Quotulatiousness

February 27, 2024

Javier Milei gets ghosted by US media after posting rare budget surplus in Argentina

Filed under: Americas, Economics, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Jon Miltimore on Argentine President Javier Milei’s good economic news that the legacy US media are resolutely ignoring:

Argentine President Javier Milei speaking at the World Economic Forum gabfest in Davos, Switzerland, January 2024.
Photo by Flickr – World Economic Forum | CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Argentines witnessed something amazing last week: the government’s first budget surplus in nearly a dozen years.

The Economy Ministry announced the figures Friday, and the government was $589 million in the black.

Argentina’s surplus comes on the heels of ambitious cuts in federal spending pushed by newly-elected President Javier Milei that included slashing bureaucracy, eliminating government publicity campaigns, reducing transportation subsidies, pausing all monetary transfers to local governments, and devaluing the peso.

Milei’s policies, which he has himself described as a kind of “shock therapy,” come as Argentina faces a historic economic crisis fueled by decades of government spending, money printing, and Peronism (a blend of national socialism and fascism).

These policies have pushed the inflation rate in Argentina, once one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America, above 200 percent. Today nearly 58 percent of the Argentine population lives in poverty, according to a recent study.

And Milei rightfully blames Argentina’s backward economic policies for its plight — policies that, he points out, are spreading across the world.

“The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism,” Milei said in a recent speech in Davos. “We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world — rather they are the root cause.”

The revelation that Argentina has done something the US government hasn’t done in more than two decades — run a budget surplus — seems like a newsworthy event.

Yet to my surprise, I couldn’t find a word about it in major US media — not in the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, or Reuters. (The New York Sun seems to be the only exception.)

I had to find the story in Australian media! (To be fair, the Agence France Presse also reported the story.)

One could argue that these outlets just aren’t very interested in Argentina’s politics and economics, but that’s not exactly true.

The Associated Press has covered Argentinian politics and Milei extensively, including a recent piece that reported how the new president’s policies were inducing “anxiety and resignation” in the populace. The same goes for Reuters and the other newspapers.

A cynic might suspect these media outlets simply don’t wish to report good news out of Argentina, now that Milei is president.

February 22, 2024

Allied War Crimes, Latin American Troops, and Top-Secret Proximity Fuzes – WW2 – OOTF 033

Filed under: Americas, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 21 Feb 2024

Did the Western Allies commit war crimes? What did Latin American troops do during the war? And, how did the top-secret proximity fuze change the face of warfare? Find out in this episode of Out of the Foxholes.
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January 26, 2024

Javier Milei to the parasites in Davos – You are the problem

Filed under: Americas, Economics, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Jon Miltimore on Argentine President Javier Milei’s visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this month:

Argentine President Javier Milei speaking at the World Economic Forum gabfest in Davos, Switzerland, January 2024.
Photo by Flickr – World Economic Forum | CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Javier Milei went to Davos to attend the 54th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting last week.

Attendees of the meetings — often derided as global elites who bask in their pomp, privilege, and luxury as they try to address global problems with collectivist solutions — received a jarring message from Argentina’s newly-elected president: you are the problem.

“Today I’m here to tell you that the Western world is in danger,” Milei said in his prepared remarks. “And it is in danger because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty.”

[…]

This is just a sprinkling of the topics discussed in Davos, of course, but you’ll notice a common current that runs throughout them: the solution to virtually every problem requires more government and “collective action”, and less freedom.

This is precisely the kind of thinking Milei, a self-described libertarian, took aim at in his speech, which was a clarion call for leaders to reject collectivist thinking and embrace individual freedom.

“The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism,” Milei told the audience. “We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world; rather they are the root cause.”

As Milei pointed out, few can better attest to the failures of collectivism than Argentines. The country surged to prosperity in the latter half of the nineteenth century, only to experience a massive drop in prosperity due to its embrace of Peronism, a blend of fascism and socialism named after the left-leaning revolutionary Juan Domingo Perón (1895–1974) who dominated Argentine politics for decades following his initial ascent to power in 1946.

While many of Milei’s predecessors, such as the jet-setting Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a self-described Peronist and progressive, were delivering international speeches in Copenhagen about tackling climate change through “a new multilateralism”, Argentines watched their country slowly collapse into poverty.

By embracing protectionist trade policies and rampant government spending, Peronists set Argentina’s economy on fire. By 2023, 40 percent of the population was in poverty and inflation had reached more than 140 percent due to massive money printing. Because of the constantly eroding value of pesos, Argentine merchants are compelled to update prices on chalkboards throughout the day.

The human disaster in Argentina was not caused by climate change or AI or “misinformation”.

It was caused by Argentine politicians and bureaucrats abandoning free-market capitalism, an economic system that brought about unprecedented human prosperity across the globe, and a stark contrast to its various collectivist counterparts — fascism, Peronism, communism, anti-capitalism, etc.

This is why Mr. Milei called capitalism the only “morally desirable” economic system, and the only one that can alleviate global poverty.

January 15, 2024

An alternative recruiting strategy for the US military

Filed under: Americas, Government, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Theophilus Chilton suggests there’s a deeper plan for the US federal government’s blatant encouragement of mass illegal immigration across the US-Mexican border, and if true it might indicate that things are about to “get spicy”:

It genuinely is a mystery …

This move by Texas [using state resources to enforce federal border control against the will of the federal government] represents a ratcheting up of our collapse phase trend towards decentralisation. At least for now (and let’s hope Abbott has the fortitude to follow through), a state is openly defying FedGov in a non-Regime approved way that would have been unthinkable even twenty years ago. Even if FedGov wins this standoff, it presages more and more movement in that direction. The Regime is bleeding power and everyone knows it, even if they can’t afford to let on to that fact. Either way, the Regime is going to have to stop this quickly before other states start getting ideas. If they can’t, their already tarnished reputation will take a further massive hit.

