Almost any Jew can be stateless, but Marx was particularly so — born of alien parents in a frontier region between Germany and France, educated in the Rhineland and in Prussia, a student at Berlin but a graduate of Jena, exiled by the age of thirty-two. Nor was this domicile chosen from any love of England or of anything but safety. He knew next to nothing of the English when he died, preferring to live among German exiles, talking German, thinking in German, and for preference writing in German. He knew of the toiling masses only from blue books and parliamentary reports. We hear nothing of his travels among the Lancashire cotton mills and as little of his talks with the London poor. There is no record of his visiting the coal mines, the docks, or even a public house. He was essentially homeless, offering no loyalty and expecting no aid. And with his scorn went hatred. He despised and loathed his rivals, quarreled with this allies and condemned all sympathizers who deviated even by a little from the doctrine he held to be sacred. Karl Marx had no country.
C. Northcote Parkinson, “Internal Contradiction”, Left Luggage, 1967.
September 22, 2013
QotD: The personal alienation of Karl Marx
September 21, 2013
QotD: True liberalism
The function of Liberalism in the past was that of putting a limit to the powers of kings. The function of true Liberalism in the future will be that of putting a limit to the powers of Parliament.
Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State, 1884.
September 16, 2013
“This is Britain. And in Britain you can wear what you want.”
In the Telegraph, Dan Hodges defends the right of women to wear whatever they want:
The debate about “The Veil”, is neither necessary, nor is it complex. In fact, it’s very, very simple. This is Britain. And in Britain you can wear what you want.
Obviously there are practical exceptions. I can’t turn up to my local swimming pool and jump in with my clothes on, for example. When I tweeted about this earlier today a number of people asked: what about people going through airport security? And in that instance obviously veils should be removed. In the same way that when I pass through security, my shoes occasionally have to be removed. But that doesn’t alter the basic fact that if I still want to wander round in my pair of battered Adidas Samba, I’m free to do so. And any women who wishes to wear a veil is free to do that too.
“You can’t wear hoodies in shopping centres, or crash helmets in banks”, some people have pointed out. Fair enough. When the nation is trembling from an onslaught of Burka-clad steaming gangs I may reassess my view. But until then the rule remains; we are a free society, and we are free to wear the clothing of our choice.
I understand those who express concern about the cultural implications of veils. Indeed, I share them. My wife and I regularly drive through Stamford Hill to see relatives. When we do, we invariably reflect on the local Hasidic Jewish community, and how great it is that London is so rich culturally. But it’s noticeable that all the women, (and indeed the men), are essentially dressed in the same way. That’s great to look at from the outside, and reflects a strong sense of heritage and identity. Yet it also reflects conformity. And conformity is a bad thing. It stifles personal identity, and by extension freedom.
But from my point of view, that’s just tough. If I were to advocate passing a law that said Hasidic Jewish women should be banned from going out unless they’re dressed in bright, vibrant colours, I’d rightly be regarded as having lost my mind. And it’s no different to advocating we should start punishing women who decide to go out in a veil.
British battlefields and the belated preservation effort
In History Today, Julian Humphrys talks about the late start in preserving and interpreting the battlefields in Britain:
Few would disagree that battles have played a significant part in Britain’s history. The Norman Conquest after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 caused enormous social, political and cultural change; De Montfort’s victory at Lewes in 1264 led to the earliest forerunner of Parliament; Bruce’s victory at Bannockburn in 1314 helped secure Scotland’s independence from England while the battles of the mid-17th century helped change both the roles of Crown and Parliament and the relationship between the component parts of the United Kingdom. Furthermore the reputations of many great leaders were forged on the battlefield: Cromwell’s victories, for example, gave him both the opportunity and the desire to intervene on the national political stage. But why preserve the battlefields?
Part of the answer lies in the ground itself. Battlefields may contain important topographical and archaeological evidence, which can help us understand the events that took place on their soil. Walk the boggy ground at the foot of the steep slopes of Branxton Hill at Flodden and you’ll quickly understand how in 1513 advancing blocks of Scottish pikemen lost cohesion and momentum and floundered to bloody defeat at the hands of the Earl of Surrey’s English billmen (see James IV: Renaissance Monarch). By locating the fall of shot through metal detecting, archaeological projects at Edgehill (1642), Naseby (1645) and Culloden (1746) have helped us learn more about the dispositions of the armies and the course of the battles, while at Bosworth (1485) it has finally unearthed the actual location of the fighting itself.
