Making aid work

I'm not a regular reader of the New York Review of Books (there is only so much lefty-establishment bile and rubbish one can take on a sustained basis, although - as far as I know - it's still more palatable than the truly appalling London Review of Books). However, every now and again one comes across something interesting there, and at the recommendation of a friend I read a review from the current issue, a balanced and very interesting piece by Nicholas Kristof (of the New York Times) on foreign aid: Aid: Can it Work?.
He makes several points which demonstrate both a healthy skepticism of many current arrangements, and a noble desire to ensure that poor people's lot across developing countries is improved, realistically and efficiently:

Still, on the arguments about the effectiveness of aid, Easterly makes a better case than Sachs—and if Easterly can stimulate a sensible rethinking of aid, he will save lots of lives, too. To begin with, he casts doubt on the very notion of a "poverty trap," where countries need outside resources to generate economic growth. Certainly it's well known that some of the countries that have battled poverty most effectively —like China, Singapore, Malaysia, and others in Asia—have received very little aid per capita. The median ratio of aid to GDP of the ten countries with the highest per capita growth rates between 1980 and 2002 was just 0.23 percent. In contrast, as Easterly shows, the ten countries with the lowest per capita growth rates in that period, all negative rates, had a median aid-to-GDP ratio of 10.98 percent. That says nothing about causation, but it's still not very encouraging.
When it comes to the effects of large-scale aid programs in Africa, Easterly's argument is worth quoting:

Jeffrey Sachs and co-authors previously predicted that large aid increases would finance "a 'big push' in public investments to produce a rapid 'step' increase in Africa's underlying productivity, both rural and urban." Alas, we have already seen this movie, and it doesn't have a happy ending. There is good data on public investment for twenty-two African countries over the 1970–1994 period. These countries' governments spent $342 billion on public investment. The donors gave these same countries' governments $187 billion in aid over that period. Unfortunately, the corresponding "step" increase in productivity, measured as production per person, was zero. Perhaps part of the reason for this was such disasters as the five billion dollars spent on the publicly owned Ajaokuta steel mill in Nigeria, begun in 1979, which has yet to produce a bar of steel.

Even in the poorest countries you see some signs of available money that could be used for investment, and is not. In Kisangani, in the heart of poverty-stricken Congo, wrenching malnutrition exists side by side with brothels, beer joints, and cigarette stands. If one could get the men who spend their money in those places to invest in the simplest of businesses or in their children's education, they could begin to escape the so-called poverty trap.
[...]
If Easterly is generally sensible, there's one matter where I think he's catastrophically wrong. That is his hostility toward military intervention. It's true that in the past, military interventions have often been foolish and ended up hurting the people we claimed to be helping. The long American proxy war in Angola was a disaster for everyone. But it's also true that the single most essential prerequisite for economic development is security: no one will invest in a shop or factory if it is likely to be burned down soon. And insecurity is immensely contagious.
The Western failure to intervene early in Rwanda allowed the genocide in 1994 that claimed perhaps 800,000 lives. But that was only the beginning. That chaos in turn infected Burundi and especially Congo, which collapsed into civil war. Some 4.1 million people have died because of the Congo war, mostly from hunger and disease, making it the most lethal conflict since World War II.
Something similar happened in West Africa. Upheavals in Liberia were allowed to fester and spread to Sierra Leone and then Ivory Coast; and now Guinea may be on the precipice as well. Because nobody was concerned to stop the killings in Darfur when they began in 2003, the genocide there is now spreading to Chad as well, and even to the Central African Republic.
So one of the most crucial kinds of foreign aid is simply security. And when we have provided that kind of aid, it has made a huge difference. The most successful single thing the US ever did in Asia, for example, was probably Truman's decision in 1950, after the Korean War began, to send the Seventh Fleet to protect Taiwan. Otherwise China would very likely have invaded Taiwan sometime in the 1950s, hundreds of thousands would have died, and Taiwan wouldn't have existed as a free economy in the 1980s and 1990s to provide both an economic model and investment for the Chinese mainland. The cost to the US of that deployment was negligible, and the benefit to the world was enormous.

Do read the whole thing.

Protesting for Darfur in London

On Sunday a friend of mine and I went to the Day for Darfur protest in London. It started in front of the Sudanese embassy which is just off the end of Pall Mall; there was some chanting and several interesting (but occasionally unintelligible) speeches. After that we walked towards Downing Street, taking the long route along Piccadilly. Here are some pictures I took while walking down Whitehall, looking back towards Trafalgar Square:

and forward towards Westminster:

There were more people than I expected, and despite my cynicism the worldwide protests may be having some small positive effects:

Sudan is expected to withdraw its deadline for African Union peacekeepers to leave the war-torn western region of Darfur at the end of this month, when AU foreign ministers discuss the mounting crisis in New York today, according to senior officials in Khartoum.
Sudanese president Omar al Bashir's ultimatum for an AU troop pull-out threatened to leave the huge area with no international monitors and provoke a major escalation of a three-year war which has already left a quarter of a million people dead.
A special "global day for Darfur" yesterday saw protesters in several dozen cities around the world call for an end to the fighting and warn of impending genocide.

Those who know me won't be surprised to learn that I favour a more vigorous approach:

Led by the United States, the UN security council has called for international forces to replace the AU troops with better equipment and a stronger mandate. Although the resolution says the troops require the consent of Sudan's government, President Bush hinted at the weekend that they should go in regardless.
"What you'll hear is, well, the government of Sudan must invite the United Nations in for us to act. Well, there are other alternatives, like passing a UN resolution saying we're coming in with a UN force in order to save lives," he said.

I doubt that will happen, but I firmly believe that if the international community is any more conciliatory than that, it will be condoning the continuation of genocide (once again).

Chirac is a dangerous idiot

In case you weren't aware of this, Chirac is an idiot:

French President Jacques Chirac has said referring Iran to the UN Security Council is not the best way to resolve a crisis over its nuclear programme.
"I don't believe in a solution without dialogue," Mr Chirac told Europe-1 radio, urging countries to remove the threat of sanctions against Iran. The US is leading calls for sanctions to be imposed on Iran if it refuses to suspend uranium enrichment.

Independently of what one thinks would be the best strategy to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear programme, Chirac's statement seems to be aimed specifically at ensuring the failure of any diplomatic effort. In fact, I think this policy has two effects: on the one hand it weakens the incentives that Western diplomacies have at their disposal, making it easier for Iran to flout international pressure and obtain nuclear weapons. On the other hand, assuming there are still Western countries determined to impede Iran's nuclear armament, it will make future armed intervention or conflict with Iran much more likely. This is the same pattern that emerged with Iraq: had France, Germany and others presented a united front with the US, a war could easily have been avoided.
What is "I don't believe in a solution without dialogue" supposed to mean anyway? What is this, the Afternoon Tea theory of international relations?! Is there anyone, at any point, with whom Chirac would have refused to have an unconditional dialougue? Hitler? Stalin? And why does he think we always have to have a dialogue with our hands tied behind our backs, while our opponents operate under no restriction whatsoever? For crying out loud, this nutcase is opposing referral to the UNSC, for possible discussions of potential economic sanctions! What would he have proposed be done in the face of Nazi armament and aggression in the 1930's? Dialogue without any consequences? Surrender without a fight? Oh, wait a minute... that's precisely what France did do. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Oriana Fallaci: a full life

Last night Oriana Fallaci, one of the most famous and cotroversial Italian journalists, passed away. Wikipedia has a comprehensive and balanced biography of her. From the introduction:

Oriana Fallaci (June 29, 1929 in Florence, Italy - September 15, 2006) was an Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer.

(Photo source) A former antifascist partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career.
[...]
As a young journalist, she interviewed many internationally known leaders and celebrities such as Henry Kissinger, the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Lech Wałęsa, Willy Brandt, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Walter Cronkite, Omar Khadafi, Federico Fellini, Sammy Davis Jr, Deng Xiaoping, Nguyen Cao Ky, Yasir Arafat, Indira Gandhi, Alexandros Panagoulis, Archbishop Makarios III, Golda Meir, Nguyen Van Thieu, Haile Selassie and Sean Connery.
After retirement, she wrote a series of articles and books, critical of Islam and Arab culture, that have roused significant controversy.