So in light of this news, we saw something else on Thursday that ought to be of interest. A very odd bill has been proposed in the House of Representatives by two Democratic representatives – a bill that would ban “private military activity“. On its face this seems strange since every state in the union already does this. However, the bill, as written, is so vague that it could be interpreted to outlaw organised range shooting activities or even paintball games as “combat training”. This bill reeks of desperation because the Regime knows that its path to collapse is further along than a lot of people think and they know that “private military activity” is a very real possibility. The Regime has been accelerating to the point of no return and is trying to stifle any potential serious opposition.

Opposition to what? Well, that’s a good question. Let’s put some pieces together.

It’s no secret that the US military is facing a serious recruiting shortfall. Obviously, the current Regime has little use for the American military as it has traditionally been constituted. This is shown by the absolutely disrespectful way in which our troops are routinely treated by their own government and chain of command. Especially driving this recruitment deficiency is the huge drop in enlistment by the military’s traditional recruiting stock – rural and suburban White men from the South, the Midwest, and the Mountain West. In other words, exactly the kind of people being demonised by the new military with its DIE initiatives, rainbow flags, and trooned officer corps.

So who is going to fill the ranks? Fortuitously, we seem to have a huge flow of military aged males from all over the world crossing our border for whom the Regime has been rolling out the figurative red carpet. These are guys who probably have a lot of time on their hands. Wouldn’t it be a swell idea if we inducted all these guys into the military to make up for the lack of Heritage American interest? Indeed, history repeatedly shows that unpopular regimes typically do exactly this. They start to rely on foreign mercenary forces for a number of purposes.

Certainly, as GAE struggles to keep its steam, there may be a need to send Guatemalans and Nigerians into various Middle Eastern sandboxes to take shrapnel that Americans won’t take. After all, there will still be the vain and desperate attempts to shore up American globohomo empire in that (and other) regions. But historical, one of the main uses of foreign troops has been to try to keep your own potentially rebellious natives in line. Foreign troops have no real connexion with those whom they are suppressing and thus are willing to follow almost any orders that their paymasters give them.

However, unlike many first world countries that are under the Regime’s heel, the USA has a large body of well-armed citizens, many of whom have military training and combat experience. These guys – plus any other patriotic citizens they may be willing to help train – probably won’t take too kindly to being suppressed by foreign hirelings, something that will quickly make a lot of people’s patience run out. Say, wouldn’t it be a shame if all of these armed, trained and trainable people started organising to protect their homes, families, states, and country?

Despite all of the bravado from left-wing Twitter X keyboard warriors about “YoU’rE aR-15 vS. tAnKs AnD f-15s!!1!” the Regime knows that this armed Heritage-American populace is a potential threat, hence the effort to stifle its organising. And on some level, these people must know that they aren’t really a legitimate government and that they exercise power solely through police powers and the force of arms. Even if they don’t, an increasing number of real Americans DO know this. The Regime has lost the mandate of heaven, and history abundantly attests to what happens to regimes to which this has happened.

The radical anti-state agenda of Argentina’s Javier Milei

Filed under: Americas, Economics, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Jon Miltimore compares the Venezuelan experience after electing Hugo Chavez in 2007 to Argentina’s radically opposed choice to elect Javier Milei as President late in 2023:

Javier Milei, 8 October 2022.
Photo attributed to Vox España via Wikimedia Commons.

In November, the country elected libertarian Javier Milei as its new president. And whereas Hugo Chavez said, “All that was privatized, let it be nationalized”, Milei is essentially saying the opposite: All that was nationalized, let it be privatized.

Milei started by cutting in half the number of federal ministries in Argentina, reducing them from 18 to nine. This was followed by a massive currency devaluation.

Milei did not stop there. In a recent televised announcement, he said he would “repeal rules that impede the privatization of state companies”.

Those words were backed up by a 300-measure order designed to deregulate internet services, eliminate various government price controls, repeal laws that discourage foreign capital investment, abolish the Economy Ministry’s price observatory, and “prepare all state-owned companies to be privatized”.

Milei capped it off on Wednesday with a 351-page omnibus bill that takes aim at Argentina’s regulatory state and would grant Milei emergency powers “until December 31, 2025”.

Giving any president emergency powers is no small thing, even during a genuine crisis. Though Milei’s bill is designed to curb state power, not to expand it — a notable contrast to the typical crisis response paradigm — history and recent events in El Salvador show how emergency powers can be abused and used to violate human rights and liberty.

Whether Milei can get his full agenda through is unclear, but there’s reason for optimism.

His stunning election is itself evidence that Argentines are hungry for change. He’s already shown an impressive pragmatism to wed to his undeniable political flair, surrounding himself with a slew of talented policy experts. This includes Federico Sturzenegger, a former chief economist of Argentina’s central bank who two decades ago managed to turn around the failing Bank of the City of Buenos Aires. Sturzenegger’s reforms were so effective they became a Harvard case study.

Success is by no means certain, of course.

Recovering from decades of Peronism — a blend of socialism, nationalism, and fascism, which dominated Argentina’s political system for years — will not happen overnight. And Argentina’s political class has spent the last few years making a bad situation worse.

Still, the great economist Adam Smith once observed that the key to economic prosperity is surprisingly simple.

“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice,” the Wealth of Nations author said.

Milei knows this. He has not just read Smith (in addition to Austrian school economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises). In a 2017 profile, he dubbed himself “Adam Smith’s heir.”

