Natalie Solent |
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Politics, news, libertarianism, Science Fiction, religion, sewing.
You got a problem, bud? I like sewing.
E-mail: nataliesolent-at-aol-dot-com (I assume it's OK to quote senders by name.) Back to main blog RSS thingy 
Jane's Blogosphere: blogtrack for Natalie Solent. 
Links ( 'Nother Solent is this blog's good twin. Same words, searchable archives, RSS feed. Provided by a benefactor, to whom thanks. I also sometimes write for Samizdata and Biased BBC.) The Old Comrades:
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Friday, September 19, 2003
Don't send out a search party if there's only light to zero posting in the next few days. I am perfectly capable of escaping this here bear trap by rubbing off my own leg with a nail file without outside assistance.
Go on, away with you. Read those other blogs. Mark writes: Check out: Oppressor and penguin-fan Tim Blair asked me and several other bloggers for our views on carrot fondues. No, it wasn't that. It was ummm, thassright, blogging. The answers are here. I am the one who got my answers in too late for his newspaper article and then forgot to post this for several weeks. Thursday, September 18, 2003
"Let's all try to get the Nietzsche quote right, shall we? The philosopher, who has gone beyond good and evil: he's the one who is strengthened by whatever does not kill him. The rest of us are just screwed." - from Odious and Peculiar.
Also democracy, Melians vs Athenians, martial arts, and a Brief Defense of the Kantian Conception of Space as the a Priori Form of Outer Intuition. What, you mean your blog hasn't got one? Denis MacShane, Minister for Europe asks "why can't we all just get along" when it comes to the Europe debate. Why not, indeed? I think one of the problems is that Europhiles like the Minister don't really engage with their opponents. As examples of Eurosceptic thought MacShane quotes the demented advocate of murder Lance-Watkins, some hate-mail and various ignorant (or prescient, see later) rumours. Yet there are peaceable and well-informed people in his own Parliamentary Labour Party who also oppose EU integration and could argue their case in terms likely to appeal to Guardian readers. Why doesn't he ask them to join the debate? The European discussion is poisoned by hates that come from who knows where. Yeah, all that abuse saying that if you don't want a European superstate you are therefore a xenophobe or a "Little Englander" gets on my nerves too. Getting counter-arguments across is difficult. The great Boris Johnson asked me to do a Spectator diary... it never got used. I don't blame Boris but could it be because the Poles like Europe, voted "yes" to the EU...
The Spectator once rejected a submission of mine as well. Could it be that the great Boris was jealous of my genius?
It is not so much a democratic deficit but an information deficit that cripples Britain's outlook on the EU. In Helsinki, by contrast, I visit the head office of an EU information network which gives the Finns a chance to learn about Europe, undistorted by the Europhobe media. It costs about £1m and has stands in the libraries of all main Finnish cities and towns with information officers who tour businesses, schools and civil society outfits to explain the EU.
Who pays for this? Am I right in thinking that the Finnish taxpayer (whose free press, it seems from MacShane's account, is insufficiently respectful) must pay for state propaganda outlets in all the main towns and political officers to tour the schools and tell the kiddies their new duties? Someone tell me I'm wrong. Tell me that equal time is given to Eurosceptic views in these centres and I'll take back my view that they are are yet another good reason to fear and dislike the European Union.
Still on the subject of Finland:
this sturdy nation just blinks with surprise at the view that EU membership threatens Finnish independence in any way.
Look up "Finlandization."
...In fact, as I tell them, the European model was invented in Finland a long while before it became accepted in Europe... As a Labour MP and minister I want Finland alongside us arguing the case for Europe's social and environmental rules. 'Conservatives in Europe', please note.
But the Finns, like the French and Greeks and Irish and the rest of them are quite happy with the euro.
If he really doesn't know that there are large segments of the public in all these countries who are not he is even more out of touch than I thought. En route to Finland, I spent some time is Oslo. I met businessmen who moan that every law and rule in Norway now has to be in full compliance with the EU. So they have all the obligations of EU membership but no voice in decision-making.
I can solve that one - drop the obligations of EU membership.
The myths being spread about the next constitutional treaty are hilarious. My favourite one argues that the Queen will be replaced by the chairman of the European council of ministers as head of state.
Once, I would have thought that the idea of humble market traders being prosecuted for not offering their produce in kilograms was equally absurd. If anyone had predicted that twenty years ago they would have been laughed at as scaremongers. Yet it happened.
