Natalie Solent |
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Politics, news, libertarianism, Science Fiction, religion, sewing.
You got a problem, bud? I like sewing.
E-mail: nataliesolent-at-aol-dot-com (I assume it's OK to quote senders by name.) Back to main blog RSS thingy 
Jane's Blogosphere: blogtrack for Natalie Solent. 
Links ( 'Nother Solent is this blog's good twin. Same words, searchable archives, RSS feed. Provided by a benefactor, to whom thanks. I also sometimes write for Samizdata and Biased BBC.) The Old Comrades:
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Saturday, October 19, 2002
Irish as She Is Spoke. I can't make Stephen Pollard's individual links work, so you'll just have to get scrolling yourselves. First look for the intriguing headline: "This place of destiller total translates the expressions in the languages of extrangeiras and the later part." Got that? It links to a cute little program that takes the work out of the much-loved pastime of running passages through Babel Fish and then bouncing them back into a transformed and charming version of English. A post or so down he has a post called "the meaning of is", where he quotes the famous words of EU bigwig Günter Verheugen concerning the way an inconvenient verdict in the Irish referendum can't possibly mean what you think it means. "If a treaty is rejected twice in a country and that country knows exactly that this treaty is a precondition for the conclusions of enlargement negotiations, the outside world cannot make the judge whether the rejections means enlargement or something else."
Given that I speak no foreign language as well as Mr Verheugen speaks English, it would be unfair and hypocritical to make fun of his slightly wonky English. Unfair, hypocritical and fun. Through the mangle it went. We had:
Then I tried another translation. It came out:
Sadly, early polls suggest that the Irish might spoil my fun by voting Yes. But we'll see. UPDATE: We saw. They did. Pity. Friday, October 18, 2002
"You are IndyNutter, I am holding today's Daily Freakzoid, and I claim my five pounds." Compared to some, though, our Germ shines like a good deed in a naughty world. Here's a chap whose own personal Daily Freakzoid has the headline: You have my attention.
“Terrorist” Lookalike Attack
Sure looked like terrorism to me.
- Zionists forcing Australian support for American war on Iraq.
Oh, one of them.
Germaine Greer says, "In allowing the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, to be the first to identify the Bali bombers as al-Qa'eda, American intelligence has sent an ill-prepared Australia into the front line." Paul Wright of Tanstaafl says, "Stupid of me, I know. I could have sworn it was the murder of my countrymen that put us on the front line. What was I thinking?"
Read the whole post. There have been moments in her long career when Greer slipped into sense. This wasn't one of them.
Still surfing through Slugger's links, I found this post in Fenian ramblings, covering Ireland's upcoming referendum on the Nice Treaty. You would be right in supposing that I don't agree with every word on that blog. However, I certainly agree with this: The other main propaganda technique, used mainly by Irish politicians, has been to threaten the Irish people with the prospect of a loss of power and influence in the EU, should they vote NO again. Bertie Ahern has repeatedly threatened the Irish populace with the promise that "a second No to Nice would dilute the considerable Irish influence at a time when decisions are looming on issues which go right to the heart of our economic wellbeing." Brian Cowen takes this one step further in this article, where he spells out the exact political process to which the Taoiseach alludes: Nota bene: not only is Patrick Crozier back from Japan and sending me e-mails, he is also once more vigorously posting to UK Transport and CrozierVision, which it seems I didn't kill after all. It's coming to something when the happiest post today was about lice. It's so difficult to insult a louse, seeing as "louse" is itself an insult. One can try "scum", I suppose, as an even lower form of life. Anyway, be assured that chemical warfare is being waged with no prisoners taken. Still on the subject of rules of war, Slugger O'Toole has an interesting post about the Bloody Sunday soldier who broke ranks to claim that the Paras were not under fire. Has the soldier done a Scott Ritter - gone over psychologically to the enemy? It happens. Or is he merely the only one to come clean, when his former comrades kept a conspiracy of silence over a massacre? I don't know. I have no special knowledge of what happened at Bloody Sunday. My opinion, being no more than that of an attentive reader of the newspapers, is that they probably did come under fire - it's not as if the IRA at that time would never have dreamed of firing on British soldiers - and that then they reacted as they would in the war they were trained for, the war against the Red Army.