A heavy dose of Adam Smith is precisely what Argentina needs, and Milei has correctly diagnosed the affliction of Argentina’s once-prosperous economy.

“The state doesn’t create wealth; it only destroys it,” Milei said in a widely viewed 2023 interview.

January 8, 2024

QotD: Nomadic cultures’ territorial needs

Filed under: Americas, Asia, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

This bears little resemblance to the strategic concerns of historical nomads. As a direct consequence of failing to understand the subsistence systems that nomads relied on, [George R.R.] Martin [in his descriptions of the Dothraki nomad culture] has also rendered their patterns of warfare functionally unintelligible.

The chief thing that nomads, both Great Plains Native Americans and Eurasian Steppe Nomads used violence to secure control of is the one thing the Dothraki never do: territory. To agrarian elites (who write most of our sources) and modern viewers, the vast expanses of grassland that nomads live on often look “empty” and “unused” (and thus not requiring protection), but that’s not correct at all. Those “empty” grasslands are very much in use; the nomads know this and are abundantly willing to defend those expanses of grass with lethal force to keep out interlopers. Remember: the knife’s edge of subsistence for nomads is very thin indeed, so it takes only a small disruption of the subsistence system to push the community into privation.

For the Eurasian Steppe nomad, the grass that isn’t near their encampment is in the process of regrowth for the season or year when it will be near their encampment and need to support their herds. Allowing some rival nomadic group to move their sheep and their horses over your grassland – eating the essential grass along the way – means that grass won’t be there for your sheep and your horses when you need it; and when the sheep starve, so will you. So if you are stronger than the foreign interloper, you will gather up all of your warriors and confront them directly. If you are weaker, you will gather your warriors and raid the interloper, trying to catch members of their group when they’re alone, to steal horses and sheep (we’ll come back to that); you are trying to inflict a cost for being on your territory so that they will go away and not come back.

The calculus for nomadic hunters like the Great Plains Native Americans is actually fairly similar. Land supports bison, bison support tribal groupings, so tribal groups defend access to land with violent reprisals against groups that stray into their territory or hunt “their” bison. And of course the reverse is true – these groups aren’t merely looking to hold on to their own territory, but to expand their subsistence base by taking new territory. Remember: the large tribe is the safe tribe; becoming the large tribe means having a larger subsistence base. And on either the plains or the steppe, the subsistence base is fundamentally measured in grass and the animals – be they herded sheep or wild bison – that grass supports. Both Secoy and McGinnis (op. cit.) are full of wars of these sorts on the Great Plains, where one group, gaining a momentary advantage, violently pushes others to gain greater territory (and thus food) for itself. For instance, Secoy (op. cit., 6-32) discusses how access to horses allowed the Plains Apache to rapidly violently expand over the southern Plains in the late 17th century, before being swept off of them by the fully nomadic Ute and Comanche in the first third of the 18th. As McGinnis notes (op. cit., 16ff), on the Northern Plains, prior to 1800 it initially was the Shoshone who were dominant and expanding, but around 1800 began to be pushed out by the Blackfoot, who in turn would, decades later, be pushed by the expanding Sioux.

This kind of warfare is different from the way that settled, agrarian armies take territory. Generally, the armies of agrarian states seek to seize (farm-) land with its population of farmers mostly intact and exert control both over the land and the people subsequently in order to extract the agricultural surplus. But generally (obviously there are notable exceptions) nomads both lack the administrative structures to exert that kind of control and are also very able to effectively resist that sort of control themselves (it is hard for even nomads to tax nomads), making “empire building” along agrarian lines difficult or undesirable (unless you are the Mongols). So instead, polities are trying to inflict losses (typically more through raiding and ambush than battle). Since rivals will tend to avoid areas that become unsafe due to frequent raiding, the successful tribe can essentially push back an opposing tribe with frequent raids. In extreme circumstances, a group may feel threatened enough to get up and move entirely – which of course creates conflict wherever they go, since their plan is to disposess the next group along the way of their territory.

Within that security context, larger scale groupings – alliances, confederations, and super-tribal “nations” – are common. On the Eurasian Steppe, such alliances tended to be personal, although there was a broad expectation that a given ethnic grouping would work together against other ethnic groupings (an expectation that Chinggis actually worked very hard, once he became the Great Khan of a multi-ethnic “Mongol” army, to break up through the decimal organization system; this reorganization is part of what made the Mongol Empire so much more successful than previous Steppe confederations). Likewise, even a cursory look at the Native Americans of the Great Plains produces both a set of standard enmities (the Sioux and the Crow, for instance) but also webs of peace agreements, treaties, alliances, confederations and so on. The presence of British, French, Spanish and American forces (both traders and military forces) fit naturally into that system; the Plains Apache allied with the Spanish against the Comanche, the Crow with the United States against the Sioux and so on. Such allies might not only help out in a conflict, but also deter war and raiding because their strength and friendship made lethal retaliation likely (don’t attack someone allied to Chinggis Khan and expect to survive the experience …).

Exactly none of that complexity appears with the Dothraki, who have no alliances, no peace agreements, no confederations and no territory to attack or defend. Instead, the Dothraki simply sail around the grass sea, fighting whenever they should chance to meet.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: That Dothraki Horde, Part IV: Screamers and Howlers”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2021-01-08.

January 1, 2024

The largest telescope that will ever be built*

Filed under: Americas, Science, Space, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tom Scott
Published 2 Oct 2023

The asterisk is important.
■ More on the ELT: @ESOobservatory https://eso.org

The Extremely Large Telescope, in Paranal, Chile, is probably going to be the largest optical telescope that will ever be constructed. I was invited out there by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council and the European Southern Observatory, and I wasn’t going to turn down a chance like that.

