What we’re seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East.

a healthy, wealthy, and happy human life is considered a burden upon the earth. For instance we are told that if the entire world lived like the United States, fossil fuels would run out within seven year’s time, or maybe ten. What a horror such a world would be. There is no talk of how much higher the rate of invention would be, or how much we would save by having better institutions.

Hezbollah and Hamas militants, on the other hand, are difficult to distinguish from those “civilians” who recruit, finance, harbor and facilitate their terrorism. Nor can women and children always be counted as civilians, as some organizations do. Terrorists increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their attacks. The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit.

According to the IRA, civilian bystanders, including women and children, who were killed when bombs blew up police officers or soldiers should have known better than to be associating with the security forces or socializing in places that they were known to frequent. These bystanders were complicit in their own deaths. It was an utterly contemptible argument then. It’s just as contemptible today.

Mann et al., misused certain statistical methods in their studies, which inappropriately produce hockey stick shapes in the temperature history. Wegman’s analysis concludes that Mann’s work cannot support claim that the1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium.

Wie vandaag in België tegen immigratie pleit om culturele redenen, en daarbij "eigen volk eerst!" roept, loopt veel kans om veroordeeld te worden wegens racisme. Maar wie tegen immigratie pleit om economische redenen, mag zichzelf een etiket van "sociaalvoelend mens" opplakken. Het xenofobe discours in Vlaanderen zit vandaag geconcentreerd bij twee partijen: Vlaams Belang en de SP.a. Culturele xenofobie en socio-economische xenofobie. Het eerste wordt verketterd en juridisch bestreden, over het tweede is men trots: kijk eens hoe goed we jullie jobs beschermen tegen die goedkope Poolse metselaars.

As Israel enters the third week of an incursion into the same Gaza Strip it voluntarily evacuated a few months ago, a sense of reality among Arabs is spreading through commentary by Arab pundits, letters to the editor, and political talk shows on Arabic-language TV networks.The new views are stunning both in their maturity and in their realism. The best way I can think of to convey them is in the form of a letter to the Palestinian Arabs from their Arab friends:

Dear Palestinian Arab brethren:

The war with Israel is over.
You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children.

We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel.
Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.
At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan. It isn’t going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.
You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you. You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins.
Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.
In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day.
What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world’s have-nots?
We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.
Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.
Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab. Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours,Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods — more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives — while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.
The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?

1. We need to emphasize the middle ground in between the welfare state and individualism. We can be for helping the poor and providing public goods, and still be against government.

2. I believe quite strongly in the importance of the institutions of civil society. Take away families, churches, civic groups, community associations, standards bodies, charitable organizations, and others, and you are left with either individualism or government. Conversely, the more you strengthen government, the more you tend to weaken the elements of civil society.

3. A classical liberal in this century should be relatively apolitical, in the sense of not rooting strongly for a political party. Instead, encourage the nongovernmental components of civil society, particularly private schools and private forms of saving and insurance.

4. Private forms of support for intellectual property, in the form of patronage, should be allowed to substitute for the legalistic approaches of patent and copyright. In fact, I hesitate to use the term "intellectual property" and would prefer the term "patronage goods."

5. Above all, a classical liberal needs to identify, expose, and counter the marketing strategies and tactics that are used to expand government. Both political parties play up fears in order to sucker us into ceding money and power. Just as certain citizens’ groups are known for exposing the false advertising of corporations, we need to expose the false advertising of politicians.

In the 90’s GM produced a line of electric cars called the EV1 that had a following of hard core fans in California, Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson among them. These cars had no trouble accelerating and keeping up in California traffic, and once they went from lead-acid to NiMH batteries, the range between charging was 130 miles. None of these cars were sold, however, only leased. Once US Automakers managed to defeat California’s "zero emissions" requirement, GM quit renewing leases, repossessed the cars, and destroyed them. A bunch of fans of the cars offered GM $1.9 million for the last 78 used EV1’s that were sitting in a lot, but they were taken away and crushed. GM kept insisting that no one wanted to buy the cars.

Some facts about the EV1, the research and development of which was produced by _my_ division of GM, Hughes Electronics: General Motors lost two billion dollars on the project, and lost money on every single EV1 produced. The leases didn’t even cover the costs of servicing them. The range of 130 miles is bogus. None of them ever achieved that under normal driving conditions. Running the air conditioning or heater could halve that range. Even running the headlights reduced it by 10%. Minimum recharge time was two hours using special charging stations that except for fleet use didn’t exist. The effective recharge time, using the equipment that could be installed in a lessee’s garage, was eight hours. Home electrical systems simply couldn’t handle the necessary current draw for "fast" charging. NiMH batteries that had lasted up to three years in testing were failing after six months in service. There was no way to keep them from overheating without doubling the size of the battery pack. Lead-acid batteries were superior to NiMH in actual daily use. Battery replacement was a task performed by skilled technicians taking the sorts of precautions that electricians do when working on live circuits, because that’s what they were doing -- working on live circuits. You cannot turn batteries "off." This is the reason the vehicles were leased, rather than sold. As long as the terms of the lease prohibited maintenance by other than a Hughes technician, GM’s liability in the event of a screw-up was much reduced. Technicians can encounter high voltages in hybrid vehicles. In the EV1, there were _really_ high voltages present. Lessees were complaining that their electric bills had increased to the point that they’d rather be using gasoline.

