Humourless twat of the week (2)

The ever so thin-skinned Mad Vlad strikes again, from MSN/Forbes:

Depardieu, who has had close ties to Putin since 2013 and even received a Russian passport directly from Putin, told AFP on Thursday the Russian people were “not responsible for the crazy, unacceptable excesses of their leaders like Vladimir Putin.”

The Kremlin said it would be “ready” to explain the situation in Ukraine so that “he understands better” if Depardieu “wants,” AFP reported. Depardieu, who previously supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea, is “not completely immersed in the political agenda,” Peskov said.

Depardieu “does not understand what happened in Ukraine in 2014, he does not understand what the Minsk agreements are, he does not understand what Donetsk and Luhansk are, he hardly understands what is the bombing of civilians, he is unlikely to know about the nationalist elements,” Peskov said, according to Politico.

Wot? Anybody who slags off Mad Vlad gets personally invited to Re-education Camp? Even if Depardieu were totally 100% wrong, why should this concern a Head of State?

"Better off dead"

This whole Ukraine/World War III is really getting me down. I responded the only way I know how:

"Turkish government had enormous arrest lists ready ‘just in case'"

Newsthump on top form.

"Egyptians vote in landmark presidential election"

From the BBC:

Egyptians are voting for their new dictator, 15 months after ousting Hosni Mubarak in the Arab Spring uprising. Fifty million people are eligible to vote, and large queues have formed at some polling stations in the mistaken assumption that people were queuing for food.

The military council which assumed presidential power in February 2011 has promised a fair vote and civilian rule, which is not binding on the duly elected despot. The election pits Islamists against Western lackeys and revolutionaries against Mubarak-era ministers.

But the BBC's Wyre Davies, in the second city of Alexandria, says that for many people the election is not about religious dogma or party politics, but about who can take their food from the table.

The frontrunners are:

* Ahmed Shafiq, a former commander of the air force and briefly commandant of a large concentration camp for political prisoners.

* Amr Moussa, who has served as foreign minister and head of the Egyptian secret police.

* Mohammed Mursi, who heads Muslim Brotherhood's Amputations and Female Genital Mutilations Party.

* Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh, former head of the Egyptian national bank and a large-scale property developer, who has acted as intermediary for many Western arms manufacturers.

Robert Mugabe: it's the end of an error

He's put in for a promotion

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Aung San Suu Kyi

Pervez Musharraf

Has anybody else noticed that whenever there's news from Pakistan, it is invariably really bad - Bhutto assassination, terrorist attacks (in Pakistan and in India), corruption, failure to deal with flooding, cricketers taking bribes to lose matches etc?

More to the point, is it a coincidence that this has all happened in the past two years since Pervez Musharraf threw in the towel? You didn't hear much from Pakistan - and certainly nothing terribly bad - during the eight years that he was in charge. He even managed to keep his sense of humour despite the numerous attempts to assassinate him.

Is it possible that he was - by Pakistani standards - a genuinely enlightened leader? I'm a pacificist and a democrat, but I always liked him and see no reason to change that opinion. Slightly more controversially, is it possible that people in some countries (particularly Islamic ones) just aren't ready for democracy? Will they ever invite him back, I wonder?

Just askin'.

The Daily Mailexpressgraph will have a field day with this...

... and rightly so, on this occasion. From the BBC:

Swimming lessons in some Staffordshire schools should stop during Ramadan to ensure Muslim pupils "do not swallow water", a council has suggested...

The council guide states: "Schools with a significant number of Muslim pupils should try to avoid scheduling swimming lessons during Ramadan to remove unnecessary barriers to full participation."

It also suggests re-scheduling sex education classes during the holy lunar month, as Muslim followers who have reached puberty are required to avoid sexual thoughts during this period...

Schools have been advised this can disrupt pupils' sleeping patterns and it suggests internal examinations could be re-scheduled to reflect their lower levels of concentration.

The council said the document, produced by its Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education, was based on information from the Muslim Council of Great Britain, an umbrella organisation that claims to represent up to 500 Muslim groups in the UK.

"The overriding consideration should be that children do not feel disadvantaged in school activities because of their religious observance," the council added.

At last, Barroso has said it...

To my mind this whole 'common currency' idea clearly has advantages (for example it reduces transaction costs, and, assuming free movement of capital and labour, it would tend to shift capital and labour towards profitable areas/activities) and disadvantages.

