DUFF & NONSENSE!

Pity the poor statesman!

Pity the poor statesman!  Not a phrase you are likely to read too often on this site but I am moved to express it after finishing Donald Cameron Watt's forensic examination of the diplomatic history leading up to WWII entitled How War Came. I confess it is not an easy read and I was not helped by the fact that for much of the time whilst I was reading it, I was also wrestling with my production of Hamlet.  Perhaps though, in retrospect, it was a good thing that I was forced to take it small bites because I have rarely read a history that is quite so detailed.  I simply wilt at the thought of the 'zillion' man-hours Watt must have spent trawling through the diplomatic archives of all the European powers and America.  Piece by piece, detail by detail, he builds the huge mosaic of inter-locking diplomatic moves and counter-moves, the feints and parries, the honourable and the squalid as the nations of Europe writhed in their efforts to escape the coming calamity, or at least, get though it with with minimal damage and, if possible, some advantage.

It is not an Anglo-orientated history; he takes care to present the picture as seen by all the main participants.  Even so, Chamberlain obviously plays a central role and it is contemplation of that sad figure, so traduced by history, that occasions the title of this post.  Chamberlain obviously made mistakes (but not as many as are frequently laid at his door) but two important factors must be kept in mind.  First, in a democracy you get the government you deserve, so in this case the mob of the great British electorate should stone itself before they stone their prime minister!  Secondly, there had been no-one like Adolph Hitler rampaging on the European scene since Bonaparte at the beginning of the 19th c.  European politicians contained within their host the usual number of villains but their villainy was, so to speak, of the everyday, human kind that people were used to and could deal with.  Hitler was of a very different mould and the leaders of Europe were rather like a bunch of harassed, fearful doctors attempting to find a cure for a new and highly dangerous bacillus.

However, the main thing that prompts my pity for statesmen in general, and Chamberlain in particular, is what we would call today, 'information overload'.  Until I read Watt's book I simply had no conception of the sheer volume of information that passes across a statesman's desk.  Much of it is not just contradictory but will be different accounts of the same subject matter, and much of it will come from 'experts' (dread word!).  The statesman must decide, who's right, who's wrong; who can I trust, what's in it for him, or them, or me, and so on, and so on.  Usually the answers to those questions are simply unknowable and so the statesman must fall back on his judgement. 

I wouldn't take the job for any money! 

Dr. Who's Time Machine

It's a funny old world!  I woke up this morning and found that Dr. Who's 'phone box in my front garden.  There was no-one in it, he was probably off somewhere saving the cosmos, so I thought to myself, why not?  I stepped in, shut the door and pressed the first knob I saw and suddenly, whoosh, there I was travelling back in time.  Amazing - straight back to 1980 - my dear, the fashions!  Anyway, I found myself parked on a street corner in Washington, USA, right next to a rather startled looking news-stand owner.  So, before he panicked I quickly bought a few papers and mags and returned to the time machine.  The first one I opened was Newsweek, and my goodness did I get a shock.  here's what I read:

"The year: 2000. The place: Earth, a desolate planet slowly dying of its own accumulating follies. Half the forests are gone; sand dunes spread where fertile lands once lay.

Nearly 2 million species of plants, birds, insects, and animals have vanished. Yet man is propagating so fast that his cities have grown as large as his nations of a century before."

Crikey, I thought, must have missed that one, really must take more water with it.  Hang on, I thought, what was Newsweek's source for this doom and gloom back in 1980 and then all became clear -  it was Jimmy Carter's mammoth, 1,600-page, Global 2000 report, commissioned by himself at vast expense to the tax-payers of America (Gee, thanks, Buddy, can you spare dime?  Take that as  a 'no', shall I?)  This colossal waste of money and several Brazilian rain forests sold 1.5m copies in 8 languages and was intended by Carter to be his bequest to the nation and, indeed, the world.  Well, thanks, Jimmy, ol' boy, but in view of the fact that it was almost totally wrong  I think I'd rather have the Brazilian trees back again.