Later on in the post, David McKittrick of the Independent is quoted as saying, rather weirdly, that "This picture of events has been generally contested by civilian witnesses. Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, who has admitted to the tribunal that he was second-in-command of the IRA in the city on Bloody Sunday, is to testify that the organisation's members did not open fire." I hope that it was merely a looming deadline, or a cack-handed sub-editor, that led Mr McKittrick to cite a top IRA man as just another "civilian witness", as if he were just a passer by with no reason to lie.
Following the links on Slugger, I came across "The Shamrockshire Eagle." I read back through the Eagle archives as there were a lot of anti-libertarian headlines that looked, and were, interesting. Eventually I caught sight of my own name, the implication that I only cared about Protestant victims of terrorism in Northern Ireland, and the suggestion that my eyes would be opened were I to investigate the murder of Miriam Daly. In fact I didn't have to do much more than refresh my memory, as I already knew something about it. A strange example to make that particular case. There were, literally, hundreds of innocent Catholics, randomly slaughtered by Protestant terrorists in their living rooms, as they drank at bars, or returned from concerts, some with the collusion of terrorist sympathisers in the RUC, UDR or British Army, who would make better poster children for that argument than a woman who was certainly an apologist for terrorism, and who is lauded here as an actual INLA volunteer.
But her killing was still murder, because murder is murder. The men who left her bound and tortured body to be found by her ten year old twin daughters as they came home from school would be punished - up to and including hanging them, depending on the circumstances - if it were in my power to arrange it. OK? Israel has slipped off the headlines recently. Don't forget that going to pick up groceries in Israel is like going to pick up groceries in Washington at the moment: you know that someone may be preparing to kill you or your loved ones. Except that in Israel, it's like that all the time. Continuing the theme of Israel and the press: Joseph Alexander Norland of Dawson speaks! has a post on PLO intimidation of the media. Oh, yes. The interesting reason for me having not much time to blog today. Yesterday, I thought I felt lousy. Streaming eyes, runny nose, aching bones. Then I had a nice hot bath... and I discovered that there is feeling lousy, and there's being lousy. Yeeeeuuuuuch. So the entire family have to be doused in Disgusting Gloop. "Pleasant to use," it says on the bottle. Not unless you are seriously deranged. Go on, have a good scratch. Feel free. The guys in the office won't know why. Jus in Bello. Loadsa letters in response to the one from Randy posted yesterday, including some further remarks by the same correspondent. I'll quote excerpts from a selection - apologies to those left out. If I don't dig out as many links and research it all as deeply as I should, that's for an interesting reason which I will tell you later. Patrick Crozier of UK Transport gave me the title for this post. And writes:
I think there are all sorts of practical reasons quite separate from the ethics why you might want to take prisoners. The main point is that if soldiers know they will be treated well if they surrender then they are more likely to surrender. It ain't over yet, Patrick, much as I agree with you about ineffective rules. My regular correspondent A. R. C. also took up the subject of Northern Ireland, among others. He writes,
...in case you haven't already thought of it, find your copy of 'The Sword and the Pen'. I _think_ it's there you'll find an excerpt from General Sherman on how to treat civilians which qualifies his 'war is hell' with certain do's and don'ts, so is very relevant to your remarks and Randy's reply. (I'd quote it to you except we returned the book to you a month or two ago. I therefore deduce that it was then on your dining table; good luck finding it now.) Thanks for the good wishes, but no such luck. But, trust me readers, this chap A.R.C., whom you will deduce I know personally, has a frighteningly good memory for such things. And if I spent my time fooling about with the piles of books in this house I wouldn't get any blogging done. - NS
(From memory) Sherman's point was on the one hand the difference between the civil war and an 18th-century dynastic conflict required measures against civilians but on the other hand these measures should have their limits as regards non-violent civilians. He also stressed the need for giving southerners time to accept their defeat and change their minds. Randy, whose letter below started this thread wrote back:
I have not advocated killing prisoners or gassing civilians. The "Law of Land Warfare" extends to many other things, and this is one of the reasons why the US has rejected having our military tried by a world court. The US is correct to resist. The tranzis put Gadaffi in charge of human rights; who knows what twits or madmen they might select as judges. I hear that France (!) has also negotiated some sort of exemption, but very, very quietly. - NS. Randy continues,