In de Verenigde Staten worden er elke dag een paar duizend mensen afgeknald, maar als er hier op het Astridplein iemand wordt vermoord, komt het meteen op CNN. [...] Plots lijkt lijn 23 de lijn des doods, en Antwerpen het oord des verderfs!

Economically, Kurdistan is still tied to Baghdad, from which it receives 17 per cent of Iraq’s oil revenues. Under the new constitution, oilfields developed in future will be managed by the regional government. The KRG has already signed agreements with several foreign oil companies to explore for oil inside the three northern provinces, and some oil has been discovered. Old oilfields, mostly in desperate need of repair and maintenance, will be managed by the oil ministry in Baghdad.

For the Kurds, it is all the most delicate of balancing acts. They want an Iraqi state to prevent their becoming too vulnerable to Turkey or Iran. Iranian artillery recently fired 2,000 shells across the border with Iraqi Kurdistan to drive this point home. Within Iraq the Kurds need an agreement with the Shia, who make up 60 per cent of the country’s population. Kurdish leaders are intent on keeping close to the US as foreign guarantor against the Iranians and Turks.

So far the Kurdish leaders have been astute in dealing with the myriad threats facing them and, thanks to a certain amount of luck, successful. They also know that failure would once again exact a terrible price from their people.

Uzbekistan has issued an eviction notice to a U.S. air base that has been used since 2001 to stage military and humanitarian operations in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said Saturday. The notice, delivered Friday to the U.S. Embassy in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, gives the United States six months to comply, Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said. "The bottom line is, they want us out," he said. The Uzbek government has increasingly bristled at the U.S. military presence, especially since the State Department joined international allies in calling for an inquiry into the shooting deaths of protesters during a rally in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijon in May.

Let us hope that finally the Bush administration will now recognise the true nature of the Karimov regime. It is symptomatic of the complete failure of Western policy in Central Asia that rather than withdraw with some dignity, the US has managed to hand the dictator Karimov the propaganda coup of kicking out the World’s greatest power. This is not about the response to the Andizhan massacre. To the end the US was muted on human rights in Uzbekistan and still has not called for full elections including the opposition. This is about the Karimov regime’s decision to turn to Gazprom and the Russians, not the US, to develop Uzbekistan’s oil and gas fields. This deal involves Uzbekneftegas and was brokered between the President’s daughter, Gulnara Karimova, and Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek born Russian oligarch who bought 27% of Corus (British Steel). The Karimov regime are determined to keep complete control of the economy so they can continue their massive looting for personal enrichment. They were concerned that Western companies could build centres of wealth not under their direct control. They have therefore decided to turn to Russian and Chinese state companies for investment. These companies operate the system of oligarch corruption that the Karimov regime understands. This is the explanation for Central Asia’s “Diplomatic Revolution” as Uzbekistan turns decisively away from the USA towards Russia and China. There will now be massive pressure by Karimov on Tajikistan and Kirghizstan – both tiny countries dependent on Uzbekistan for energy supplies – to follow suit.

Overheard at a Cato Institute talk I attended:

What have we gotten from Republicans controlling all the branches of government? A bloated entitlement state that eats its young, and a lot of buildings named after Ronald Reagan.

The future level of greenhouse gas emissions is governed mainly by the increasing demand for transport and electricity as economic development progresses in developing countries. Rich countries must pay for the research and development which would make developing and running a low carbon infrastructure affordable by poorer countries. In the recent Group of Eight Gleneagles discussions on climate change, US President George W.Bush made four assertions: there are large uncertainties about the science and the economics; the Kyoto agreement would involve large costs and negligible benefits for the US; proposals to deal with greenhouse gas emissions that exclude developing countries are ineffective; and that research and development on new technologies should take priority over expenditure for meeting emissions reduction targets. It pains me to say it but on all points Mr Bush is right. (...) The Kyoto treaty is inconsequential because even if fully implemented it would not change greenhouse gas concentrations by much. If the degree of potential warming is large – say 5˚C over the next century – reducing that figure to 4.5˚C is nowhere near enough. If the degree of potential warming is small – say 0.5˚C over the next century – a policy which reduces that figure to 0.45˚C imposes costs a great deal larger than its benefits. There is no scenario in which actions that reduce global concentrations by a small amount make much sense. Since a small amount is exactly what we are doing, this is a key conclusion. We should, instead, either take major action or focus on adapting to any consequences. What would be involved in doing a lot? The US accounts for just over 20 per cent of greenhouse gas output and Europe and Japan for a bit less. The whole of the developed world contains 800m people, compared with 2.4bn in India and China. The future level of greenhouse gas emissions is governed mainly by the increasing demand for transport and electricity as economic development progresses in these countries. This is the issue that matters on climate change. It is almost the only issue that matters on climate change. And it points to the only way in which, if western leaders did take climate change seriously, the issue could be tackled. Rich countries must pay for the research and development that would make developing and running a low carbon infrastructure affordable by poorer countries. This is a matter for serious science, not wind farms and bicycle-to-work day. Only nuclear technology fulfils these requirements today but its deployment on a global scale raises as many problems as it solves. There are many options that might become but are not yet commercially viable – hydrogen, photovoltaics, fusion. There are some not yet imagined. It is a curious lacuna that the most technologically progressive century in history ended with fuel technologies not fundamentally different from those employed when it began. And that we still do not have any cheap way of storing electricity. These are the projects on which action against climate change should focus. Many of the people who express concern about climate change do not want a technological solution. Their concern is really an expression of guilt about materialism, distaste for capitalism and fear of technology. It is because Mr Bush does not experience any of these feelings that he is right on this issue.