After a decade of self-imposed silence she returned to the Italian public discourse with a long and fiery essay expressing her thoughts following the September 11th attacks on the United States. Entitled La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio (The Rage and the Pride, translation here) it was published by Corriere della Sera on 29 September, 2001. I remember reading it that day, at my parents' home in Milan and feeling admiration for her plain-speaking and vigorous attack on the enemies of the West, both internal and external. Her occasional lack of distinction between radical Islamists and Muslims in general, was in my view totally inappropriate, but her critics often fail to note that her vitriolic attacks are quite consistently indiscriminate: the Italian people, the EU etc. also come in for their share of criticism without any distinctions being made.
The essay was expanded into a book which was followed by a sequel, and she continued writing articles, never leaving the public eye.
As I noted, there are fair and serious criticisms that can be made of her rhetoric, without dishonestly minimising the threat that is in fact posed by Islamist fanatics. I certainly do not agree with all of her positions (for instance, I am absolutely in favour of open immigration – although I believe a certain degree of integration and assimilation should be expected of newcomers).
In a relatively balanced piece for Reason, Cathy Young quotes a critique of Oriana's book by Christopher Hitchens - certainly no apologist for Islamists - published in the Atlantic Monthly:

Written in the hot flush that overtook her on September 11, and originally published as a screed in the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, this is a sort of primer in how not to write about Islam. Fallaci claims in her introduction that in order to shorten the diatribe for newspaper purposes she "set aside the most violent passages." I wonder what those passages can have been like; the residue is replete with an obsessive interest in excrement, disease, sexual mania, and insectlike reproduction, insofar as these apply to Muslims in general and to Muslim immigrants in Europe in particular. A sampling, which preserves her style and punctuation and spelling:

The fad or rather the hypocrisy, the shit, that calls "local tradition" the infibulation. I mean the bestial practice by which, in order to prevent them from enjoying sex, Moslems cut young girls' clitoris and sew up the large lips of the vulvas. All that remains is a tiny opening through which the poor creatures urinate, and imagine the torment of a defloration ... thank God I never had any sentimental or sexual or friendly rapport with an Arab man. In my opinion there is something in his brothers of faith which repels the women of good taste.

In other words—and there are a great many of them—Fallaci ignores her own pro forma injunction to remember that Islam is a faith, not a race. Her horror is for the shabby, swarthy stranger who uses the street as a bathroom (she can't stay off this subject) and eyes passing girls in a lascivious manner.

Although I think this characterisation is rather overwrought and unfair, it has some truth to it and it is this kind of thing that is the source of the mixed feelings I have towards Oriana Fallaci: on the one hand I deplore her lack of clarity on what should be legitimately attacked and what can only be termed prejudice, on the other I feel that in the West there is an intense dearth of commentators and public figures who are willing and able to defend the basic principles on which the West is based, and Oriana Fallaci's writings, despite all her flaws, have, for some people – many of whom I'm convinced are not bigots – served as a wake up call to the threat under which these principles are, and I would call that a good thing. Only a few months ago the New Yorker published a beautiful article about her, which I think portrays her fairly, while depicting her contradictory nature.
A good exposition of the very serious problems that Europe is facing has been written by Bruce Bawer, who - in my experience - strongly expresses the moral clarity which Oriana Fallaci partly lacked. I am currently reading his new book, While Europe Slept, which is very interesting and well-written (also see this excellent book by Claire Berlinski). He explores many of the themes of the book in an essay he wrote for the Hudson Review (see here for pdf version), which also quotes Oriana Fallaci:

The messenger [Pim Fortuyn] was silenced—but his message lived on in the writings of other heterodox Europeans who, stirred by 9/11, began to find their voices. Legendary Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, for example, responded to 9/11 with The Rage and the Pride, a cri de coeur in which she wrote: "I am very, very, very angry. Angry with a rage which is cold, lucid, rational . . . . I spit in their face." "They" being not only the terrorists but also the European elite, which, she demanded, must shake off its fashionable anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, recognize where the real threat to Western freedom lay, and act to defend that freedom. Civilization, America, freedom, individualism, the West: for Fallaci, all these things are indivisible, and those who defend them are heroes, those who fail to recognize their preciousness are fools, and those who seek to destroy them are a peril not to be taken lightly. In passionate, rambling, highly personal prose, Fallaci, a longtime left-winger, decried her fellow leftists' affection for Arafat, praised Rudolph Giuliani, condemned Muslims’ treatment of women, and recalled interviewing Pakistani leader Ali Bhutto, who, tearfully telling her of the marriage he was forced into as a child, concluded, "No religion is as oppressive as mine."

As Bawer writes elsewhere for the fifth anniversary of 9/11 (emphasis mine):

On 9/11, the free world was powerfully reminded of its freedom. In Europe, alas, that day's spirit has been steamrollered by an establishment that – apparently having already accepted the inevitability of Europe's Islamization – routinely turn the truth on its head, representing aggressors as victims and self-defense as inflammatory. That upside-down picture needs to be set aright, and the spirit of 9/11 resurrected. For the bottom line is simple: if we don't cherish our liberties with the fervor that the jihadists treasure their faith, we'll lose.

And that is why Oriana Fallaci's fervor was, depite the misgivings, welcome to me.

The Guardian's dishonesty

It is truly a pity to see how appallingly dishonest and shoddy the Guardian, considered by some Britain's foremost daily, has become in its reporting. William Sjostrom at AtlanticBlog illustrates a recent despicable example. The article begins:

George Bush last night admitted that Saddam Hussein had no hand in the 9/11 terror attacks, but he asked Americans to support a war in Iraq that he said was the defining struggle of our age.
[...]
The president conceded some crucial ideological ground, formally disavowing the neo-conservative accusation that Saddam had played a role in the attacks on September 11 2001. But he was unapologetic about the decision to invade Iraq.

AtlanticBlog notes:

Is the Guardian really this incompetent, that neither its reporter nor its editors pay attention to their own stories, or is something else going on? In 2003, the Guardian says Bush "admits", then three years later does the same thing, in neither case saying when Bush made the claim. Any suspicions that the Guardian is a newspaper rather than a tiresome propoganda rag are once again eliminated.

Do read the whole thing. Harry's Place also mentions this and notes:

The Guardian story in a nutshell: Bush has once again 'admitted' that something he and his administration never said, wasn't the case.

Also see Melanie Phillips' comments, where she expands on the Al Qaeda-Iraq question. Elsewhere, in regards to the Lebanese Red Cross ambulance story, Tim Blair makes a good point:

Mayes, reasonably enough, allows for "inconsistencies and anomalies" in reporting from war zones. Perhaps, then, the Guardian's initial report should have indicated some fog-of-war doubt over the claims made to their correspondent instead of stating as fact: "Israel's rocket strike on two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances on Sunday night set a deadly new milestone [...] Two ambulances were entirely destroyed, their roofs pierced by missiles."
[...]
Great work, Clouseau.

Do read the whole thing. And then journalists wonder why the MSM is not trusted...

Lighting candles of truth

There seems to be a tendency among people who are, for whatever reason, opposed to George W. Bush, to minimize any scourge he turns his attention to, be it the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Iranian nuclear armament, terrorism or fundamentalist Islam. Martin Amis has a long essay in the Observer (the Sunday edition of the Guardian; via Instapundit) in which he explores what should be self-evident:

I will spell this out, because it has not been broadly assimilated. The most extreme Islamists want to kill everyone on earth except the most extreme Islamists; but every jihadi sees the need for eliminating all non-Muslims, either by conversion or by execution. And we now know what happens when Islamism gets its hands on an army (Algeria) or on something resembling a nation state (Sudan). In the first case, the result was fratricide, with 100,000 dead; in the second, following the Islamist coup in 1989, the result has been a kind of rolling genocide, and the figure is perhaps two million.