📰 DISCLAIMER
While the STFC and ESO invited me and arranged the logistics after arrival into the Antofagasta region, I was not paid for this (not even my travel costs) and I have sole editorial control over the video. This is not an advert.
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December 9, 2023

Venezuela’s renewed imperialism

Filed under: Americas, History, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Like many of us, Colby Cosh is trying to figure out what’s going on in Venezuela these days, as the government “won” a plebiscite to push its long-standing claim for a huge chunk of next-door neighbour Guyana’s territory:

Map showing the two disputed land areas of Guyana. The red region is disputed with Venezuela (Guayana Esequiba) and the yellow region is disputed with Suriname (Tigri or New River Triangle)
Map by SurinameCentral via Wikimedia Commons.

I’ve been plunging into the weeds — as some of my readers perhaps are — trying to figure out why Venezuela is trying to take over three-quarters of the land area of neighbouring Guyana. I mean, yes, duh, the simple answer is “oil”. The relevant part of Guyana — the sparsely populated, heavily Indigenous Essequibo region west of the river of the same name — has been claimed by Venezuela with varying degrees of vigour and indignation since it became independent from Spain. In the last decade or so, it has come to light there is abundant oil beneath the continental shelf belonging to the Essequibo area.

It might, in fact, be enough oil to make Guyana the world’s largest crude producer in a manner of months. Such an event would almost certainly create an unbearable crisis for the radical-left Venezuelan government, which has fouled up its own oil industry, obliterated its currency and created the single largest refugee crisis in the recorded history of the Americas. And so, the North Korea of the Western Hemisphere is suddenly behaving in an awfully warlike — one might say imperialistic — manner towards a tiny neighbour. Which is, in turn, why the United States is rattling the sabre in Guyana’s defence.

The basic situation in the Essequibo region in the centuries after Columbus was that the territory de jure belonged to Spain but was often really in the hands of Dutch mariners and colonists. There was a long cycle of Dutch incursion and Spanish retaliation. Venezuela inherited and pursued the Spanish claims upon independence — originally as part of the Republic of Gran Colombia (1811) and then as a sovereign state unto itself (1830). Britain gained the Dutch territory in the Napoleonic Wars and incorporated Essequibo into the unified colony of British Guiana in 1831.

The two countries recognized that they had a big disagreement over where the Venezuela-British Guiana border might actually lie. But Venezuela wasn’t in a position to pick a fight with the British Empire, and British public opinion couldn’t be convinced to care very much about the problem. The two countries kicked the can down the road and mutually agreed not to colonize the area.

Fast-forward a bit: in the 1870s, gold was discovered in the disputed zone, waaay over toward the Venezuelan side, and in the 19th century, gold meant a gold rush. British and American privateers started turning up with shovels and pickaxes in the interior, sovereignty be damned. Venezuela eventually began to lobby the U.S. executive branch for redress, reminding American politicians of their precious Monroe Doctrine (which was technically incompatible with the existence of a “British Guiana”). Britain, coming under uncomfortable diplomatic pressure, agreed to submit the border question to neutral arbitration.

And here we come to the heart of the quarrel. The U.S. and Britain set up an arbitration panel of the classic 19th-century kind — the same kind of panel, in fact, that fixed up much of the U.S.-Canada border during the same period. This panel had two American Supreme Court justices representing Venezuelan interests; two equally high-ranking British judges; and a neutral fifth man borrowed from the Russian Empire — the Estonian international-law scholar Friedrich Martens (1845-1909). Throughout the 19th century, Russia had often been used in this way by western powers as an honest broker, and arbitration was seen as a universal means of peaceful dispute resolution — the great hope of the world’s future.

And yet, like what seems to be every border dispute in South America since the Spanish skedaddled, an agreement doesn’t seem to last more than the lifetime of one of the governments that negotiated it and some of them aren’t even that durable. Ed Nash has a video summarizing the economic and military state of affairs that helps explain why this dispute is potentially of global concern.

November 30, 2023

The challenge facing Javier Milei

Filed under: Americas, Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Craig Pirrong outlines just how much work Argentinian President-Elect Javier Milei will have to accomplish to begin to bring Argentina’s government in line with his electoral mandate:

When I wrote Milei is not a leftist, let’s say that rather understates the matter. Milei loathes leftists and leftism, and repeatedly refers to them on television and in public appearances in scatalogical terms, calling them “leftards”. He despises collectivism, and asserts bluntly that leftists are out to destroy you. His mission is to destroy them first.

As someone so vehemently hostile to the left and well outside conventional political categories, Milei’s victory has triggered a mass moral panic, especially in the media. The New York Times coverage was (unintentionally) hilarious: “Some voters were turned off by his past outbursts and extreme comments over years of work as a television pundit and personality.” Well, obviously a lot more weren’t, but I guess one has to take solace where one can, eh, NYT?

Milei’s agenda is indeed a radical one, especially for a statist basket case like Argentina. To combat the country’s massive (140 per cent annualised) inflation, Milei says he will dollarise the economy and eliminate (“burn down”) the central bank. He also wants to reduce radically the role of the state in Argentina’s economy. He says he wants to “chainsaw” the government – and emphasises the point by campaigning with an actual chainsaw.

His election on this programme sparked a rally in Argentine financial markets, with government debt rising modestly and stock prices rallying smartly.

Will Milei be able to deliver? Some early commentary has doubted his ability to govern based on the fact that his party’s representation in the legislature is well below a majority. That may be an issue, but not the major obstacle to Milei’s ability to transform Argentina into what it was at the dawn of the 21st century: an advanced, rapidly growing economy and a relatively free society.