[…]
It is sometimes said that Britain lags behind the US, Belgium and parts of France in the care, interpretation and promotion of its battlefields. Many more British schools visit the Western Front than they do the battlefields of the Wars of the Roses or the Civil Wars. There are a dozen First World War museums in and around Ypres alone, headed by the award-winning ‘In Flanders Fields’ museum in the town’s restored Cloth Hall. There are numerous bunkers and preserved or reconstructed sections of trench, over a hundred British and Commonwealth cemeteries, and countless walking tours, self-drive tours, coach tours, cycle tours, even balloon tours to choose from.
Many American Civil War battlefields are carefully tended, painstakingly interpreted and bristling with memorials. The field of Gettysburg (1863) is administered by the US National Park Service; with a staggering 1,300 monuments it has been described as one of the largest collections of outdoor sculpture in the world. But perhaps all this is to be expected, for while its civil war remains America’s most costly conflict and was fought at home, Britain has done much of its fighting abroad. Mention battlefields to a Briton and the chances are they will initially think of somewhere overseas, notably Ypres or the Somme. The Great War was in many ways our national Calvary — the first time that anything more than a relatively small British army took part in a major war, suffering mass casualties as a result. Furthermore much of it was fought just across the Channel within reach of the British visitor, most of whom will know of relatives who fought there.
September 13, 2013
QotD: The constant theme of British battles through history
I have a theory that, while the battles the British fight may differ in the widest possible way, they have invariably two common characteristics — they are always fought uphill and always at the junction of two or more map sheets.
Field Marshal William Slim, “Aid to the Civil”, Unoficial History, 1959.
September 10, 2013
QotD: Law-making
One might have expected that whether they observed the implication of these domestic failures, or whether they contemplated in every newspaper the indications of a social life too vast, too varied, too involved to be even vaguely pictured in thought, men would have entered on the business of law-making with the greatest hesitation. yet in this more than anything else do they show a confident readiness. Nowhere is there so astounding a contrast between the difficulty of the task and the unpreparedness of those who undertake it. Unquestionably among monstrous beliefs one of the most monstrous is that while for a simple handicraft, such as shoe-making, a long apprenticeship is needful, the sole thing which needs no apprenticeship is making a nation’s laws.
Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State, 1884.
September 9, 2013
When politicians meddle in defence matters
An interesting report in Herald Scotland by Kate Devlin illustrates some of the problems created when politicians make decisions without adequately consulting with the civil service:
The man in charge of equipment at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has warned officials offer “opinion” not fact on defence programmes, including the aircraft carriers being built on the Clyde, because of pressure from ministers.
In recent years the department has become notorious for overspends and procurement problems. But Bernard Gray said that civil servants in his department had “their arms put up behind their backs” to produce hasty costings for projects.
Earlier this week Mr Gray revealed that in 2010, when Tory MP Liam Fox was Defence Secretary, officials were given just hours to estimate the cost of changing the planes to fly from the carriers.
Mistakes in that process led to a humiliating U-turn by Mr Fox’s replacement Philip Hammond last year and have cost the taxpayer at least £74million.
Appearing before a separate committee of MPs, Mr Gray said officials should have been given six months, not a day, to complete the work. He said what was eventually provided was “opinion”.
“People (within the MoD) come under pressure, with people saying, ‘Everybody wants to know, we have to have an answer today,'” he said.
September 8, 2013
Prince Andrew’s brief career as a burglar
Red faces again for the security team at Buckingham Palace:
The incident came two days after a break-in at the Palace, which is said to have left Royal protection officers “jittery”.
Prince Andrew, 53, was walking in the garden when sources claim he was ordered to the ground and asked to identify himself. Scotland Yard say that no weapons were drawn during the incident.
A Palace source told the Sunday Express: “There is a high turnover of the police on duty at the Palace but you’d think anyone would know what Prince Andrew looks like.
“It’s fair to say that to describe the Duke as unhappy and the two officers as highly embarrassed is the biggest understatement of the century.”