Do read the whole thing. Glenn also cites Amit Varma, who says:

I don't fully agree with either Amis's pessimistic appraisal of Islam in general today, or his optimistic prognosis of the future. Unlike him -- and perhaps because I am in India -- I see plenty of "moderate Islam," as he terms it, around me, though more and more Muslims are certainly getting radicalised, for a variety of complex reasons. Equally, I am not convinced that Islamism is "the death agony of imperial Islam ... the last wave - the last convulsion." I think Amis writes those lines more in hope than in rational conviction, giving in to the twin human instincts of believing that all problems have solutions, and that progress is inevitable.

In many respects the West really does not seem to have internalized this message. One of the many small signs of this is the MSM's insistence in calling Mohammad Khatami a moderate. Pajamas Media has an interesting video with Richard Miniter about him, entitled Murder at the Cathedral. Clearly fundamentalist Islam (which I generally call Islamism) must be combatted urgently (particularly in Europe). There has been a general debate about how to go about this, most starkly regarding the decision whether Islamist terrorism should be seen as an act of war or as a law enforcement matter. It does not exactly fall into either category and I think the best attitude is illustrated by Richard Posner's position, whose Glenn & Helen Show podcast I listened to recently, and whose new book has been garnering positive reviews (via Instapundit): in the Washington Post and in the Weekly Standard. As (the non-neocon) Dahlia Lithwick says:

The real power of Posner's effort is that he stands back and measures whether Guantanamo Bay and wiretapping are really worth it. It's proof that the best cure for partisan shrieking is a good old-fashioned game of cost-benefit analysis.

Do read both reviews.
While we fine tune in what way to best fight Islamist fundamentalism, there is another extremism which all rational and moderate people should be worried about: Western extremism. Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at New York University the other day and made a few points I emphatically agree with (though I don't always agree with him). PJM correspondent and Atlas Shrugs blogger, Pamela, has videos and commentary:



Netanyahu exhorts us to:

"...repel the lies. I will not go back to those gas chambers. Not those physical ones, not those of the poisoned wells and slanders.The only way that a free society can defend itself aside from taking up arms is also to light those candles for truth.
What I ask of you tonight is for each of you to light the candle of truth. You know how you do it ...flip on the internet and light many many candles of truth."

Do watch the whole thing.
If there was any doubt that this ("lighting candles of truth") was badly needed (after the countless scandals and biases, which seem to always go one way), this story (via Instapundit) should clinch the deal:

Saddam Hussein had a very trusted source inside AP, according to the translation of another of the thousands of documents captured by U.S. forces that are only slowing being made public. In this particular document, the source inside AP tells Hussein about the formation of UNMOVIC, the UN weapons inspection team.

As Ed Driscoll says:

After Eason Jordan's "The News We Kept To Ourselves" admission, and Reuters' cozy relationship with assorted freedom fighters terrorists, I'm not at all surprised.
Amongst numerous media other scandals, add to the list CBS's Ra^therGate, ABC's eagerness to be censored, Newsweek's Koran in the Can fabrication, and of course, all of the New York Times' woes, and you've got an Elite Media whose credibility across the board is crumbling.

And this is the "respectable" US media we are talking about... (which Europeans always say are pawns of Bushitler). I cringe to think about the rest. That's why there is a need to fight and "light candles of truth."

Threatening license revocation?

I have not seen the much talked about ABC 9/11 miniseries, however, whatever its flaws, I am appalled by some of the overwrought reactions I have seen from some of its critics.
As Professor Bainbridge notes:

Of course, in a way, I can understand the Democrats' outrage. They are so used to Hollywood being a reliable part of the Democratic propaganda machine that the very idea of a network movie making any criticism of a Democratic administration must come as a serious shock to the system.
The letters from Democratic lawmakers to ABC implictly threatening ABC affiliates broadcastig license, however, are an unacceptable infringement of First Amendment values.

This seems to me a terrible move on two levels. Firstly, it seems like the Dems want to stifle free speech:

I think this may be the biggest miscalculation I have seen this election season. I mean this one is positively biblical. The Senate Democrats just threatened to go after ABC's broadcasting license if it airs The Path to 9/11. Not fix it, not alter it. Kill it or they will come for you.
[...]
Do they have any idea what they look like to the average American? They look not like defenders of the truth, they look exactly, precisely, like they are trying to hide something. This is an absolutely stunningly stupid move. This may play well to the true, hard-left believers, but to average Americans you just hurt yourselves very, very badly.

Secondly, while the Clinton Administration (as well as the current Administration) can hardly be blamed for not realizing how dangerous Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were going to be, the record is not exactly prisitine: apart from the Sandy Berger shenanigans, see this post from Power Line, and this column from Investor's Business Daily. Ann Althouse points out that while the miniseries may be inaccurate, these ferocious attacks are bringing renewed focus on some uncomofortable hard facts, such as this NBC News clip, with Tom Brokaw, who is hardly a Republican stalwart:



Also see this Power Line post, which underlines why it is important that we not forget what went wrong before 9/11 under the Bush as well as the Clinton administrations: the Democrats seem to want to go back to the old system. Do read the whole thing.

Who's willing to stand up?

Yesterday Instapundit had a small but worrying roundup of recent developments in the increase in anti-Semitic attacks. In that context he repeats something he has pointed out before:

If they [the Jews] had the habit of blowing things up, they wouldn't face this problem.

The point is that Islamist terrorism wouldn't be so widespread if us Westerners didn't make it so effective by our limp and subdued response. Which is underscored by the Mark Steyn column he quotes today:

Consider, for example, the bizarre behavior of Reuters, the once globally respected news agency now reduced to putting out laughably inept terrorist propaganda. A few days ago, it made a big hoo-ha about the Israelis intentionally firing a missile at its press vehicle and wounding its cameraman Fadel Shana. Shana was posed in an artful sprawl in a blood-spattered shirt. But it had ridden up and underneath his undershirt was spotlessly white, like a summer-stock Julius Caesar revealing the boxers under his toga. What's stunning is not that almost all Western media organizations reporting from the Middle East are reliant on local staff overwhelmingly sympathetic to one side in the conflict -- that's been known for some time -- but the amateurish level of fakery that head office is willing to go along with.

See here and here for more details on the specific case. Mark Steyn concludes:

It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead.

As Niall Ferguson predicts (via Harry's Place), they will probably be proven wrong, but that happy outcome would certainly not be the merit of the Al-Reuters and multiculti crowd.

Podcasts, finally

I have finally moved into the real world: for the first time I have listened to a podcast, and I really enjoyed it! The podcast in question was the last installment of the Glenn & Helen Show, in which they interview Richard Posner (who has his own blog here), about terrorism, the constitution and his latest book Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency. Posner and his hosts make a number of interesting points and I highly recommend listening to the podcast.

Mel Gibson, eat your heart out

I don't really follow sports, but this is the funniest video I have seen in a long time (via Harry's Place):



Enjoy!

International law, only if it fits the agenda

I have mentioned before that I am somewhat skeptical of international law and international organisations. I have recently seen two cases which underline one of my concerns. Many of the most ardent supporters of international law and its apparatuses, often seem to be more interested in using the principles involved to further what can only be termed nakedly political ends, while completely ignoring any principles or precedents which are unhelpful or contrary to those ends.
The first example I encountered this week comes from the Claremont Institute blog, The Remedy, and has to do with the right to self defense:

Glenn Reynolds alerts us to this U.N. Report which denies that there is such a thing as a right to self-defense in international law.

No international human right of self-defence is expressly set forth in the primary sources of international law: treaties, customary law, or general principles.

[...]People writing reports for the U.N. should consider what the founders of the modern ideas of the law of nations had to say about the subject. Hugo Grotius was quite clear on the subject. Emmerich de Vattel was too.
[...]
The U.N. is therefore wrong to say, "primary sources of international law: treaties, customary law, or general principles." Clearly the U.N. has cut international law off from its root.
Of course, as I have noted before the U.N., has grown to be hostile to the natural rights foundation of the United States by its very nature. At the foundation of the U.N.'s understanding of law is an idea that is irreconcilable with the natural rights foundation of the U.S. Hence the U.N. does not grasp the necessity of a natural right to self-defense, a right of inestimable importance to us, and formidable only to those who would be tyrants.