Here are some of his forecasts, or to be precise, the forecasts of the, er, 'scientific' consensus of 1980, beginning with the famous (infamous?) executive summary:

"If present trends continue, the world will be more polluted, less stable ecologically, and more vulnerable to disruption than the world we live in now...the world's people will be poorer...the outlook for food and other necessities of life will be no better...for most people on earth life will be more precarious in 2000."

Happily, even back in 1980, there were a few men possessed of independent and shrewd judgement, what today the HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) would call 'deniers', prepared to come out and face down the consensus.  Hermann Kahn, the founder of the Hudson Institute, joined forces with Dr. Julian Simon (he of the famous wager with Paul Erlich, the doom-monger, that the prices of 5 basic raw materials would fall, not rise because of scarcity forecast by Erlich - Simon won!)  These two wrote a refutation of Carter's nonsense which they renamed Globalbaloney 2000. Paul Erlich dismissed their paper, The Resourceful Earth, with the sneer that "the one thing the earth isn't running out of is imbeciles".

Let us do some checking.  The doomsters forecast an oil price in 2000 of $80-100.  In fact it was $25-30, an error of between 300-400%.  They went on to forecast "a 100% real increase in food prices by 2000".  In fact (as opposed to phantasy), world food production rose by 25% so that by year 2000 food prices had fallen by 50%.  So what about the 'population explosion, so beloved by the likes of Paul Erlich?  Well, by 1999, the world population did increase to 6 billion but that was less than the forecast of 6.35 billion, and considerably less than the previous European effort at doom-mongering, 8 billion.  As Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out, the rise in population "did not erupt because people suddenly began breeding like rabbits.  Global population exploded instead because people stopped dying like flies!"  The "more precarious life", forecast by Carter et al, seems not to have happened in India, China, Indonesia and Mexico where mortality rates for children fell by 50% (let me repeat that - fell by 50%!) between 1980 and 2000; and life expectancy increased by 10-15 years from the mid-1970s.

So the doomsters were proved wrong on almost every count and you might think that they slunk away in shame.  Not a bit of it.  They claim that things only improved because of their timely warnings and interventions!  So who followed Jimmy Carter into the White house in 1980?  Why none other than Ronald Reagan who blithely ignored all the faint-hearts and pushed a free-market agenda, supported, I might add, by 'that woman' over on this side of the pond.  Well, the last time I looked, the world was still here and more or less the same.  Happy days and if you're offering, mine's a large one - and no water - cheers!

I am indebted to Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute and the American Spectator from whose article in July/August 2000 I have mostly sourced the post above.  I had saved it somewhere in my computer's memory and only stumbled upon it a few days ago.  Unfortunately I cannot find a link.

The Freemasons of Science!

I am obliged to Tim Lambert of Deltoid for the information that the authors of the Lancet essay on Iraq death rates have agreed to open access to their data upon which they reached their conclusions.  Hurrah, I thought, now perhaps we shall see some proper scientific method applied to those statistics so that we can have a more accurate measurement of the bleedin' obvious that a hell of a lot of people in Iraq are being killed.  Perhaps your reaction was the same as mine - in which case you, too, are a naive sucker!

There are two little conditions:

1:  "These data will be released on request to recognized academic institutions or scientific groups with biostatistical and epidemiological analytic capacity", or in other words, if you can't roll your trouser leg up, give the secret sign and swear the proper oath, you can get lost!

2:  " The data will be provided to organizations or groups without publicly stated views that would cause doubt about their objectivity in analyzing the data", or in other words, if you have failed to worship properly at our shrine, you heretic, you will be cast forth into darkness!

Science reports (subscription needed) that "Michael Spagat, an economist and expert on conflict studies at [...] University of London has been refused access".  The report continues "Spagat calls the policy "deeply flawed," adding, "If we do something dumb or nonobjective with the data, qualified people should be able to expose our stupidity." The decision also puzzles David Kane, a fellow at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science who has received the data set even though he says he posted comments on a Web log last fall that raised the possibility of fraud. Denying some critics access "is ridiculous," Kane adds."

