Het is natuurlijk al langer bekend maar de liberalisering van de elektriciteitsmarkt werkt wel degelijk. De beste manier om dat na te gaan is door te situatie in Vlaanderen, waar de markt vrij is en alle consumenten zelf een leverancier mogen kiezen te vergelijken met de prijzen in Wallonië, waar men de markt nog steeds gesloten houdt. En men kan ook vergelijken met de situatie van voor de liberalisering. In beide gevallen is de conclusie duidelijk: de Vlaming betaalt zowel in de tijd als in vergelijking met Wallonië minder voor elektriciteit. Het voordeel tegenover Wallonië bedraagt 15%.

Maar gas dan? In vergelijking met de situatie van voor de liberalisering betalen gezinnen nu een kwart meer. Het is echter verkeerd om dit voor te stellen als het resultaat van de liberalisering. Met of zonder de liberalisering van de Vlaamse markt zouden de internationale gasprijzen gestegen zijn. Wellicht zouden Vlaamse gezinnen zonder liberalisering nog meer betaald hebben, want ook hier liggen de prijzen in Wallonië hoger.

Eén kanttekening moet worden geplaatst. Het prijsvoordeel is het groots voor zij die de markt afschuimen en actief voor de goedkoopste leverancier kiezen. Maar om dat te bevorderen mag er best nog wat meer transparantie in de tarieven komen.

Obviously organic foods are better and healthier for us than non-organic foods. Obviously. So we should not meddle with our natural foods, but we in fact almost always do, intended or not. We cannot escape the fact that in one way or the other we always modify the things we eat. In that sense there are no "organic" or "natural" foods, only "artifical" ones. The real question we should consider is: which foods are the most healthy, wich foods are of the highest-quality. And in the face of this question the distiction between organic and non-organic (or conventional) becomes irrelevant. Tim Worstall writes:

Oh how this finding will get trumpeted!

The 14 veterinary and public health researchers have written to the FSA claiming that there is compelling evidence that organic milk is a richer source of Omega 3 essential fatty acids and that official advice should reflect this.

There will no doubt be a spill over to all other forms of organic food as well. The only problem is that this result is not because it is organic, it’s a side effect of something else. That is, we cannot generalize from stating that because organic milk is better in one way, that all organic foods are:

"The reason why it has so much Omega 3 is because we cannot use nitrogen on the grass," he said. "So instead we sow a lot of clover seeds in the grass which fixes the nitrogen in the ground. Clover is high in omega 3 and it gets in the milk."

So if conventional farmers were to sow clover then their milk would be just as healthy as the organic milk: it’s a side effect, not a function of it being organic.

Reminds me in away of the thing from a couple of years ago, that organic tomato ketchup protected against cancer better than conventional. It’s well known that lycopene, the thing that makes both tomatoes and ketchup red, does indeed protect against certain cancers (palate, oesophagus etc). But why would organic ketchup protect better? Because they don’t use high fructose corn syrup, relying instead upon the natural sweetness of the tomatoes. Which means they put more tomatoes in each bottle. Which means more lycopene.

Nothing at all to do with it being organic, simply a side effect: you’d get exactly the same effect from a non-organic ketchup that used the same number of tomatoes.

Jeffrey Sachs, and economist who want to save the world and eradicate extreme poverty from the face of the earth by 2015, mainly by increasing aid and targeting it at the right goals (combating disease, overcoming the poverty trap (people and governments not having enough money to save and accumulate and invest capital), and the limits of geography), and who has made his case with this book, has now been called to run for president of the United States.

Some comments:

We will do a lot worse.

Dr. Sachs is quite busy trying to save the world and we do not want to excessively burden him.

Dear Professor Jeffrey Sachs, You would almost certainly suck less than our other likely choices for president. Please run.

I always have thought he really was one:

Mad Pat accuses the Mexican government of the Aztlan Plot, a deliberate campaign to use America as a dumping ground for its poor and unemployed, both to relieve social pressure and effect a cultural reannexation of the American Southwest.

In his final chapter, “Last Chance”, he lays out a national plan to deal with the State of Emergency before it makes an end of America: deporting illegal immigrants; a ten-year moratorium on legal immigration at 150,000 to 250,000 a year; and a $10-billion, 2,000-mile double-line security fence between the United States and Mexico.

Millions of deportees? Better order the cattle cars now. Buchanan’s Last Chance solution would turn America into a police state. Perhaps that’s what fascists like him secretly want. As for his double-line security fence, they had one like that running through Berlin - and a shoot-to-kill policy to boot - and still people crossed. Thank goodness immigrants are brave enough to risk their lives to come to America to do the jobs US-born people can’t or won’t do.

Tim Worstall debunks another myth, using figures of the left-wing Economic Policy Institute, embarrasing this fine progressive think-thank :

In the USA the poor get 39% of the US median income and in Finland (and Sweden) the poor get 38% of the US median income. It’s not worth quibbling over 1% so let’s take it as read that the poor in America have exactly the same standard of living as the poor in Finland (and Sweden). Which is really a rather revealing number don’t you think? All those punitive tax rates, all that redistribution, that blessed egalitarianism, the flatter distribution of income, leads to a change in the living standards of the poor of precisely ... nothing.

No wonder they couldn’t find WMD in Iraq. They didn’t have such road signs over there.



Want more?(Warning: for government sceptics only)

Senator Jean-Marie Dedecker en Kamervoorzitter Herman De Croo pleiten voor de privatisering van gevangenissen. Of beter: ze zijn voorstander van een publiek-private samenwerking. Meteen wordt gedacht aan de Verenigde Staten waar ze inderdaad zo "gek" zijn gevangenissen door de private sector uit te laten baten. Maar eigenlijk halen de twee liberale politici de mosterd vooral uit Frankijk, dat uiteraard bekend staat voor zijn neoliberaal beleid:

Overbevolking, verouderde infrastructuur, logge bureaucratie... de problemen waarmee onze gevangenissen al decennia lang kampen, komen nu pijnlijk aan het licht’’, stelt Jean-Marie Dedecker. ,,Bovendien is ons gevangenisstelsel onbetaalbaar. Elke gevangene kost ons 100 euro per dag. Alles samen zijn er 9.700. Reken uit dat je meer dan 350 miljoen euro uitgeeft voor een systeem dat duidelijk niet werkt. Dan moet je het uitbesteden aan de privé. Uit het buitenland leren we dat die dat minstens even goed doen, en vooral veel efficiënter. Eerst en vooral zit je met een geweldige besparing in de bouwfase, dat blijkt uit alle studies. Wel, wij zitten met 19e eeuwse opberghuizen die maar niet gemoderniseerd geraken, besteed die opdracht uit.’’

Private of semi-private gevangenissen zijn overigens niets nieuws, ook niet in de Europese Unie:

According to the data available,
Australia has the largest proportion of prisoners held in private prisons while .the US
has the highest number of private prisons. In the UK, 10% of prisoners are detained in
private prisons. There seems to be a correlation between the extent of privatisation
and a high incarceration rate. Since the 1980s France pioneered semi-private prisons
and has recently embarked on what is currently Europe’s largest prison building
programme of 18 new semi-private prisons. Elements of privatisation also exist in
Germany and Hungary and in some other European countries. The practice of
subcontracting catering, laundry and maintenance services is widespread.