The real obstacle is one that is faced by anti-statists everywhere – the bureaucracy. (I do not say “civil service” because that phrase is at best aspirational and more realistically a patent falsehood. Akin to the Holy Roman Empire that was neither holy nor Roman, the “civil service” is neither civil nor a service.)

Argentina’s bloated state is its own clientele with its own interests, mainly self-preservation and an expansion of its powers. Moreover, it has created a whole host of patronage clients in business and labour. Milei’s agenda is anathema to this nexus of public and private interests. They will make war to the knife to subvert it.

Even a president with an electoral mandate faces formidable obstacles to implementing his agenda. The most important obstacle is what economists call an “agency problem”. The bureaucrats are agents of the chief executive, but it can be nigh unto impossible to get these agents to implement the executive’s directives if they don’t want to. Their incentives are not aligned with the executive, and are often antithetical. As a result, they resist and often act at cross purposes with the executive.

The modern chief executive’s power to force his bureaucratic agents to toe the line is severely circumscribed. At best, the executive can make appointments at the upper levels of the bureaucracy (such as the heads of ministries or departments), but the career bureaucrats who can make or break the executive’s policy are beyond his reach, and not subject to any punishment if they subvert the executive’s agenda.

November 26, 2023

It’s apparently political earthquake season

Filed under: Americas, Europe, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Elizabeth Nickson wonders if you can feel the Earth shaking in your area:

Did you hear the roar on the streets when Milei won Argentina? It built and built, and then everyone was out on the streets shouting, from windows, inside shops, houses. It is the future, all over the world. The Netherlands on Friday. Same same. Universal rejoicing.

Absurdistan does a solid line in doom, but our firmly held first principle is that every single one of us should be two or three times as rich, with massively increased scope and ability to do the things we want to do. Defeating the criminal cartel that runs Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Government, Big Tech and Big Charity will light up the galaxy if not the universe. And … this. Especially this:

Unlike almost everyone in the media, Absurdistan knows regulation is the principal reason we are hornswoggled serfs. Even Trump’s team was surprised at the economic boom that came from his mild de-regulation; they thought tax relief was the key. It was important, none of us should be paying more than 25% in taxes, if that, but the regulation! You have no earthly idea how fiendish it has become until you start a business or require permission to create anything in the material world. Few journalists ever do that, the most they do is join a bank in “communications”, design an app or website, do PR, or “consult”. They are virtually, to a man or woman, children in the real world. So no one reports on the most brutal crippler of every man, woman and child on earth. Equally, virtually no writer I read has any grasp on the ingenuity, the creativity, the strength of the ordinary man. They all seem to think we need guidance from them, which is laughable. They have screwed up everything so utterly, we teeter daily on the edge of fiscal catastrophe.

Bloomberg reports on Milei victory

When Vivek Ramaswamy proposed instantly firing 50% of federal bureaucrats on Day One, I stood on my office chair and cheered.

When Javier Milei tore strips of paper representing government ministries off the whiteboard, I had to go out and run around the house a few times.

Africa is not limited by anything but confiscatory corrupt government, as asserted by Magatte Wade in her new book. Wade should be running things in Africa, which is polluted by commies, plutocrats, crooked multinationals, ravening bureaucrats, corrupt politicians and the brutalist green movement. The Chinese would stun the world if they could get rid of the vicious predatory communist regime that enslaves every man, woman and child. And not in the sense that they are “taking over”.

The mop-up will take decades. But unpicking the bad regs and shooing the bad legislators off to permanent exile, prosecuting the army of government thieves, and creating a multi-polar world, will be more absorbing than our endless self-cherishing, self-indulgence. Have we not all shopped enough? We have powerful enemies, but they are fully aware of how destructive they have been, their guilt written on their exhausted pouchy faces.

Trump is a symptom, not a cause

People fighting the Borg wish for leaders but this is not a movement that requires leadership by anyone but each and every one of us. Trump is a symptom, not a cause. This is multi-headed, like Medusa, representing tens, hundreds of millions of individuals saying NO. Real politicians like Mike Johnson, Geert Wilders, Pierre Poilievre, Javier Milei, and Danielle Smith are listening to us and stepping up.

November 21, 2023

Javier Gerardo Milei, President-elect of Argentina

Filed under: Americas, Economics, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the current evidence, Argentina has finally decided to turn away from both communism and Peronism to try something radically different in the person of newly elected Javier Gerardo Milei, variously described (disapprovingly) in the English-language press as “far right”, “extreme right”, “Trump-like”, and most alarmingly, “libertarian”. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about him (before the edit wars get serious on his page):

Javier Milei, 8 October 2022.
Photo attributed to Vox España via Wikimedia Commons.

Javier Gerardo Milei (/miˈleɪ/ mee-LAY, Spanish pronunciation: [xaˈβjeɾ xeˈɾaɾðo miˈlej]; born 22 October 1970) is an Argentine politician, economist, and author who is the President-elect of Argentina.[1] Before rising to political prominence, Milei initially gained notability as an economist, as the author of multiple books on economics and politics, and for his distinct political philosophy.

