Here’s another reminder that Berlusconi is not the euroskeptic that is so often hoped for by conservatives on this side of the Atlantic:

“The Italian and German governments have agreed to seek a quick adoption of the European Constitution, with as few changes as possible.

The agreement to limit the number of amendments made by governments when they pour over the document later this year is being seen as an attempt by Rome to place relations between the two countries on a better footing.

Meeting with his Italian counterpart on Saturday in Verona the German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder spoke in favour of having the draft Constitution adopted without changes.

Pleased with the draft presented by the Convention on the Future of Europe Berlin is keen to see that the agreement is not watered down.

Whoever opens the packet, will not manage to seal it again, the German Chancellor warned.

It looks like he has now secured Italian support, which will be essential. “

Former East German skater Katarina Witt may be as easy on the eye as she is hard on the ice, but her new venture, hosting a TV show on the brighter side of the dictatorship under which she once flourished is in, to put it mildly, very poor taste. The London Independent picks up the story:

“During the four-part series, she will interview former East German personalities but avoid politics. "It is an entertainment show," Ms Witt said. "It is time to show we also had fun in the German Democratic Republic." To drive home the publicity message, the ice-queen sports a blue communist Free German Youth movement shirt.”

[As] Günter Nooke, an eastern German conservative Christian Democrat politician, said: "What would be the reaction in Germany if television produced similar programmes about the Third Reich?"

Quite.

Art Torres is Chairman of the California Democratic Party, and this is what he told the LA Times:

Schwarzenegger is "at the very least a misogynist I think women have to ask themselves, is this the kind of governor they want?"

Quite why Art Torres is in a position to tell women what they have to ask themselves escapes me.

What is it about state attorneys general? In an entertaining piece over at Reason Nick Gillespie discusses their latest foray into the absurd:

“In a stunning, courageous admission that they no longer have any serious work left to do, attorneys general in two dozen states recently sent a letter to the Motion Picture Association of America asking that Hollywood minimize smoking in movies so youngsters won't be gulled into lighting up. Taking a page from movie gangsters, who tend to threaten vaguely rather than make explicit demands, the attorneys general didn't insist on a specific remedy. Rather, according to a spokesman for one of the signatories, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, they were merely expressing "concern for the health of our kids."

The whole article is well worth reading, but it’s interesting to see that Lockyer’s spokesman, one Tom Dresslar (a man who has apparently no problem about working for a rape fan), concedes, “We're not saying any law has been broken.” Despite that, these repulsive busybodies have decided to try their hands at a little intimidation, and, as usual on these occasions of bureaucratic overreach, they cite, sigh, ‘the kids,’ a justification more emetic than any cigarette could ever be.

In his piece Nick Gillespie points out some other lessons ‘the kids’ could learn from the movies including that “Car chases can solve problems,” and “Mutation is a viable path to self-improvement”, but if the attorneys general are really concerned about this issue, I have a modest proposal.

From the Daily Telegraph :

”A Shakespeare test that requires no knowledge of the playwright's texts is being reviewed after complaints from teachers, exam officials said yesterday.

Pupils could pass the key Stage Three paper, sat by 14-year-olds, without reading any Shakespeare as it asks questions relating to "themes" rather than demanding specific understanding of his plays.

One question on Henry V states that the king was regarded as a hero and asks candidates to write about "people you admire".

Another refers to the importance of appearance in Twelfth Night and asks pupils: "How important is what you wear? Write your views as if contributing to a piece in a teenage magazine."

I wonder what the Derb has to say about this.

There’s nothing new about the anti-globalization movement – it’s just another chance for a small self-selected elite to demonstrate its moral superiority over the rest of us, and as usual this latest generation of prigs, saints and busybodies is doing so by demonstrations of conspicuous non-consumption, the ascetic self-indulgence that has persisted through generations of the annoying, from hermits to Savanarola, to early Bolsheviks to the grotesques at the Center for ‘Science’ in the ‘Public Interest' and to far too many others. Unfortunately, these sorts of people are never just content to pose – they have programs to work out, plans to set and laws to impose – all so the rest of us can’t make decisions of which they disapprove. And if their actions involve theft, confiscation, compulsion or the destruction of private property, so much the better.

Here’s a prime example from France:

“The McDonalds franchise located in Paris at Strasbourg St. Denis has been shut down by striking workers for the better part of a year. Now the strikers are occupying the McDonalds and using it as a storefront to sell t-shirts to fund striking French artists and anything that José Bove [the ‘peasant’ totalitarian who destroyed another McDonalds] is up to at the moment. So here we have the confiscation of private property that has been turned into a squat, and illegal commerce, and nothing is done about it.”

Via the blogger at Merde in France (as its name would suggest, this blog contains, ahem, ‘indelicate’ language.

The tragedy of all those deaths in France during the recent heatwave is now well-known, but their underlying cause still remains unclear. Was the fraying of traditional bonds to blame or structural problems in the French healthcare sector? Perhaps, but this piece by Cato’s Patrick Michaels suggests that a more mechanical problem may be to blame : the lack of air-conditioning:

”The mathematics of this problem are terribly transparent. In order to meet their self-imposed targets from the Kyoto Protocol (search) on global warming, European nations already have taxed energy, but they have not done enough. Consequently, even more restrictions are being proposed, especially by the German government. Unaffordable air conditioning will become even more expensive, killing more and more Europeans the next time the temperature reaches what passes for a few degrees above what is normal in Dallas.

Europe has effectively imposed a continuous blackout on air conditioning, and now it is paying the price.

Some people will point to the hundreds of people who died in the infamous July 1995 Chicago heat wave and wonder how we could have ignored this obvious tragedy. We didn't.

Normally many more die on the poorer South Side of the city, but not in 1995. A power outage hit the affluent North Side early on and the air conditioning went out. As they say, Q.E.D.

And as for the heat-prostrated people of Europe, it's too bad that the Kyoto Protocol will do nothing measurable about the Earth's mean temperature for the forseeable future. But it will kill thousands and thousands more in France, Germany and England, where energy taxes are enormous, creating an invisible blackout of lifesaving air conditioning.”

Intriguing.

That Islamic militancy is a threat to the Enlightenment values of the West is, one would think, obvious, and it's something that needs a vigorous intellectual response as a supplement to the police work of the current anti-terrorist campaign. Despite this, hogtied by PC and the shibboleths of multiculturalism, this is an approach that politicians seem curiously unwilling to try. Still, in her address to a "conference of chairmen of Islamic centres and Imams in Europe," the Austrian foreign minister shows that she, at least, is beginning to take some tentative steps in this direction:

"Let me, from my viewpoint as Austrian foreign minister, briefly outline the nature of these expectations on the basis of a few issues, which I hope you will discuss in the course of your meeting and take into consideration in your "Graz Declaration":

Are human rights merely compatible with Islam, as is written in the agenda for this conference, or do the Islamic institutions in Europe have specific ways and means of defending and advocating human rights, both actively and by initiative…"

Blogger Bill in Austria has more.

Here’s a speech from thuggish Micheal Martin, Ireland’s Minister for Health and, inevitably, Children in which he attempts to justify his proposed ban on smoking in bars and restaurants. As usual, ‘passive smoking’ is used in an attempt to justify this legislation, but read Martin's speech carefully and see if you can find anything that tries to quantify this supposed risk.