Ik vind het voorstel van Dedecker en Decroo een goed idee. Zeker de bouw van gevangenissen alsook sommige diensten kunnen perfect uitbesteed worden aan de privé-sector. Het winstmechanisme is een uitstekende manier om de zaken op een efficiënte manier aan te pakken. Er zijn diverse voordelen, althans volgens dit artikel in The Economist:

Critics complain that a private company will inevitably treat prisoners simply as inventory. But Mr Ferguson responds that prisons—like any other public service—can be improved by competition and flexibility. For states with a sudden capacity problem, CCA can supply “just-in-time” beds. The company can also build prisons faster than the government—15 months for CCA compared with up to five years for states and eight for the federal government. The private sector can offer other innovations. After his spell on the front-line in New Mexico, Mr Ferguson came away appalled by the number of hours prison guards spend documenting their movements in a logbook; he is trying to switch to an electronic system. But his real trump card is cost. CCA and its competitors can almost always undercut the state—Florida even obliges the private sector to operate 7% more cheaply than the public sector. The savings owe much to lower staffing costs, and economies of scale.

Maar behoren gevangenissen dan niet tot de kerntaak van de overheid? Natuurlijk. Maar kerntaak of niet, dit betekent niet dat de overheid het ook zelf moet doen, of dat de technieken van de private sector niet kunnen worden toegepast. De vaststelling is nu eenmaal dat het beheer van de gevangenissen al tientallen jaren een ramp is. Als de overheid zijn taak niet goed vervult, of niet goed kan vervullen, is het tijd voor verandering.

Wat is dat toch met "links" in dit land? Vroeger kon men er op aan dat de socialisten in dit land de belangen van de arbeiders verdedigde. Nu is men al tevreden met meer transparantie rond toplonen van managers. Niks, geen klassestrijd. Agalev, die andere linkse partij, stond dan weer voor de verdediging van ons milieu. Maar opvolger Groen!? Die vindt de normen rond de straling van GSM-masten tegenwoordig van kapitaal belang. Niks, geen "save the rainforest" (een kaalslag die onverminderd doorgaat). Niks, geen dierenrechten. Nee: dat piepkleine risico dat misschien hier toch ergens iemand ziek wordt van te veel onder een GSM-mast te zitten, dat vinden de groenen van levensbelang. Van levensbelang inderdaad: waarom vraagt men anders een norm die maar liefst zeven maal strenger is dan de huidige? Nu moet je weten dat er geen enkel bewijs is dat de stralen van een mast voor mobiele telefonie (want het gaat in de toekomst ook meer en meer over UMTS) schadelijk zijn voor de volksgezondheid. En dat zeggen niet de mobiele operatoren, maar onafhankelijke wetenschappers. Doet er niet toe, zegt Groen!, ondanks alle bewijs bestaat er een risico en dus zijn we maar best voorzichtig. Ah. Dat is zoals G.W. Bush: ondanks alle afwezigheid van bewijs bestaat er toch het risico dat Saddam massavernietigingswapens heeft, dus maar beter Irak aanvallen. (Foei Ivan, zomaar Groen! vergelijken met Bush...)

Punt is dat elke menselijke activiteit risico’s inhoudt en dat als je al die risico’s wil vermijden, elke maatschappelijke vooruitgang tot stilstand komt. Zo is het vandaag de dag zeer onvoorzichtig om je in het verkeer te begeven. Het risico dat je iets overkomt in het verkeer is veel groter dan het risico om ziek te worden als je in de buurt van een GSM-mast woont. Ja, je matigt je snelheid, maar anderen doen dat misschien niet, of je wordt gegrepen door iemand die door het rood reed, of je bevindt je net achter een vrachtwagen die zijn lading verliest. Enz... Wegblijven dan maar uit het verkeer? Probeer dan maar eens te overleven!

Ik ben niet tegen het voorzichtigheidsprincipe. Het is duidelijk dat wanneer aangetoond wordt dat producten echt schadelijk zijn voor de volksgezondheid en voor het milieu dat er dan maatregelen moeten worden genomen. Maar dat is niet de manier waarop Groen! dit principe interpreteert. Zij willen preventief elk mogelijk risico op eventueele schade voor mens en milieu zoveel als mogelijk uitsluiten. Maar deze interpretatie is zowel gevaarlijk als naïef. Gevaarlijk, omdat bijvoorbeeld zowat alle medicijnen ongezonde bijwerkingen kunnen hebben en dus om deze reden uit de handel zouden worden genomen. Beter geen risico nemen he! Het enige zekere gevolg echter is veel meer slachtoffers en meer ondraaglijk lijden. Naïef, omdat men risico’s nu éénmaal niet kan uitsluiten. Tof dat er in de buurt van ziekenhuizen geen GSM-masten staan, maar daar heb je niet veel aan als je per ongeluk van de ziekenhuistrap dondert. Wel handig op zo’n moment zijn pijnstillers, nevenwerkingen of niet.

Huh?

Ik betwist zeer sterk dat SP.A niet links genoeg meer is. De SP.A niet de partij van de arbeiders? Toen ik de lonen van de ceo’s bekendmaakte, kwamen arbeiders me zeggen: eindelijk iemand met haar op zijn tanden. Sommigen zeiden het ook iets plastischer (lacht). Transparantie over de lonen maakt de sociale dialoog vele eerlijker. Linkser kan je toch niet zijn?

Aldus Bruno Tuybens. Salon-socialist. Hoe anders kun je iemand noemen die transparantie van toplonen het summum van links zijn, vindt? Waar is de klasse-strijd gebleven? Moeten socialisten niet ijveren voor lagere lonen voor CEO’S? Is links niet langer voorstander van een socialisering van ondernemingen dan? Meer macht aan de arbeiders en niet enkel de aandeelhouders, zoiets? Nee, een beetje transpartie en linkser dan dat kan je tegenwoordig al niet meer zijn.

Links is Tuybens misschien nog wel (maar wat is nu nog de inhoud van een begrip zoals "links"?), maar een partij die de belangen van de arbeiders verdedigd is de SP.A allang niet meer...Nu, ik lig er niet wakker van, ik ben een tegenstander van het socialisme, maar het wordt moeilijk een tegenstander te bekampen die nog maar een schim is van zichzelf. Arme Jef Sleeckx.

Let’s face reality guys. Apart from the fact that the Israeli - Libanon war was a crime (without pointing the finger - Israel and Hezbollah and it’s supporters are both guilty), with 1,100 people killed, more than 3,600 wounded and 750,000 displaced in Libanon and 157 killed, 1,500 wounded and 300,000 displaced in Israel (in one month, compare this with the few dead in the previous six years), it remains a huge mistake. And here we can point the finger: Israel screwed up. Hezbollah won:

Hizbollah’s standing across the middle east, and its own power base in Lebanon is such that it is under very little pressure to disarm. In the midst of the deployment of the Lebanese army in the south, the most that is likely to happen is that Hizbollah will keep weapons out of sight while storing much of its arsenal in secret locations south of the Litani river and close to the Israeli border. This pattern would be very similar to the movement’s behaviour for the past six years at least.(...)