If we accept that the risk of a greenhouse effect is large enough to demand action, the question is: what sort of action? Greenhouse gas emissions are cumulative; it seems likely that more good will come of stopping the flow entirely later than slightly slowing it now. If only the faddish short-term fixes (such as offshore wind farms) were likely to lead to longer-term solutions (such as nuclear fusion, or solar after three more decades of Moore’s Law-type progress) - we wouldn’t have to make difficult choices today.

This is all about taxpayers’ money being diverted from developing clean renewable technologies to try and make burning coal less dirty," Bob Brown, leader of the minority Australian Greens party, said in a statement.

i wonder if it would be a good bet to follow my natural cynicism, and say that one of the technologies to be pushed will be hydrogen fuel cell cars?

The United States, the world’s top polluter, is set to unveil a five-nation pact to combat global warming by developing energy technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions, officials said on Wednesday. China and India, whose burgeoning economies comprise a third of humanity, as well as Australia and South Korea are part of the agreement to tackle climate change beyond the U.N.’s Kyoto protocol. The United States and Australia are the only developed nations outside Kyoto, which demands cuts in greenhouse emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Both say Kyoto is flawed because it omits developing states. Diplomats in the Laotian capital Vientiane said the pact would be formally announced on Thursday when U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick holds a news conference attended by representatives of the other signatories. Zoellick is attending a regional forum in Laos. Details of the pact were unclear but it appears to echo recent comments by President Bush who advocates the use of technology to curb growth in greenhouse gas emissions rather than setting Kyoto-style caps on emissions. Bush believes Kyoto would threaten the U.S. economy even though many of his allies see it as a vital step to brake a rise in temperatures they fear could trigger more floods, storms, lift sea levels and drive thousands of species to extinction.

Using purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates, the IMF (2004b) calculates that the United States and China presently account, respectively, for 21 and 12½ percent of world GDP. Given 2003 and 2004 growth rates, this implies that the United States was responsible for roughly 16 percent of global growth in 2003 and 17 percent in 2004. The same kind of calculation for China reveals a higher contribution: 30 percent of global GDP growth in 2003 and 24 percent last year. Together, these two locomotives made up over 40 percent of the 2003–04 global expansion. Their joint contribution to global growth in 2003–04 is similar if we were to use market exchange rates as weights, but their relative contributions would be reversed; the US contribution would then be on the order of a third, while China’s contribution would fall to roughly a tenth. This reflects the facts that the US share of world GDP is somewhat higher with market exchange rates than with PPP exchange rates (29 percent versus 21 percent), while China’s share is much lower with market exchange rates than with PPP exchange rates (4 percent versus 12½ percent). If the relevant measuring rod is taken to be domestic demand growth (at market exchange rates), the US contribution to global (domestic demand) growth would still be slightly higher and China’s contribution would be slightly lower, since the United States has been running an increasing trade deficit whereas China has been running an increasing trade surplus. Turning to world trade, in 2004 the US share of world trade was 12½ percent, while China’s share was 6 percent (10 times the share China had in 1977). China alone accounted for more than 10 percent of global trade expansion in 2003–04, while the US contribution was 8 percent. Together, China and the United States supplied about one-fifth of global trade expansion during the past two years. These back-of-the-envelope estimates suggest that if China and the United States were to grow considerably slower over the next three years than they did during the last two, emerging economies would, ceteris paribus, face a less supportive global environment.