Martin clearly has as much contempt for science as he does for the intelligence of his electors.

This grubbily conformist little website is an EU-funded (EU taxpayer-funded, in other words) effort to dissuade teens from smoking. They shouldn’t of course, but there’s something more than a little patronizing in the way that the EU’s bureaucrats think it’s any of their business. Still, Brussels clearly spared no expense when it came to their text of their message:

“The cigarette industry does more than merely advertise a deathly product. Sophisticated marketing and promotion measures, from tombola actions and the distribution of free packets, over the sponsoring of sport and music events, up to the employment of a wide range of promotional items rouse curiosity in adolescents and animate them to give it a try.

The annual expenses of the tobacco multis for promotion activities and special forms of advertising amount to more than 7.4 milliard US Dollars in the USA alone – by far the largest item in the marketing budget of cigarette producers. This way, campaign motifs and brand names become a part of whole generations’ daily lives. The familiarity with the brand swamps out the deadly effect of cigarettes in the consumer’s consciousness. “

This is, apparently, written in what the EU considers to be English.

Here’s an intriguing article from the Guardian on Scottish food, an often-underrated cuisine. The health brigade will be both upset and gratified by this extract:

”The abuse of fatty foods (as well as alcohol, cigarettes and heroin) can only, in the end, be put down to a particularly phlegmatic "Get tae f***!" Rab C Nesbitt/Braveheart side to the national character, which, it has to be said, has held us in pretty good stead over the years. That and, of course, the traditional Scottish hatred of waste.

"I would hate to die with a heart attack and waste a good liver, kidney and brains," said famous folksinger Hamish Imlach. "When I die, I want everything to be knackered." And he did of course, aged 56. “

Sorry to return to London’s Congestion Charge again, but seeing socialism in action does have a certain ‘scared straight’ value to it. Add to this the certainty that some American municipality will probably give this dumb idea a try, then publicizing Red Ken’s crusade against cars may have some value to an audience over here.

The indispensable Iain Murray has now weighed in on this controversy:

“Livingstone… told the Daily Telegraph newspaper that, "The aim of congestion charging was always to cut traffic and congestion, not to make money." It is clear, therefore, that Livingstone was not interested in a market mechanism and finding an appropriate equilibrium between revenue and congestion. Instead, the congestion fee is revealed as what a lot of us thought it was to begin with -- an environmental tax.

Yet it is not a traditional form of tax. Ken Livingstone has seen free to buy what he sees as environmental benefits by diverting large sums from Londoners' pocketbooks (the average person paying the charge will probably end up paying well over $1,500 a year) into the coffers of Capita. The economic term for Capita's role is "rent-seeker" -- a person or company that seeks to secure guaranteed income streams by using regulation to appropriate the income of other persons or companies (in recent American history, the most notable rent-seeker was Enron). It appears that Londoners are not happy about this. Over 100,000 people are currently refusing to pay penalty notices.”

Failure, incompetence and coercion: classic socialism imposed by a man who is, at heart, just another 1960s boomer who won’t go away.

Of course, there’s another topic here – why the left hate the auto so much – but that’s a discussion for another time.

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidaon--O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih.

An email:

Ramesh must have been having a bad day yesterday. The editorial page
article by Jost et. al. defending their research on political
conservatism is simply terrible. It is terrible not because of what it
says but rather how it distorts what they previously said in thier
research. They claim that they did this research as arm's length
unbiased academic research and their findings have been distorted by an
irresponsible press. As much as I hate to defend the press, they
interpreted what Jost et. al. was saying in their reprehensible articles
correctly. (Indeed, the cause of the press's interpretation was most
likely a Stanford university press release that described the research.
Having read the original articles, I do not believe that a journalist
would have the patience to read the things in the first place.) Anyway
several points need to be made.

1. The press did not create the pejorative terms to describe
conservative or conservative beliefs, the researchers did. The terms
dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity to describe conservatives appear
throughout both articles (They wrote two articles. The original article
and then one responding to a criticism of that article. Both articles
appear in the May issue of Psychology Bulletin) but most prominantly in
the abstract of the original article. In the abstract of the reply
article, the following terms to describe conservatives also appear,
"lack of openess to experience; uncertainty avoidence; personal needs
for order, structure and closure; fear of death; and system threat."
They then repeat these claims in the first paragraph of the article
itself. Moreover, they repeat these claims throughout the article and
the follow-up Reply article. In short, despite the protests of the
authors, the pejorative description of conservatives is not due to any
misinterpretation of the article by the press but rather the content of
the article.

2. The most outrageous comparisons of conservatives like Ronald Reagan
and Rush Limbaugh to Hitler and Mussolini is based solely on their claim
that all preached a return to some idealized past. This is a claim that
remains unproven. I do not remember Reagan championing such a thing nor
have I heard Limbaugh champion such a notion. If one could link
political ideologies to Hitler and Mussolini by one possible similarity
then on the basis of their support for and creation of social security,
New Deal liberals could be placed in the same camp as these two.
Furthermore, German Greens could be linked to Hitler as they share
certain reverences for nature. In the Washington Post article, Jost et.
al. simply do not address why they rely so heavily on such a tenuous
link between Reagan and Hitler and Mussolini.

3. They selectively attribute motivations to conservatives (from their
Exceptions reply). "American conservatives may support a market-based
economy (which introduces uncertainty and risk) because it preserves the
status quo and results in inequality of outcomes even though it may
conflict with personal needs for stability and security." In other
words, if a policy has an impact that conflicts with their hypothesis,
they will search among other possible impacts until they find one that
is consistent with their hypothesis. In short, it is impossible to test
their hypothesis. This is not science.

4. Finally there is no control group. Suppose that everything else
these guys find is true, it does not prove that these are "conservative
traits." These may be human traits and by focusing only on research
examining conservative (and fascist) beliefs, they are attributing to
conservatives, personality traits that exist in people of all political
ideologies (and even among those who are completely apolitical). This
too means that Jost et. al.'s research is not science.

To understand how completely these guys are out of touch with reality
consider this statement in their Exceptions Reply, "(Reagan's) chief
accomplishment, in effect, was to roll back both the New Deal era and
the 1960's, which was also the goal of former Speaker of the House of
Represenatives Newt Gingrich and many other neo-conservatives often
regarded as advocates of change." In addition to being factually wrong,
there is a logical error. Why would rolling back the New Deal and 1960's
be a goal of Newt Gingrich and Neo-conservatives if that had already
accomplished by Reagan?

Another statement in the Exceptions Reply illustrates the contempt and
bias these researchers have for conservatives. "there seems to be no
shortage of ideological rigidity among right-wing emigres from Cuba
living in the United States, as demonstrated by the Elian Gonzales
case." It is simply unclear to me (and unexplained by them) how the
Elian Gonzales case illustrates any such thing except the author's
hostility to hispanics who do not follow the liberal party line.