This article by Iain Murray about the Kyoto protocol contains two particularly pointy points for debate. When discussing this issue with your progressive friends, never fail to mention the great debt the UK environment owes to Margaret Thatcher or the fact that France can easily abide by Kyoto beause of all its nice clean nuclear power stations. Bush says there is no evidence of Saddam link to 9-11, says this report by Tim Harper, liberally mixing editorial comment in with the news. Personally, I think it very probable that SH was informed in a general way about a plane attack on the WTC, so that he could know that his money was being "well" spent. And for the record I do think he had WMD - chemical weapons in particular.
Bush has a pendantic streak. He means what he says: he hasn't found any evidence, much as he'd like to have. He is also signalling that he is not about to apologise for the Iraq war even so.
'Why bother with Iraq?' has been a topic of debate in the Libetarian Alliance Forum recently. Below, slightly edited, are some of my posts. Bear in mind that they are only one side of a debate, but I think they stand quite well alone. Given that I want to talk on this blog about why I think the Iraq war was justified and useful, I prefer to re-post them here rather than think up new words to say the same thing again. Sometimes politics is very simple.There was then some debate about whether there was any proven link between Saddam Hussein and 9-11 and was the mere plausibility of such a link sufficient justification for going to war. Both are very legitimate subjects for debate, of course. I said: One can agree or disagree with the hypothesis that Saddam directly knew about 9-11 but what is so stupid about the idea that [makes] anyone who holds it a hick? What's so unlikely about it? Was Saddam, the man who gassed Halabja, too gentle to hurt anyone? Was Saddam, the man who invaded Kuwait and Iran, too cautious to go for a spectacular and dangerous attack? Was Saddam, the man who tried to have the US president assassinated, too respectful of American power to try anything against them?And Saddam Hussein was killing thousands of people every month. With every month that goes by since his overthrow that's a few more thousand lives saved.Thinking about it, my belief that the Iraq war was justified has to do with my view of human nature. It's like people and cultures have several different TV or radio channels available. That's why the same person or the same culture can be capable of friendliness, curiosity and goodness in one area and dedicated evil in another. Circumstances and events can switch us from one channel or another. Untrammelled power is one circumstance that switches people to the evil channel. Mob hysteria is another. What we have really been fighting over in the last two years is the selector dial for the Arab/ Muslim world. Great forces pull it towards the death-cult channel, other forces, God willing greater, yank it back towards the peaceful interaction channel. *I'd add that China has cause to know from its own history vis-à-vis Japan and Europe that the vultures gather round a wounded animal. Wednesday, September 17, 2003
No blogging today, as I have to work. Yeah, you say with a sigh, tell me about it. Before anyone ever complains about this hard fact again, however, take a look at this. (Link to damnum absque injuria found via Boris Kupershmidt of the Libertarian Alliance Forum.) Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Another Irish blogger, Gavin Sheridan of Gavin's blog, has cheered on the Swedes. A commenter points out that Ireland will have to have another referendum about the EU constitution. Don't you mean another two referenda? Monibot, voice of reason. So says Oliver Kamm. I think the tipping point on the globalisation / free trade issue was reached during the last month. Suddenly we have the Guardian blogging against agricultural subsidies and Monibot for free trade. I have put my hand firmly over the mouth of little devil at my shoulder who wants to say something sarca - ouch! Gerroff yer little - as I was saying my nice angelic friend here would like to - aagh - congratulate them on - I'll stuff your cute little tail down your throat if you do that again - on, as I was saying, this most welcome change of heart. Things the internet will change. Here are two posts, one from Blog Irish and one from Bjørn Stærk, both recounting similar situations - the major newspapers of their respective countries decline to report uncomfortable facts. Bjørn Stærk writes: Here's a selection of articles written by Aftenposten's London correspondent Carsten Bleness about the Kelly investigation: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. [All numbers are links to articles -NS]You won't find a single article in this list - barely a sentence - that is critical of the BBC's conduct in the Kelly case. Accusations that the BBC, not Blair, sexed up its case, that it, not Blair, abused its powers, have simply not been reported in Norway's most important newspaper! Even the news that Andrew Gilligan will likely be sacked from the BBC has not been mentioned. Are the accusations true? I don't know, but they are credible, and Aftenposten is simply not doing its job when its man on the job refuses to even indicate to his readers that the BBC may have done anything more (or less) than textbook investigative reporting.Bran of Blog Irish writes: A few days ago, we were puzzled to discover that neither the Irish Times nor the Irish Independent nor the RT? 6.1 News had reported the fact that the UN Security Council had forced the resignation of Carla del Ponte as chief prosecutor for the International Court in Rwanda.And: Feeding this reality avoidance is the selective lack of information provided by the Irish media. No one reported that the UN Security Council agreed with the pragmatic Kagame. Unlike Bertie, Kagame was brave enough to tell the sanctimonious intermeddlers seeking to prosecute a possible 800,000 murderers that it just couldn't be done. The UN Security Council agreed with him and fired del Ponte.The British media market is bigger and for various reasons fiercer, so I doubt you would get such extreme instances of suppressio veri here: no tidbit goes ungobbled for long when the ecosystem is big enough. More to the point, I doubt you will get this situation for much longer in Ireland or Norway either. Biased Everybody. I did wonder whether to put this BBC commentary about an international education survey into Biased BBC, but decided the bias was too general to be visible. Why does everyone assume that spending your days at a desk being taught at - or spending your country's tax money on desks and teachers - is always and everywhere A Good Thing? "The UK has a staying-on rate that is worse than many other developed countries." By worse they mean lower, ignoring the possibility that the youth of Britain may kick the dust of school from their feet with the greatest of pleasure; that is, if their youth isn't behind them by the time they are finally allowed to leave. Then the survey worries that "these youngsters face poor employment prospects and a lifetime of low earnings." The solution: keep everyone in school until they are 25. Then all of us can be poets and the burgers will flip themselves. But, what serpent is this that has entered our Eden? Some cunning and determined elitists are staying in school until 35? This is the race which will rule the Sevagram!