What really sticks in the craw of conventional journalists is that although individual blogs have no warrant of accuracy, the blogosphere as a whole has a better error-correction machinery than the conventional media do. The rapidity with which vast masses of information are pooled and sifted leaves the conventional media in the dust. Not only are there millions of blogs, and thousands of bloggers who specialize, but, what is more, readers post comments that augment the blogs, and the information in those comments, as in the blogs themselves, zips around blogland at the speed of electronic transmission. This means that corrections in blogs are also disseminated virtually instantaneously, whereas when a member of the mainstream media catches a mistake, it may take weeks to communicate a retraction to the public. This is true not only of newspaper retractions - usually printed inconspicuously and in any event rarely read, because readers have forgotten the article being corrected - but also of network television news. It took CBS so long to acknowledge Dan Rather’s mistake because there are so many people involved in the production and supervision of a program like ’’60 Minutes II’’ who have to be consulted. The charge by mainstream journalists that blogging lacks checks and balances is obtuse. The blogosphere has more checks and balances than the conventional media; only they are different. The model is Friedrich Hayek’s classic analysis of how the economic market pools enormous quantities of information efficiently despite its decentralized character, its lack of a master coordinator or regulator, and the very limited knowledge possessed by each of its participants. In effect, the blogosphere is a collective enterprise - not 12 million separate enterprises, but one enterprise with 12 million reporters, feature writers and editorialists, yet with almost no costs. It’s as if The Associated Press or Reuters had millions of reporters, many of them experts, all working with no salary for free newspapers that carried no advertising.

The argument for filtering is an argument for censorship. (That it is made by liberals is evidence that everyone secretly favors censorship of the opinions he fears.) But probably there is little harm and some good in unfiltered media. They enable unorthodox views to get a hearing. They get 12 million people to write rather than just stare passively at a screen. In an age of specialization and professionalism, they give amateurs a platform. They allow people to blow off steam who might otherwise adopt more dangerous forms of self-expression. They even enable the authorities to keep tabs on potential troublemakers; intelligence and law enforcement agencies devote substantial resources to monitoring blogs and Internet chat rooms. And most people are sensible enough to distrust communications in an unfiltered medium. They know that anyone can create a blog at essentially zero cost, that most bloggers are uncredentialed amateurs, that bloggers don’t employ fact checkers and don’t have editors and that a blogger can hide behind a pseudonym. They know, in short, that until a blogger’s assertions are validated (as when the mainstream media acknowledge an error discovered by a blogger), there is no reason to repose confidence in what he says. The mainstream media, by contrast, assure their public that they make strenuous efforts to prevent errors from creeping into their articles and broadcasts. They ask the public to trust them, and that is why their serious errors are scandals.

The back-to-back nature of the deadly attacks in Egypt and London, as well as similarities in the methods used, suggests that the al Qaeda leadership may have given the orders for both operations and is a clear sign that Osama bin Laden and his deputies remain in control of the network, according to interviews with counterterrorism analysts and government officials in Europe and the Middle East. Investigators on Saturday said that they believed the details of the bombing plots in Egypt and Britain -- the deadliest terrorist strikes in each country’s history -- were organized locally by groups working independently of each other. In Sharm el-Sheikh, where the death toll rose to 88 people, attention centered on an al Qaeda affiliate blamed for a similar attack last October at Taba, another Red Sea resort. In London, where 52 bystanders were killed in the subway and on a bus, police have identified three of the four presumed suicide bombers as British natives with suspected connections to Pakistani radicals.

Iran’s support for al-Qaeda is something of a mystery. Darling thinks it’s active support by certain factions. Ken Pollack has told me that it’s just a matter of Iran not wanting to deal with the problem and hence doing nothing. Dan seems more convincing on this question, but I really don’t know.

(Iraqi Prime Minister) Jaafari welcomed the signing of agreements to improve cooperation in areas ranging from security to Iraq’s serious shortage of refined fuel, as he prepared to board a plane for the northeastern city of Meshhad for closing talks with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

De omvang van de aanslag in de badstad aan de Rode Zee wijst er trouwens op dat daar een lange voorbereiding en coördinatie voor nodig was, met name ook op Egyptisch grondgebied. De ideologie die de harde jihadisten aankleven, vindt in Egypte steeds meer aanhangers en dat komt in de eerste plaats door de ellende en armoede waarin Hosni Moebarak zijn bevolking laat leven.

On a Windows Vista Web site, Microsoft says the new operating system will enable "a new level of confidence in your PC and in your ability to get the most out of it," introduce "clear ways to organize and use information the way you want to use it," and connect users "to information, people, and devices that help you get the most out of life."

ABC News reported in 1999 that Osama bin Laden had a “long relationship” with his “friend” Saddam Hussein, that he was “welcome in Baghdad,” that he tried to get enriched uranium from Saddam, and that he also asked for political asylum in Iraq. They even have a clip of Osama himself admitting he hoped to get enriched uranium from Saddam.