I realize this email is long (and probably late given that Remesh's
original post was from yesterday and about yesterday's Washington Post
editorial page), but my main point is that we should not be decieved by
an academic's self-serving description of his own research. Consulting
that research to determine what it says and its purpose is much better.
We do this with regard to many other kinds of research, we should also
do it with psuedo-psychological research into the psychology of
conservatives, especially research by Dogmatic Liberal ideologues who
think it is reasonable to liken conservatives to fascists and Nazis.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sergei Prokofiev's musical fairy tale Peter and the Wolf is popular with children but not with wolf lovers, and two former world leaders -- Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev -- aim to put that right in a new recording.

They have teamed up in a new recording that couples the tale with a contemporary version featuring the same two protagonists but a very different ending.

Prokofiev's version ends with Peter capturing the wolf and leading a triumphant procession to the zoo, paining music-loving environmentalists with romantic visions of wolves in the wild.

In the new version, narrated by former U.S. president Clinton and called Wolf Tracks, Peter again captures the wolf, but this time repents of his act and releases the animal, who howls a grateful goodbye.

"Forgetting his triumph, Peter thought instead of fallen trees, parched meadows, choked streams, and of each and every wolf struggling for survival," Clinton narrates.

"The time has come to leave wolves in peace," he adds.

Mikaela Ziegler, 7, and her 4-year-old sister, Annika, were selling refreshments Wednesday afternoon near the State Fairgrounds when a woman approached them. But she wasn't there to buy.

"She said, 'You can't sell pop unless you have a license,' " Mikaela said.

That's how it came to be that an inspector with St. Paul's Office of License, Inspections and Environmental Protection shut down Mikaela and Annika's pop stand.

Their outraged father, Dr. Richard Ziegler, called City Hall for an explanation. He was told that St. Paul is cracking down on unauthorized merchants and that his daughters would be free to hawk their beverages once they obtained a $60 license.

As I'm sure you all already talked about, Cynthia McKinney's going to be a visiting professor at Cornell . Maybe she can get one of those mortarboard hat thingies made out of tinfoil.

I was delighted to read the Manichaean ramblings of Danel Paden, director of the Catholic Vegetarian Society ("Letters," June 2003). It confirmed my theory that fanaticism in Western society alternates between nudism and vegetarianism, both of which contradict the order of grace.

As an optimist, I happily trust that Paden confines his extreme commitments to vegetarianism.

Taste is one thing; it is another thing to condemn meat eating as "evil" and permissible only "in rare and unfortunate circumstances." Paden disagrees with no less an authority than God, Who forbids us to call any edible unworthy (Mark 7: 18-19), and Who enjoins St Peter to eat pork chops and lobster in one of my favorite revelations (Acts 10: 9-16). Does the Catholic Vegetarian Society think that our Lord was wrong to have served up fish to the 5,000, or should He have refrained from eating the Passover Lamb? When He rose from the dead and appeared in the Upper Room, He did not ask for a bowl of Cheerios, nor did He whip up a meatless omelette on the shore of Galilee.

Man was made to eat flesh (Genesis 1: 26-31; 9: 1-6), with the exception of human flesh. I stand on record against cannibalism, whether it be inflicted upon the Mbuti Pygmies by the Congolese Army or on larger people by a maniac in Milwaukee. But I am also grateful that the benevolent father in the parable did not welcome his prodigal son home with a bowl of radishes.

Vegetarians assume an unedifying posture of detachment from the sufferings of vegetables that are mashed, stewed, diced, and shredded. In expensive restaurants, cherries are publicly burned in brandy to the applause of diners. It is not uncommon for people to submerge olives in iced gin and twist the peels of lemons. Be indignant, vegetarian, but not so selectively indignant that the bleat of the lamb and the plaintive moo of the cow drown out the whine of our brother the bean and the quiet sigh of the cauliflower.

Vegetables have reactive impulses. Were we to confine our diet to creatures that lacked sense and do not even respond to light, we could only eat liturgists and liberal Democrats.

The Rev. George W. Rutler
New York City

At this writing, Senator Joe Lieberman is scheduled to appear at Yale to give a speech supporting the strikers. It will be called, "Why Politicians Running for President Support Your Strike." Jesse Jackson was already there. Say what you will about the wilting Jesse, he still has the power to bring listless partisans to their feet. What was his theme? You can get an idea from the name of the strikers' tax-deductible organization. It is called “Hungry for Justice,” and they have a tame bishop there to handle contributions. What would you say if you were dispatched to New Haven to side with the strikers?

You would not be able to use the language of Tobacco Road. No, something less than that. The 4,000 strikers, who provide for the maintenance of the university including clerical aid and library and dining-hall service are paid an average of $32,000 per year. But that's hardly all, Yale's administration stresses in full-page ads. The employees are getting, or are offered in the contract they rejected over the weekend, raises which, cumulatively, would yield a 44 percent salary increase in five years. The two striking locals get pension benefits which, by Yale's arithmetic, when combined with Social Security yield about 85 percent of their salary. Note: They kick in after 30 years' work. It is hard to remember when 30 years' work was on the order of a full career. Americans used to start work at 20 and quit at 65, which is 45 years later.

The employees and their families have free health care, to which they contribute no deduction from salary. They have a minimum of seven weeks of paid vacation. Yale will subsidize up to $46,460 worth of college bills of employees’ families, and help ($25,000) in getting mortgages in neighborhood housing.

An eye-catching point of contention is Harvard. The strikers say that employees of Harvard get more money. Yale responds: No, it's the same, if you take into account that the cost of living in Cambridge is a little higher than in New Haven, and the education, better.

Now, strikes at Yale are something of an institution. Just as Broadway plays used to open in New Haven, union demands are something of a tradition. Eight out of ten contracts with the university have resulted in strikes. One of them, in l977, lasted 13 weeks, another, in l984, ten weeks. Since universities are all about students who go there to live and learn, the obvious casualties are—the students. Some of them will find, according to Yale's postings, that their classes will take place in City Hall. They will eat wherever they can. Professors teaching Latin literature can make do in improvised quarters, not so physicists and engineers who require great blackboards and perhaps computer projections. So that classes are a problem.

Now add this complication. Some professors have announced that they will not teach if in order to do so it is required that they cross a picket line. That does put one in mind of New Deal rhetoric. Thou shalt not cross a picket line. That is a concept derived from the very idea of collective bargaining. Some sanctions used in the past by striking unions were illegalized by the Taft-Hartley Act (dubbed the “slave-labor act” by the labor movement), which forbade secondary boycotts (if your trucks bring food to Yale, we will strike all your trucks coast to coast). But the old pull of class antagonism is active still, and Jacksonian rhetoric is full-blown. Jesse Jackson several times stressed that Yale has an endowment of $11 billion, which makes it sound as though, with an endowment that large, why not double employee wages? The educational world learned several days ago that the headmaster of St. Paul's School is paid $524,000 annually, relieving that cleric (he is an Episcopal bishop) of any of the privations of the poverty associated with the Christian ministry. If St. Paul’s can swing it, why not Yale?

There is the other point, of course. It is that Yale walks a fiduciary fine line. The $11 billion was donated in the cause of education. The endowment and the students more or less share the burden of maintaining the place. The endowment, and student fees, aren't to be taken as an ATM machine for the two locals.