Perhaps the most indicative development of the past four days has been the immediate and very substantial flow of refugees back to the ruined towns and villages in southern Lebanon and the appearance of bulldozers, excavators and large numbers of young men involved in repair and rehabilitation work. The signs are that Hizbollah will channel in very substantial financial resources very quickly indeed. Its emphasis is likely to be placed on repairing the less severely damaged houses, bringing in tents and even prefabricated buildings as temporary replacements for destroyed houses and then providing economic support for the people returning.

The whole emphasis will be on repopulating the area as quickly as possible – a development of profound political significance across the region in light of Arabs’ awareness of the long-lasting nature of the exile of Palestinians. A marked contrast between what Hizbollah is proving able to do and what Arab governments have so persistently failed to do will be noted by millions.

The very speed at which the refugees started to return, within hours of the start of the ceasefire, is itself important. It is highly unlikely that this was a spontaneous development and much more likely that, at least informally, the Hizbollah leadership encouraged it. From the Hizbollah perspective, this had a dual benefit: it was a palpable demonstration of its own perceived victory, and it conveyed a message of confidence that it considered the region safe for people to return.

It is also clear that Israel was caught unawares by the speed of the refugees’ return – a process that both prompted the Israeli Defence Forces [IDF] to warn civilians about the dangers, and made it much more difficult for the IDF to contemplate further military action. The symbolism should not be underestimated. If southern Lebanon had remained a largely depopulated region, there would have been an impression of continued conflict. If people return and start the process of rebuilding, it reinforces the impression of a Hizbollah victory. Hizbollah itself is helped greatly here by the availability of very large amounts of financial aid, primarily from Iran, and the Tehran government too gains substantial political benefit from its subventions.

No wonder some people think that the status quo of the previous six years wasn’t so bad after all, even for Israel itself. The irony of course is that it’s very likely we will return to exactly the same situation as before the war but with many innocent people dead and with a much diminished standing of Israel in the international community (so much so that it now accepts the U.N. to interfere - a remarkable turnaround for Israel).

Paul Krugman:

But he [Treasury Secretary Paulson] quickly reverted to form, falsely implying that rising inequality is mainly a story about rising wages for the highly educated

And here is ...Paul Krugman:

The New Gilded Age, 1980-?: Big gains at the very top, stagnation below.

Now, as Andrew Samwick points out, the top 1 percent is rather highly educated. So what is it? Is rising inequality mainly a story about rising wages at the top or is it not? As Brad DeLong, that great Krugman defender would say, huh?

This is good. Very good. Richard Rodriguez, who is not a multiculturalist apperantly, but an advocate of assimilation, because there is something like a common American culture in his view, is nevertheless appalled by the voices raised against Mexican migrant workers. He writes:

In his latest book, Who Are We?, Huntington describes an America under siege from Latin American immigrants. His America is a kind of little England, a demi-demi Eden with pudding for dessert and “Masterpiece Theatre.” Forget the French Revolution; forget the Dutch; forget Spain, obviously; forget the Massachusetts Indians who rescued the Puritans from winter; forget the African slaves who created the wealth of a young nation. According to Professor Huntington, “Anglo-Protestant culture has been central to American identity.” There are no ironies in Professor Huntington’s America. There are no ironies because there are no dialectical meetings. There can be none. America was settled by the British, and British it should remain.

I suppose I object to Huntington’s nativism more as a Roman Catholic than as a Mexican-American. Even so, as a Mexican American I roll my eyes when Huntington credits England with the American work ethic and implies that a darker race is incapable of equal industry.

Further,

The anger we lately tapped to hunt the Arab terrorist, we now direct toward the migrant worker. The illegal immigrant becomes bin-Laden’s doppelganger. In order to turn our familiar use of the Mexican peasant into a fear of the Mexican peasant we have had to internationalize him. The migrant has illegally crossed an international border, we say. (...) If we are unable to distinguish the terrorist from the migrant worker, Americans will end up isolating illegal immigrants and their children from the mainstream, encouraging the adults to see themselves as mired in hopeless illegality, and their children to see themselves as off-spring of the undocumented, thus also criminal. And we will have Arabian Nights on a larger scale than those we witnessed last summer in Paris.

Actually this surprises me. And I hope this will not come to pass. I always tought, and still think, that the United States as a society is open enough to prevent a Parisian summer to happen there. Anyway, if Rodriguez is right, we should resist those who want to close the borders.

Does Bush knows something we don’t? Or is he indeed just a fool? According to the president, the UN peace force in Lebanon will seal off the Syrian border so that Hezbollah can no longer be resupplied by Iran with weapons. But, hold on, take a look at this map:



Silly isn’t it? However, Bush is not wrong in asserting that Unifil indeed has a mandate to help the Lebanese government to seal of it’s border with Syria.

Resolution 1701 says:

OP14. Calls upon the Government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel and requests UNIFIL as authorized in paragraph 11 to assist the Government of Lebanon at its request;

Yes, Unifil troops will be stationed in the part of Libanon shown on the map. But they may assist the Libanese government in it’s efforts to seal off it’s borders for weapons destined for Hezbollah. So it’s primarily the government of Libanon who has the responsibility to seal of the border with Syria, but it can request the help of Unifil troops who as a consequence must be active in other parts of the country. So I don’t think that Bush’s remarks are that silly. That does not mean it will work of course, we still can be screwed, but that is as much a problem for the UN than for the Bush-administration.

Nog al te vaak wordt gedacht dat het internet dé technologische communicatierevolutie is van de voorbije jaren. Mis. We denken nog altijd te veel in termen van massacommunicatie. De ware revolutie heeft echter plaatsgevonden in individuele communicatie van persoon tot persoon. De ware technologische revolutie met de meeste maatschappelijke relevantie is de GSM. Het is nu zelfs officieel, want bijna de helft neemt zijn GSM al mee naar het toilet:

Uit een onderzoek dat Samsung Electronics heeft laten uitvoeren, blijkt dat de mobiele telefoon nu werkelijk deel uitmaakt van ons dagelijkse leven. Volgens het onderzoek zou het merendeel van de Belgen (60%) constant bereikbaar wil zijn. 92% zou niet op vakantie vertrekken zonder zijn gsm. Maar liefst 72% van de respondenten zegt dat ze hun woning nooit verlaten zonder hun mobiele toestel en 62% bekent dat ze zich niet gerust voelen wanneer ze hun gsm thuis vergeten. Nog frappanter is het feit dat 45% (vooral mannen) hun gsm zelfs meenemen naar het toilet, 41% in bad en 4% presteert het zelfs om hun gsm-oproepen te beantwoorden tijdens het liefdesspel.

Ik ben benieuwd naar de resultaten van een gelijkaardig onderzoek naar het internet maar ik denk niet dat het hier aan kan tippen. Want wie onderbreekt er nu het liefdesspel om te gaan bloggen?

Heh. Islamic media outlets can spin too:

Al-Jazeera reports that a new Palestinian public opinion survey finds Palestinians preferring Ismail Haniya (Hamas) over Mahmoud Abbas (Fatah) by more than five percentage points (31.7% to 26.3%). Al-Jazeera’s presentation is a bit misleading, since they highlight the "strongly support" numbers rather than the total of "strongly" and "somewhat" support. in addition to the 31.7% who "strongly support" Haniyia, 30.6% "somewhat support him, 24.5% "somewhat do not support him, and 11.8% "strongly do not support" him. As for Abbas, 26.3% strongly support him and 43.7% "somewhat support him", while 20.3% "somewhat do not support" and 9.2% "strongly do not support." The same survey could be presented like this, then: 70% of Palestinians support Mahmoud Abbas to some degree, compared to 62.3% who support Haniya to some degree.