Do read the whole thing.
The second instance regards the West Bank, and the fact that some people claim Israel should not be allowed to enact a unilateral withdrawal. Apart from the fact that I find it unlikely that someone in good faith could expect Israel to establish its final borders in negotiation with an entity which does not recognize its right to exist tout cour and advocates its destruction, there was an article in the July-August issue of Commentary, Why Israel Is Free to Set Its Own Borders by Michael I. Krauss and J. Peter Pham (requires subs.), which explores some of the international law issues which are involved. It goes over the relevant history and has a concurrent legal discussion which is particularly interesting. Here is the conclusion:

None of this is to suggest that Israel's legal and historical claims to sovereignty in the West Bank require it to remain there. But neither is it required to consult either the Palestinian Arabs or the self-appointed representatives of the "international community" if it decides to withdraw from some territory and determine its own borders. As Ariel Sharon and now Ehud Olmert have argued, it may well be in Israel's national interest to disentangle itself, as much as prudence requires, from the Palestinians and the territory in which they predominate. As many Israelis see it, to do any less might court the risk of Israel itself becoming an "occupied territory"- and at the hands of a far less benign power.
It would be best to bring about any such disengagement through negotiations with a credible and well-meaning Palestinian counterpart. But for now and the foreseeable future, the seat on the other side of the table remains empty. In this circumstance, exactly as in the 1967 war of aggression that attempted its annihilation, Israel, if it chooses to do so, has every legal right to act alone.

A copy of the article can be found here (pdf). Do read the whole thing.

Dead Meat

A lot of Europeans often go on and on about how much better healthcare systems are around here: they are so much more equitable as they are free and universal, while in the US, which is barbaric and inhumane, people die on the street and are turned away from emergency rooms if they do not have a credit card.
That's clearly a load of tosh. European healthcare systems are obviously not free, and as far as I know people are not turned away from emergency rooms in the US. Additionally European-style socialized systems also tend to be extremely inefficient. This creates somewhat hidden discrimination in two respects:

• If you are relatively healthy you get all the care you need but as soon as something serious crops up things often go pear-shaped, and at that point,
• If you are rich you can afford to go private (either at home or abroad), but if you're not you are as likely as not going to be stuck in a sometimes fatal waiting list.

I don't doubt that the US system needs to be reformed, but at least the inequalities of the US system (which are much less pronounced than what most Europeans would like to think) are transparent and recognize a reality which Europe has simply swept under the carpet.
For instance a while back, in Italy, my 83-year-old grandmother was diagnosed with colon cancer (after various misdiagnoses), and was put on a waiting list of several months to get the operation needed to remove the tumor. The wait would in all probability have been fatal. As she could afford it she paid for the necessary procedure and did it immediately as a private patient, and now, thank God, it seems the issue has been resolved conclusively. In this respect I highly recommend watching a tragi-comic preview of an upcoming documentary, entitled Dead Meat. The producers say:

Dead Meat is a 25 minute short film which shows the reality of health care under Canada's socialized medical system: Canadians wait ... and wait ... and wait. ... And sometimes they die while waiting for free government health care.

The filmmakers are currently in production on a feature-length film addressing health care in the U.S. and Canada slated for release in late 2006. As an interim offering, they have produced this short film which debuted at the Liberty Film Festival in West Hollywood, CA on Oct 21, 2005.
[...]
Many Canadians who have never been really sick are supportive of their system. In fact, the system caters to the healthy majority with free primary care doctor appointments, flu shots, etc. while depriving the truly sick - often the elderly - of timely medical treatment that is often more expensive. Political expediency dictates that health care dollars are spent where the votes are: the healthy majority - while across Canada, hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people quietly languish in pain in their homes on long waiting lists for treatment.
[...]
Certainly there are pockets of excellence in the Canadian health care system - and not everyone waits. If a person is in the process of having a heart attack, they get immediate treatment. However, any treatment deemed 'elective' - meaning that possible death is not imminent - often entails a wait. Cancer biopsies, MRI scans, heart bypasses, cataract operations, and hip replacements all involve lengthy waits for many Canadians.

Please watch it! It is truly compelling. Incredibly there are still people who find something to brag about when comparing universal public healthcare to the US system. I wonder what these people would consider a failure...

Is the electric car back?

Despite my profound indifference towards cars (and racing cars in particular), based on what I have read about it, I am quite excited about the prospected Tesla Roadster. Wired magazine enthusiastically reports:

The trick? The Tesla Roadster is powered by 6,831 rechargeable lithium-ion batteries -- the same cells that run a laptop computer. Range: 250 miles. Fuel efficiency: 1 to 2 cents per mile. Top speed: more than 130 mph. The first cars will be built at a factory in England and are slated to hit the market next summer. And Tesla Motors, Eberhard's company, is already gearing up for a four-door battery-powered sedan.

Now someone from Popular Mechanics (via Instapundit) has tried driving it and seems to be equally delighted.

As I am both an oil hawk and care about the environment, this seems to be an excellent development, particularly in the face of those who inanely claim that to save the planet we must go back to live like they did in the Stone Age.
In an interesting and thorough article that appeared in the September 2005 issue of Commentary (requires subs.; see free version here), the authors of The Bottomless Well come to the following conclusion:

The trick, then, is to figure out how best to collapse our bipolar energy economy into a single market, one in which non-oil fuels can more readily substitute for oil. Happily, we are already well on the way. During the crunch of 1979-85, utilities in the U.S. quickly shifted away from oil; today we depend on it for just 3 percent of our electric power. The huge opportunity ahead is to use electricity—and thus coal and uranium, principally—to displace still more oil. Doing this will depend on the price of oil, which we cannot control; on the price of electricity, which we can; and on the evolution of technology that will bridge the divide.

Do read the whole thing. The Tesla Roadster, and the technical specs it vaunts, particularly when adapted to more functional models (as seems to be the plan), increasingly looks like a significant step towards "collapsing our bipolar energy economy into a single market." After many false starts, and decades of work, it seems the time of the functional electric car has finally come...

Biased, as usual

It is truly a pity that Amnesty Interantional and Human Rights Watch have come to represent the positions of the international far Left, often abandoning any objectivity and therefore significantly damaging their effectiveness (and usefulness).
According to the Financial Times:

Amnesty International says attacks on civilian targets by Israeli military forces during the recently ended fighting in Lebanon look like deliberate war crimes.
In a report released on Wednesday, the London-based human rights organisation argues that the destruction of Lebanese homes and basic infrastructure "was an integral part of the military strategy".
Noting violations by both sides, Amnesty says it has asked the United Nations to open a "comprehensive, independent and impartial inquiry" about the 34-day war between Israel and the Lebanese-based Hizbollah militia.

David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy (via Instapundit) illustrates the absurdities of the report and also of the positions of HRW’s director, Kenneth Roth:

The idea that a country at war can't attack the enemy's resupply routes (at least until it has direct evidence that there is a particular military shipment arriving) has nothing to do with human rights or war crimes, and a lot to do with a pacifist attitude that seeks to make war, regardless of the justification for it or the restraint in prosecuting it [at least if it's a Western country doing it], an international "crime."
[...]
I also have to question the "high number of civilian casualties" that Amnesty is reportedly relying on. Any innocent civilian death are tragic, but 1,000 or so (alleged, we don't really know) civilians in a month of urban warfare against an enemy that based itself in the middle of cities and villages hardly seems excessive by any objective standard. The idea that Israel deliberately targeted civilians should be self-refuting to anyone with common sense, given the low level of casualties relative to the destructive power of the Israeli air force.
[...]
According to Roth's logic, Israel can only retaliate if it's retaliation will cost no more civilian lives in Gaza or Lebanon than would be caused by the terrorists if Israel didn't try to stop them. This is a formula that would paralyze not only Israel, but the U.S., Russian, India, and any other country that feels the need to pursue a military response to terrorism. Surely, the Allied forces inadvertantly killed more Afghan civilians than the number of Westerners likely at immediate risk from Al Qaeda and the Taliban! The type of "international law" and "human rights" activism that Roth and co. represent is scrupulously amoral in failing to consider that the aggressor should be held responsible for the deaths on both sides, as you can't expect any nation to allow its civilians to be attacked and not retaliate militarily.