What is engrossing is the whole scene. Yale's political prejudices are exuberantly liberal (to unearth a professor in the social sciences who voted Republican would earn a Pulitzer for investigative reporting). But suddenly we have the officials of this liberal university acting like . . . hardhearted, union-busting capitalist exploiters of the working class.

Well, the students can take it as field work, but they are paying about $3,000 per month ($36,000 per year) for their education. Do students ever strike?

Here’s a creepy, crawling thing, an article by a Labour MP who first went to a cretin convention held in Havana a quarter of a century ago:

“For me, that visit was the start of a life-long love affair. There is no need to confuse that statement with uncritical acclaim for everything about the place. But criticism should never ignore the fact that Cuba's primary service to the world has been to provide living proof that it is possible to conquer poverty, disease and illiteracy in a country that was grossly over-familiar with all three. That is a pretty big service. The fact that it has been delivered in the face of sustained hostility from an obsessive neighbour makes it all the more stunning.

Fast forward 22 years, and I became trade minister in a Labour government. At my first meeting with the official in charge of trade with the Americas and Caribbean, he offered a summary of our commercial relations with just about every country. There was one conspicuous absentee. "What," I asked, "are we doing with Cuba?" The answer was very little, ostensibly because of a modest outstanding debt from the mid-1980s.

Within a month, we were on a plane to Havana, and commercial normality now exists in our relationship. During that first ministerial visit, I was guest of honour at a small dinner and retain a copy of the diplomatic telegram which recorded the occasion.

The opening summary reads: "Unscheduled invitation from Castro to Mr Wilson to dinner. Castro holds forth for five and a half hours. Unequivocal message from Cubans that they seek further improvement in bilateral relationships with particular emphasis on trade relations. Close rapport established between Castro and Mr Wilson." The dinner ended with him toasting "Tony Blair and the third way" while I responded by raising my glass to "peace and socialism".

I have now had half a dozen such sessions with Castro. He talks a lot but then he has a lot to talk about. He is a man with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge… “

If you have a strong stomach read the whole thing.

Mr. Derbyshire:
I have a copy of "The Top 500 Poems" by William Harmon (Columbia, 1992). The poems were selected by using Granger's Index to determine which poems have been anthologized most often.
Hopkins is represented by 12 poems. (Only Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Dickinson, Yeats, and Wordsworth are represented by more.) Here they are, in order of their popularity as indicated by an index in Top 500:
5. Pied Beauty
30. The Windhover
36. God's Grandeur
44. Spring and Fall
125. Felix Randal
126. No Worst, There is None
191. Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord
260. Spring
286. Heaven-Haven
321. Inversnaid
490. Habit of Perfection
491. Carrion Comfort
Considering Hopkins' small poetic output, a dozen poems in the top 500 is quite remarkable, I think.
Thanks for promoting Hopkins at The Corner.

This is, I’m pretty sure, the first time that the Corner has linked to the Weekly Worker , but this story is too good not to repeat:

”A bizarre collection of organisations on the revolutionary left have been on the receiving end of a petty, but nonetheless politically quite sophisticated, fraud dating back to at least the late 1900s. Five young Ukrainian conspirators - seemingly with a background in the ‘official communist’ Komsomol and well able to pick up the vital factional nuances of left politics in the Anglo-Saxon world - managed to pass themselves off as ‘sections’ of anything up to 12 different organisations. A feat which might be explained by the claim that they first met each other in an “amateur acting troupe”.

Those stung include … [the] Committee for a Workers’ International, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, …[the] Workers Revolutionary Party and its ‘Fourth International’, the US-based League for a Revolutionary Party, the Committees of Correspondence (publishers of News and Letters), the International Bolshevik Tendency, the Socialist Party of Great Britain and Workers Power, along with its burlesque League for the Fifth International. Plans were also being hatched to establish links with colonel Gaddafi and his regime in Libya - that at least might have proved to be a real money-spinner.

Using a whole string of aliases [the tricksters] recreated in fictional microcosm the factional struggles and rivalries that plague the left in Britain and the US. Negotiations, polemics, splits and all. This doubtlessly pleased their ‘masters’ in London and New York no end.

In a spirit of internationalism, but presumably with an eye to outdoing their rivals on the left, various groups channelled money and material resources to aid those whom they believed to be their co-thinkers. For example, it seems that at least three organisations were supplying cash for the upkeep of an ‘office’ in Kiev. Besides that there were trips to Germany, Britain and elsewhere.

Now the whole scam has been exposed. Apparently the executive committee of the SPGB got the feeling that all was not well with their World Socialist Party Ukraine in July. Their minutes put the worries on record. The penny dropped for the IBT and Workers Power on August 14. A leading WP comrade was boastfully displaying a photograph of the organisation’s recent world congress to an IBT member. Standing on either side of the said WPer were two Ukrainian comrades - they were instantly recognisable. They were the IBT’s key comrades in their own Ukrainian section. Photos and information were quickly exchanged between factional centres - everyone had been conned. "

Ha ha ha

Via the blog at Harry’s Place.

Check out the inscription on the base of this Lenin statue (now resident in Texas).

Via blogger Radley Balko

Geoffrey Howe began his period of high ministerial office as one of the architects of the Thatcher revolution. He was her first Chancellor of the Exchequer. Later, he went to seed, EUphoria and the Foreign Office, crowning his moral and intellectual decline with the speech that precipitated the Iron Lady’s fall from power. For years now, he has sat in Britain’s House of Lords, the upper house ‘reformed’ by Tony Blair and which is now filled with establishment cronies and a few hereditary relics. After years of an increasingly overweening executive, it’s more than ever clear that Britain, like most democracies, needs an effective – elected – upper house.

The existing crowd, establishment placemen and career sycophants, needless to say, don’t agree.

And M’Lord Howe, supine, useless, complacent, but, sadly, still sort of relevant, writes in the London Spectator that that’s just fine:

“Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the Lords rejected the idea [of injecting a bit of democracy into their club] by a majority of four to one. They might, of course, have done so solely out of self-interest. But it could make more sense to acknowledge that they may, after all, be best placed to judge the likely impact of an elected element upon the almost universally well-regarded way in which they currently work.”

Chuck ‘em all out – starting with Howe – and bring in that vulgar, vulgar ‘elected element.’

The Forest Service's accounting does not include long-term profits that accrue indirectly from natural habitats. These add-ons derive from peripheral tourist facilities and other businesses attracted by the amenities of pleasant environments. Such economic growth is all but absent in the case of logging and other extractive industries, for the obvious reason that Americans do not find mill towns and logging roads appealing. In a nutshell, current federal policy is promoting a proportionately minor income producer to the detriment of the dominant income producer.