Al-Jazeera’s choice to spin the results in Haniya’s favor is telling (keeping in mind that this is the website, not the TV station). The headline results strengthen the argument that the kind of harsh military approach Olmert is using in Gaza and Lebanon only strengthens the Islamist alternative. The more detailed results don’t strongly undermine the argument - Haniya doesn’t do poorly, and his negatives are no higher, and probably a bit lower, than before the Palestinian-Israeli fighting began. But it doesn’t support the argument as strongly. And the results also don’t show Abbas being undermined dramatically by the violence. At any rate, it isn’t nearly as clear-cut as the Lebanese survey showing a dramatic rise in support for Hezbollah.

But still note the "dramatic rise in support for Hezbollah"...even Sunni and moderate moslims organisations as far away as Indonesia now support Hezbollah. Israel has conviced Sunni muslims to support a Shiite terrorist organisation sponsored by Iran. That’s something like Sunni’s in Iraq supporting al-Sadr. Great job, Olmert!

It’s official. Obesity is now a bigger problem in the world than hunger:

Sedentary lifestyles combined with major shifts in eating habits have contributed towards an obesity epidemic that means some 1.4 billion people worldwide are overweight, while 800 million are under-fed.

As Jonathan Dillow points out this should actually be a reason to rejoice. But don’t hold your breath. Obesity is a disease you know, worse, it’s an epidemic, so government has to step in here aswell, by distorting price signals:

To combat this, governments need to adjust domestic policy to allow control over the price of food which could then in turn impact on people’s diets, the annual conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists has been told.

Sigh. When will they learn?

Philippe Legrain reads the papers and is disgusted:

Some opponents of immigration are so utterly shameless that they will use any sick and twisted nonsense to further their cause.

The Wall Street Journal reports that:

The London terror plot is already having an impact on Congress’s contentious effort to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, with House Republicans saying it strengthens their call for beefing up border security before permitting any increases in legal immigration

Rep. Curt Weldon, the Republican vice chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said:

It’s just going to reinforce the House position, which is that we have to first of all shut down the borders and get control of the problem of illegal immigration.

Right: so a foiled plot by British Muslims to blow up planes destined for the US underscores the need for America to build a wall along its southern border to keep out Catholic Mexican immigrants.

Impeccable logic.

First, some quotes:

Last year, Lebanon was the beacon of the Bush administration’s vision of a new Middle East. There were free elections without Syrian influence, women’s rights, a free press and free speech. Today, much of this nation feels deserted by America as Israeli warplanes dropping American-made weapons destroy apartment blocks, bridges and roads. After four weeks of bombardment, the feeling is increasingly shared by Shiite and Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze. Israeli and American officials thought Israel’s counterattack against Hezbollah would turn more Lebanese against the militant Shiite group, but members of the new independent government worry that the war will turn Lebanon into a bastion for extremism. With every civilian death, anger rises, among both the displaced poor living in parks and the well-off still eating pasta salads in cafes.

And:

Estimates of the number of Lebanese nationals who have already fled to neighbouring Arab countries run upwards of 250,000 -- a staggering number in this nation of 3.5 million people. But as Lebanon reels from a month of punishing air strikes and braces for further fighting, government officials predict the exodus will swell to include hundreds of thousands more in the weeks and months to come. The fear is that these Lebanese are leaving for good, never to return for much more than a visit, or to collect the family and belongings they are leaving behind.

And:

The Israeli government and its supporters abroad insist that groups like Hizbullah are intentionally provoking slaughters by hiding among civilians, in order to bring down IAF bombings. But in reality, since the bombings are confirmed to not be accidents, and not be tactically useful (since everyone knows Hizbullah is gone by the time the IAF bombing or shelling occurs), it would appear the real strategy is to kill civilians until Hizbullah loses its resolve. In fact, this is a fairly old counterinsurgency strategy, one embraced by many occupying powers through history. As a method of warfare, it leads inevitably to radicalization of the enemy and a brutalization of tactics. Ehud Olmert’s successor as prime minister of Israel, or perhaps his successor’s successor, will have to deal with that. So will the Israeli citizens whose trust in their leadership is being traduced so cruelly.

In a comment to a previous post, Peter Fleming points out that Hezbollah is nothing more than Iran’s front organisation set for the destruction of Israel. That may well be true. But that does not make Israel’s strategy the right one. It certainly is a mistake, and increasingly a crime. It brings back memories from the cold war. One can always argue that the bombing of Cambodia by Nixon and Kissinger was necessary to roll back communism. But it did literally paved the way for the most communist and at the same time most genocidal regimes of recent history, that of Pol Pot. Or take Afghanistan. It may well haven been most gratifying for the Americans that they could bog down the Russians in their own Vietnam. They were happy to support one of the most extremist and anti-Western warlords, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. (who used to throw acid into the faces of women who weren’t dressed according to in his eyes ’Muslim laws’). This proxy war impoverished and destroyed the country and it led to the emergence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. To be sure, the point is not to put the blame on the Americans here. The Russians invaded Afghanistan. And Pol Pot was a genocidal maniac anyway. But the destruction of Cambodia by the bombing did turn the country into a fertile field for a regime like that of Pot to blossom. And by invariably supporting the most extremists of the warlords Afghanistan did turn into a breeding center of terrorists. It certainly was a mistake, and a crime.

Back to Israel. If what Peter Fleming wrote is true, and there are no reasons to doubt it, then it’s Iran that is, via Hezbollah, attacking Israel. The latest attack and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, that triggered the response from Israel, must then be considered to be a casus belli to attack Iran. But then why isn’t Israel bombing Teheran instead of Beirut? Why is it destroying the civilian and military infrastructure of a country that is already powerless to do much about Hezbollah? Why is it dropping bombs on a country where large parts of the population have no grudge against Israel, at least up until now?

Iran and Israel are the two superpowers in the region. There is no doubt on which side I’m on (and you should on). We all should be pro-Israel, while Iran still remains part of the axis of evil. But Iran is getting of the hook right now, while the bodybags of many innocent people are piling up in Libanon… and Israel. Libanon effectively plays the role of Afghanistan in this war. We all know what happened there. It came back to haunt the U.S.: it resulted in 9/11. If we can believe the above three quotes the same is happening here with Libanon: a country destroyed and impoverished coming back to haunt Israel. If that happens the Israeli government did not only made a huge mistake, it effectively committed a crime.

One of the most disputed items about globalization is that about export-led growth. According to the defenders all a country has to to is to increase it’s competitiveness so that lower prices leads to higher exports. More exports, means more growth. Export-led growth is the strategy for poor countries to develop. And for rich developed countries it’s the way to stay ahead. Sounds goods, sounds liberal, because it’s good for business and liberals are pro-business. Wrong. Liberals are pro-market.

Only it doesn’t work. And it isn’t in any way liberal. It’s good for business to be sure. Business interests argue that inceasing competitiveness per sé is the first and foremost duty of the government. That we have to lower taxes for that, lower administrative burdens, cut wages or in any case restrain rising wages. And so on. The result will be more exports, and exports are so important for an open country like Belgium. That’s what they always say.