Were the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo war crimes? Was nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Did you know that the allies intended to try Admiral Donetz for leaving submarine attack survivors adrift at sea to die, until the sticky point was put forward that we had done the same thing to the Japanese? Yes, and I think I can add a similar example. The USSR wanted to prosecute various Luftwaffe types for bombardment of civilians but the US and UK for obvious reasons resisted this idea. World War II aerial bombing was a special case. A wholly new technology arose, evolved in the heat of the most terrible war in history until it played a major part in that war, dominated our thinking for a few decades, and then refined itself down until we reached the precision bombing of Afghanistan. I cannot blame the airmen of either side for participating in the Blitzes of WWII. It would not pass to do the same thing now. Nuclear deterrence (i.e. bombs not intended to be used) is another special case - but it would take more space and time than I have to cover that subject halfway adequately. - NS
Your unattributed expression attaching the views of "many soldiers" is gratuitous and unworthy. I don't see why. It was not intended to be insulting, only a direct rejoinder to Randy's own (very reasonable) statement that he had some personal knowledge of these matters as a veteran himself. I grant that personal experience has weight, but it cannot be conclusive since others - my "many soldiers" - have had the same personal experience and yet have come to varying conclusions as to the worth of "war by the rules." I did not quote any then because it seemed too lightly made a point to warrant it, but the literature of war includes ample examples, some referred to in this post. Although it's going back a few years now, I used to know several serving soldiers via the OTC and I recall that their opinions on the laws of war were quite conventional (in a good sense). - NS
We live in a world with few professional soldiers today. The collapse of socialism cut the ground out from under the warriors of the West, and gave rise to bureaucracies where girls and gays could play too. The apex of western strength was Gulf War I. We may have improved some technical capabilities since then, but the warfighters at the top were driven from the camp during the Clinton years. Randy also added, in response to my "It can be done without killing prisoners or gassing civilians.",
Maybe, maybe not. Saddam is an evil bastard, and his gassings have shown how far he will go. How far will we go to rid the earth of him? Unless those around him bring him down, or his military lay down their arms, I don't know how you get him without destroying the country. It may come to that. Let's go for him now before it does. Finally, another regular correspondent, Captain Heinrichs, dropped me a line. As a serving soldier he has no doubt decided that he gets enough of all this warry stuff in the day job and chose to cover another topic altogether. Namely his significant contribution to my hundred thousand bloghits:
Twice a day, sometimes three; four if I forget. I'm doing the best I can, what more could I do? Thursday, October 17, 2002
Just looking at my hits thingy, I see it's passed twenty thousand. I was a little short of eighty thousand before the BeSeen counter packed in. So this blog has almost certainly reached the hundred thousand mark. Thanks for stopping by! Links policy. I do try to look at the urls people send me, although not usually the same day. I don't usually put a blog on my blogroll until I've found myself linking to it for the fourth or fifth time and thinking, oh, that one again. Rules of War: a reader responds: I'm a fan Nat, but what is this "rules of war" blather. I was once a professional soldier, and know something about this subject.Briefly, my take - and the take of many soldiers - on this is that fighting war hard and comitting war crimes are different things. I approve of making damn sure that the enemy knows he's been defeated. Often attrition is the only way of doing it. It can be done without killing prisoners or gassing civilians. In general the long-term winners of history have comitted fewer war crimes than the long-term losers. Two candles lit. And how if they should join up and become a fire? First I read that the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, has reasserted the supremacy of British Law over European, as reported by David Carr in Samizdata. Then I discover via Iain Murray in The Edge of England's Sword that the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, has reasserted the supremacy of Parliament over Brussels. Presumably these top legal guys talk to each other. Presumably they know that anything they say on this subject is picked up pretty quickly. So, we must assume, the word has gone out that the line to take is not one of complete submission to Brussels. Or is it all a a trick, a pacifier? Professor Glenn Reynolds on how the right to bear arms is the bulwark against genocide. And I add my view that the right to own property is the bulwark against famine. Pity that the human rights "community" is dead set against one and lukewarm on the other; until some sense gets knocked into them bets are off on this being a happy century. Yet another revelation from North Korea. Thanks to my highly-placed spies I can explain why the Hermit Kingdom has started spilling its secrets. The scene is Pyongyang, early morning. Exterior view of lone figures scurrying across empty squares dominated by heroic statuary. Cut to a well-appointed conference room littered with crisp packets and beer cans. Picture of Great Leader on wall, slightly askew.