An email:

Here's a couple of things to keep in mind about that logging article:

1) the author assumes that the Bush administration is logging for purely
profit-making motives without providing any evidence that this is the case;

2) the author lives in Massachusetts, which has no national forests;

3) More than 80% of the land in Idaho and Nevada is owned by the feds. The
author concludes that "America's national forests are the common property of
its citizens. They are a public trust of incalculable value. They should be
freed from commercial logging altogether..." No doubt he would feel the
same way about resort constructrion, mineral removal, gas exploration, etc.
The author doesn't demonstrate how exactly the citizens of rural America are
going to make a living when all their assets are declared a "common property
of its citizens." The job losses if his proposals were followed-through
would be regionalized but enormous in those regions and quite calculable;

4) The national forest system was not acquired to simply wall off over a
third of the United States from development. Rather the opposite was true.
The "public trust of incalculable value" was created specifically to create
jobs and economic growth. If we would like to revise that philosophy, it
would only be fair to revise the amount of land the government oversees in
the United States;

5) the author uses "wilderness areas" in a very ambigious manner. There are
millions of acres of designated wilderness in the national forest system
where no roads are allowed to be built. I believe the author is using
"wilderness areas" to incorporate ANY area in the national forests that does
not currently have roads, but can't be certain;

6) the author talks about revenues yielded in 1999 without doing any
profitabilty analysis, then blithely talks about long-term profits that
"accrue indirectly from natural habitats." There are public goods which he
might be referring to but aren't "profits;" there is also optionality in
terms of leaving land open for future optimimum-use decisions which include
logging, mining, etc-- removing those options would reduce optionality and
hence profitability. Allegheny Energy is a pioneer in calculating
optionality value on open land and has had some succesful deals recently in
West Virginia with local environmental groups. They'd be good to contact
for additional information on this subject;

7) Much of the author's language is vague, unclear, or very generalized. It
sounds good, but wallpaper looks good-- doesn't necessarily have any value.

Newsweek has named my alma mater the "Most Happy" school in America. I'm happy for Goucher -- which, despite my ribbing, does offer a pretty good education -- but they really must have put something in the water since I left.

John - I haven't heard of her either, though I don't follow the poetry scene too closely since my tractor accident. Nevertheless, two random thoughts. First. people named "Gluck" shouldn't go into any business which requires rhyming. Second, speaking of inventor-parents, Michael Nesmith's mother invented Liquid Paper (AKA White-Out)?

It's good to see that Paul Weyrich, Richard Land, and Pat Robertson have all taken Judge Roy Moore to task for defying a federal court order, even though they agree with him (as I do) that his display of the Ten Commandments does not violate the Constitution.

I am no fan of judicial supremacy. Many public officials, most prominently Abraham Lincoln, have maintained that no court decision could legally bind them to act, in parallel cases, as though the court's reasoning were sound. Thus the State Department could issue passports to black citizens even after the Supreme Court made its ruling in Dred Scott. But Lincoln never denied that the parties to a case were bound to follow judicial decisions. When a federal court issues an order to a public official by name--even if that order is foolish or mistaken, as I think this one is--he is bound to follow it.

He always has the option of resigning in protest, perhaps even of engaging in official civil disobedience (that one I need to think through). But you can't simultaneously claim that the federal courts have no moral right to judge in a matter while also filing an appeal with them, as the Alabama chief justice has done.

Acts of civil disobedience have to be evaluated based on moral criteria. The Washington Post quotes D. James Kennedy as saying that Alabama presents an "exceptional case" where civil disobedience is required, because the court order is an attempt to put "man's law" above "God's law." If Moore were being ordered to deny the existence of God or the validity of the commandments, or to repudiate the commandments, he would indeed be morally obligated to commit civil disobedience. But he has not been ordered to do any of those things. Nor has he been ordered to give his assent to the proposition that his display violates the Constitution. There cannot be an obligation in conscience to keep a particular bloc of granite in a particular place. And when there is no moral obligation to disobey "man's law," there is a moral obligation to follow it.

I think I'm going to do a bigger piece on Vermont. Anybody with political, economic or historical insights into why I should or shouldn't hate Vermont please drop me a line at GFileCorrections@aol.com.

Because everything I read now has to be for work or research for my book, I've spent much of the last three weeks only reading books about Fascism and Nazism. Cheery stuff. I must say I was a little disappointed by The Arms of Krupps. It's still very good and extremely impressive research-wise, it's simply a less enjoyable read than I expected it to be (I loved Manchester's When the World Was Lit Only By Fire. I have to say the reverse about Robert Procter's amazing The Nazi War on Cancer. It's just an astoundingly interesting read.

Funny, when he called me to ask me if I was a liar, he didn't seem to have done his research at all. I'll tell you that story when I get back.

Judging by some of the emails after my last posting on London’s ‘congestion charge’ (basically a surcharge on motorists driving into Central London) there are still a few otherwise sensible readers who remain loyal to this malevolent piece of leftist social engineering. Their argument? That the congestion charge is, somehow, a ‘market-based’ solution. It’s nothing of the sort, of course. The transport market is already so distorted by subsidy, planning regulation and excessive fuel taxes, that a levy imposed by government on yet another group of travelers will do nothing to make this market anything like, well, a market. The charge should be seen for what it – yet another example of destructive environmentalist politics.

What’s more, it’s a real mess.

Rule 1: When someone talks about 'the children' watch out for your wallet.

Rule 2: When someone talks about 'the children' watch out for your freedoms.

And now, it seems:

Rule 3: When someone talks about ‘the children’ watch out for your democracy.

According to the London Sunday Times (no link) Germany’s parliament is to consider a proposal which would give parents the right to cast additional ballots for each of their children below the age of 18. A Green parliamentarian interviewed by the Sunday Times compared the move to the campaign for female suffrage and added this:

“This is no joke because there are millions of little people living in our society today who often have more informed political views than adults who are currently being discriminated against simply on account of their age.”

Votes for these “little people?” Oh, pleathe. I think I am going be thick.

Actually that's a great article.
It actually admits Qusay and Uday are dead. No conspiracies theories or claims of Hollywood special effects.
Ahhh, progress.

A clever young lady named K-Lo
Mused on Hillary Clinton all day-lo.
Said K. Lo, "It's quite stunning
That she isn't running;
I'll just act like she will anyway-lo."

OK - you finally talked me into it - Just got back last month from 3 years in Ireland so after selfishly using NRO I figured payback was in order.

Really NRO helped keep me sane for the last 3 years and I hope I helped straighten out some badly misinformed Irish.

As they say in Ireland - Tanks ah million...

“I think one has to say it's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that's why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign.”

The Democrats… are a veritable festival of interest groups: unions, teachers, minorities, feminists, gay groups, environmentalists, etc. Each of these groups has a litmus test without which they will not ratify a candidate: unfettered support for abortion, against vouchers, against ANWAR drilling, whatever. A lot of groups means a lot of litmus tests, because with the possible exception of the teachers, no one group is powerful enough to swing an election by themselves.

Fiscal conservatives will, by and large, allow you to throw a bone to the social conservatives so long as you do it somewhere the fiscal conservatives don't have to look at, such as prisons and homeless shelters, or small towns in Alabama. The small towns in Alabama, so long as they are left alone and not asked to celebrate gay wedding ceremonies next to the crèche in the town square, will generally leave the fiscal conservatives to their own devices except during the annual farm-subsidy festival. These two groups do not agree, but there are only two of them, and there are enough issues on which they do agree that they can generally carve out a reasonably coherent platform. (Reasonably coherent, that is, for American politics). And because their members often shade from one group to the next (such as a near relative who is for gay rights, but against gay marriage, and generally fiscally conservative, but in favor of a Medicare drug bill), there is some tolerance in the party for dissent from the platform.