Without speculating on what those disadvantages might be, it is clear that once a currency area reaches a certain (geographical) size [As Dearieme points out, it is political, economic or cultural 'diversity' that matters rather than surface area], they outweigh the advantages - if this were not the case, the whole world would be using the same currency (putting aside the fact that for centuries, the whole world had a common currency, it was called 'gold'). We also know that there have been countless currency unions in the past, most of which fell apart again

For analogy with 'common languages', see footnote*.

As to this whole common European currency idea, which has been bumbling along for decades, opponents have always said that it would simply not work without economic, and hence ultimately political union. The more outspoken proponents were saying the same thing as well, of course, but this was not, until now, the EU-fficial line.

So you will be horrified/pleased** to see in today's Metro that Barroso has finally come out and said this:

The European Union wants to crack down on 'irresponsible' government spending following the £638billion EU stabilisation mechanism. The plan, proposed by the EU's executive commission, calls for unprecedented scrutiny of countries' spending plans – even before they go to their national parliaments.

EU commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said: 'You can't have a monetary union without an economic union and this is the absolute prerequisite for having monetary union.'

* By analogy, it must be clear that things would work better on a global level if we all spoke the same language, which is why the smaller languages are dying out and well over half the world's population now speaks just four languages, English (in all its variants); Spanish/Portuguese (which is more or less the same language AFAIAC); Arabic (and all its variants) or Chinese (in both its main variants).

Presumably, these language blocs are sufficiently big to gain most of the advantages, and the massive cultural resistance to further consolidation now outweighs any further gains that might accrue to a bloc which adopted English in favour of its own language. I can just about imagine English and Spanish/Portuguese merging over the next few centuries as well, and perhaps the Chinese and Arabs will adopt the Roman alphabet (like Turkey or Malaysia did; some Chinese language newspapers use the Roman alphabet etc), but hey.

** Delete according to whether you are an EU-sceptic or an EU-phile. Whether the spending cuts are a good idea or not is a separate debate, but let's not forget the huge financial burden that all the EU regulations place on domestic economies.

From The Dictator's Handbook, Chapter 7

"When living standards start to slide backwards because of your heavy-handed and corrupt regime, you can usually distract people's attention from this (and have a fine excuse to move against 'internal enemies') by stoking up tensions with, and ultimately declaring war on, a neighbouring country. Simples."

Power Grab Of The Week

Condensed version of email from Denis Cooper (with kind permission):

"An EU official has told The Times of Malta that one item in the draft conclusions of the two day EU summit which starts today, will be to extend the term of the EU Commission for an extra six months.

I've looked carefully, and there is definitely no specific legal basis for extending the term of the Commission under these circumstances, not even in a "caretaker format". And over two weeks ago I emailed the office of Commissioner Neelie Kroes about it, and the bloke (one Jonathan Todd) broke off the exchange when I posed the question: "But on what legal basis could the Council of Ministers authorise the present Commissioners to remain in post beyond the end of their five year term, which expires on October 31st?"

Anyway, they think they can do whatever they please by invoking the catch-all Article 308 TEC, on pdf page 179 here:

"If action by the Community should prove necessary to attain, in the course of the operation of the common market, one of the objectives of the Community, and this Treaty has not provided the necessary powers, the Council shall, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the European Parliament, take the appropriate measures."

Although in this case they might have a problem consulting the European Parliament before midnight on Saturday."

Be careful what you wish for ...

Via Socialist Appeal:

URGENT: Two workers killed while defending the occupied Mitsubitshi factory

In the afternoon of Wednesday, January 29, two workers were killed by police ... The workers killed are Pedro Suarez from the Mitsubishi factory and José Marcano from nearby auto parts factory Macusa. They were killed when regional police of Anzoategui was attempting to evict hundreds of workers who had been occupying the Mitsubitshi (MMC) factory.

Now, guess in which hell-hole of a South American dictatorship this happened...

Highlight between the dotted lines for the answer:
---------------------------------
Yup, that Socialist Paradise Venezuela.
---------------------------------

The wisdom of crowds

Having collated and meticulously analysed the responses from thirty-five internationally renowned and highly qualified medical specialists, Kim Jong-Il will be pleased to hear that forty per cent concluded he wasn't dead yet, just feeling a bit il.

On the downside, over a quarter thought that he was in fact dead. And slightly over a third neither cared nor knew who he was in the first place.

