Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Diplomacy and Terrorism

Diplomacy and Terrorism
12/30/08 - ChicagoBoys by Shannon Love
[edited] For nearly three decades people like Greenwald claimed that if Israel merely ended the occupation of the Palestinian territories it would get peace. Instead it got human bombs and rocket attacks. Ditto for the withdrawal from Lebanon.

Terrorists stop for only two reasons: (1) They win and graduate to despotic rule (Mugabe), or (2) they’re physically prevented from acting. Israel has decided to go for reason (2). The rest of us should hope it succeeds.

Matthew Alexander on Torture

Matthew Alexander on Torture
12/30/08 - Schneier.com
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq."

Friday, December 26, 2008

Mencken's Timeless Insights

Mencken's timeless insights
12/26/08 - PittsburghLive by Donald J. Boudreaux
An excerpt from a great article.
[edited] If I could bring one person back to life for an evening of good food, stiff drink and sterling conversation, that person would be H.L. Mencken (1880-1956).

Mencken thought the typical politician is a "merchant of delusions," a "pumper-up of popular fears and rages. The politician is never to be trusted.

"What is a political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better?"

"If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. His very existence, indeed, is a standing subversion of the public good in every rational sense. He is not one who serves the common weal; he is simply one who preys upon the commonwealth."

"It is to the interest of all the rest of us to hold down his powers to an irreducible minimum and to reduce his compensation to nothing; it is to his interest to augment his powers at all hazards, and to make his compensation all the traffic will bear."

+ + +
The Political Manual: Adequate Compensation
As a politician, get paid what you are worth.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Political Arrest in Great Britain

A British Political Arrest
11/29/08 - Samizdata.net by Brian Micklethwait (London)
The Damian Green Political Arrest

--> An outrage that brings shame on Britain
01/12/09 - (11/29/08) TimesOnline by Mathew Parris

[edited] Nine counter-terrorism officers raided the home and offices of a senior member of the Opposition. What a blunder. What an outrage. What a stupid, stupid, thing to do.

This is a gift to the Tories (conservatives), and incredibly damaging to a governing party whose Prime Minister enjoys a reputation for bullying. That is the best argument for doubting that Labour ministers had anything to do with the arrest of Damian Green, a mild-mannered and distinctly herbivorous Shadow Immigration Minister.

Maybe ministers really were kept in total ignorance, but few ordinary voters are going to believe it. A Prime Minister otherwise known as the Big, Clunking Fist will struggle to dissociate himself in the public mind from an astonishingly heavy-handed police operation against a critic.

Micklethwait comments on declining ethics in politics:
[edited] I include references to f---ing and f---ers very deliberately. Our rulers now swear a lot more than they used to. It is all part of that atmosphere, that tone, that they have been so busily creating. It is an atmosphere in which there are now so many laws, and laws which are so sweeping in their scope, that all are now guilty.

The law simplifies down to the question: do they like you? If they really really do not like you, look out, they'll come for you, and find or make up the laws they need as they go along.

A front bench politician has been, very publicly, on the receiving end of this parody of the idea of law. It is cause not for rage and more swearing, but for rejoicing [because it brings the corruption of government and law into public view].