We are witnessing one of the greatest betrayals by the left since so-called left-wingers backed the Hitler-Stalin pact and opposed the war against Nazi fascism. Today, the pseudo-left reveals its shameless hypocrisy and its wholesale abandonment of humanitarian values. While it deplores the 7/7 terrorist attack on London, only last year it welcomed to the UK the Muslim cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who endorses the suicide bombing of innocent civilians. These same right-wing leftists back the so-called ’resistance’ in Iraq. This ’resistance’ uses terrorism against civilians as its modus operandi - stooping to the massacre of dozens of Iraqi children in order kill a few US soldiers. Terrorism is not socialism; it is the tactic of fascism. But much of the left doesn’t care. Never mind what the Iraqi people want, it wants the US and UK out of Iraq at any price, including the abandonment of Iraqi socialists, trade unionists, democrats and feminists. If the fake left gets its way, the ex-Baathists and Islamic fundamentalists could easily seize power, leading to Iranian-style clerical fascism and a bloodbath. I used to be proud to call myself a leftist. Now I feel shame. Much of the left no longer stands for the values of universal human rights and international socialism.

In the postwar years, South Korea and Taiwan had the good fortune to become, effectively, client states of the U.S. South Korea received huge infusions of aid, with which it rebuilt its economy after the Korean War. Between 1946 and 1978, in fact, South Korea received nearly as much U.S. aid as the whole of Africa. Meanwhile, the billions that Taiwan got allowed it to fund a vast land-reform program and to eradicate malaria. And the U.S. gave the Asian Tigers more than money; it provided technical assistance and some military defense, and it offered preferential access to American markets. Coincidence? Perhaps. But the two Middle Eastern countries that have shown relatively steady and substantial economic growth—Israel and Turkey—have also received tens of billions of dollars in U.S. aid. The few sub-Saharan African countries that have enjoyed any economic success at all of late—including Botswana, Mozambique, and Uganda—have been major aid recipients, as has Costa Rica, which has the best economy in Central America. Ireland (which is often called the Celtic Tiger), has enjoyed sizable subsidies from the European Union. China was the World Bank’s largest borrower for much of the past decade.

The Mezzogiorno (South of Italy) is a large macro-region of about 20.9 million inhabitants (36% of Italy) with a GDP of €220.2 billion (24% of Italy). Ireland is a much smaller region, of 3.8 million inhabitant and a GDP of €82 billion33. Between 1991 and 2000, Ireland grew on average by about 8% a year, while the Mezzogiorno grew by about only 1%. As a result, the per capita GDP of Ireland moved over the ten years from 77% to 116% of the EU average, while that of the Mezzogiorno remained between 74% and 69%. The GDP of an Irish resident in 2000 is about 168% of the GDP of a resident in the South of Italy, while, back in 1991, it was only 4% greater. According also to other economic and social indicators (unemployment, poverty, etc.), Ireland is often among the top performers with the Mezzogiorno often the weakest performer (e.g. see European Commission 2003c and 2001a). Funds per head effectively paid out by the EU cohesion policy were four times higher for Ireland than for the Mezzogiorno in 1991, 40% higher in 2000 and 25% lower in the period 2000-2006.

There is already some reports that Iraqis have begun to deploy crude WMD weapons against U.S. forces in Iraq. In the beginning of 2005, the Iraqi correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam reported that fighters fired mortar rounds containing chemical substances at the U.S. al-Habbaniyah base. There has also been speculation that Iraqi guerrillas fired rockets loaded with Sarin gas at a US base near Falluja in February 2005. While neither of these reports have been confirmed, there can be little doubt that Iraq is still a repository of some WMD material, despite the fact that none have been found since the ouster of Saddam Hussein. In an ironic twist of catastrophic proportions the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq may result in exactly the kind of attack that it was purportedly designed to prevent in the first place; namely a WMD attack on U.S. interests by Iraqis.

In 1984, nearly 40% of the average New Zealand sheep and beef farmer’s gross income came from government subsidies. A year later, almost all of these subsidies were removed. New Zealand farmers were on their own, and remain so today in 2002. As they saw it at the time, New Zealand farmers were cut adrift by their government. Yet, more than 15 years later, the farming sector in New Zealand has grown and is more dynamic than ever. The intervening years have been a struggle for many, but now farmers are proud of their achievements. They remain without subsidies, earning their living by their own efforts without interference. Farmers now fiercely defend their independence. Where once farmers were treated with derision and scorn by the rest of the nation, now there is respect and even admiration. Much traditional animosity between town and country has gone.

Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the US-led invasion, according to senior European intelligence officials. Intelligence officers learned between 1999 and 2001 that uranium smugglers planned to sell illicitly mined Nigerien uranium ore, or refined ore called yellow cake, to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq. These claims support the assertion in the British government dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programme in September 2002 that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from an African country, confirmed later as Niger. George W. Bush, US president, referred to the issue in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

Freedom to Access Content.
First, consumers should have access to their choice of legal content. Consumers have come to expect to be able to go where they want on high-speed connections, and those who have migrated from dial-up would presumably object to paying a premium for broadband if certain content were blocked. Thus, I challenge all facets of the industry to commit to allowing consumers to reach the content of their choice. I recognize that network operators have a legitimate need to manage their networks and ensure a quality experience, thus reasonable limits sometimes must be placed in service contracts. Such restraints, however, should be clearly spelled out and should be as minimal as necessary.