But there is one thing that is much more important. Productivity. With rising productivity countries (and companies) can stay competitive, even when wages also rise. In fact higher productivity means higher living standards, while higher living standards will mean more and more sophisticaded demand, so that companies are forced to spend more attention to quality. (See Michael Porter). A virtious circle of economic growth and real development will be the result. For this it’s wrong to put all your money on the "competitiveness obsession" (Paul Krugman) but on openness in general:

If governments want to increase their economies’ share of global production in high-value-added sectors or, better still, create new such products and sectors, then the policy goal should be to increase competitive pressure upon an economy’s own businesses. In spite of the frequently cited examples of export-led growth for some developing countries, there is mounting evidence that the benefits to growth of countries’ engagement in trade are attributable to openness. These include: the direct benefits of importing lower prices and greater variety; the efficiency gains from challenging (rather than protecting) domestic businesses; and policy choices that contribute to a broadly liberal and market-orientated framework across the economy. Exports taken on their own, the usual narrower target of competitiveness policy, are not correlated with average per capita income growth.

In fact it’s imports that are correlated with per capita income growth. So when the textile industry complains that it can’t compete anymore without support from the government, then bear in mind that they want to limit imports while more imports are correlated with higher living standards. They want the government to protect their interests at the expence of everyone elses. That’s pro-business alright, but not pro-market and thus in any way a liberal policy. On the other hand openness isn’t exactly anti-business either. It’s good for those businesses who respond in the right way to the increased competition in the marketplace. It’s bad for those who lobby the government for protection. But openness is especially good for the economy as a whole - businesses, workers and consumers. And yes, it’s about competition. It’s about forcing companies to compete. A good business climate - with lower taxes and administrative burdens - is helpfull for sure, and not in any way harmfull. But Other policies however are:

A focus on export competitiveness usually leads to actively harmful policies, beyond simply wasted resources and rhetoric. If exports are the public criterion of economic success, policymakers can meet that goal only by self-destructive means: depreciating a country’s currency, thus eroding the purchasing power and the accumulated wealth of citizens; depressing wages in export sectors, either directly or through relative deflation vis-a-vis trading partners, thus cutting real incomes and domestic demand; subsidising or protecting exporting companies, thus distorting investment decisions and locking in old technologies and businesses at the expense of new entrants; or promoting national champions, thus increasing both wasteful public spending and the costs to domestic households and businesses.

Companies in fact do not like competition. If they can they will avoid it. If they can get the help of government to get protection from it, they will invariably ask it. Take patents, which are government enforced monopolies. When American producers of semiconducters found out they couldn’t compete anymore with the Japanese they asked and got an increased protections of their intellectual property rights through patents. Afterwards the number of patents exploded. It was a device to protect those companies from foreign competition. So when business groups ask for policies to protect their competitiveness in order to export, beware. It’s mostly because they can’t compete anymore because the market has turned against them. That’s a pity for them, but distorting market competition is bad for all the rest aswell.

The sorry state of European education:

A recent study of German high-school textbooks by the Institute for the German Economy, in Cologne, found entrepreneurs—instead of getting credit for creating jobs—taking the blame for everything from unemployment to alcoholism to Internet fraud and cell-phone addiction. Some high-school social-studies textbooks teach globalization as an unmitigated catastrophe; students are advised to consult the radical anti-globalization protest group Attac for further information. In France, books approved by the Education Ministry promote statist policies and voodoo economics. "Economic growth imposes a way of life that fosters stress, nervous depression, circulatory disease and even cancer," reports "20th-Century History," a popular high-school text published by Hatier. Another suggests Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were dangerous free-market extremists whose reforms plunged their countries into chaos and despair.

But there’s hope. Read the rest.

Luc Van Braekel pointed me to this remarkable story from september 2001:

ISI (Pakistan’s secret service and promotor of Al-Quada and the Taliban - Ivan) Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, extending his Washington visit because of the 9/11 attacks [Japan Economic Newswire, 9/17/2001] , meets with US officials and negotiates Pakistan’s cooperation with the US against al-Qaeda. It is rumored that later in the day of 9/11 and again the next day, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage visits Mahmood and offers him the choice: “Help us and breathe in the 21st century along with the international community or be prepared to live in the Stone Age.” [Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Hamburg), 9/12/2001; LA Weekly, 11/9/2001] Secretary of State Powell presents Mahmood seven demands as an ultimatum and Pakistan supposedly agrees to all seven. [Washington Post, 1/29/2002] Mahmood also has meetings with Senator Joseph Biden (D), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Secretary of State Powell, regarding Pakistan’s position. [Miami Herald, 9/16/2001; New York Times, 9/13/2001 ; Reuters, 9/13/2001; Associated Press, 9/13/2001] On September 13, the airport in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, is shut down for the day. A government official later says the airport had been closed because of threats made against Pakistan’s “strategic assets,” but does not elaborate. The next day, Pakistan declares “unstinting” support for the US, and the airport is reopened. It is later suggested that Israel and India threatened to attack Pakistan and take control of its nuclear weapons if Pakistan did not side with the US. [LA Weekly, 11/9/2001] It is later reported that Mahmood’s presence in Washington was a lucky blessing; one Western diplomat saying it “must have helped in a crisis situation when the US was clearly very, very angry.” [Financial Times, 9/18/2001]

Here is a corroborating article from LA Weekly. Of course Musharraf is collaborating now and it’s a good thing that he was kind of beaten into it. But Pakistan still remains a vulcano, a vulcano with nuclear weapons. An awfull comparison comes into sight: with Iran. I think Iran is less of a vulcano. Of course the leaders are more hostile to us than Musharraf but with Iran it’s only the regime. The Iranian people are in fact very much pro-American. In Pakistan this is not so sure. Mussharaf seems to be surrounded by fundamentalists. What comes after him can only be worse. The other point of comparison are the nuclear weapons: Pakistan has them, Iran still has years to go...And newspaper reports from Pakistan say that at least some generals are prepared to use them against Israel. So I’m not quite sure that leaving Mussharaf alone because he is our ally at the moment is the right choice.

Still lot’s of talk about the convergence between the television and the computer. Talk is, indeed, cheap. But it won’t happen:

A PC (or Mac) with some multimedia features anchors the home office, while a TV with some computerized gear—think TiVo, not desktop computer—owns the living room. Tech marketers talk about the "2-foot interface" of the PC versus the "10-foot interface" of the TV. When you use a computer, you want to lean forward and engage with the thing, typing and clicking and multitasking. When you watch Lost, you want to sit back and put your feet up on the couch. My tech-savvy friends who can afford anything they want set up a huge HDTV with TiVo, cable, and DVD players—then sit in front of it with a laptop on their knees. They use Google and AIM while watching TV, but they keep their 2-foot and 10-foot gadgets separate.