A perceptive commenter on Tim Lambert's site called 'John A' wrote the following:

"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it".  Where have I heard this before? Think, think."

An even more perceptive, intelligent and witty fellow, although modesty forbids that I should disclose his identity, then wrote this before going over Climate Audit for yet more forensic but depressing examples of scientific Freemasonry:

"John 'A', do you know, just like you, I think I have that deja vu feeling all over again, again! Semi-scientists, reluctant to release data, tight little groups who all agree with each other ... no, don't tell me ... it'll come to me in a minute ..."

I must again repeat my respect for Tim Lambert, a man with whom I would probably have difficulty agreeing the time of day.  Politically, I suspect, he would have considerable sympathy with the writers of the original report published in the Lancet, but he's unafraid to point up humbuggery where-ever it appears.

Capitalism - red in tooth and overdraft!

Nothing quite so cheering (and do I need some good cheer - see below!) as watching silly socialists making even bigger prats of themselves than usual.  Tonight I heard a tendentious piece of reporting which would stand as a class-room example of total economic ignorance.  It was a TV report on the attempted take-over of Boots by a 'gang' of private equity investors.  They were actually portrayed as brandy-swilling, cigar smoking, gangster-like caricatures - and this in what purported to be a serious news story!  The usual moaners and groaners, the trades union officials, were interviewed which was fair enough, but no effort was made to explain to viewers that capitalism works by companies making maximum profits from all of their activities and thereby returning good dividends to their shareholders who include, of course, those very workers upon whom the reporter lavished so much of his mis-placed sympathies, or at least, those who have sensibly invested in a pension or savings plan.

If any company fails to maximise its profits, of course, it leaves itself open to some very hard-headed and courageous men who are prepared to borrow huge amounts of money on their own recognisance, in the hope and expectation that they can strip the fat from the the conglomerate, sell it off for a profit and then drive the leaner and meaner core business to new heights before they sell it off again to the wider world of investors.  Apart from the benefit to the company concerned, the good, old Law of Unintended Consequences begins to operate because other companies, living a rather soft and complacent existence with untapped sources of wealth in their 'portfolio' of activities, suddenly have their minds concentrated much in the way that a hanging in the morning is supposed to produce!

Of course, not all private equity buy-outs work out well because capitalism does not work on certainties.  However, without that predatory threat hanging over the boardrooms of Britain, our companies would soon sink into the complacency and uselessness of our nationalised industries who sail serenely on and on and on buoyed up by an ocean of tax-payer's money (or, my money, as I fondly think of it!)

"Oh brave new world!"

First, an apology for my unwarranted absence for so long.  It was due to a combination of effects, really.  The unbelievably good weather which will have all the UK HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) sweating with excitement at the thought that we have an example of global warming.  Needless to say, one glance at a weather map of Europe will show that all we really have is a slight shift of normal weather patterns northwards so that England basks whilst Marbella (where two dear friends have just gone for some sun - hee, hee, hee!) remains damp and cloudy.  Anyway, a certain amount of sunny inertia combined with strict orders from the 'Memsahib' concerning the garden, plus the fact that the Churchyard grass was reaching toward the top of the bell tower, has kept me away from the keyboard.

And yet ... and yet ... there was, as the more perceptive of you might have guessed, something more that kept me from tapping out my somewhat pedestrian thoughts.  My last two posts give the clue.  "I have of late - but wherefor I know not - lost all my mirth".  Actually I do know, or at least suspect the cause.  In particular, it was the disgraceful, humiliating behaviour of those captured sailors and marines; in general, it was the dismal but deadly accurate words in the lyric provided by Barry which sums up much of what I feel.  There can be no doubt that a general, pervading feeling of angst and despair settled upon me.  Everywhere I look there are second-raters, spivs, charlatans and poltroons, not just in everyday life, but in positions of power and influence.  I look for comfort in our history which contains many examples of similar periods of useless frivolity which eventually were superseded by episodes of historic greatness.  Alas, today, I see no sign of any potential anywhere in our public life for anything other than further and accelerating decline.