As an economist, Milei is a vocal proponent of the Austrian School. He has critiqued the fiscal policies of various Argentine administrations and he advocates for reduced government spending. As a university professor, he has taught courses in macroeconomics, economic growth, microeconomics, and mathematics for economists.[2] He is also the author of numerous books and has hosted radio programs, including Demoliendo mitos and Cátedra libre. In 2021, he entered politics and was elected as a national deputy representing the City of Buenos Aires for La Libertad Avanza. During his tenure, he limited his legislative activities to voting, focusing instead on critiquing what he describes as Argentina’s political elite and its propensity for high government spending. Milei has pledged not to raise taxes and has donated his national deputy salary through a monthly raffle. He was a presidential candidate in the upcoming 2023 general election,[3] with Victoria Villarruel as his vice-presidential running mate.[4] He advanced to the run-off of the presidential election, in which he faced Sergio Massa.[5] On 19 November 2023, he won the run-off election with 56% of the vote to Massa’s 44% to become President-elect.[6]

David Warren certainly seems to like the cut of Milei’s jib:

Mr Milei not only swept the “youth” vote, but he did that while declaring: “Killing children is not a human right!” He mocked an accumulation of political corrections, while dropping a few more “flinch bombs” worthy of the XVIIth-century bishops who evangelized that country.

The outgoing president, another tedious Peronist like our pope, shared the old presidential palace with decorative plants. Carlos, my correspondent, claims that he could make Justin Trudeau look intelligent. If true, this would be an extraordinary accomplishment. He also leaves an amazing national debt, hyperinflation, energy shortages, &c.

Mr Milei seems to have won as Mr Trump once did in the United States: by not flinching. A point may be reached in national decline when even the young will pitch out the Peronistas. Godspeed to them, when they reach this point.

Nevertheless, one must continue to despise politics. Carlos echoes Borges: “No matter how bad an Argentine government is, the next will be worse”.

The Buenos Aires Times, quoted by Brian Peckford:

Milei promised to return Argentina, one of the richest countries in the world a century ago, to its former glory, after decades of stagnation, mostly under the populist Peronist coalition – big on welfare and government spending.

The president-elect vowed “a limited government, respect for private property and free trade. The model of decadence has come to an end. There is no way back.”

Milei offered special thanks to former president Mauricio Macri and failed opposition presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich, who threw their support behind him after defeat in the first round and helped bring over their voters to his force.

He also thanked scrutineers from his party and those from the opposition PRO party that had worked to protect and count votes at polling stations.

Milei ended his speech with his traditional trademark rallying call: “Viva la libertad carajo!” (“fucking long live freedom”).

News of the libertarian’s victory prompted wild scenes from supporters on the streets of Buenos Aires. The area around the Hotel Libertador, his traditional bunker for election night, was swamped by revellers celebrating his win.

It’s often said that socialists will dismiss any failures by socialist governments by declaring that it wasn’t “real socialism”. This is equally true for other political and philosophical beliefs:

November 5, 2023

Hugo Chávez

Filed under: Americas, History, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The most recent entry in the Dictator Book Club at Astral Codex Ten looks at former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez:

Former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
Photo by Roberto stuckert Filho/PR via Wikimedia Commons.

All dictators get their start by discovering some loophole in the democratic process. Xi realized that control of corruption investigations let him imprison anyone he wanted. Erdogan realized that EU accession talks provided the perfect cover to retool Turkish institutions in his own image.

Hugo Chavez realized that there’s no technical limit on how often you can invoke the emergency broadcast system. You can do it every day! The “emergency” can be that you had a cool new thought about the true meaning of socialism. Or that you’re opening a new hospital and it makes a good photo op. Or that opposition media is saying something mean about you, and you’d like to prevent anyone from watching that particular channel (which is conveniently bound by law to air emergency broadcasts whenever they occur).

This might not be the only reason or even the main reason Hugo Chavez ended up as dictator. But it’s a very representative reason. If Putin is basically a spook and Modi is basically an ascetic, Hugo Chavez was basically a showman. He could keep everyone’s attention on him all the time (the emergency broadcast system didn’t hurt). And once their attention was on him, he could delight them, enrage them, or at least keep them engaged. And he never stopped. Hugo Chavez was the marathon runner of dictators.

    He was on television almost every day for hours at a time, invariably live, with no script or teleprompter, mulling, musing, deciding, ordering. His word was de facto law, and he specialised in unpredictable announcements: nationalisations, referenda, troop mobilizations, cabinet shuffles. You watched not just for news value. The man was a consummate performer. He would sing, dance, rap; ride a horse, a tank, a bicycle; aim a rifle, cradle a child, scowl, blow kisses; act the fool, the statesman, the patriarch. There was a freewheeling, improvised air to it all. Suspense came from not knowing what would happen.

    There would be no warning. Soap operas, films, and baseball games would dissolve and be replaced by the familiar face seated behind a desk or maybe the wheel of a tractor … it could [last] minutes or hours. Sometimes Chavez wouldn’t be talking, merely attending a ceremony … One time Chavez decided to personally operate a machine on the Caracas-to-Charallave rail tunnel. A television and radio announcer improvised commentary for the first few minutes, but gradually ran out of things to say as the president continued drilling, drilling, drilling. Radio listeners, blind to Chavez pounding away, were baffled and then alarmed by the mechanical roar monopolizing the airwaves. Some thought it signaled a coup.

In 2012, while he was dying of cancer, Chavez gave “a state of the nation address lasting nine and a half hours. A record. No break, no pause.” Put a TV camera in front of him, and the man was a machine.

If he had been an ordinary celebrity, he would be remembered as a legend. But he went too far. He became his TV show. He optimized national policy for ratings. The book goes into detail on one broadcast in particular, where he was filmed walking down Venezuela’s central square, talking to friends. He remarked on how the square needed more monuments to glorious heroes. But where could he put them? The camera shifted to a mall selling luxury goods. A lightbulb went on over the dictator’s head: they could expropriate the property of the rich capitalist elites who owned the mall, and build the monument there. Make it so! Had this been planned, or was it really a momentary whim? Nobody knew.