Luc Van Braekel citeert Bernard Lewis:

Wat is de betekenis van 22 augustus? Dit jaar komt 22 augustus in de islamitische kalender overeen met de 27ste dag van de maand Rajab van het jaar 1427. Volgens de overlevering is dat de nacht waarin veel moslims de vlucht van de profeet Mohammed op het vliegende paard Burak herdenken. Die vlucht ging eerst naar "de verste moskee", gewoonlijk geassocieerd met Jeruzalem, en vervolgens naar de hemel en terug (zie Koran XVII.1). Dat zou wel eens een geschikte datum kunnen zijn voor een apocalyptisch einde van Israël en, indien noodzakelijk, van de wereld. Het is verre van zeker dat de heer Ahmadinejad zulke cataclysmische gebeurtenissen gepland heeft voor 22 augustus. Maar het zou wel verstandig zijn om rekening te houden met de mogelijkheid.

22 augustus? 22 AUGUSTUS! Dat is verdorie mijn verjaardag. En op die dag plant de heer Ahmadinejad minstens één cataclysmische gebeurtenis?

In Is there a basis for global warming alarm?, professor of Atmospheric Science Richard Lindzen, asserts that the answer is no. Of course we already knew that, but it’s always good to see an expert concurring. Lindzen says that we should not concentrate on levels of CO2 but on climate forcing. Two facts are important here. First, the impact of CO2 is non-linear. Each added unit contributes less than it’s predecessor. The first doubling of CO2 in the air will cause more global warming than the second, and the second more than the third and so on. Second, we are still far from a doubling of CO2, and climate forcing is already about three quarters of what we expect from such a doubling. Thus, global warming should have been much higher. The warming we observe is very little compared to what models suggests.

How likely is it that the one quarter we have to go will cause a much higher increase then we now have observed with the first 75%? And why should we try to decrease the level of CO2? Is this still a viable strategy after 75% of climate forcing has already occurred? Lindzen doesn’t think so. He thinks we are past the point of no return. Better to adapt.

But won’t we see more storms and other destructive weather events? Isn’t that enough to do everything we can to force down the levels of CO2? Well, maybe not:

According to any textbook on dynamic meteorology, one may reasonably conclude that in a warmer world, extratropicalstorminess and weather variability will actually decrease. The reasoning is as follows. Judging by historical climate change, changes are greater in high latitudesthan in the tropics. Thus, in a warmer world, we would expect that the temperature difference between high and low latitudes would diminish. However, it is precisely this difference that gives rise to extratropicallarge-scale weather disturbances. Moreover, when in Boston on a winter day we experience unusual warmth, it is because the wind is blowing from the south. Similarly, when we experience unusual cold, it is generally because the wind is blowing from the north. The possible extent of these extremes is, not surprisingly, determined by how warm low latitudes are and how cold high latitudes are. Given that we expect that high latitudes will warm much more than low latitudes in a warmer climate, the differenceis expected to diminish, leading to less variance.

From a review of this (must buy) book:

One of Tooze’s most fascinating conclusions is how much Hitler’s economic understanding was informed by the US. Roosevelt’s America was not only the ultimate enemy, dominated as the Nazis thought by Jewish capitalism, but a role model. More than France’s and Britain’s colonies, it was America’s vast territory and internal market that informed and, in his eyes, legitimised Hitler’s view that Germany could only prosper through the colonisation of the east.

This Lebensraum theory, whereby local populations would be driven away or eradicated as the American Indians had been, was the Nazi answer to America’s frontier mentality. In fact, many aspects of Hitler’s economic thinking were nothing but a distorted interpretation of the US economic model. Even the dictator’s irrational belief in the “power of the will” over adversity echoed the proverbial American optimism.

Alex Tabarrok argues here and here against foreign intervention. He writes:

In Fiasco, Thomas Ricks says the war on Iraq and subsequent occupation was ill-conceived, incompetently planned and poorly executed. I have no quarrel with that. What dismays me is that anyone expected any different. All wars are full of incompetence, mendacity, fear, and lies. War is big government, authoritarianism, central planning, command and control, and bureaucracy in its most naked form and on the largest scale. The Pentagon is the Post Office with nuclear weapons.

I symphatise with Tabborok’s argument. But that still does not bring me to opposing any kind of foreign intervention. In fact as Tyler Cowen argues opposing foreign invervention on the principles set out by Tabbarok would not bring a libertarian world one yota closer:

Don’t be distracted by Alex’s libertarian rhetoric on foreign policy. It would not produce a very libertarian world. It would lead to um...fiasco. Ask around in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, or for that matter Honest Europe. That’s most of the free world. Can anyone else protect Singapore or New Zealand? Had Alex his way, the first Gulf War never would have happened. Saddam and his sons would rule Iraq, owning both Kuwaiti oil revenue and nuclear weapons, and probably itching for a rematch with Iran. Sound like fun? It is palatable to oppose the second Gulf War only because we fought the first.

And Cowen provides the clincher:

when it comes to foreign policy, we are usually comparing one set of government agents to another, rather than market vs. government. So a generally low opinion of government need not slant the case against a foreign policy intervention.

Indeed. Randolph Bourne once said, war is the health of the state. I agree, but war is mostly between two or more states. And surely it ain’t necessarily healthy for both of them. The Iraq war certainly did not improve the "health" of Saddam’s government. Thus, even a libertarian can (or rather should) support a war against the worst kind of government of all: a totalitarian one, like that of Saddam Hussein.

One consistent critic of globalization has been Robert Wade of the London School of Economics. Although he now concedes that world income inequality has declined over the past few decades he now argues that this is not that important. What really is a cause for concern is absolute income inequality. And here we see that the gap is widening. Philip Legrain does not think much of this argument:

Consider again his example of economy A, where the average income is $10,000, and economy B, where it is $1,000. Their relative income is 10:1 and the absolute gap between them is $9,000. Suppose B grows at a racy 10 per cent a year. Its income will rise by $100 to $1,100. If the absolute gap between A and B is not to widen, A can add at most $100 to its income of $10,000, which means growth cannot exceed 1 per cent. In short, because A starts off so much richer than B, even if B booms the absolute gap between them will initially widen unless A stagnates—and if A stagnates, B is unlikely to boom, since A’s demand for its exports will also stagnate. Perhaps Wade wants the gap between rich and poor to shrink through economic stagnation in rich countries—if so, he should say so explicitly. But surely what is happening now is preferable: rich countries are growing steadily, but poor countries are growing faster, and thus catching up in relative terms. If this continues, they will eventually narrow the absolute gap too. For example, if B grows at 10 per cent a year for 30 years, its income will rise to $17,449; while if A grows at 2 per cent a year over the same period, its income will rise to $18,114.

The point is: absolute income inequality can only decline in the short term if rich countries stop growing. The question Wade needs to answer is: does the really think that poor countries can develop in a world where rich countries do not grow?

All those supporting the CURRENT Israeli efforts to eradicate Hezbollah should consider this:

a very interesting resource from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, namely a list of Hezbollah attacks along Israel’s northern border from May 2000 to June 2006.

I tried to tally it all up, and I came up with 13 soldiers and seven civilians killed, along with 27 soldiers and 7 civilians wounded, plus three IDF soldiers and two Israeli Arabs captured. Obviously, that’s an undesirable situation for Israel. What’s more, since this is what happened after Israel stopped occupying Lebanese land, it’s all very unjustified. Clearly, given the consistent nature of these provocations, Israel had a legal and moral right to seek changes.