Police are on high alert after the biggest security breach at the Palace in 30 years, in which a man managed to scale a 12ft fence, evade dozens of armed officers, and make his way into the state rooms last Monday.
QotD: What is Fascism?
Learned controversies, reverberating for years on end in American magazines, have not even been able to determine whether or not Fascism is a form of capitalism. But still, when we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini’s Italy, we know broadly what we mean. It is in internal politics that this word has lost the last vestige of meaning. For if you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years. Here I am not speaking of the verbal use of the term ‘Fascist’. I am speaking of what I have seen in print. I have seen the words ‘Fascist in sympathy’, or ‘of Fascist tendency’, or just plain ‘Fascist’, applied in all seriousness to the following bodies of people:
Conservatives: All Conservatives, appeasers or anti-appeasers, are held to be subjectively pro-Fascist. British rule in India and the Colonies is held to be indistinguishable from Nazism. Organizations of what one might call a patriotic and traditional type are labelled crypto-Fascist or ‘Fascist-minded’. Examples are the Boy Scouts, the Metropolitan Police, M.I.5, the British Legion. Key phrase: ‘The public schools are breeding-grounds of Fascism’.
Socialists: Defenders of old-style capitalism (example, Sir Ernest Benn) maintain that Socialism and Fascism are the same thing. Some Catholic journalists maintain that Socialists have been the principal collaborators in the Nazi-occupied countries. The same accusation is made from a different angle by the Communist party during its ultra-Left phases. In the period 1930-35 the Daily Worker habitually referred to the Labour Party as the Labour Fascists. This is echoed by other Left extremists such as Anarchists. Some Indian Nationalists consider the British trade unions to be Fascist organizations.
Communists: A considerable school of thought (examples, Rauschning, Peter Drucker, James Burnham, F. A. Voigt) refuses to recognize a difference between the Nazi and Soviet régimes, and holds that all Fascists and Communists are aiming at approximately the same thing and are even to some extent the same people. Leaders in The Times (pre-war) have referred to the U.S.S.R. as a ‘Fascist country’. Again from a different angle this is echoed by Anarchists and Trotskyists.
Trotskyists: Communists charge the Trotskyists proper, i.e. Trotsky’s own organization, with being a crypto-Fascist organization in Nazi pay. This was widely believed on the Left during the Popular Front period. In their ultra-Right phases the Communists tend to apply the same accusation to all factions to the Left of themselves, e.g. Common Wealth or the I.L.P.
Catholics: Outside its own ranks, the Catholic Church is almost universally regarded as pro-Fascist, both objectively and subjectively;
War resisters: Pacifists and others who are anti-war are frequently accused not only of making things easier for the Axis, but of becoming tinged with pro-Fascist feeling.
Supporters of the war: War resisters usually base their case on the claim that British imperialism is worse than Nazism, and tend to apply the term ‘Fascist’ to anyone who wishes for a military victory. The supporters of the People’s Convention came near to claiming that willingness to resist a Nazi invasion was a sign of Fascist sympathies. The Home Guard was denounced as a Fascist organization as soon as it appeared. In addition, the whole of the Left tends to equate militarism with Fascism. Politically conscious private soldiers nearly always refer to their officers as ‘Fascist-minded’ or ‘natural Fascists’. Battle-schools, spit and polish, saluting of officers are all considered conducive to Fascism. Before the war, joining the Territorials was regarded as a sign of Fascist tendencies. Conscription and a professional army are both denounced as Fascist phenomena.
Nationalists: Nationalism is universally regarded as inherently Fascist, but this is held only to apply to such national movements as the speaker happens to disapprove of. Arab nationalism, Polish nationalism, Finnish nationalism, the Indian Congress Party, the Muslim League, Zionism, and the I.R.A. are all described as Fascist but not by the same people.
George Orwell, “What is Fascism?”, Tribune, 1944
September 6, 2013
Construction report on HMS Queen Elizabeth
BBC News had a report on the aircraft that are supposed to be available for HMS Queen Elizabeth when she is brought into Royal Navy service later this decade. They also included an older video on the state of the ship’s construction, which happily had been posted to YouTube (most BBC videos at their site are non-embeddable):
Published on 10 May 2013
Work on the first of the Royal Navy’s two new Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers is well under way at a dockyard in Rosyth.
The structure is almost complete in what is now the largest engineering project in the UK.