It is no comfort to me that being born in 1939 the earlier years of my life were some of the most glorious in our history.  That dimly remembered time only rubs salt in the festering wound of the decline and fall of all that was the very best of Britain.  I look in vain for some sign, any sign, that that the next generation can see the swamp that is sucking them down.  As many of you know, I have a fair number of younger 'Brits' who comment here quite regularly. Mostly they are joyful in their nihilism, happy as they spit on all the conventions that will make life worth living, and cannot wait to rush toward the tyranny that awaits them, for they forget that nature, and politics, abhors a vacuum, and the vacuity of their soft, spoiled petulance invites destruction.  Alas, the fact that I will not be around to see it happen is of no comfort.

Lest you think me unduly pessimistic, today, a young man was jailed for 4 months for cruelty to the Pit Bull Terriers he bred for fighting, but four foul slags (I use the word deliberately) were given suspended  sentences for filming their toddlers who they encouraged to hit each other in the face as they screamed abuse at one nappy-wearing child who didn't want to fight!  I almost wish the Muslims would take over!

Top Banana!

Mr. Barry 'Bananas' is a regular commenter here at Duff & Nonsense.  In all honesty, he does not always make himself welcome because some of his contributions to many of our conversations are the equivalent of a Kalahari bushman's grunts and clicks!  Even so, from time to time he has a rather catching turn of phrase, even if it is usually in the form of some ripe invective, so I put up with him.  However, today he has turned up trumps in the form of a song lyric by a group, hitherto totally unknown to me, called The Waterboys. I do not think this is a great lyric but it is a very good one and some of the images are very striking.  Barry was shrewd enough to send it in as a comment to my post below when, and I apologise for it, I allowed myself to indulge in a mixture of anger and angst.  Some of you may not bother to read the comment conversations that go on beneath the posts so I decided to highlight it up here.  Thanks, Barry.

The Waterboys: "Old England"

Man looks up on a yellow sky
And the rain turns to rust in his eye
Rumours of his health are lies
Old England is dying

His clothes are dirty shade of blue
And his ancient shoes worn through
He steals from me and he lies to you
Old England is dying

Still he sings an empire's song
And he keeps his navy strong
And he sticks his flag where it ill belongs
Old England is dying

You’re asking what makes me sigh now
What it is makes me shudder so
Well...
I just freeze in the wind
And I’m numb from the pummeling of the snow
That falls from high in yellow skies
Where the time stained flag of England flies
Where the homes are warm and the mothers sigh
Where comedians laugh and babies cry
Where criminals are televised! Politicians fraternize! Journalists are dignified and everyone is civilised!
And children stare with heroin eyes
Old England!

Evening has fallen
The swans are singing
The last of Sunday's bells is ringing
The wind in the trees is sighing
And Old England is dying

Rock Apes and Tars don't come from Mars!

Alright, I know, my headline titles are becoming more and more obscure.  Let me explain.  "Tars" should be known to all Brits with a minimal sense of history as standing for 'Jack Tars', that is, sailors; however, "Rock Apes", I admit, does require slightly more specialist knowledge in that it was (and maybe still is) the deliberately insulting name my regiment gave to all members of the Royal Marine Commandos. (I never did discover what they called us!)  From this introduction you can probably guess the subject matter of this post. Apart from my brief comments below, I had intended to refrain from any further mention of the subject that the great Richard Littlejohn calls "Up the Shatt al Arab without a paddle". My reason was simple - deep and abiding shame.  I just wanted it all to go away and be forgotten.  Then we had the horror of the sailor and 'sailorette' selling their shameful stories for cash whilst fellow servicemen and women died in the front line.  Despite this provocation, I still could not bring myself to to comment further but earlier today an extraordinary event occurred.  A very dear friend, a lady of the 'old school', by which I mean some one who has lived their life by a simple but very clear code of ethics and honour, rang me in a frightening state of distress, literally sobbing her heart out. To begin with I thought a mutual friend had died, or that perhaps she had been informed of some dreadful medical condition, but gradually, between the sobs, she managed to gulp out that she had only just heard the story of the conduct of those British service personnel - she is a wise woman who never reads newspapers or watches television. 