At the same time, the list puts some perspective on the practical size of the Hezbollah problem. Twenty dead over six years. Thirty-four wounded. A bad business. But clearly a low-intensity problem all things considered. Hezbollah, whatever it’s notional commitment to the destruction of Israel, was not a practical threat to the nation’s survival, it was the instigator of low-level border clashes. Throughout the duration of this period, Israel seems to have consistently shot back at attacking Hezbollah operatives (which of course they would) and now and again launced retaliatory strikes when there seemed to be something worth striking.

That, it seems to me, was a wise way to handle the situation. The tit-for-tat retaliations appear to have succeeded in containing the conflict. Not in stopping Hezbollah from attacking, but in dissuading it from escalating. The resulting situation wasn’t ideal by any means, but it was pretty good, all things considered. The odds that the current military action -- which has already cost Israel, to say nothing of Lebanon, more lives than six years worth of low-intensity conflict -- will alter the situation dramatically for the better strike me as very low.

Things are escalating now. Although Israeli victory reports say they almost have blasted Hezbollah from the face of the earth, Israeli civilian casualties from Hezbollah-attacks are increasing by the day. The question is, is it worth it? The answer increasingly appears to be no.

Natalie Solent is just back from Belgium:

Beer still nice, Belgium still Belgish, gun laws a little less liberal than they were. (like many other things, others would add - Ivan)

Happily the beer is still nice. By the way, liberal gun laws or not, there is more good news. Communism is dead:

Communism is dead! I knew I’d find some good news if I looked hard enough. There had been a few indications before now that communism might be dead, but now I know for sure. It appears that Fidel Castro handed over Cuba to his brother while he had an op. Back when Communism was alive, they may have been gut-churningly evil mass-murdering scum, but they respected the forms. A society in which anyone could say, "Here y’are, bro, take the whole country" was exactly what they were there to extirpate. The French Revolution finally died when Napoleon took to handing out the crowns of Europe to his relatives.

If only a certain left-wing Belgian governor would remember that...

2006-08-03b-forum.mp3

Listening to Thomas Ricks, a military reporter from the Washington Post, who just wrote a book about the misadventures of the U.S. in Iraq, does not make one very optimistic. According to Ricks, one can speak about systematic failure. It’s not just that mistakes were made: there are too damn many of them from the President down, over Congress, the generals and the Americans in Iraq, starting but not ending with Paul Bremer.

It went wrong from the beginning, with Tommy Franks war plan, according to Ricks the worst war plan ever made. Frank’s plan in fact created the insurgency. He had no idea what to do once the Americans reached Baghdad. And after his job was done, he just walked away. He retired, letting the situation worsen. But Frank’s bossess are resposible too. The vision behind the invasion, according to Ricks, was one of transforming the Middle-East. Remember indeed Wolfowitz remark that peace between Israel and the Palestinians went through Baghdad. Well...But Franks war plan was essentially a plan for a coup d’etat. Get rid of Saddam and get out.

Then there is de role of Iran, probaby playing a large role behind parts of the insurgency. According to one high-ranking military officer, Iran did have a plan for the aftermath. They were just behind the American troops, as it were.

Other well-known "mistakes" were of course Abu Graib and debaathification. Aby Graib however was just the tip of the iceberg. And debaathification as such was not wrong, but the way it was done again helped to create the insurgency.

Is there a danger for a civil war? According to Ricks a low-level civil war is allreading going on. The military in fact does not have an idea about what’s really happening in Baghdad. And if things keeps on worsening it could spill over to other countries. If a real civil war breaks out, the Kurds obviously will secede. What will the Turks do then? Finally one cannot rule out the possibility that an anti-american tiran will grap power in Iraq.

So a grim picture then. Nevertheless, Ricks remains a "supporter" of the occupation. He thinks that Americans have to stay, otherwise a civil war will be a certainty. But obviously something has to be done about the systematic failure of the Americans in Iraq. It would be nice i think that Bush and Blair would face reality. Learn from the mistakes. And do not stay the course, but change it according to the lessons learned. Otherwise get out, if that’s still possible after all.

Remember all the fuss when Google started it’s Belgian version of Google News? Belgian newspapers where upset that Google started quoting articles and providing links to it without asking permission. Apperantly protecting their copyrights where much more important than the extra traffic that Google News could generate. Their reaction was quite mystifying. As blogger Luc Van Braekel at that time pointed out, they were biting their traffic-feeding hand. Now more traffic means of course more publicity and thus more revenues from advertising. But the mystery deepens when we consider the fact that the revenues from intellectual property rights are actually but a fraction of the revenues from advertising and circulation. At least this is so in the United States, but I guess it would not be that much different in Belgium:

If all copyright on newspapers were abolished, the revenues of newspapers would be little affected.6 Take, for example, the 2003 annual reports of a few of the leading newspaper companies in the United States. The New York Times Company receives a little more than $3 billion a year from advertising and circulation revenues, and a little more than $200 million a year in revenues from all other sources. Even if the entire amount of “other sources” were from syndication of stories and photos—which likely overstates the role of these copyright-dependent sources—it would account for little more than 6 percent of total revenues. The net operating revenues for the Gannett Company were more than $5.6 billion in newspaper advertising and circulation revenue, relative to about $380 million in all other revenues. As with the New York Times, at most a little more than 6 percent of revenues could be attributed to copyright-dependent activities. For Knight Ridder, the 2003 numbers were $2.8 billion and $100 million, respectively, or a maximum of about 3.5 percent from copyrights. Given these numbers, it is safe to say that daily newspapers are not a copyright-dependent industry, although they are clearly a market-based information production industry.

Or these kinds of figures do not apply for Belgium, or the people who run our newspapers are not very bright entrepreneurs.

Christopher Hitchens considers the inept reaction of the Bush-administration concerning the events in the Middle-East. The Bush-administration sits on it’s hands, doing essentially nothing, not even behaving in the way critics think of as it’s essence, ie. imperialistic:

Iran hands out missiles to a theocratic gang that was until recently mounting pro-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut, all the while spitting in the face of the U.N., the U.S. and the EU on the nuclear issue -- and is subjected to precisely no consequences. Syria openly parades the leader of Hamas in a Damascus hotel, while accepting Iranian largesse (and incidentally proving once again that "secular" Baathists can indeed collude full-time with religious fundamentalists), sends its death-squads to murder Lebanese politicians and journalists -- and is subjected to precisely no consequences. Syria and Iran send sophisticated explosives for the use of Shiite sectarians in Iraq, who employ them to murder American soldiers and Sunni civilians -- and are subjected to precisely no consequences. While all the time, because of its arming and encouraging of Israel, the otherwise passive United States is regarded with as much hatred and fury as if it had in fact tried to remove Assad and Ahmadinejad from power! To suffer all the consequences of being imperialistic, while acting with all the resolution and consistency and authority of, say, Belgium, is to have failed rather badly.

Imagine! Considered to be an empire and acting like Belgium!

Infuriating? Ridiculous? Sad, really:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg6qWVGqEJ4

And if there were not so many innocent victims from Hezbollah, I would be rolling over with laughter. But it’s too damn serious:

"I am here to glorify the resistance, Hezbollah. I am here to glorify the leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah."