"Seized properties shame Poland"

Here's another example of why it takes countries much longer to recover from left-wing dictatorships than from right-wing ones.

NB - I am not trying to downplay the Poles' historic anti-semitism or their possible complicity in The Holocaust, that's a different topic.

"Ireland risks splitting EU, says adviser to Sarkozy"

I said back in March that an Irish "No" might be The Beginning Of The End. Going by the tone of this article*, perhaps history will prove me right.**

I like this paragraph best:

He said it was a mistake for the Government to hold a referendum on Lisbon and described such plebiscites as "tools for dictators" as evidenced by European history. "If you hold 10 or 12 referendums and in every state there is 80 per cent support for an idea there is still only a less than 1 per cent probability that the measure will pass everywhere," he said.

Wot?

"Dictatorships"? Like Switzerland, Norway, Ireland ...?

The maths is out. What he means is "if there is an 80 per cent probability of each referendum resulting in a 'yes'", in which case, the probability of all 12 referenda resulting in a 'yes' is just under 7% (+0.8^12).

And where does this "80 per cent" come from? IIRC we've had three referenda so far*** (France, Netherlands, Ireland) and all three have resulted in a 'no'.

* Via Denis Cooper.

**^TMSigue Sigue Sputnik

*** Update, oops, I forgot about referenda in Luxembourg and Spain, who both voted 'Yes'

Two party rotating dictatorship (2)

Continuing the theme of my an earlier post, the answer to the question Are we destined to be stuck in a two party rotating dictatorship for good? is, rather depressingly, "Yes". Bluntly speaking, this is not just because of the dishonesty of politicians, it is because of the dishonesty (or stupidity, or petty-mindedness, or lack of vision) of voters.

The two (or three) large parties have policies that are virtually indistiguishable; because it is easier for them to "fight over the centre ground". This is not really centre-ground at all, it is Large Government.

If a small-government, free market liberal sticks his head above the parapet, sure, most people will agree with him on one or two narrow issues, but most will also be more worried about losing some trifling advantage that the tax, welfare or planning system gives him; or by the thought that others might benefit more; or, Heaven forbid, that the State might stop interfering in people's lives so much. This forces the large parties to stick to the pre-agreed script; any perceived differences are purely presentational and not of substance.

I can't be bothered rehearsing the arguments in favour of low, simple taxes and Universal Benefits, it's easier to consider this in terms of relatively trivial matters, for example my manifesto for a Coalition Of The Willing. The accompanying Fun On-Line Poll ended up 60% in favour of scrapping all these silly bans, but I doubt whether any political party, short of LPUK, would have the nerve to recommend such a list. And to be honest, I doubt whether this sort of thing is a vote-winner, because voters are basically a spiteful lot, who quite happily give up one or two freedoms of their own if it means that they can outlaw all the little things of which they don't approve.

Crudely, Tory voters don't like the fox-hunting ban but wouldn't dream of legalising cannabis; Lib Dem or Green voters are relaxed about legalising cannabis but disapprove of fox-hunting. The Labour Party just enjoy banning everything, I am not sure if Labour voters have even noticed this, so it might not be fair to generalise on "What the stereotypical Labour-voter would or would not ban".

And there we have it, a classic impasse, that can only get worse as time goes on.

The difference between 'right wing' and 'left wing' dictators

Longrider's post reminded me that I have been meaning to cover this topic for ages (apart from a comment here). In short, there are two types of dictatorship; those who nationalise or collectivise assets (in particular land) and put them under the control of The Party or the dictator's cronies ('left wing'); and those who don't ('right wing').

In the former category, we have e.g. USSR, Eastern Europe, China, many Middle Eastern countries, North Korea, Cuba, Burma, Zimbabwe, Venezuala etc; and in the latter we have the Nazis, Japan (before WW2), Franco, Mussolini, whoever was in charge in Portugal and Greece after WW2, South Korea, Pinochet, Galtieri etc. I can't think of many current examples of the latter category.

Most dictatorships come to an end, whether violently or otherwise. The striking difference is that once a right-wing dictatorship disappears, it only takes civil society a couple of years to re-establish itself and for the economy to pick up where it left off (assuming that the economy suffered in the first place, which is not always a given, unlike with 'left wing' dictatorships), whereas with 'left wing' dictatorships, misery is guaranteed for decades (or centuries) to come while people bicker over who owns what; the bickering can cause as much damage as the original dictatorship.