Then he would move on to some other topic. An ordinary citizen would call in and describe a problem. Chavez would be outraged, and immediately declare a law which solved that problem in the most extreme possible way. Was this staged? Was it a law he had been considering anyway? Again, hard to tell.

Sometimes everyone in government would ignore his decisions to see if he forgot about them. Sometimes he did. Other times he didn’t, and would demand they be implemented immediately. Nobody ever had a followup plan. They expropriated the mall, but Chavez’s train of thought had already moved on, and nobody had budgeted for the glorious monuments he had promised. The mall sat empty; it became a dilapidated eyesore. Laws declared on the spur of the moment to sound maximally sympathetic to one person’s specific problem do not, when combined into a legal system, form a great basis for governing a country.

But Chavez TV was also a game show. The contestants were government ministers. The prize was not getting fired. Offenses included speaking out against Chavez:

    Chavez clashed with and fired all his ministers at one time or another but forgave and reinstated his favorites. Nine finance ministers fell in succession … it was palace custom not to give reasons for axing. Chavez, or his private secretary, would phone the marked one to say thank you but your services are no longer required. Good-bye. The victim was left guessing. Did someone whisper to the comandante? Who? Richard Canan, a young, rising commerce minister, was fired after telling an internal party meeting that the government was not building enough houses. Ramon Carrizales was fired as vice president after privately complaining about Cuban influence. Whatever the cause, once the axe fell, expulsion was immediate. The shock was disorienting. Ministers who used to bark commands and barge through doors seemed to physically shrink after being ousted … they haunted former colleagues at their homes, seeking advice and solace, petitioning for a way back to the palace. “Amigo, can you have a word with the chief?” One minister, one of Chavez’s favorites, laughed when he recounted this pitiful lobbying. “They know it as well as I do. In [this government] there are no amigos.”

… or taking any independent action:

    [A minister] was not supposed to suggest an initiative, solve a problem, announce good news, theorise about the revolution, or express an original opinion. These were tasks for the comandante. His fickleness encouraged ministers to defer implementation until they were certain of his wishes. In any case they spent so much time on stages applauding — it was unwise to skip protocol events — that there was little opportunity for initiative. Thus the oil minister Rafael Ramirez would lurk, barely visible, while the comandante signed a lucrative deal with Chevron […]

    But upon command, the stone would transform into a whirling dervish … the comandante‘s impulsiveness demanded instant, urgent responses. He would become consumed by a theme. Rice! Increase rice production! The order would ricochet through [the government]. The agriculture, planning, transport, commerce, finance, and infrastructure ministers would work around the clock devising a scheme or credits, loans, cooperatives, mills and trucks to have it ready, at least on paper, for the comandante to unveil on his Sunday show. Thus was born the Mixed Company for Socialist Rice. Then, the next week, chicken! Cheaper chicken! The same ministers would forget about rice while they rushed to squeeze farmers, truckers, and supermarkets so that the comandante could say, on his next show, that chicken was cheaper.

… or, worst of all, not enjoying Chavez’s TV shows enough:

    [Ministers had to] arrange their features into appropriate expressions when on camera or in the comandante‘s sight line. This was tricky when the comandante did something foolish or bizarre because the required response could contradict instinct … Missing a cue could be fatal. During a show the comandante‘s laser-beam gaze swung from face to face, spotlighting expressions, seeking telltale tics. Immediately after a broadcast, Chavez reviewed the footage, casting a professional eye over the staging, lighting, camera angles — and audience reaction.

    The comandante‘s occasional lapses into ridiculous were inevitable. He spoke up to nine hours at a time live on television, without a script … Being capricious and clownish also sustained interest in the show and underlined his authority. No other government figure, after all, dared show humour in public. But on occasion this dissolved into absurdity. Who tells a king he is being a fool?

    Ministers faced another test of the mask in September 2007, when the comandante announced clocks would go back half an hour. The aim was to let children and workers wake up in daylight, he said. “I don’t care if they call me crazy, the new time will go ahead, let them call me whatever they want. I’m not to blame. I received a recommendation and said I liked the idea.” Chavez wanted it implemented within a week — causing needless chaos — and bungled the explanation, saying clocks should go forward rather than back. If ministers realized the mistake, they said nothing, only smiled and clapped […]

    On rare occasions the correct response was not obvious, sowing panic. In a speech to mark World Water Day in 2011, the comandante said capitalism may have killed life on Mars. “I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilisation on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet.” Some in the audience tittered, assuming it was a joke, then froze when they saw neighbors turned to stone. To these audience veterans it was unclear if it was a joke, so they adopted poker faces, pending clarification. It never came; the comandante moved on to other topics.

How did a once-great nation reach this point? I read Rory Carroll’s Comandante to find out.

October 12, 2023

Canada, “a country with short arms and long pockets”

Filed under: Americas, Cancon, Government, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In the National Post, John Ivison recounts Canada’s continuing inability to live up to expectations internationally, especially militarily:

US President Joe Biden talks to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, March 2023.

On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mark Norman, the former vice-chief of defence, made a prediction that sounded overblown at the time.

“I really think the Americans are going to start ignoring us because they don’t think we are credible or reliable. They are not even putting pressure on us anymore,” he said in a January 2022 National Post interview, based on his conversations with contacts in Washington.

It turns out he was absolutely right.

Since then, leaked Pentagon documents have confirmed that sense, indicating that the U.S. believes “widespread defence shortfalls have hindered Canada’s capabilities, while straining partner relationships and alliance contributions”.