If you want to see the face of fanaticism – and you have a strong stomach- check out the website of Al Muhajiroun (a small (thankfully), but high profile Islamic extremist group based in the UK) and click on the press release dated 17th August, 2003. Here’s how it ends:

“Two years on then, it seems that during their customary 1 minutes silence in NewYork and elsewhere on September the 11th 2003, Muslims worldwide will again be watching replays of the collapse of the Twin Towers, praying to Allah (SWT) to grant those magnificent 19, Paradise. They will also be praying for the reverberations to continue until the eradication of all man-made law and the implementation of divine law in the form of the Khilafah - carrying the message of Islam to the world and striving for Izhar ud-Deen i.e. the total domination of the world by Islam.”

If that’s not enough, try the press release of August 24th entitled ‘The United Nations – a legitimate target?’. Here’s an extract:

“One of the many benefits of 9/11 was that it clearly delineated the two camps of Islam and Kufr (non-Islam), the camp of Haq (truth) and that of Batil (falsehood), the camp of sovereignty and supremacy for God as opposed to sovereignty and supremacy for man made law. Verily Muslims have no choice but to reject all alliances apart from those with Muslims. This means rejecting the UN and any organisation or body propagating man made law. As Allah (SWT) says in the Qur'an:

'O believers do not take the Jews and Christians as friends and protectors. They are just supporters of and love each other alone. And whoever does turn to them is one of them. Verily Allah does not guide the oppressors' [EMQ 5:51]

And 'The believers are a single brotherhood' [EMQ 49:10]

Let it be known therefore that all regimes, governments and bodies (implementing man made law) in the world today are rejected by Muslims and that the only legitimate authority, recognised in Islam on the state level, is that of the Islamic State i.e. Al-Khilafah, which must be established by Muslims and which will carry the message of Islam to the world - striving for Izhar ud-Deen i.e. the total domination of the world by Islam, through its divine foreign policy of Jihad.”

The Lord of The Flies , again.

Psalm 23
--------
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me:
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou anointest my head with oil;
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Ultimately, the security of Iraq will be won by the Iraqi people themselves. They must reject terror, and they must join in their own defense. And they're stepping forward. More than 38,000 Iraqis have been hired as police officers. Iraqi police and border guards and security forces are increasingly taking on critical duties. Over 1,400 Iraqi civil defense corps volunteers are being trained to work closely with coalition forces; 12,000 Iraqis will be trained in the next year for the country's new army.

At the same time, 31 countries have contributed 21,000 forces to build security in Iraq. I will continue to challenge other countries to join in this important mission. In most of Iraq today, there's steady progress toward reconstruction and civil order. Iraq's Governing Council, representing the nation's diverse groups is steadily assuming greater responsibility over the country. The coalition provisional authority, led by Ambassador Paul Bremer, is implementing a comprehensive plan to ensure a successful, democratic Iraq, and a better future for the Iraqi people.

Building a free and peaceful Iraq will require a substantial commitment of time and resources, and it will yield a substantially safer and more secure America and the world. I'll work with the Congress to make sure we provide the resources to do the work of freedom and security.

Iraq's progress toward self-determination and democracy brings hope to other oppressed people in the region and throughout the world. It is the rise of democracy that tyrants fear and terrorists seek to undermine. The people who yearn for liberty and opportunity in countries like Iran and throughout the Middle East are watching and they are praying for our success in Iraq.

More progress will come in Iraq, and it will require hard and sustained efforts. As many of you saw firsthand in Germany and Japan after World War II, the transition from dictatorship to democracy is a massive undertaking. It's not an easy task. In the aftermath of World War II, that task took years, not months, to complete. And, yet, the effort was repaid many times over as former enemies became friends and allies and partners in keeping the peace.

Likewise, the work we do today is essential to the peace of the world and for the security of our country. America is a nation that understands its responsibilities and keeps its word. And we will honor our word to the people of Iraq and those in the Middle East who yearn for freedom. (Applause.)

Dave, I’m no great fan of De Gaulle (he was no friend to either Britain or America), but I think that I’m right to recall that it was either at that service or at a celebratory parade at around the same time that someone fired some shots in his general direction. Everyone ducked or threw him or herself to the ground except, naturellement, De Gaulle.

Magnificent.

My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior...

for he who is mighty has done great things for me...

He has shown strength with his arm,

he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,

he has put down the mighty from their thrones,

and exalted those of low degree...

He has helped his servant Israel,

in remembrance of his mercy,

as he spoke to our fathers,

to Abraham and to his posterity for ever.

Here is a hideous – and heart-breaking – story from the UK, yet another awful reminder that there is nothing very fictional about Lord of the Flies .

That poor child.

There is, it turns out (who knew?), a statute of the Duke of Wellington at the top of a tall tower in a small town in Ireland. It appears to be a well-loved local monument, and quite rightly so. The Iron Duke – as we’ve discussed here before on the Corner – was a man to admire. Unfortunately, a busybody has written to the local paper saying that the locals should "remove this reactionary figure and replace him with a son or daughter of your own country". That busybody was, I regret to say, American.

Wellington’s family first arrived in Ireland in 1226, a little some earlier, some might point out, since those pilgrims first set out on the Mayflower.

Yes, I'm still alive. I just wanted to say hello. Getting on line is very tough where I am, particularly when you consider that I'm on vacation. Thanks for all the nasty email from people saying that I'm lollygagging (great word; Derb where does it come from?). It's nice to be missed.

Sir--I am disappointed by your article on natural gas in Peru... (then on and on for another 250 insomnia-curing words)

Senator Patrick Leahy Washington, DC

U.N. inspectors have found traces of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium at an Iranian nuclear facility, a senior diplomat said Tuesday, citing a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The find heightened concerns that Tehran may be running a secret nuclear weapons program.

Ah, the problem though is that Derb is English - it would have to go something like this: -
There once was a writer named Derb
Who effected a clerical garb
When seeing a lurch
In the Anglican Church
He wrote columns with excessive barb

There once was a writer named Derb
Whose comments left K-Lo perturbed
"Corner postings are sparse
So get off your arse!
Remember, you're paid by the word"

In August 2000, the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf group, another Al Qaeda affiliate, held 21 people hostage for several months on the island of Jolo. After a negotiating stalemate between Manila and the terrorists, Kadafi intervened, offering as much as $1 million per hostage and citing his role as a "humanitarian."

Abu Sayyaf leaders spent the money Kadafi gave them on M-16 rifles, grenade launchers and other weaponry, according to the daily newspaper the Australian. The money also aided a recruitment drive that landed the group an estimated 2,000 new fighters. Each was paid $2,000 to join.

There once was a writer named "Derb"

Whose writing impulses were curbed.

Like little Jack Horner,

He sat in the Corner

Unable to summon a verb.

It's entirely possible that Western negotiators will return from Beijing next week talking about "signs of progress." Diplomatic atmospherics are among the many scarce goods that Pyongyang presumes to regulate and ration. But any genuine progress toward a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear impasse cannot be expected without fundamental -- even revolutionary -- changes in outlook and policy on the part of North Korea's leadership. None of the options Washington and its allies face in North Korea is pleasant -- but the time has come to face them squarely, without diplomatic illusion.