JAMES KELLY: You bastard. Tickling's cheating. It's all up my nose, now.
It's the Saudis, stupid. A report from a team that includes several top Clinton-era administration officials states the obvious, but with authority. Wednesday, October 16, 2002
Oxfam have shown suprising backbone, according to Junius. Ted Honderich offered to donate them the proceeds from his book that apologises for terror. They turned him down. About ten years ago an Oxfam researcher rang me up. Despite admiring the good work they do in emergency relief, I took the opportunity to tell them off for their "do as I say, not as I did to get rich myself" attitude towards Third World countries. I've taken several other opportunities to tell them off since. Let me now take this opportunity to give them a kind word, and even - aaagh it's painful - a donation. The end of habeus corpus is coming, courtesy of the EU. Sometimes nothing terrifies me so much as that only five years ago I would have regarded the EU as a boring non-issue. Ten years ago I supported it. Ban the Bomb and save the world for conventional warfare. Many moons ago I really did have a badge saying that. I once accidentally - very accidentally - wore it to the OTC Mess, which was a mistake, but in a sicko sort of way it does represent my real opinions. I approve of there being rules of war. Even though they are to some extent arbitrary, I approve of their mere existence. Every now and then someone pipes up that rules just make war acceptable and hence perpetuate it as an institution. My response to that is that those engaged in unrestrained war - be it at the Eastern Front or modern-day Algeria - do not sit up one day and say "Gosh, this is silly. Let's stop." In the vivid and terrible phrase that I heard somewhere and cannot attribute, they curse God, and continue. The laws and customs of war directly save many lives. Almost as important is that they serve as a reminder that even in the most desperate struggle one can never simply say "Evil, be thou my good." After a war fought broadly according to the rules reconciliation is surprisingly easy, almost as if forgiveness were a natural aspect of the human spirit. It is war crimes, not wars in themselves, that are remembered with bitterness for centuries. The Sealed Knot society happily re-enact the battles of the Civil War and a good time is had by all: but the smiles would be wiped right off our faces if the Cromwellian side took it in their heads to take the boat over to Ireland and play-act the massacre at Drogheda.
As well as forbidding the massacre of civilians, the laws and customs of war have decreed that certain inherently indiscriminate weapons are taboo. Taboo is a good word to use. Make use of the oldest instincts of mankind to build a wall of abhorrence that will hold firm however dire the need or ruthless the actor. The worst of tyrants should say, with a shudder, I may be bad but I would not stoop to that.
When I first heard that Saddam had used gas on the people of Halabja I couldn't understand why the world didn't seem to care as much as I and my immediate circle did. It ought to be a point where conservatives and liberals can come together; conservatives if they are really as steeped in history as they claim, liberals if they are really as concerned for humanity as they claim. Gary Farber felt the same way.
Tuesday, October 15, 2002
The guys at the Korean Friendship Association BBS have noticed me. To Dermot,Prompting the more relaxed Mr Alejandro Cao to reply: For my part, I shall look forward to the coming flood of donations from the eager new readers brought to me by the good offices of the Korean Friendship Association. Don't worry, dear Students of the Juche Idea, Mr Cao is correct in thinking that I'm not into hacking, cracking or any of that bad stuff, and also in thinking that I really ought to have a column in the Washington Post. Just interested in your world view. What do you think about the abductions, then, now that the Dear Leader has confirmed that's what they were? I can't seem to find the page where you discuss it all. Kidnapped Japanese arrive home. "Dressed in smart suits and dresses with pin-badges of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il," apparently. Wouldn't be my first choice of apparel in the circumstances, but then again, it probably wasn't theirs either. At the present count, the numbers of British victims of the WTC and Bali terror attacks now add up to a neat 100. We could cower in a hole. Or we could fight back. Decisions, decisions. John Weidner talks about the way multi-faceted decisions evolve. The decision he is examining is "shall we go to war with Iraq." I think he is dead right to highlight the enormous reluctance to accept the validity of that sort of decision. It is not a good enough story. It lacks catharsis. While I'm hobnobbing with the Greek terms, how about a little bathos. The talk of decision-making reminded me of a technique I learned on a civil service course. I shan't even pretend that I have much of a reason for talking about this other than that it was the most interesting and useful thing the government ever taught me. (The second most interesting thing was how depreciation works. Really.) Say you want to move house. You have three possible houses, and must also include (the Treasury were insistent on this) not moving at all as one of the options. So write "House #1", "house #2", "house #3", "not moving" across the top as column headings. Now think of all the factors influencing your decision. They might include: number of rooms and so on. They become the rows of the grid.