Freedom to Use Applications.
Second, consumers should be able to run applications of their choice. As with access to content, consumers have come to expect that they can generally run whatever applications they want. Again, such applications are critical to continuing the digital broadband migration because they can drive the demand that fuels deployment. Applications developers must remain confident that their products will continue to work without interference from other companies. No one can know for sure which “killer” applications will emerge to drive deployment of the next generation high-speed technologies. Thus, I challenge all facets of the industry to let the market work and allow consumers to run applications unless they exceed service plan limitations or harm the provider’s network.

Freedom to Attach Personal Devices.
Third, consumers should be permitted to attach any devices they choose to the connection in their homes. Because devices give consumers more choice, value and personalization with respect to how they use their high-speed connections, they are critical to the future of broadband. Thus, I challenge all facets of the industry to permit consumers to attach any devices they choose to their broadband connection, so long as the devices operate within service plan limitations and do not harm the provider’s network or enable theft of service.

Freedom to Obtain Service Plan Information.
Fourth, consumers should receive meaningful information regarding their service plans.

Belgians suffering under a morass of contradictory, complicated or just plain absurd regulations have for two years had a place to make their complaints known: a Web site called Kafka, set up by their government. The rare flash of bureaucratic humor has had tangible results: a savings of $281 million over two years, Belgian officials said Friday. The site www.kafka.be was set up by the government in 2003, encouraging individuals and businesses to come up with examples of needless rules and regulations. It was named after Franz Kafka, the late Czech-German author who hated irrational authority and whose work defined the alienated modern world of the 20th century. This multi-ethnic nation of 10 million has mind-numbingly complex bureaucratic systems. The country is divided into 589 communes and run by a national government and six other separate governments representing the French, Dutch and German language groups and the Brussels, Walloon and Flanders regions. The man in charge of the Kafka initiative, Secretary of State for Administrative Simplification Vincent Van Quickenborne, said the millions in savings came from "alleviating some of the administrative burden imposed on citizens and entrepreneurs." Based on thousands of complaints, the government eliminated some outdated rules, such as one concerning the so-called "conform copies." For two centuries, official documents submitted to authorities had to be accompanied by a copy issued and stamped by an individual’s local district proving the authenticity of the original. Another regulation to be abolished by the end of the year is the obligation to validate a new driver’s license with a fiscal stamp — a form of an administrative fee — which can be only purchased at post offices, Van Quickenborne said.

In particular Dawa-oriented radical-Salafist organisations and networks from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states strongly emphasise ’re-Islamisation’ of the Muslim minorities in the West. These organisations include missionary, socio-cultural and finance organisations which claim not to be politically orientated or violent, but whose activities are often based upon extreme puritan, intolerant and strongly anti- Western ideas. Their efforts are purposefully aimed at encouraging Muslims in the West to turn their back on Western values and standards. They preach an extreme isolationism from Western society and propagate ’exclusivism’ and parallelism. In some cases they propagate the creation of fully Islamised districts in big cities in the West or even pursue parallel social structures in the form of autonomous Sharia areas, as a sort of enclaves foreshadowing the Umma. In the future the Umma is to spread across the whole world, including the West.

In the War on Terrorism headed by the United States following the attacks of 11 September, several relative successes have been achieved which were decisive for the present nature of the threat from international radical-Islamic terrorism. The dismantling of Al Qaeda’s infrastructural facilities in Afghanistan as well as the elimination or arrest of several of its foremost leaders have resulted in a fragmentation of Al Qaeda. As a result, its actual strength and organisational powers have been reduced. This has caused a decentralisation of international Islamic terrorism. There are no longer any global networks controlled by a central Al Qaeda leadership. Instead, local networks have emerged which are related on the basis of a common Al Qaeda ideology, rather than by organisational ties. Within the local networks in particular in the Western world (especially in Europe) Al Qaeda’s ideology is interpreted in an even more extremist way than by the Al Qaeda’s leadership itself. Often the actors in these networks are not really driven by strategic-tactical considerations; they see themselves as participants in a mythical, apocalyptic final battle with Evil (the Western world) in the context of which, in principle, all exponents of Evil (in fact any Western citizen) should be destroyed. This perception may lead to a willingness to participate in ruthless mass destruction. The willingness among members of local radical-Islamic networks in the Western world to use extreme violence is mainly fuelled by the part of Al Qaeda’s ideology that is based on the ideas of one of the founders of Al Qaeda, Abdallah Azzam (1941-1989). He contended that each Muslim individually has an obligation (’Fard ayn’) to wage an armed Jihad against the nonbelievers. Islam is threatened to such an extent that each Muslim individually (independently of a higher religious authority) is fully justified to engage in an armed Jihad. Local radical-Islamic networks in the Western world are also characterised by a further radicalisation of ideological thinking about Takfir (’branding as heretics’). In particular the ideas of Shukri Mustafa (1942-1978), the founder of the Takfir wal Hidjra (literally: ’branding as heretics and leaving’) movement have contributed to this further radicalisation. According to this movement, in effect all those who adhere to another faith (both non-Muslims and Muslims who, according to the Takfiri, do not adhere to the proper form of Islam) are nonbelievers who are to be combated. This means that, in effect, society as a whole is designated as a target.