Do read the whole thing, which mentions some other interesting points. One of the commenters mentions a short article in Capitalism Magazine (whose brashness I often find deliciously refreshing), which puts things in a, er, slightly different perspective from AI and HRW:

The primary purpose and moral obligation of any legitimate government is to protect the lives and rights of its own citizens. Hezbollah, a military wing of the Islamic dictatorship of Iran, had been explicit in its desire to destroy Israel and had been preparing to do so for the last several years from inside Lebanon, but Israel’s government did virtually nothing to pre-empt the recent attack.
When Hezbollah attacked, Israel significantly dampened its response in order to minimize the killing of "Lebanese civilians," thereby allowing many Hezbollah terrorists to live and kill Israelis. It was immoral for Israel's government to sacrifice a single Israeli soldier or civilian to save the lives of those Lebanese civilians who chose to remain in a region occupied years earlier by a terrorist organization.

Also see here, where this subject is expanded on. I had to almost laugh out loud as I was contemplating what the general reaction would be if this were the kind of strong condemnation of the Israeli government Amnesty and HRW felt impelled to make...

Post Scriptum:
I see that Instapundit has linked to an excellent Steven Den Beste post from 2003 which takes a more in-depth look at the faults and biases of Amnesty International and HRW. Do read the whole thing.

Post Scriptum II:
And the hits keep on coming!

Back to work

Despite appearances I have not dropped off the face of the planet: I have just gotten back from a rather long vacation (which was preceded by some busy times at work).
I had quite a lot of fun, by the way. First I visited my grandmother at her vacation home on the Adriatic coast, between Ancona and Pescara. A few friends of mine came along and we had a relaxing time. Her front yard opens directly on the beach (which, how shall I put it, is incredibly convenient) and she is an outstanding cook, which makes her especially popular amongst my friends... After that I visited my other grandparents in Trieste (which is where I grew up) for a weekend, and then joined the rest of my family on a small, quaint island in Croatia (called Ilovik), which is where my parents vacation quite regularly.
Nonetheless I was really happy to get back the other day, to the hustle and bustle of London, to the familiar comforts of my house and to regular phone and internet access...

The situation in Lebanon

I am somewhat conflicted by what is happening in Israel and Lebanon, as I feel terrible about the civilian casualties on both sides, while at the same time I see the necessity and justification for the Israeli response. At any rate I think this Washington Post column by Charles Krauthammer describes why this is a unique opportunity:

Hence the golden, unprecedented opportunity. Hezbollah makes a fatal mistake. It crosses the U.N.-delineated international frontier to attack Israel, kill soldiers and take hostages. This aggression is so naked that even Russia joins in the Group of Eight summit communique blaming Hezbollah for the violence and calling for the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty in the south.
But only one country has the capacity to do the job. That is Israel, now recognized by the world as forced into this fight by Hezbollah's aggression.
The road to a solution is therefore clear: Israel liberates south Lebanon and gives it back to the Lebanese.

Emphasis mine. I think the Israeli government should be more strenuous in asserting this last aspect. It should repeatedly call on the Lebanese government to cooperate with Israel, as Israel intends to pull back as soon as its very reasonable objectives are fulfilled, and collaborating will minimize civilian casualties, disarm Hezbollah more effectively and protect the Lebanese infrastructure. Obviously the Lebanese government would probably not accede to these sincere demands (as Hezbollah is even part of the governing coalition), but if so they would at least undermine the claim that Lebanon is stuck between two warring parties.
Naturally, the military straregy is of essence as well:

It starts by preparing the ground with air power, just as the Persian Gulf War began with a 40-day air campaign. But if all that happens is the air campaign, the result will be failure. Hezbollah will remain in place, Israel will remain under the gun, Lebanon will remain divided and unfree. And this war will start again at a time of Hezbollah and Iran's choosing.
Just as in Kuwait in 1991, what must follow the air campaign is a land invasion to clear the ground and expel the occupier. Israel must retake south Lebanon and expel Hezbollah. It would then declare the obvious: that it has no claim to Lebanese territory and is prepared to withdraw and hand south Lebanon over to the Lebanese army (augmented perhaps by an international force), thus finally bringing about what the world has demanded -- implementation of Resolution 1559 and restoration of south Lebanon to Lebanese sovereignty.

Do read the whole thing. And to keep abreast of the latest news and commentary an excellent source is Pajamas Media, whose latest roundup can be found here.

Remembering someone

I usually try to avoid reading certain kinds of things during down time at work (like P. G. Wodehouse novels) because I don't want to attract attention by laughing out loud or being emotional, but I was taken off guard by this article in today's Wall Street Journal, which brought tears to my eyes. I think it's behind a subscriber wall so I am reproducing the whole text:

A Friend's Illness Can Change You

By Jeffrey Zaslow - Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2006; Page D2

In ninth grade, Justin Rochkind learned that he might lose his leg to bone cancer. No one told him he'd also lose his friends.
Yet when he returned to school after treatments, he felt ignored and abandoned. Former pals averted their eyes as he limped by. No one sat with him at lunch. Eventually, he chose to be home-schooled.
I met Justin in 2003, three years after his diagnosis. He was 17 years old then, in remission, but still angry at his peers. He lived in my community of West Bloomfield, Mich., and offered to share his story in this column in the hope that he'd help other ill kids who felt ostracized.
He had simple but vital advice for the classmates of such children. "Always assume you're their only friend," he said.
Three more years have now passed, and the kids who disappointed Justin are halfway through college. Some have taken action to deal with regrets about their behavior. Others offer an example of how a community can make amends and correct itself from within.
When I first wrote about Justin, he had turned mostly to his siblings for companionship. He recognized, gratefully, that family bonds can embrace us when the bonds of friendship collapse.
At the time, some of Justin's former classmates admitted they could have been more supportive of him. But they also wished he was more forgiving. "We all need to learn to be there for each other, and to let people love us," said Adam Kessler, then 17, and one of the few who kept in touch with Justin. "If Justin comes back, we'd like another chance with him."
Justin never returned to school, in part because the cancer returned. But slowly, friends and acquaintances came back into his life. They invited him to a Super Bowl party. Then they surprised him at a restaurant for his 18th birthday. At first, Justin was tentative and chilly, unwilling to let go of how they had hurt him. And some kids remained frightened by his illness. In time, however, they rediscovered that their old friend was more than his cancer. He was bright and funny -- a musician, magician, artist and aspiring filmmaker. Justin, meanwhile, found a measure of forgiveness.
In June 2004, while Justin was undergoing treatment at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., his friends back in Michigan mounted "Rockin' for Rochkind," a fund-raiser featuring local musical acts. Fifty kids sold tickets and put up posters; 300 young people attended. "What we are doing here today is the absolute essence of what it means to be a community," one of the organizers, Zack Chutz, then 17, wrote in the program book.
That night in Memphis, Justin received phone updates about the event, and he was thrilled, especially because so many attractive girls had shown up. "He felt a lot of love from his peers," says his father, Sandy. "He saw that his friends had come full circle on their own -- they righted a wrong -- and they did it without the help of counselors or parents. I think they needed healing as much as Justin did."
Justin died in July 2004 at age 18.
Around the first anniversary of his death, his mother, Lynne, received a letter from a girl in the neighborhood. "She wanted me to know that she was thinking of Justin. She was one of those who hadn't given him the time he needed, and she wished he could know how sorry she was. It was a lovely letter."
Adam Kessler, now 20, calls Justin's mom each year on Mother's Day and Justin's birthday. At Indiana University, he is a vice president of "Circle of Life," a campus group now organizing a giant mini-marathon to benefit a scholarship fund for students with cancer. He calls Justin his inspiration. "Kids forgot about him in life. I don't want to forget about him in death."
In 2003, Tara Forman told me she hadn't been the friend Justin needed when he was first diagnosed. But she was grateful that their friendship was rekindled. She talked about how she'd gotten sick with the flu for a few days, and felt hurt that no friends called to check on her. "I can't imagine how tough it would be to have cancer, and not have friends to fall back on," she said.
Tara is now 19, and each summer since Justin died, she has volunteered at cancer facilities.
Zack Chutz, also 19, thinks of Justin daily, especially when the clock hits 3:22. (Justin's birthday was March 22.) Last week, to mark the second anniversary of Justin's death, Zack helped organize a memorial service at a summer camp he and Justin attended. Campers and counselors sang Justin's favorite song, "The Sound of Silence."
When I met Justin in 2003, he talked about his life before cancer. He said he'd be at the mall with friends, see kids in wheelchairs or bald from chemotherapy, and turn his head away. "I felt bad for them, but I felt uncomfortable," he admitted.
He asked me to give a message to young people to reach out to such kids. "Take that first step," he said. "And don't just do it out of sympathy. Do it from your heart."