I'm not ungrateful. I really like being able to read and I quite like knowing Schrödinger's equation too, or at least having once known it. But there are a few things the writers of articles like this need to know in order to complete their education:
Serious bit #1: Education is nice but not all of it takes place in school. #2: - or in the first half of your life. #3: - or at the command of a teacher. #4: Money spent on education is not education. #5: Pieces of paper saying you are educated sometimes lie. #6: - and when they do tell the truth, you poor deluded yoghurt-eaters, what people use them for is sorting the sheep from the goats, and the workers from the managers. #7: Half the time they're just keeping you in a box, frankly. #8: Plumbers make a fortune. #9: Not that we need self-flipping burgers anyway. There are always Arts graduates.
I added #10 later, and this one really is serious: Joanne Jacobs posts a link to a study that describes another reason why increased staying-on rates do not always add to the sum of human happiness. Her story refers to the US, but does anyone doubt the same could be said here? One of the nicer things about being a grown up is that for most of us the chances of being pushed around and insulted on a daily basis go down drastically once you leave school. I noticed an improvement in my quality of life once I hit the Lower Sixth and one or two of the more disaffected pupils had left - and I went to a fairly orderly girls' grammar, so my idea of what constituted "disaffected" was pretty mild. The improvement was nothing to do with academic selection (I really missed some friends who left to work in shops or have babies) and everything to do with all those who remained being volunteers. There's a spectrum between a student who is fully committed to education and an utterly rebellious prisoner. Government targets to "improve" staying-on rates do not increase the number of prisoners (we are talking about 16+ year olds, after all, who could leave if they chose) but they do shift the spectrum in the prisoner direction. More young people are in school who would rather be elsewhere, and they tend to horse around. Right Wing News has an interview with Milton Friedman. Sudden wild hope... Sound. Very sound. Some of these bloggers get very uppity. If Mark Steyn had paid similar attention to proper priorities he'd have a Nobel prize by now. Monday, September 15, 2003
How to take the bread from the mouths of Africans while emoting sweet nothings all over them. Just "expose" the "hypocrisy" involved in the awful, shocking fact that socialist political parties trade with people poorer than they are. Read the whole story in Zambian roses. Fortunately in this case someone exposed the exposers. Ching, chang, chong. Or "stone, paper, scissors" if that's what you called it in your school playground. Stone blunts scissors. Scissors cuts paper. Paper wraps stone. I thought of that game when I read this article by Mark Steyn. He asks why Anna Lindh's killer was able to chase her up an escalator while everyone stood and watched. In mitigation of the conduct of those bystanders I could offer the plea of sheer disbelief. On the happily rare occasions when I have witnessed violence, I, like them, have stood there desperately trying to re-process what I was seeing into a misunderstanding. Liberty breeds safety. Safety breeds docility. Docility destroys liberty. Stone, paper, scissors.
Politically I've woken up. In my personal reflexes I'm still asleep.
UPDATE: bad link fixed now. Thank you, David Janes. Who, incidentally, makes the good point that the Swedish government is technically allowed to join the Euro whatever the voters say. I almost wish they would. It would be so obviously contemptuous of the voters, and the resulting unpopularity would be so severe, that we might just see Sweden be the first to prove that the decision to join the Euro is not irreversible.