Osama bin Laden’s standing has dropped significantly in some pivotal Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence has "declined dramatically," according to a new survey released yesterday. Predominantly Muslim populations in a sampling of six North African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries share to a "considerable degree" Western concerns about Islamic extremism, according to the poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, conducted by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization. "Most Muslim publics are expressing less support for terrorism than in the past. Confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined markedly in some countries, and fewer believe suicide bombings that target civilians are justified in the defense of Islam," the poll concluded. The one exception is attitudes toward suicide bombings of U.S and Western targets in Iraq, a subject on which Muslims were divided. Roughly half of Muslims in Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco said such attacks are justifiable, while sizable majorities in Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia disagreed. Yet, support for suicide bombings in Iraq still declined by as much as 20 percent compared with a poll taken last year. The results, which also reveal widespread support for democracy, show how profoundly opinions have changed in parts of the Muslim world since Pew took similar surveys in recent years. The poll attributed the difference in attitudes toward extremism to both the terrorist attacks in Muslim nations and the passage of time since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. (...) The poll results are a rare piece of good news for the Bush administration, which has faced difficulties seeing gains in its two top foreign policy goals -- combating terrorism and promoting democracy in the Islamic world. (...) The new poll also found that growing majorities or pluralities of Muslims now say that democracy can work in their countries and is not just a Western ideology. Support for democracy was in the 80 percent range in Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco. It was selected by 43 percent in Pakistan and 48 percent in Turkey -- the largest blocks of respondents in both countries because significant numbers were unsure.

In the future, there will only be two sectors of the American economy: home developers who continually tear down old housing stock and replace it with bigger, better houses, and homeowners benefitting from leveraged investments in ever-rising real estate prices who keep this sector going. The enormous wealth created this way will allow us to maintain our lifestyle by importing inexpensive consumer goods and by outsourcing all other services.

Kan ik zelf ergens buiten Telenet een Digibox of Digicorder kopen, of misschien zelfs zelf ineen knutselen? Neen, dit kan en mag niet. Men zal de Digibox of Digicorder bij Telenet zelf dienen aan te schaffen.(...) Wanneer blijkt dat het toestel niet van Telenet afkomstig is, zal het niet geactiveerd worden.

Last week at the G8, President Bush restated his favorite global warming canard: that mandatory curbs on fossil fuel pollution will “cripple the U.S. economy.”

WELL, WHAT DOES HE THINK GLOBAL WARMING WILL DO TO THE ECONOMY!?!?

I wish there was an even bolder bold on this computer to emphasize how insane this logic is. Non-stop flooding, killer heat waves, energy and food shortages: what will these do to the economy?

The Kyoto Protocol makes little difference to rates of global warming and has a naive compliance mechanism, which can only deter countries from signing up to subsequent tighter emissions targets

There are several elements to the cost burden that the US would bear if it ratified Kyoto. First, it would have its own domestic emissions reduction programme and the costs of that would fall on industry, transport and households. The US judged early on that these costs would be unacceptable, but had always maintained that the prospect of acceptability would exist if there was widespread emissions trading. In the event, the Kyoto Protocol enabled various forms of trading: trades between rich nations based on allocated permits (cap and trade), project-based trades between (roughly) OECD countries and East Europe and Former Soviet Union (“joint implementation”), and project-based trades between OECD countries and developing countries (“Clean Development Mechanism”—CDM). Moreover, the US had already sponsored major efforts at joint implementation in order to learn how to operate such projects. Arguably, the limited prospects for extensive cap and trade systems (which is what the EU has developed), and the comparatively small role playable by joint implementation and the CDM, persuaded the US government that compliance costs to the US would be higher than they hoped.
Second, the US has been insistent that developing countries must quickly assume targets of their own. We noted above that this is a rational position to take since rates of warming cannot be adequately affected without this happening. The developing countries have always maintained that warming was not their responsibility. If the rich countries want to bring the developing countries on board, they might therefore have to pay for developing country reductions as well as their own. The Kyoto Protocol does have “flexibility mechanisms” which permit reductions in developing countries to be credited to developed economies provided the latter pay for them. But what the US may have feared was the prospect that the developing countries would maintain their “you not us” stance and eventually the US would have to become a major contributor to the costs of reducing emissions in developing countries, without emission credits being secured.
Third, “relative” cost matters, i.e. the burden on the US relative to the burden borne by others. Apart from any feelings about “unfairness” if others did not appear to bear as big a burden, there are concerns about competitiveness, and about impacts on specific sectors of the economy—not least oil and coal producers.
A fourth factor relates to the Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that influenced the US government. These were primarily those that showed comparatively small global benefits from Kyoto (the work of Professors Nordhaus, Mendelsohn, Manne and Dr Richels). Thus the US was being asked to bear a “big” cost (as they saw it) for uncertain global benefit. The climate models themselves were showing little or no effect on rates of warming from Kyoto. However, a dominant feature of the minor impact of the Kyoto Protocol on warming is also the fact that developing country rates of growth of emissions are the fastest. President Bush clearly stated: “I oppose the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80% of the world, including major population centers such as China and India”. We offer this brief analysis of the position of the US not because we wish to defend that position, but in order to argue that there is an economic rationality to the stance taken. Failure to understand that rationality will misdirect efforts to bring the US into future negotiations in a more positive way. (...)
Finally, the US has repeatedly stressed the role of technological change in securing greenhouse gas emission reductions. While the Kyoto Protocol should, in principle, encourage technological change, we are not convinced that it has sufficient focus on this central issue.