A government U-turn over fighter jets for the carriers cost taxpayers £74m, according to a new report by the National Audit Office.
The BBC’s Defence Correspondent Jonathan Beale saw the progress being made on the ship.
The Press Association also had a video from June:
September 4, 2013
More on Britain’s aircraft carrier program
The always informative Sir Humphrey responds to yesterday’s Daily Mail and other media reports on the CVF program:
The first thing that struck the author on reading it was that it highlighted the challenges posed in bringing any large piece of equipment into service. There was a lot of comments about the risk posed to the UK by not having the so-called ‘Crowsnest’ AEW capability in service until 2022 which left the platform at risk. It is very easy to focus on the idea that a carrier is late, and that is a relatively simple piece of kit, so why should it take so long to bring into service? In reality the introduction into service of CVF is a watershed moment for the Royal Navy — it will represent a step change in capability, and merge together several very different capabilities which the RN has either not operated for a while, or which it has not operated at all. At its heart the RN is having to simultaneously introduce a brand new class of ship into service, with all the technical risk that this entails. This is then backed up by the near simultaneous introduction into service of the most technically advanced jet the UK has ever operated, and also bring the UK back into the world of fixed wing carrier operations, a skill which even with the mitigation measures in place will still be a challenge to regain. Its also about bringing a new AEW platform into service, after a near 6 year gap in cover, and again with all the very considerable technical risk posed by this. Finally its about bringing the whole package together and working with the rest of the RN to ensure that what exists isn’t just a collection of equipment of very levels of operational utility and capability, but is in fact a fully worked up and integrated system which has an effect far beyond the sum of its parts.
[…]
One thing that reads through very clearly in the evidence is the clear emphasis that CVF is seen as a joint asset for Coalition operations. While obviously it provides a national capability in extremis, it is clear that provision of a CVF hull and airwing is seen as a major means of the UK working with coalition partners. This is an important part of the reality of future naval operations — while we like to fondly imagine that CVF provides the UK with the ability to work in isolation, in reality its an asset that will provide great influence in coalition work. The evidence is clear that in future the UK sees provision of CVF on operations as being part of a wider multi-national force, and particularly early in its life, there is an expectation that capability gaps such as AEW would be met either by working with partner nations, or by wider UK assets (e.g. AEW Sentry).
This is important as it highlights the gradual shift in UK thinking away from funding the provision of an entire wholesale package of capabilities into assuming that risks can be taken in some areas. When one reads the evidence though, it is suddenly clear how far fetched the scenarios sound — for instance it was only under heavy questioning, when the line of assumptions reached ‘fighting an enemy with French and US cover in high seas away from landbased cover’ did we discover that the RN may struggle a wee bit without CROWSNEST. One would hope that between 2020 and 2022 the RN is not going to be re-enacting scenes from a Tom Clancy novel?
September 3, 2013
Britain’s new aircraft carriers in the news again
It’s from the Daily Mail, so a certain level of de-hystericization is called for…along with salt to taste. First, the discovery that the two carriers will initially be without radar for early warning of incoming planes and missiles:
The Royal Navy’s new aircraft carriers could set sail without a crucial radar which warns commanders of incoming enemy warplanes and missiles.
A damning report by MPs reveals the Crowsnest early warning system will not be ready until six years after the first of the £5.5billion Queen Elizabeth-class warships enters service in 2016.
Delays in fitting the ‘eyes in the sky’ system to military helicopters until 2022 were a ‘concern’, the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says today.
And the costs incurred by changing the planned acquisition of F-35 aircraft to equip the carriers is rather eye-watering:
The bill for the two new warships, given the green light in 2008, is almost twice the original £3.6billion — and there are ‘huge risks’ it will increase further, says the report.
MPs heap criticism on the Coalition for wasting money after a U-turn over the type of warplanes to fly from the aircraft carriers.
In 2010 ministers controversially decided to scrap the last Labour government’s plans to buy a fleet of jump jets, which take off and land vertically.
Instead, Prime Minister David Cameron ordered conventional versions of the US-built F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that would need catapults and arrester gear to take off from and land on the vessels.
But this was based on ‘deeply flawed information’, say the committee. When the cost of fitting the ships with ‘cats and traps’ more than doubled to £2billion, Mr Cameron flip-flopped and returned to buying the jump jet.