O'BEIRNE: You believe that the attacks on 9/11 taught some lethal lessons. Like what?

JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, that we need to be better prepared to fight against terror, that terrorists use this high technology, it uses disposable telephones, it uses modern communications techniques that, frankly, weren't available in the fight against terror. And we needed to be prepared to stop additional terrorist attacks.

O'BEIRNE: How important has the PATRIOT Act been in preventing additional attacks?

ASHCROFT: Well, the PATRIOT Act did about three things. One, it took a number of authorities that we had against other kinds of criminal activities, say drugs and organized crime, and made those authorities available to fight against terror.

Number two, it gave us the ability to have the kind of technology against terror that would match the technology of the terrorists, so that we could use digital surveillance techniques to surveil digital communications.

And number three, it took down the wall of separation between the CIA intelligence capacity of the country and the FBI, the law enforcement capacity, so information we learned in the intelligence world could be used to prevent additional terrorist attacks.

O'BEIRNE: Now, the Patriot Act passed Congress six weeks after 9/11 by a vote of 98 to 1 in the Senate and overwhelmingly in the House. Why is it apparently more controversial now than it was back then?

ASHCROFT: Well, I really can't say, unless it is that the country is less focused on the need to interrupt the kind of violent terrorist attacks that really galvanized our attention. There was a vigorous debate for the full six weeks we were focused on this. We had a proposed act ready to go within six days, but it took the kind of careful inspection to which the Congress (UNINTELLIGIBLE) gave the act in order to pass it in six weeks.

But I hope that we don't lose our focus.

O'BEIRNE: Last month, a provision that permits delayed notification of warrants was effectively repealed by a large margin in the House, including over 100 Republicans. Does that tell you that even the president's supporters have now become critics of the act?

ASHCROFT: No, that was a late-night amendment that hadn't been debated, it hadn't been before committee. There were people on the floor saying, I don't know what this does. People were told that this was some kind of novel intrusion into the civil rights of Americans.

Judicially supervised delayed notification has been part of our law for decades. And it allows us to, under the supervision of a court, to make certain kinds of searches and delay giving notice, so that we don't tip off the criminal or the person who is, who is, who is being examined.

This authority has been available against organized crime and against drug dealers and the like, certain kinds of fraud...

O'BEIRNE: Another specific. Under the act, can federal agents conduct wiretaps, seize property, or make arrests without warrants?

ASHCROFT: Absolutely not. Now, a warrant to get records under the PATRIOT Act has to be approved by a federal judge, so is that -- there is that layer of case-specific examination by a federal judge to see to it that it's proper and appropriate, and then, of course, ultimately, the twice-yearly reports by the Justice Department on the PATRIOT Act to the Congress, they provide another layer of oversight in the congressional branch...

O'BEIRNE: Can immigrants now be held indefinitely without the right to attorneys?

ASHCROFT: Absolutely not. Immigrants cannot be held without a reason to hold them. Now people who are in violation of the law can be held. They are always given notice of their right to an attorney.

O'BEIRNE: Do you have the necessary tools now, or do you need additional legislation to continue the success in preventing another attack? ASHCROFT: Well, I think we're always going to have to be sensitive to the fact that the terrorist evolves. He changes his operation to try and avoid the techniques and the capacities we have. So we should always be open to finding ways to protect American lives, American liberties against terrorism.

Let me give you another example. People who commit violent crimes or people who are major drug dealers, there is a presumption that they should be detained while their case is being adjudicated. It's not a -- not automatic, but there is a presumption that they wouldn't be sent out on bond.

We don't have that presumption about terrorists.

O'BEIRNE: Some of these changes would fit into a PATRIOT II?

ASHCROFT: We know that there is a continuing threat, and that it's an evolving threat, and that we ought to be sensitive to doing what's necessary to protect the lives and liberty of Americans. And if it needs -- if we need to ask the Congress to act again, I'm confident that the Congress will. They acted wisely, it's been a success, it's been a substantial part of our ability to protect America.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HUNT: Kate, is Attorney General Ashcroft ignoring the now bipartisan reservations in Congress about the PATRIOT Act?

O'BEIRNE: No, he's traveling in order to counter this disinformation campaign about the PATRIOT Act.

Look, I am as distrustful of the federal government and recognize federal law enforcement is a fearsome thing as the next card-carrying conservative. But there is so much misinformation about the PATRIOT Act.

The ACLU, fine, they object. They object when these tools are available against the Mafia and drug dealers. They're certainly going to object to terrorists. Having the same tools now available with respect to terrorism, in some cases, even a higher burden investigating terrorism.

So, as I said, the attorney general, I wanted to give him an opportunity to answer the specific charges. These are commonsense provisions that have clearly (UNINTELLIGIBLE) us and made us safer in two and a half years, not a further attack, despite the fact that al Qaeda remains active here, and it remains overwhelmingly popular in the polls with the public.

Arnold is showing the resolve, leadership, determination and right attitude on business & taxation needed to address the gigantic stinking mess that the Democrats have made of our state....

I am a "strategic" supporter of Arnold. Tom McClintock is much closer to my politics, and knows the state government far better than Arnold. But Tom, bless his soul, is the very visual embodiment of the sort of Republican who scares the pants off of a large swath of California's lotus-eating populace. The white shirts with the pinched collars...and the narrowly-set eyes are not fatal flaws in my book. But I don't get to elect the next governor by myself, or with my friends. A...large segment of the California electorate will never vote for a Republican who looks like a scold....

I would prefer to vote for Tom McClintock, who is the conservative's dream....[But at] this point, I could vote for Arnold.

[I'm] pro [Arnold], tentatively. With all the mixed messages coming out of his camp (from Buffett and spokesman Sean Walsh), I can't help but remain weary of Arnold's true intentions. If he TRULY believes we are overtaxed and is absolutely committed to lowering (or at least not raising) taxes, why do his senior-most advisers keep mentioning potential tax hikes? I'm afraid that, after the review of the State's books by the outside accountants he proposes, he will then come to the conclusion that higher taxes of some sort are in fact necessary. That being said, I think he stands an infinitely greater chance of getting elected than the Republican candidates who have committed to lowering/not raising taxes without equivocation.

Yes on Arnold but in fear and trembling; it feels more and more like another hold-your-nose-and-vote situation.

A proposal: All three Republican candidates who trail the leader in the polls two weeks before October 7 should agree to withdraw, in favor of the leader.

HOBSBAWM: You didn't have the option. You see, either there was going to be a future or there wasn't going to be a future and this [the Communist Party] was the only thing that offered an acceptable future.

IGNATIEFF: In 1934, millions of people are dying in the Soviet experiment. If you had known that, would it have made a difference to you at that time? To your commitment? To being a Communist?

HOBSBAWM: This is the sort of academic question to which an answer is simply not possible...I don't actually know that it has any bearing on the history that I have written. If I were to give you a retrospective answer which is not the answer of a historian, I would have said, 'Probably not.'

IGNATIEFF: Why?