I have never been closely acquainted with someone in similar circumstances, but these lessons apply to so many situations. I find it overpowering to reflect on how incredibly meaningful and lasting small actions or a few words can be in interpersonal relationships, and how oftentimes we do not think about these things enough.

Off with his head!

This story is truly incredible (and note that Die Welt isn't some wacky - or even neocon - paper; via Instapundit, also see here):

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency effectively fired his lead Iran investigator this spring at the request of the Iranians, according to a new report in the German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag.
The lead inspector of the 15-man IAEA team in Iran, Chris Charlier, told the newspaper that the IAEA chief, Mohammad ElBaradei, agreed to a request the Iranian government made, and relegated Mr. Charlier, a 64-year-old Belgian, to office work at the organization's Vienna-based headquarters. The Iranian request was reportedly made when Mr. ElBaradei visited Iran in April.
The news could have explosive consequences for America's policy of entrusting Mr. ElBaradei to negotiate an end to Iran's uranium enrichment. In 2004, after intelligence reports found him coaching the Iranians on the intricacies of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, the State Department launched a campaign to prevent Mr. ElBaradei, an Egyptian, from running for an unprecedented third term as IAEA secretary-general. That campaign failed after other countries expressed their support for him.
[...]
Mr. Charlier told the German newspaper that he believes Iran is hiding elements of its nuclear program. In comments that echoed U.N. inspectors' during the 1990s looking at Saddam Hussein's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, he said, "Wherever we went, whatever we did, they always followed us, monitoring us with video cameras and capturing every single one of our conversations. Never letting us out of their sight for a second, watching everything over our shoulder. ... How the devil were we supposed to rationally do our work?"
A spokesman for the IAEA yesterday would not comment on the story. Die Welt wrote that officials from the organization confirmed the key facts of the piece and asked the newspaper not to publish it. One of the reasons the officials gave was that it would harm the work of its inspectors on the ground.

And we (neocons) should trust international law and organizations more to resolve world conflicts? Are you nuts?!

This is leadership

Good news:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed Monday to continue his plan for unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank, saying that the current round of violence would not stop the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
"I haven't changed my basic commitment to the realignment plan," Olmert told foreign reporters in Jerusalem. "I am absolutely determined to carry out the separation from the Palestinians and establish secure borders."
He said that Israel had no policy of trying to topple the Hamas-led Palestinian government despite its arrest of dozens of Hamas officials and military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
"We have no particular desire to topple the Hamas government as a policy. We have a desire to prevent terrorists from inflicting terrorism on the Israeli people," he said.
Olmert also rejected European Union criticism of Israel's
military offensive in Gaza, saying the EU should focus instead on Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.
"When was the last time that the European Union condemned this shooting and suggested effective measures to stop it?" Olmert asked. "At some point, Israel had no point but to take some measures in order to stop this thing."

I'm glad to see I agree with everything Olmert said. I strongly feel this is a courageous and moderate stand to take. See this and also see some interesting comments from Melanie Phillips which put things in much needed perspective:

Let us remind ourselves of the context. Israel was condemned for its occupation of Gaza, which was said to be creating 'despair' and 'frustration' that was causing violence against Israel. Israel withdrew from Gaza. From the day it withdrew, the Palestinians started firing rockets from Gaza into Israel. These rockets have caused some fatalities and injuries. More than 1000 have been fired since the withdrawal. Now two rockets have hit Ashkelon, one hitting a school playground which just happened to be empty. As the Haaretz writer Ze'ev Schiff has observed, this constitutes 'an unequivocal invitation by Hamas to war.'
Virtually none of these attacks has been reported in Britain.
The Palestinians have been smuggling into Gaza a vast arsenal of weaponry and have been tunnelling into Israel. If they haven't got it already, it is only a matter of time before they get chemical or biological material with which to arm these weapons still further. For the Palestinians, withdrawal from Gaza has provided the opportunity to ratchet up their war against Israel. So much was always entirely predictable (including to people like myself, who supported withdrawal as the lesser of two terrible evils). Since Israel no longer occupied Gaza, it should have been plain — to those who didn't believe it previously — from these post-withdrawal attacks that the Palestinians' war was not one of liberation but of extermination (as they had so helpfully announced in both the Palestinian national charter and the Hamas charter).
Virtually none of this has been reported in Britain.
It was only with the tunnel raid on Israel, the killing of the Israeli soldiers, the kidnapping of Cpl Shalit and the subsequent murder of an Israeli teenager on the West Bank that Israel finally responded. It had taken months for it to do so. And so how did it respond? It destroyed two bridges and a power station — and the British media immediately screamed that these were war crimes and 'collective punishment', even though virtually no Palestinians at that stage had been killed.
Today, the fighting escalated and so did the casualties. Such is the inevitable price of a war declared upon Israel. Such civilians who are regrettably killed become casualties because the men of terror position themselves amongst them, thus effectively using the Palestinian population as human shields as this small snippet illustrates.

Do read the whole thing.

Take that!

As guilty as this makes me feel, I cannot suppress the feeling of schadenfreude at the news that Harvard will be suffering consequences for the indecorous defenestration of Larry Summers. Truly a victory against tyrants. Here's the story as reported by the Financial Times:

Larry Ellison, chief executive of Oracle, the business software group, has decided against a promised $115m donation to establish a centre for the study of health care projects at Harvard University.
The decision marks the first concrete fallout from the resignation earlier this year of Larry Summers, Harvard’s president, following a faculty revolt.
An Oracle spokesman said on Tuesday that Mr Ellison's decision to withdraw his pledge was "directly related" to the departure of Mr Summers, the controversial former US treasury secretary, whose brusque management style frequently clashed with members of the Harvard faculty.
"Larry Summers was the brainchild of this initiative. He and Larry Ellison had several dicussions about it. His last day at Harvard is this week, and his departure from Harvard is really the reason that Larry decided to reconsider the decision," the spokesman said.
He said Mr Ellison planned to announce a donation to another organisation within "several weeks."

Revenge is a dish best served cold!

CND: Iran can have nukes, but not the UK

David T. (Tate) of Harry's Place has a post up in Comment is Free in which he notes an interesting double standard:

Kate Hudson, the chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is implacably opposed to the retention of a modern nuclear deterrent for Britain.
[...]
When it comes to Iran's nuclear programme, however, CND have a rather more, erm, nuanced position. In October 2005, CND invited a very special guest to address its annual conference:

The Iranian Ambassador, Dr Seyed Mohammed Hossein Adeli will speak at the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's Annual Conference on the 15-16th October 2005. He will be giving Iran's perspective on the current controversy around the Iranian civil nuclear power programme.

CND members were treated to the Iranian regime's defence of that "civil nuclear programme."

Do read the whole thing.

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Ann Althouse (via Instapundit) makes an interesting point:

You know, what the Democrats need is a presidential candidate who was critical of the war early on, but who now firmly supports the successful completion of the mission. Gore?

