of cheap goods from China and elsewhere. But for those who wanted to look hard enough, the warning signals were plenty: asset price bubbles in property, gold, antiques, fine wine, equities, as well as the frenzy of mergers and takeovers, much of which was funded by cheap debt, as well of course as the heavy lending to sub-prime borrowers in the US, Britain and elsewhere.
The trouble, however, is whether central banks have, or ever had, the weapons to control runaway lending. Consider this: for much of the 1990s and “Noughties”, Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, operated a zero-interest rate policy. Its official interest rate today is 0.5%. Let me repeat: 0.5%. As a result, speculators have borrowed vast amounts of money from Japan and reinvested the proceeds in places like Britain, where rates have been over 5%, or the US, or Switzerland, or Australia, New Zealand, and the euro zone. This is what is called the “carry trade”. These carry trades mean that to all intents and purposes, low-rate nations set the prevailing value of borrowing money.
Of course, old-style mercantilists might argue that this proves the need for exchange controls, capital controls and the like. I disagree, but I can understand the reactions. We live in a globalised market for money and credit, but without some sort of international “anchor” mechanism like the old gold standard, there is a dangerous vacumn in the system. Yes, I know all the arguments against tying currencies to gold (which is above $1,000 per ounce), but surely the finest minds of our economics profession need to figure out one of the key challenges of our time: how to ensure that the price of money is handled intelligently in today’s global market place.
Update: Megan McArdle has thoughts.
I like this:
For, the truth is that a dogmatic respect for certain fundamental rights is what enables us to be easygoing about most other things.
“Us” being us libertarians. This is in connection with some row at Harvard about reserving the gym for women, for a bit, or something. Being, like Ravikiran Rao, a libertarian, I can be easygoing about the details, although a link from Rao would have been good.
To me, it seems like a good idea to make reasonable accommodations for people’s religious or other beliefs, where possible. Whether we should in any particular case depends on so many factors, so many costs, so many benefits and the conflicting interests of so many constituencies that it would be highly presumptuous of me to make blanket statements one way or the other. But what I can state is that letting property owners make the decision devolves the decision making to those who are closest to the decision and who have the most stake in the costs and benefits of that decision.
Or, you could turn this into a legal question involving esoteric principles. Well, good luck. When you are trying to make a law for this, you are moving the decision-making up to the top. Your quest for foolish consistency will inevitably lead to foolish decisions, because no law will provide for every nuance that would be involved in individual cases. There is still time. Come to Libertarianism my children!
Heh. Read the whole thing (which is not a lot longer) here. And while you’re there, wander around the rest of the blog, which is one of my favourites, aside from its regrettable habit of not supplying links, to such things as stories about Harvard gyms being reserved for women.
I particularly enjoyed an earlier posting that Ravikiran Rao wrote, some time last year I think, which I cannot now find (so no link to that from me – sorry), in which he blamed nuclear weapons for the miseries of the world. The argument went approximately like this. People are happy when progressing, and one of the easiest ways of making progress is to make the kind of progress involved in clearing up after a major war, by rebuilding buildings, baby booming, and so on and so forth. But, nuclear weapons have done away with major wars, progress has therefore become a lot more awkward, and people are consequently more miserable. I suspect that there may be quite a bit of truth to this surmise, but true or not, I enjoy the way that Rao’s argument arrives at a deeply respectable modern orthodoxy (nuclear weapons: bad!) via heresy (nuclear weapons have unleashed a serious modicum of world peace).
That last heresy is one that I agree with. I accept the orthodoxy about the niceness of world peace, and say: well done nuclear weapons. Seriously, I think that nuclear weapons have changed the world from a place in which major powers prepared for world war at all costs, to a place in which major powers avoid world wars at all cost.
Dallas City Hall has idled more than one-fourth of the 62 cameras that monitor busy intersections because many of them are failing to generate enough red-light-running fines to justify their operational costs, according to city documents.
– Dallas Morning News (with thanks to Engadget for picking up on the story)
Should the possession and/or distribution of child pornography be a crime in a free society?
It might seem strange that I would be saddened by the death of man who was supposed to have admired Lord Keynes, but Tony Dye knew a credit-money bubble when he saw one. What Tony Dye did not understand was politics. Every time he was certain that the crash must come, Alan Greenspan (and the mini me versions of him in charge of such institutions as the Bank of England) would just create more money to keep the credit boom going.
“But if he does that it will just make the crash worse when it does finally come” seemed to be Tony Dye’s position, and he was right.
However, he did not understand that political types (and Greenspan was certainly a political type) do not care about the long term.
“In the long run we are all dead” was the position of Lord Keyes, and Tony Dye is now dead. However, he did care about the long term – and the people who are left to live in it.
The latest great idea from ‘digital-strategy consultant’ Jim Griffin, who is advising the Recording Industry Association of America on new and innovative ways of rent seeking, is to propose a piracy surcharge on ISPs in the USA.
Of course the advantage of that is if all broadband users have to pay the music industry $5 per month, regardless of whether or not you actually download any music, legal or illegal, why bother promoting music at all? Who needs products when you can just force people to pay you regardless? Is it great that we have governments around the world who are in a position to actually try and do stuff like that?
On March 18th, it will be two years since the untimely death from cancer of Chris Tame, founder of the Libertarian Alliance, bibiophile, and sceptic about many things, including the time spent (wasted?) on party politics. There is a plan to commemorate the academic approach which Chris always thought was a key to winning the battle of ideas against collectivism of all shades, with the Inaugural Chris R. Tame Memorial Lecture, at the National Liberal Club, in London on Tuesday at 6.30pm.
The speaker is Professor David Myddelton, from Cranfield University. The title of the lecture is: “How to Cure Government Obesity,” which sounds like the sort of obesity we really ought to panic about.
Admission is free BUT ONLY if you contact Tim Evans, the LA’s president, by email: ———-. Numbers are limited and there are some drinks afterwards. I expect a recording will be made and linked to on either the LA blog or website. I shall certainly be there.
I especially miss the wicked sense of humour and the fact that my office is above an Amnesty International second-hand bookshop. It’s the sort of place Chris would have spent five minutes scanning ALL the shelves – even sport, in case a Tae-Kwondo manual showed up! Then he would have chatted for an hour with the Socialist or Liberal volunteers in the shop, discussing what he termed “the rape of the libraries” and (sincerely) pushing against climate change on progressive humanist grounds.
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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.
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