HOBSBAWM: Because in a period in which, as you might imagine, mass murder and mass suffering are absolutely universal, the chance of a new world being born in great suffering would still have been worth backing. Now the point is, looking back as an historian, I would say that the sacrifices made by the Russian people were probably only marginally worthwhile. The sacrifices were enormous; they were excessive by almost any standard and excessively great. But I'm looking back at it now and I'm saying that because it turns out that the Soviet Union was not the beginning of the world revolution. Had it been, I'm not sure.

IGNATIEFF: What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?

HOBSBAWM: Yes.

There’s a disturbing article in the weekend’s Financial Times about some of the Islamic schooling on offer in Indonesia. Writing about the Al-Mukmin boarding school, the FT’s writer notes “[its] students and teachers are quick to leap to its defence. The school's gruelling 3.30am to 10pm schedule and its curriculum - 60 per cent of which is dedicated to Islamic studies - are meant only to build good Muslims, they argue.”

The word they are looking for is brainwashing.

The Parents' Television Council, an organization with, obviously, far too much time on its hands, has denounced the entertaining CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as being the least ‘family-friendly’ show on TV, whatever that may mean. As usual, 'the children’ are dragged out as the justification for what is, quite frankly, a childish piece of moral posturing (the way that the Council appears to equate a three in the bed scene with cannibalism, snuff films and the sight of mutilated corpses is somewhat revealing). That said, the PTC is, of course, entitled to its opinion. Trying to influence network policy is not, contrary to what is often argued, ‘censorship.’ Others, however, are entitled to say that the PTC's approach is wrong, and so I shall.

The answer seems clear – parents who disapprove of such fare should make good use of the ‘off’ switch and a spot of persuasion. In a society where both parents often work, that’s never going to be a foolproof method, alas, even with all the v-chips in the world, but in the end that just may be too bad. The alternative, producing programming always geared to the fear that some child may see something ‘inappropriate’, will lead to an even larger excess of either sugarcoated pap, or tiresome earnestness or both, and that would be nothing to look forward to.

Now, what's on tonight?

“RZHEVSKY ARTILLERY RANGE, Russia - They killed them effortlessly, in the signature style of Josef Stalin's dreaded NKVD secret police: a bullet to the back of the skull, the bullet's exit shattering the facial bones.

Then, haphazardly, the executioners buried their victims in mass graves, barely disguising their remains under a foot of sagging, sandy soil - year after year, body after broken body. “

Via Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, who has this to add:

“I'm surprised that this story isn't getting more attention. But not that surprised, as sympathy for communism is still treated as an amusing foible -- rather than the complicity with mass murder that it, in fact, is.”

Quite.

He was, in fact, a refugee from Hitler, but imagine, just for a moment that British ‘historian’ Eric Hobsbawm was a not so former Nazi, instead of a not so former Communist, do you think that he would have received this sort of profile in the New York Times?

For a more accurate assessment of this repulsive apologist for mass murder, it’s better to read this piece by David Pryce-Jones in the New Criterion, and understand that Hobsbawm has yet to abandon his savage creed. Unlike the Times journalist, Pryce-Jones decides to include this rather relevant anecdote:

“Not long ago, on a popular television show, Hobsbawm explained that the fact of Soviet mass-murdering made no difference to his Communist commitment. In astonishment, his interviewer asked, “What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?” Without hesitation Hobsbawm replied, “Yes.””

Pryce-Jones’ conclusion deserves to be nailed to the door of every history faculty:

“The Soviet Union collapsed with hardly a sigh, like gas going out of a balloon, because it was all a lie. Hobsbawm and his supporters will never admit their share in the central intellectual and moral failure of the times. They lost out in the real historical process, but they hope to win the historiography by turning Communism into some spectral romantic myth shimmering tantalizingly above the surface of things, out of range of truth, and therefore fit to be started up all over again. All it takes is what it always took—an unscrupulous character, lack of interest in the world of people, and well-crafted lying to the credulous.”

For a rather different view of the communist experience, try another profile – also in the Times- of one Alfred Kaarman, a former Estonian ‘forest brother’ who somehow survived the horrors that the Twentieth Century was to bring to his country. To Hobsbawm, doubtless, this man would just be a statistic.

Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was, by all accounts, an awful man and, quite clearly, no animal lover, but in its grim way this (from a review in the New York Times of a new biography of him) reveals a certain lunatic flair:

A small-time scam artist capable of posing as a Bible salesman to cheat widows, an author of asinine schemes, he nonetheless had an astounding ability to survive. Shortly after running into trouble with the Tampa police for burying a pony up to its knees in his front lawn and selling 10-cent peeks at ''the world's smallest pony,'' Parker talked himself into a job as head of the local humane society, where he put the agency in the black by starting a pet cemetery and established himself as a local wheeler-dealer.”

Connoisseurs of stinginess will also enjoy this:

“[He] liked to tip hotel bellboys with free sandwiches from studio commissaries.”

Thomas Hardy is too cheerful and optimistic a writer for my taste, but many thanks to the reader in Florida who tells me that frumenty has a useful role to play in The Mayor of Casterbridge. Laced with rum, it is prominent in the opening chapter:

”But there was more in that tent than met the cursory glance; and the man, with the instinct of a perverse character, scented it quickly. After a mincing attack on his bowl, he watched the hag's proceedings from the corner of his eye, and saw the game she played. He winked to her, and passed up his basin in reply to her nod; when she took a bottle from under the table, slyly measured out a quantity of its contents, and tipped the same into the man's furmity. The liquor poured in was rum. The man as slyly sent back money in payment.

He found the concoction, thus strongly laced, much more to his satisfaction than it had been in its natural state. His wife had observed the proceeding with much uneasiness; but he persuaded her to have hers laced also, and she agreed to a milder allowance after some misgiving.”

She was right to be worried. While drunk, the protagonist sells her and their daughter to a passing sailor.

More madness in New York City: according to a report in this weekend’s New York Sun a draft of a resolution being considered by the mayor’s Charter Revision Commission includes the suggestion that NYC’s green-card holders should be given the vote in elections for City Council, mayor and other offices.

This is nonsense. If a resident wants to vote he or she should make the effort to become a citizen. Not to insist on this is to make a mockery of both democracy and citizenship. It could also, incredibly, be the thin end of an even larger wedge. The Sun quotes Gouri Sadhwani, the director of something known as the New York Civic Participation Project (a joint venture between labor and immigrants’ groups) as saying that the vote should be extended to illegal, as well as legal, immigrants. She doesn’t think “we should draw distinctions between people who have green cards and people who don’t.”

Well, that’s right in one way – and, probably, one way only – neither should have the vote.

John, I’m not sure I dare tangle with you on questions of theology, although I have to say that Moore’s interpretation is not one that I remember from the (rather traditionalist) scripture lessons of my youth…

More generally, the problem with Moore’s stance is not his monument (as it happens, I think that the separation of church and state brigade have gone far too far in their jihad against Christmas displays and the like, and quite possibly, in this case as well) but his role as a judge. As a judge he has to uphold the law, whether he approves of that law (or how that law has been interpreted by a superior court) or not. It’s that simple.

John, well, I’ve had syllabub and very good it is too.

While we’re on the topic, thanks to the reader who sent this link to more old English cooking.