Now I’m highly critical of Israel. Not about their goal: eradicating Hezbollah, but about the means. But turning the case on it’s head by calling Israel a terrorist state, and Hezbollah the resistance (is it really illegal in Britain to say that Hezbollah is not a terrorist organisation, as Galloway asserts?), is far far over the edge. And it’s not just Galloway saying this, but the cheers he gets from that crowd that’s really frightening. If this is the state of socialism in Britain, well, sad indeed.

You have probably noticed (or maybe you didn’t) that there is no copyright notice on this site. Don’t hold your breath however. There is one coming, but not one you would expect. It goes something like this:

Copyright Notice: We don’t think much of copyright, so you can do what you want with the content on this blog. Of course we are hungry for publicity, so we would be pleased if you avoided plagiarism and gave us credit for what we have written. We encourage you not to impose copyright restrictions on your "derivative" works, but we won’t try to stop you. For the legally or statist minded, you can consider yourself subject to a Creative Commons Attribution License.

With the "we" replaced by "I". This is quote from Against Monopoly. And I’m going to put this without much changes on my site aswell. However, I’m also going to credit the authors. But that’s all. I’m going to copy it, change it, built upon it, and encourage other people to copy it, change it and put it on their site. Everything for free and without the involvement of lawyers.

I don’t think much of copyright. It’s a state enforced monopoly that does not increase welfare nor is the only or the best instrument to promote the arts and sciences. Monopolies are bad: always and everywhere. But when I say this defenders of copyrights are incensed! Copyrights are natural rights, they are human rights, do not trample on them! There defence goes like this: would you be happy if someone copied all the contens of your site, made a book out of it, put his name on it, and sold it for big bucks? Somehow I doubt it that it would be possible to make a large profit with the contens of this site, but no, I would not by happy. However, I’m only unhappy with the fact that I’m not given any credit for the book. It’s not just that copyright has been violated, but that he or she has plagiarized my work. He or she has stolen and passed off my ideas or words as her or his own, without crediting the source. And plagiarism is bad, always and everywhere:

Suppose I download a piece of music that I didn’t previously have. Ignoring the future consequences regarding music production - it is certain that from a social point of view what I did made society better off. It made me better off - I have access to music I didn’t have before - and nobody is worse off. They copyright holder might not be able to sell me music in the future - but that is just a transfer payment from me to him - it has no social consequence. Contrast this to identity theft. I make a copy of your identity - that is, I masquerade as you. This equally certainly makes society worse off. The essence of identity is that it must be unique. If multiple people hold the same identity, then the identity loses its social value. This is why trademark is different than copyright. Copyright prevents the socially desirable use of creations; trademark prevents the socially undesirable theft of identities - it preserves the right to know who you are doing business with.

How does plagiarism fit into this? Plagiarism is the theft of identity. When you take my name off the paper and claim you wrote it, this is identity theft - you are claiming to be me. It serves no socially useful purpose, and indeed has bad social consequences.

I would be all to happy however when someone would say: look I’m going to publish a book with all your pieces in it. The book will be called: The Best of the Flemish Beerdrinker. People will know that you are the original author. You will be credited. And in the book i’ll mention where they can find all the pieces on the net. That would be just fine. Would I object to that fact that he or she makes a profit of it? No, if he or she is prepared to take the risk of publishing my book, she or he is entitled to a profit, if any is forthcoming of course. And I’m happy because if the book sells I bound to have much more visitors than now who are interested in what I have to say. More visitors, more income from advertising. So I profit too. I subscribe to the view, indeed general among bloggers, that being quoted (copied) is in fact good publicity. Or, as the people over at Against Monopoly put it:

On the creativity side, organizing things is often as valuable as creating the components that are being organized. I would love to live in a world without copyright where we would all quote each other and build on each others work without involving lawyers.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. Sometimes pictures will appear here with a copyright notice. Don’t be a dork then! Those pictures are not mine, and while I don’t think much of copyright, others still do, and although they are wrong, we should respect their opinion. It’s the law we should change.

End july Bjorn Lomborg was a guest at Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria. They talked of course about global warming, Kyoto and the scare stories that cities like New York will be underwater soon. Here’s a snippet:

Fareed Zakaria: --scientists believe that places like New York will be underwater.

Bjorn Lomborg: Yeah; and that’s just simply wrong and that’s not what the UN Climate Panel--the esteemed body of 2,000 or more scientists that come together and actually try to describe global warming is telling us. They say somewhere between 30 and 50-centimeters of--of water increase which would be a foot to two-feet of--of water increase over the next century. And you’ve got to remember, the last century water actually increased somewhere between 10 and 25-centimeters. So we’ve already experienced that and we didn’t have big problems; I’m not saying it’s not going to be a problem but I’m saying we’ve got to look at how big a problem is it. It’s not devastation; it’s a problem. And the second part, the one that you sort of broke me off in saying is that first of all it’s not going to devastate human--human life. The second part is you also got to ask how much change can you do; how much can you actually affect this? And the answer is even if we implement Kyoto as we’ve talked about--that is cutting carbon emission about 30-percent for developed countries--even if the US participated into this, even if all of these countries stuck with the agreement all the way through to 2100 it would do very little good. It would basically postpone global warming for about six years in 2100. Everybody agrees about this; so this is also what the scientists tell us, yet the cost would be about $150 billion a year every year for the rest of this century. So the question I really ask is do we want to spend a large amount of money--$150 billion every year for the rest of this century to do very little good 100 years from now--when the UN estimates that for half that amount--for about $75 billion a year we could solve all major basic problems in the world; we could get clean drinking water, sanitation, basic healthcare, and education to everyone single human being on the planet.

Actually I have a problem with Lomborg. He does seem to believe that with a few billion dollars more we could solve all the worlds problems. But if that approach doesn’t work with global warming, why should it work with clean drinking water, sanitation and so on? Didn’t he read William Easterly?
(Hat tip: Truck and Barter)

It’s probably no suprise that the truth is the first and foremost casualty of the attack on Qana. Both Lebanese and Israeli sources are indeed unreliable. There is no question however that the events are a major public relations defeat for Israel. At least that much is clear. Even if - and this is a big if ! - the Israeli’s are doing everything to prevent innocent casualties something like Qana was bound to happen. Then again, reading that Qana was attacked with no information "on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time" is frankly disturbing. Instead of precision bombing it seems that the Israeli’s are reverting to some kind of "blind warfare". No wonder opinion is turning against the only steady democracy in the Middle-East.

Well, at least, I’m still the same. But because The Flemish Beedrinker is more the name of this website than about me personally and because this website has been redesigned it is indeed the New Flemish Beerdrinker. I also have made some changes contentwise. The English and Dutch part of my weblog have been separated. There are local elections in october for which I am a candidate so until then the Dutch version will be mainly about my campaign. Dutch articles not about the elections could still be posted here. But afterwards this page will be completely in English.

My blogroll has been moved to a separate page aswell. However, in the menu I have added an item called "Daily Links" containing an overview of some important articles and blogposts (at least, it’s imporant according to me). I also started a kind of pictureblog (under the heading "foto’s"). It’s still something under construction and i’m going to experiment with it for a while so what the end result will be i’m not yet sure.

Anyway, I hope you like the changes. It’s not finished yet so there could be more changes. And while most pages are in Dutch I hope to tell you more about this site and about me in English aswell. If you understand Dutch you can start by reading this. The old website is not gone. A link will be provided so that the old messages can be read again, again and again.

Thanks, and see you soon.