Random Jottings comments on this post. I should not be blogging. Stuff to do. Stuff. Stuff. Stuff. Deadlines. Horrible. (I'm. Writing. In. One. Word. Sentences. Because. My. Mind. Feels. All. Jaggly. Because. of. THE PRESSURE.) But first things first. Have a good read of Alice Bachini now at http://www.alicebachini.com/ rather than her old amiable_but_tedious_to_type address. Also Stephen Pollard has a new, accessible format, though no change of address.
Sample Bachini quote: The pathetic whiney year-zero lefty UK press is trying, as ever, to get us all to go back to the Dark Ages and reject our wonderful modern liberational inventions (note to those who don't like mobiles: DON'T BLOODY BUY ONE, THEN!) by telling us lots of stupid quack scare stories to spoil our fun and make us miserable. Sample Pollard quote: You read that right: Sweden. The most egalitarian people on Earth understand what British opponents of school choice do not: choice benefits, above all, the poor. Swedish councils are obliged to give a voucher representing 75 per cent of the average cost per student in municipal schools to any parent who wants one.Talking of Sweden, allow me to emit a triumphant witch-like cackle of laughter. Estimates of the factor by which the Yes to the Euro campaign outspent the No campaign range between 5 and 50. You know how the Guardipendent is always going on about how much George W Bush spent on getting elected? Well, according to Medborgare mot EMU ("Citizens against the EMU"), more dosh per voter than that was spent on getting the Swedes to do their European duty. There was also the effect of a sympathy vote following the murder of Anna Lindh (though sympathy votes are illogical, sympathy was certainly due to her and her family. I hope her killer is caught.) All this, and they still said Nej. Sunday, September 14, 2003
Why science fiction helps you think about the legacy of Martin Luther King. Once or twice I have opined that supporters of racial preferences have some nerve, waving the shroud of Dr Martin Luther King in support of their cause when he, in his most famous speech and elsewhere, expressed the hope that people would be judged by their deeds rather than their skin pigmentation. So how might I defend myself against the charge that I, too, have an equal nerve, dragging in the King legacy when he also supported something that I consider to be economically illiterate and particularly harmful to the poor (which includes a high proportion of blacks), namely a minimum wage?
The simplest and most important answer is that he was right about the evil of racial discrimination and wrong about the goodness of a minimum wage. Read this summary from the National Center for Policy Analysis: Government data show that black and white teenage unemployment rates in 1948 were about the same -- 9.4 percent black and 10.2 percent white. This is true, interesting and important, but doesn't make much of a blog posting. To put a different slant on the issue, I'd like to go back a few weeks to a post in which Kieran of Crooked Timber rather misunderstood the anthropic principle...
[Note to self: don't get distracted. This post isn't about the anthropic principle. Another time. Be strong!]
...although we won't discuss that subject right now, particularly as it was all covered in the comments. The bit I really liked in Kieran's post was when he speculated, possibly not entirely seriously, on the Nature of Alien Life: “I bet they also have homologues to non-fat vanilla lattes, frat parties and New Labour.”
Then a commenter called Mitch shot back with:"...A stimulant modified for reasons of health… a social gathering of a biologically distinct student subcaste… and a political association with a changing ideology," implying, of course, that Kieran's jokey list of trivia specific to Earth circa 2003 was not necessary unique to us or unexplainable to aliens after all.
And that's where the platform of the March on Washington comes back into the story. It seems to me that "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" could be explained quite easily to most of the aliens that I have met in my reading. (Yes, I know they aren't real. It doesn't matter. I'm talking about SF as a tool to explain real life situations.) You might have to replace "I have a dream" with "I wish in an ethical way", if the aliens either did not dream or did not use dreaming as a metaphor for hopeful visualisation, but getting across the essential principle that it is wrong to judge by arbitrary markers could be done. I'm not saying the Kzinti would agree, mind, but I don't think they'd be incapable of understanding.
What about a minimum wage of $2 an hour? When I started this post I thought I was going to say that it would be an untranslatable piece of Earth-centred arcana, but, not for the first time, I realised I was wrong half way through typing. It's a category of error - basically using force to bring about an apparently benevolent result without thinking through the consequences - that might turn up anywhere from Mote Prime to Gethen.
But I still think there's something to the idea that the call for beings to be judged ethically rather than by appearances is of a higher order than the demand that exchanges of labour for less than a certain number of value-storing tokens per time-interval be forbidden even if both buyer and seller wish them to take place. There's more - on file sharing, I mean. James Rummel replies to his critics thus: <throatclearing>ahem.ahem</throatclearing>"The music industry has screenshots of the crime. Evidence. That's what my arguement is based on, the facts. Not assumptions, which as you readily admit is the only thing your position has going for it. |