Hers was, perhaps, an extreme example of how many British people felt, but I can't help wondering exactly how many?  I have a sinking feeling that it was probably not a majority and, even worse, I suspect it was a rather small minority.  If so, what does it tell us of 'The State of the Nation'?  Mostly, I think, that we have completely lost our way.  It also confirms the worst prognosis of Mark Steyn, and others, that the Europeans in general, and now the Brits in particular, are gutless, soft fruit ready for Islamic plucking.  Once upon a time, I loved my country.  I recognised its many faults of omission as well as commission but reckoned that in the long view of history we were, in the words of Sellars & Yatemen, "A Good Thing"!  All that was, and is, in the past.  Today I look at my country and see it filled with strangers.  They are either fellow Brits whose selfish, nihilistic anarchy is displayed daily in the accelerating murder rates, or foreigners whose Muslim creed is abhorrent to me. 

Do I care?  Well, no, at least, not as much as my terribly distressed friend who has just woken up to what has been obvious for many years.  I do have regrets, because the 'old England' had much to recommend it, but "that old common arbitrator, Time" is inexorable.  Athens fell, Rome was sacked, the Holy Roman Empire fractured, so now it is our turn.  We have handed on, not so much a torch, as a flickering candle to that great democracy across the ocean.  How they will fare, I cannot tell, and I won't live long enough to find out.  If they fail and the candle is extinguished, does it matter?  Well, perhaps that will have to be the subject of another post some day.  For the moment, I'm off for a large Laphroaig!

I confess - I AM a Facist!

It's true, it's true, I tell you; I am a dirty, rotten Facist!  Every time I see Heather Blear's face on the telly I want to punch her, really, really hard.  It's not because of anything she's ever said because when she appears I hit the 'mute' button so fast I don't think I've ever heard her speak.  Also, it can't be anything she's done because as far as my memory goes (not far, I agree) she hasn't actually done anything since she's been a minister.  Of course, the fact that she is a minister in the most corrupt and corrupting government since the war (and I remember Wilson's!) is surely a qualification for receiving a good, straight right to the nose, but the truth is, it isn't her politics, it's her cheeky, chirpy, chipmunk face with those little pouchy cheeks and the pursed lip smile that produces the flecks of foam about my lips and the red mist over my eyes.  So, there you have it, I confess, I am indeed, a Facist.

A story of everyday experts - HAFs beware!

I am engaged (a suitably military expression for this particular post, as you will see) in a vigorous debate, now reaching in excess of 180 comments, over at Deltoid on the subject of AGW. " 'AG' what?" you might demand to know, and I don't blame you but reading these discussions is like opening a thousand cans of alphabet soup.  Anyway, AGW is Anthropogenic Global Warming.  It's a hot subject (boom, boom!)  and HAFs (see, more abbreviations, this time 'a poor thing but mine own meaning Hot Air Fanatics) become exceedingly irritable, not to say downright enraged, if you so much as question their 'scientific' methods and conclusions.  They are enormously, and suspiciously, quick to fall back on the old rhetorical line that they are 'qualified experts' and you are not.  All of which brings me to ponder on 'experts' and their hubris.

During the Napoleonic wars, Prussia was utterly humiliated by the French.  Their former 18th c., Frederickian  'power and glory'  was reduced to defeat and vassalage.  Eventually, and with a little help from their 'friends', they wriggled from under Napoleon's heel and helped win the battle of Waterloo.  Four Prussian officers of the time realised that the great days of the Frederickian military system would never return and indeed, Waterloo, and 'Boney's' shaky conduct of it, had demonstrated that the age of the single 'Great Captain'-type of commander was also at an end.  These four; Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, v. Grolman and the most famous (infamous?) of them, v. Clausewitz , realised that a new military system was needed that would avoid undue reliance on single commanders, particularly if they tended to be chosen by the King on the basis of favouritism!  Thus was born the Prussian General Staff, later, the German General Staff.