The move cost a staggering £74million in squandered in lost man hours, administrative costs and needless planning.
Labour MP Margaret Hodge, the PAC’s chairman, said: ‘The Committee is still not convinced that the MOD has this programme under control. It remains subject to huge technical and commercial risks, with the potential for further uncontrolled growth in costs.’
Queen Elizabeth class side and overhead views
The switch back to the jump jet was made last year. Back in 2010, I was rather pessimistic that the carriers would even be built and I suggested that India would likely take them off the Royal Navy’s hands once they were complete.
QotD: Some things never change, military division
Then for the first time since I had left the Kotwali I had a moment to run over in my mind the actions I had taken during the last half-hour. The soldier always knows that everything he does on such an occasions will be scrutinized by two classes of critics — by the Government which employs him and by the enemies of that Government. As far as the Government is concerned, he is a little Admiral Jellicoe and this his tiny Battle of Jutland. He has to make a vital decision on incomplete information in a matter of seconds, and afterwards the experts can sit down at leisure, with all the facts before them, and argue about what he might, could, or should have done. Lucky the soldier if, as in Jellicoe’s case, the tactical experts decide after twenty years’ profound consideration that what he did in three minutes was right. As for the enemies of the Government, it does not much matter what he has done. They will twist, misinterpret, falsify, or invent any facts as evidence that he is an inhuman monster wallowing in innocent blood.
Field Marshal William Slim, “Aid to the Civil”, Unoficial History, 1959.
September 2, 2013
This month in moral panic watch – “rape porn”
British PM David Cameron has decided that it’s the duty of his government to crack down on internet pornography. In particular, the British government will be attempting to stamp out violent pornography, aka “rape porn”. This may not be his best idea ever:
Lobby organisations like “End Violence Against Women” and sensationalist news rags like the Daily Mail repeatedly claim that watching violent pornography increases sexual abuse and rape by men.
However, the scientific evidence has stubbornly refused to play along with this view:
U.S. Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (1970) found no evidence of a causal link between pornography and rape
“Pornography and rape: theory and practice? Evidence from crime data in four countries where pornography is easily available” (1991) B Kutchinsky
Examined what happened to the rape statistics in four countries (USA, Denmark, West Germany and Sweden) during periods where the availability of violent pornography went from extreme scarcity to relative abundance.
Quoting the report: “The results showed that in none of the countries did rape increase more than nonsexual violent crimes. This finding in itself would seem sufficient to discard the hypothesis that pornography causes rape“
There’s also the problem that pornography is actually quite popular — with both male and female users — over 40% of all internet users view pornography voluntarily. In fact, large numbers of women admit to enjoying rape fantasies:
Whether the puritans or the feminists like it or not, it is a fact that many women enjoy rape fantasies as explained by this female journalist.
Erotic literature such as Fifty Shades of Grey featuring bondage, spanking, hair pulling, fisting and pinwheeling generated sales of over £10M in six months, to a predominantly female audience.
On a more scientific level, a 1988 study by Pelletier and Herold found that over half of their female respondents had fantasies of forced sex.
Nobody (quite rightly) suggests that women who expose themselves to this sort of “violent porn” literature, or who engage in sexual fantasies of rape are more likely to go out and put themselves into situations where they will be raped.
People clearly understand that there is a world of difference between enjoying rape as a sexual fantasy and the violent, painful reality of actual rape.
The same reasoning must logically apply to men who enjoy rape fantasy and rape porn. There is a world of difference between enjoying rape as a sexual fantasy and the violent reality of actual raping another human being.
To assert that women can enjoy rape fantasy, porn and violent BDSM literature without harm because they understand the difference between fantasy and reality, but men do not is nothing more than misandry.
August 31, 2013
New rule of thumb for military adventures
James Joyner suggests a new rule of thumb needs to be used:
Could anyone have imagined a decade ago a scenario when the United States would go to war with France by our side and England on the sidelines?
I anticipate English muffins being renamed Freedom muffins any day now. And jokes about kippers eating surrender bulldogs or some such.
More seriously, perhaps recent experience has provided us a rule of thumb: if Washington can not persuade both London and Paris of the advisability of military action, perhaps said action is inadvisable?