Canada left little room for doubt about its diminished capabilities when it took a pass on NATO’s largest-ever air exercise last summer, because its jets and pilots were involved in “modernization activities”. That absence left the impression that this country might not be able to show up in certain circumstances.

Even before the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East, America was letting it be known that it felt overstretched and needed regional allies to share the burden.

When President Joe Biden visited Ottawa in March, he asked Justin Trudeau to lead a mission to Haiti, which had descended into mob rule. Since the Liberals were elected on a peacekeeping ticket in 2015, it was a logical request. However, Trudeau demurred, presumably on the grounds that Canada’s security forces were stretched too thin by operations in Latvia and fighting wildfires at home. The upshot is that Kenya is set to send 1,000 security officers to the beleaguered island nation.

The recent news that Canada now plans to trim its defence budget by nearly $1 billion — a total of $17 billion over 20 years, if savings are recurring — has reinforced the image of a country with short arms and long pockets.

Against that background, it was no surprise that on Monday Biden hosted a call with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. to discuss the crisis in the Middle East — and didn’t include Canada.

A statement by the G7 minus Canada and Japan (which has a negligible Jewish population) was issued saying that the five countries would ensure Israel is able to defend itself.

Over at The Line, Matt Gurney discovered that the federal government was actively trying to hide the fact that Canadians in Israel were not able to access Canadian embassy services by pretending that the word “operational” meant “open and functional”:

On Sunday evening (hours after we published our dispatch), I received a reply from GAC. This was the reply:

    Since the beginning of this crisis, Canadian officials have been working around the clock to support Canadians. The missions in Tel Aviv and Ramallah remained operational through the weekend and will continue to be. Our missions will open on Monday October 9th, unless security conditions do not allow for it. We will be assessing the security situation daily, in coordination with our allies.

Okay! That seemed fair. But not having been born yesterday, and being in a profession where people try to spin me all the time, I noticed something immediately. The distinction GAC was drawing between “operational” and “open” stood out to me. I replied at once seeking clarification, and heard nothing back. Not even an acknowledgement.

This word choice mattered. The government publicly used the “operational” messaging. Members of the government repeated it. This was what they were telling the Canadian people: all is well, ignore those nasty media people and members of the opposition. Of course the embassies were “operational”!

See that tweet? The one pasted above? I checked out who was retweeting it. Lots of people did! And that included a bunch of Liberal MPs, a bunch of Canadian diplomats, members of the media, and what I’ll politely refer to as a group of “usual suspects” I recognize from online as being proxies for the Liberal government’s messaging (or at least really devoted True Believer Liberal partisans).

On Monday morning, having heard nothing back about what “operational” meant as opposed to “open”, I asked for a specific clarification in the terminology. What was “operational” vs. “open”? I also asked for specifics on what services were available locally from Canadian diplomatic missions in Israel over the weekend in real time, and how that would change when the embassy “opened” on Monday. I asked about the staffing level at the embassy on the weekend, and how that would compare to a normal workday, and also to a normal weekend.

Rather than answer a simple question, our government would much rather obfuscate and prevaricate as a matter of policy. That, by itself, tells you everything you need to know about both our political leaders and the civil service organizations they control.

October 1, 2023

QotD: Curry

Filed under: Americas, Food, India, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I’ve just had my version of a hot curry. Now, every single Indian friend of mine just fell off their chair laughing. My Bangladeshi friend I am sure is rolling on the floor. Because honestly, their reaction to it would probably be something like: “Be quite tasty if it had any chili in it.” Or “Bit mild.”

Of course for me, that was sweaty forehead, and under my eyes beading with it, burning lips and the thought that I ought to put a roll of toilet paper in the freezer for later.

In no small part … it is what you are used to. The chili pepper was native to Mexico. It’s not something the Indians were used to … once. But they have made it their own, and added their regional variant to it, making the food they add this foreign spice to very much characteristic of their culture and their cuisine. To them it very much part of what they are. Oddly, it seems expat Indians end up eating even hotter curries than those eaten in the country — fascinating in itself.

This is something millions of non-Indian folk across the world appreciate too. Now-a-days you’ll find many families who are neither culturally nor genetically Indian who have grown up eating curries. Many of them will be very knowledgeable about what a good curry ought to be, and some of them will even prepare it with strict adherence to the methods that good cooks in the Indian subcontinent use, and go to great lengths to get the right ingredients.

Of course: if we’re going to get puerile and talk “cultural appropriation” – it’s worth reminding people that the key ingredient came from Mexico. And, if you bother to start researching many of the other much beloved ingredients – they, as often as not had their origins elsewhere. This is as much part of being human as following these silly fads is. Whenever you look at any so-called cultural appropriation, you’ll find the xyz people actually adopted chunks of that culture from … someone else, and changed it a little to suit themselves. That’s as natural to humans as farting. Some people may do it less than others, but we all do it.

Curry and the world-wide spread of curries, has mostly been a win for the species, outside of the ill-judged dodgy vindaloo eaten after sixteen pints of lager.

Dave Freer, “Curry”, Mad Genius Club, 2019-08-26.

September 7, 2023

History Summarized: Iceland’s Hallgrimskirkja

Filed under: Americas, Architecture, Europe, History, Humour, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 26 May 2023

The name is more visually complicated than the church itself.
I tried my best to pronounce all the Icelandic correctly but that LL sound is TRICKY.

SOURCES & Further Reading:
Great Courses lectures “Iceland’s Independence” and “The Capital and Beyond in Southwest Iceland” from The Great Tours Iceland by Jennifer Verdolin, “Iceland’s Hallgrimskirkja” from World’s Greatest Churches by William R. Cook. Plus, two visits to Iceland and a lot of time spent staring at the thing.
(more…)

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