Next step, of course, is to score House #1, House #2 etc. one-to-ten on the various factors. House #1 might be big, so give it an 8 for number of rooms, but it's remote so only a 2 for ease of transport. And so on, until you get a nice grid.
Now here's the clever bit. Not all factors are equal. You must share 100 points among the various factors depending on how much they matter to you. This obliges you to be honest with yourself, and makes explicit the need for trade-offs. Let's say you choose the following weights: number of rooms - 30
Finally multiply the one-to-ten scores by the weights above. Add up the new, weighted, scores, column by column. The column with the biggest total wins.
That's not how we chose our house. My husband and I exchanged grins saying "this one!" before we'd even seen upstairs. (In our defence I could say we rented it before we bought it so a mistake was much easier to correct.) In general people hate making decisions that way. They want to say, "as soon as I saw that it had a fireplace just like grandma's, I knew the house was destined to be mine" or, better yet, "the house has such loving vibes, don't you feel it?"
It's not just houses. I tell you, there are people who finally decided they support the War on Terror because they were sorry for the dogs. I was sorry for them, too, but we pay our leaders to consider more deeply. The phrase "consider more deeply" means "consider more deeply", not "consider forever because decisions are difficult", still less "surrender." Monday, October 14, 2002
Not much posting today, as I have to do many things. One of them is make one of those chair covers with a skirt, using some Sanderson beige ticking. (Isn't it amazing how the utility fabrics of yesteryear now sell for luxury prices?) Yes, I know both ticking and skirt-style chair covers are a bit 1998, but I really think we need one. It will go to cover the lower half of our latest acquisition: a very nice Victorian chair for the head of the dining table. Except for possessing arms, which give it an authoritative air that sits well at the head of the table, it is of like style to some we had already. I like it when things don't actually match but blend, don't you? The wood has a patina as smooth and mellow as a ten year subscription to Antiques World paid for by somebody else. And you can lift up a little lid on the seat and do a wee-wee into the chamber pot therein. Handy after dinner, no? You see why I need the cover. A nice talk with Teacher. This Telegraph report details how children are being encouraged to inform on their parents. The snoops and spies go under the name of the "Connnexions Service", and that's what they do: compile a dossier on your child to connect the information held by various government departments. You remember, the information that they said was confidential. As usual it's all for the sake of the Children™. Sunday, October 13, 2002
Slaughter in Indonesia. There are multiple posts on the growing list of Australian victims of this bombing from Tim Blair. Hokiepundit posts on the separation of church and state, a subject where he is carving out a distinctive niche. I don't agree with the last paragraph, but there is lots to think about here. It's unfortunate that we tend to use the word "dense" to mean "stupid", presumably from the metaphor of a "dense" skull; otherwise I could safely say that it's a very dense post. I mean the stages of argument are densely packed in quite a short passage. OK? By the way, should any readers want to ask Hokiepundit about the intentions of the framers of the US Constitution, be advised that it is a bad idea to throw in, as one so easily might in a careless moment, any supplementary questions about his typing speed. Gregory Hlatky of A Dog's Life has made a statement of his blog's principles. "Made a statement" suggests a chap standing up to a microphone with the world's press shouting out agressive questions, but this statement is more the sort you make at twilight from a rocking chair on the porch, while meditatively holding up your glass to admire the pretty colour of the whisky. Sarin Man definitely for the drop. John Thacker writes: Oh, Japan definitely executes criminals. They do it in secret, but they certainly do. They keep prisoners on death row for quite a while (some over a decade), and then inform them of their execution by hanging mere hours before it occurs. Usually something from 2-5 executions occur a year, and about 100 prisoners are on death row at any time. Not that I particularly object to the hanging of a man who facilitated mass murder of a randomly chosen group of commuters, and who would have killed more if he could, but I ought to know by now that Japan Is Not As Cute As You Think. And, indeed, Not As Utterly Different From Its Pre-1945 State As It Would Have You Believe. Here's a post from my archives on the same subject. |