The idea was simple and revolutionary.  Officers, irrespective of their class background, would only gain admittance to the Staff by competitive examination.  The Staff itself was divided into three geographical areas matching the position of likely enemies, that is, France, Russia and the Austrian Empire.  There were two departments that were also part of the Staff; one dealt with maps in all their complexity as well as studies of the geopolitics of different regions and nations.  The second, and considered by many to be of prime importance was the study and rigorous analysis of military history.  Part of this department's duties was to arrange extremely sophisticated war games in which various strategies and tactics could be worked out.  Later in the 19th c., a third department was opened, in effect, to take control of all German railways and transport systems.  Officers who entered the Staff as juniors were continually tested and assessed.  They held staff positions either at the supreme Staff HQ in Berlin or in the various subordinate formations such as army HQs, Corps or Divisional HQs where they learnt the details of Operations, Intelligence and Administration.  The most senior held the appointment of Chief of Staff (CoS) to the commander of whatever formation to which they were attached.  It meant that whatever a commander might propose it was the CoS who disposed! The result was a 'Brotherhood' of totally dedicated men who, almost monk-like, set themselves to the life-time task of studying and applying the very highest standards of military excellence to every level of, first the Prussian, and then the German army.

This ruthless pursuit of excellence reached its apogee a hundred or so years later when the mantle of Chief of the General Staff, and in effect the commander of the entire German army, fell upon one of its most austere disciples, Alfred v. Schlieffen.  Tragically for him, his beloved wife had died very young and v. Schlieffen turned away from the broader life to dedicate himself entirely to the military life of Germany.  Some commentators complain, incorrectly, that he, and his brilliant and amazing plan was the cause of WWI.  Single causes simply do not exist in human affairs and WWI might, or might not, have occurred irrespective of whether the Schlieffen plan existed.  Nevertheless, it was, if you like, the 'Plan of Plans'.  Not just the product of one mind, but supported down to the last and tiniest details by a team of total experts, the greatest accumulation of military intellectualism the world has ever seen.

It failed!  Yes, yes, I know it wasn't the original Schlieffen plan that was put into operation in 1914 (by which time he was dead) but it was close to it and even now greater experts than me doubt that it would have worked even if it had not been tampered with.  I give talks from time to time on military history (book me, I'm very cheap and entertaining!) and I give one with the snappy title of:  "How the Germans Lost WWI in the First Eight Weeks and then Took Four Years to Own Up!"  which just about sums up the whole murderous, tragic story.  What has all this to do with the HAFs and global warming?  Simple - never just accept the word of an expert without question, particularly if he makes a point of constantly reminding you that he's an expert!

Hypocrisy - "Give me excess of it"!

Hang on (I hear you cry) surely there's plenty of it around.  Not so, not so, and how lucky you all are to have plenty of me around to put you right on this - and other matters.  But then I seem to hear you sigh that surely no-one could possibly want more hypocrisy.  Well, I do!  To be a true hypocrite it is necessary to know that there is a right and proper way to behave and thus to take great care not to divulge the very wrong and improper conduct that you, yourself, indulge in.  My exceedingly shrewd and well-read e-friend, Deogolwulf, finds exactly the right quotation from the works of G. C. Lichtenberg who describes the situation as he saw it in the 18th c.  (This is the very same G. C. Lichtenberg whose wise words adorn the top of this column and describe so accurately my own pathetically executed aim in this blog.)  Anyway, writing on the subject of morality he summed it up thus: “Every man has also his moral backside which he does not show without need and which he keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.”   That was then, but what about now, in an age where we are all encouraged to 'let it hang out', er, if you take my meaning.  Today, under the diktat of that old nutter, Nietzsche, and his contemporary chorus of cretins we are positively urged to 'moony' at the world!  Today, there is no shame and thus no hypocrisy.  One may behave in the most bestial of ways whilst pretending to a life of rectitude, but if found out, you simply shrug it off as a momentary aberration and carry on as usual.  What proof do I have for this charge?  There is not a hat big enough in which to place all the names for me to pick just one, so I will simply pluck from my memory the first example that comes to mind - Mr. Mark Oaten, MP.  I rest my case!