Well, I don't know about that (I mean the Gore part)... Simon (of I Respectfully Dissent) posts an interesting analysis in one of the comments there:

I know I'm usually the one leading the charge against comparative law, and this comparison isn't entirely a good fit, but the Dems seem to have gotten themselves into the same funk as did the Labour Party in Britain. Having been thoroughly discredited as a party of government, Labour got absolutely slaughtered in 1979 by a resurgent conservative party under the firm control of an unusually ideologically-driven leader, Margaret Thatcher. In 1983, they got an even sterner drubbing. Bits of the party began to detatch, thinking third party runs were the way to go (sound familiar?), others thought that all they had to do was sit back and do nothing, and when the Conservatives self-destructed, Labour would be returned to power without having to fundamentally change at all (sound familiar?) while some groups - particularly one called Militant Tendancy - essentially claimed that Labour had to move even further to the left (that should definitely sound familiar). Eventually, the realization set in that if they ever wanted to get back into power, they had to change, they had to get the ultra left out of the party, and they had to make a beeline back for a position that people could vote for. It took them until 1997 - nearly twenty years in the wilderness. It's easy to make the argument that Daily Kos is Militant Tendancy to Newt Gingrich's Margaret Thatcher, Al Gore's Jim Callaghan, and John Kerry's Paul Foot, and I suppose that there's an argument that Joe Biden is Neil Kinnock (no -- wait -- that's just Biden's speeches, sorry), but it's much harder, to see which Democrat is going to step up to the plate and say to the party, "shit, you guys, we're going to be out of power until kingdom come if we don't do something." In other words, the Democrats need their very own Tony Blair - the question is who.

Do read the whole thing. The cruel Biden joke was particularly appreciated...
At any rate, the odd thing about this analysis is that not too long ago people were saying that Bill Clinton did just that to get the Democrats out of the Reagan/Bush-induced funk (although that's not entirely true, as Clinton would never, ever have won in '92 without Ross Perot), and that Tony Blair was imitating Clinton to beat the Tories. However it is certainly true that as long as the Democratic leadership is populated by such cringe-inducing personages as John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi etc., and the party doesn't come up with a positive and unified vision of what it wants the US to mean for its citizens and for the world, it will be hard (thankfully) to convince the American people to entrust the keys of power to them.

Cats rule

In the great cat-dog debate, I am certainly a cat person. My sister has an adorably snobbish and indifferent cat (which I had to take care of regularly when I lived at home), and I generally think they are superior in many ways: cleaner, quieter and more independent (you can leave them alone for a weekend and they will pace themselves with the food even if you leave lots of it out, they won't pee on your couch or get desperately lonely...). Nevertheless I do recognise that honour must be paid to seeing-eye and rescue dogs, which I admire.
Anyway, I also happen to be a fan of the musical Cats, which gives living in Bloomsbury an additional dimension of fun, because that is where the story takes place. For instance according to an unpublished poem by T.S. Eliot which ended up in the musical, eventually cats go:

Up up up past the Russell Hotel,
up up up to the Heaviside Layer

I was surprised to notice that the Russell Hotel (which still stands and has a beautiful facade) is just around the corner from my house (and if you are wondering what the Heaviside Layer is, see here).
So I was very amused by this CNN report in which a couple return home to find their cat playing with a 7-foot snake. As Meryl Yourish says:

Superiority of felines over most of the other life forms is widely known (at least to the initiated). CNN provides a clip about another case when a representative of the felines manages quite nicely, thank you, in a contact with another life form.

Give 'em hell!

Never mind

The Jerusalem Post reports:

While sticking to its demand for the establishment of an independent inquiry into a blast on a Gaza beach 10 days ago that killed seven Palestinian civilians, the Human Rights Watch conceded Monday night for the first time since the incident that it could not contradict the IDF's exonerating findings.
On Monday, Maj.-Gen. Meir Klifi - head of the IDF inquiry commission that cleared the IDF of responsibility for the blast - met with Marc Garlasco, a military expert from the HRW who had last week claimed that the blast was caused by an IDF artillery shell. Following the three-hour meeting, described by both sides as cordial and pleasant, Garlasco praised the IDF's professional investigation into the blast, which he said was most likely caused by unexploded Israeli ordnance left laying on the beach, a possibility also raised by Klifi and his team.
[...]
Garlasco told Klifi during the meeting that he was impressed with the IDF's system of checks and balances concerning its artillery fire in the Gaza Strip and unlike Hamas which specifically targeted civilians in its rocket attacks, the Israelis, he said, invested a great amount of resources and efforts not to harm innocent civilians. "We do not believe the Israelis were targeting civilians." Garlasco said. "We just want to know if it was an Israeli shell that killed the Palestinians."

Adloyada (via Harry's Place and Instapundit – also see Haditha developments there) wonders:

As I commented previously, Mr Garlasco seems to have a remarkable tendency to radically recast his accounts of his actions to match emerging evidence. His entire previous case was about active Israeli shelling dropping out of the sky, which he had said was almost beyond doubt responsible.
And I wonder if Chris McGreal of the Guardian, Donald McIntyre of the Independent, and the BBC News web site will now report in full Garlasco and Human Rights Watch's latest statements that the Israeli forces invest such effort not to harm innocent civilians and were correct in stating that an errant shell did not cause the killings.
And will they raise questions about the Palestinian witness evidence they so graphically reported, which had barrages of shells landing in the midst of the family on the beach?

As they say in German: So siehst du aus!

Post Scriptum:
Also see these interesting comments from Meryl Yourish and Perry de Havilland.

Is the sky falling yet?

Something to chew on: the sea-level in the Arctic has been... falling! Madsen Pirie at the ASI Blog notes:

Scientists know that the world's oceans are not of uniform height, and it is possible, thinks Dr Proshutinsky, that the results might fit the so-called Arctic Oscillation, "a seesaw pattern of change in atmospheric pressure over the polar region and mid latitudes." The problem with fitting all this in is compounded by the regular cyclic changes which happen to the earth's climate, and indeed to the sun's output. What is by no means clear is whether any of these new Artcic findings can be laid at the door of human activity.

Do read the whole report, which underlines how little even scientists understand what drives the climate. Something I found odd is that the same page also has a graphic on Arctic sea ice extent, which is entitled: "Arctic Ice in Retreat." The data in the graphic plots as follows:

I do think the title is somewhat gratuitously misrepresenting the data... not to mention that the time frame is vanishingly small. Anyway, here (scroll down) is some more information about what is happening to glaciers in general.

'Mlle Thatcher' à l'Elysée?

Here is a story about someone I mentioned some time ago:

Sabine Hérold, who sprang to fame when she led a protest movement against French workers' readiness to go on strike, now hopes to exploit growing disillusionment with her country's political elite by winning a seat in parliament.
Miss Hérold, 25, who regards her French media nickname - Mlle Thatcher - as a compliment, also refuses to rule out standing as a candidate to replace Jacques Chirac as president next year.
Miss Hérold, a prominent figure in the new Liberal Alternative Party, told The Daily Telegraph last night that her aim was to restore French people's confidence in their country and society.
"I don't see myself as being of the Right," she insisted from Turkey, where she is on holiday. "Our concept of liberalism doesn't translate easily into English, but essentially means giving individuals the freedom and responsibility to make their own decisions in all areas of life." Miss Hérold found herself addressing crowds of up to 80,000 three years ago when she became the spearhead of a campaign against crippling anti-government strikes by public sector workers.
In her first attempt to win the hearts of French voters, she has chosen Paris's smart 16th arrondissement for her battleground. There, she will try to unseat Françoise de Panafieu, from the ruling centre-Right UMP party, who won a comfortable victory in the 2002 general election.

Quite a long shot, I would say, and that's all the more reason to admire her for fighting for these ideals. Maybe she'll do better than Abraham Lincoln... that's when the real fun would start.

Is reality malleable?

Here's a rather amusing look at how the same events can be presented in a different light. The BBC News website informs us:

Japan gains key whaling victory

Pro-whaling nations have won their first vote towards the resumption of commercial whaling for 20 years. The meeting of the International Whaling Commission backed the declaration by a majority of just one.
Anti-whaling countries say they will challenge the outcome, which Japan has described as "historic". But pro-whaling nations need support from three-quarters of the commission to overturn the 1986 ban aimed at protecting the endangered species.
The resolution, tabled by St Kitts and Nevis where the meeting is being held, declared: "The moratorium, which was clearly intended as a temporary measure, is no longer necessary."

The (London) Telegraph on the other hand reports:

Anti-whaling nations win 'great victory' against Japan proposals

Japan suffered an unexpected and total defeat when it tried to start attacking a 20-year-old ban on commercial whaling at the International Whaling Commission's meeting in the Caribbean state of St Kitts and Nevis last night.
The member countries of the UN whaling treaty voted down two proposals by Japan - the most significant one for secret ballots so that small Pacific and Caribbean nations that receive Japanese aid could unpick the protection of whales without fear of retribution. The other proposal sought to prevent the commission from discussing the fate of dolphins and porpoises as well as whales.

Meanwhile this seems to be the most factual account:

How the voting went at the IWC meeting

Japan won its first pro-whaling majority in more than two decades today at the International Whaling Commission when the group approved a declaration criticizing a 1986 ban on commercial whaling.
But Japan lost four more substantive votes at the IWC's June 16-20 meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis.
The first vote, proposed by Japan, was to prevent the IWC from discussing the fate of dolphins, porpoises and small whales in addition to great whales. Japan lost 30-32, with one abstention.
The second vote, also proposed by Japan, was to introduce secret balloting. It lost that vote 30-33, with one abstention.
The third vote, which would have allowed Japanese coastal communities to hunt a limited number of whales -- effectively circumventing the moratorium -- was lost by 30 votes to 31, with four abstentions.
Japan lost its fourth vote when it proposed eliminating a Southern Ocean whale sanctuary, for which it needed and did not expect a three-quarters majority. Japan had hoped to at least win a simple majority but lost 28-33, with four abstentions.
The fifth vote on the declaration, which called the moratorium unnecessary and which accused whales of eating "huge quantities of fish," was won by 33 votes to 32, with one abstention. Environmental activists blamed a "yes" vote by Denmark for passage of the statement.

They also have the voting list.
It's funny how even something apparently simple can seem so different depending on which account one reads. No doubt this is even more true of the really important and controversial stuff.

Post Scriptum:
À propos whaling, Daniel Drezner (via Instapundit) explains why the International Whaling Commission is his favourite international body, and notes the Independent's "rather hyperbolic" coverage of the story. No surprises from what has deliciously been called the "Daily Mail for people who recycle."

The situation in Iraq

Gateway Pundit (via MP) makes some interesting points on Iraq, and how things are going there:

The recorded Iraqi civilian fatalities (including insurgents, military, morgue counts, police, etc.) were down 16% (16% maximum) in 2005... 38% (48% maximum) less than 2003 (via Leftist anti-war site Iraq Body Count). If you take out the numbers from that horrible day in August 2005 when nearly one thousand panicked Iraqis were trampled or drowned near a Muslim shrine, the year shows striking progress compared to 2003 and 2004 with fatalities one third less than in 2004.

Do read the whole thing. Melanie Phillips notes:

Yes, abuses such as occurred at Abu Ghraib and now maybe Haditha have had a profound effect too. But once again, the way these have been reported -- as if the behaviour of the US military has been as bad as, if not even wose then, the terror perpetrated by Saddam -- has played a major role in breaking the public's spirit. Abuses happen in all military conflicts. Soldiers fighting for the most noble of ends sometimes behave in appalling ways. It's reprehensible, and should be punished. But dwelling upon it obsessively, inflating or distorting what happened and equating such aberrations with systematic tyranny, are all fuelling an atmosphere of hysteria in the west and handing Zarqawi his most potent weapon. If we had behaved like this during World War Two, we would have lost it.

Meanwhile Gene at Harry's Place expands a very interesting, and rarely mentioned, comparison with World War II:

He quotes from a book by Norman Lewis, who was stationed with the British army in Naples toward the end of World War II.

"What we saw was ineptitude and cowardice spreading down from the command, and this resulted in chaos...
"I saw an ugly sight: a British officer interrogating a civilian, and repeatedly hitting him about the head with the chair; treatment which the [civilian], his face a mask of blood, suffered with stoicism. At the end of the interrogation, which had not been considered successful, the officer called on a private and asked him in a pleasant, conversational sort of manner, 'Would you like to take this man away, and shoot him?' The private's reply was to spit on his hands, and say, 'I don't mind if I do, sir.'
"I received confirmation ... that American combat units were ordered by their officers to beat to death [those] who attempted to surrender to them. These men seem very naive and childlike, but some of them are beginning to question the ethics of this order.
"We liberated them from the Fascist Monster. And what is the prize? The rebirth of democracy. The glorious prospect of being able one day to choose their rulers from a list of powerful men, most of whose corruptions are generally known and accepted with weary resignation. The days of Mussolini must seem like a lost paradise compared to us."

Replace "Mussolini" with "Saddam" and you get one of the more mindless criticisms of the invasion of Iraq-- which doesn't stop Michael "Flying Kites" Moore and countless others from repeating it.
Add to Lewis's account the thousands of other atrocities surely committed by Allied forces during World War II, and the hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians killed by the deliberate bombing of their neighborhoods, and the Iraq war seems almost pristine by comparison. And yet who will say that the world isn't a better place for the Allies having fought and defeated the Axis? Who will argue (as some have about Abu Ghraib and Haditha) that the Second World War atrocities were sufficient cause for stopping the fight and going home?
Abu Ghraib and Haditha have sickened me, and those responsible need to be held to account-- up to the highest ranks, including the secretary of defense. Having never experienced combat, I can't begin to imagine how stressful it is. But neither can I imagine any circumstances in which it is justified to shoot defenseless women and children.
And yet I also know that on the coalition side, atrocities are the exception and not a matter of strategy-- in contrast to the other side in the fight.

Do read the whole thing: I think he really strikes the correct balance in this piece.

The Tiananmen Square Massacre

Today is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Slate has an interesting photo essay and here is a gut-wrenching video which is well worth seeing (both via Instapundit).

(Photo: Jeff Widener - The Associated Press; source)

The victims' families and the world are still waiting for China to face up to its past.

Lomborg is winning, thankfully

I became aware of the Johann Hari and Scott Burgess debate (which IMHO Scott is winning hands down) through the excellent EnviroSpin Watch. Some people where I work are fans of Harry's Place (which I enjoy as well), and came to the same debate through this post. After reading through it they came to the flabbergasting conclusion that Lomborg is misrepresenting himself. Huh?! It's funny how people who make the heritage of the Enlightenment their own, seem to have such trouble accepting hard facts, i.e. that Hari is clearly misrepresenting reality, Lomborg's positions and much else besides.
Anyway, as Philip points out, thankfully Lomborg etc. are clearly winning the practical debate:

Yet, despite the vitriol and abuse, in the solid world, beyond the febrile and hysterical rantings of a few (surprisingly few, I might add) European 'Greens', and some of the 'liberal' media, like The Independent, BBC television (far less BBC radio), and Channel 4, Lomborg is quietly winning the debate.
As Canada's The National Post (May 30) points out in 'Ottawa's Kyoto plan wins backers in Bonn', the Kyoto Protocol is slowly and inexorably being ditched and abandoned.
[...]
The economic imperative, coupled with dynamic adaptive innovation, will continue to thrive. Lomborg, in essence, has won. Hence the ill-tempered outbursts of Mr. Hari and his ilk. Sadly, in the meantime, such people have caused us to waste so much energy on sheer fantasies. As Lomborg says, we should be concentrating on getting the best outcomes for our money, especially for the poorest and the most disadvantaged in the world.

Do read the whole thing. Unfortunately Hari etc. seem intent on proving that they are totally unhinged from reality, which is a pity.