1. Have the main headline about your electoral program be how much you’re going to raise taxes. Particularly VAT, which practically everybody pays on practically everything.

2. Face a knock-down drag-out fight with your prospective coalition partner over #1.

3. Have the two parties that make up your Union disagree about the basic approach to health care reform.

4. Present security plans that your prospective coalition partner says had been previously rejected for good reasons.

And that’s just the first 24 hours after the presentation of your campaign program.

The administration was and is right in thinking that the overthrow of Saddam’s regime could change the pattern of Middle Eastern politics in ways that, by favoring the cause of decent government and basic freedoms, would favor our interests as well. Iraq will not become Switzerland, a progressive and prosperous social democracy, for generations, if ever. But it can become a state that makes room for the various confessions and communities that constitute it, that has reasonably open and free politics, and that chooses a path to a future that could inspire other changes in the Arab Middle East. I still think something like that will happen. The administration believed that the invasion of Iraq would jolt and transform a region bewitched by the malignant dreams that my colleague Fouad Ajami has described so well -- the dark fantasies of Baathists, ultra-nationalists and religious fanatics. And indeed, in the aftermath of the Iraq war the cracks have begun to show -- in Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, and even in Syria and Saudi Arabia.

a pundit should not recommend a policy without adequate regard for the ability of those in charge to execute it, and here I stumbled. I could not imagine, for example, that the civilian and military high command would treat "Phase IV" -- the post-combat period that has killed far more Americans than the "real" war -- as of secondary importance to the planning of Gen. Tommy Franks’s blitzkrieg. I never dreamed that Ambassador Paul Bremer and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the two top civilian and military leaders early in the occupation of Iraq -- brave, honorable and committed though they were -- would be so unsuited for their tasks, and that they would serve their full length of duty nonetheless. I did not expect that we would begin the occupation with cockamamie schemes of creating an immobile Iraqi army to defend the country’s borders rather than maintain internal order, or that the under-planned, under-prepared and in some respects mis-manned Coalition Provisional Authority would seek to rebuild Iraq with big construction contracts awarded under federal acquisition regulations, rather than with small grants aimed at getting angry, bewildered young Iraqi men off the streets and into jobs.

Today, the last caller on Radio 4’s ’Any Answers?’ said that we needed to look at the underlying causes of Muslim terrorism. He went on to talk about the Middle-East, how the West had oppressed the countries in this area for sixty years and how we had installed puppet governments. So which puppet governments would they be then? Hafez and Bashar Assad? Gaddafi? The House of Saud? Nasser and his successors? The leaders of the Arab states seized power themselves. They may have sought Western, or Soviet, sponsors once in power but they do not owe their positions to foreign action. This myth of Western colonialism is fostered by Arab leaders to divert attention away from their oppression of their own people. The Arab world is a shit-hole because their leaders have taken the oil wealth for themselves and used it to buy weapons to keep themselves in power. In that sense, it is very similar to the situation in Africa, except that Africa is poorer and has less money to syphon off. So how does the poverty of the masses in Arab states, a situation created by their own corrupt leaders, justify terrorist attacks on London? What is it that Britain should be doing to tackle these "underlying causes"? Should we invade these countries and help them get rid of their corrupt leaders? Oh hang on, we tried that and the dribbling liberals told us that this is a justification for Islamist terrorism too. Whatever mess the Arab states get themselves into, there will always be liberal apologists lining up to prove that it was the West’s fault. Whenever there is a terrorist attack, the same crew will appear to tell us about our part in "creating the circumstances for terrorism". They blind themselves to the facts and just trot out a load of senseless and illogical drivel. Who are these ignorant fools? How have their views become so prevalent? What makes people hate their own country so much that they can’t even condemn a terrorist attack without adding an apology for the perpetrators?

The issue is clearly one of balance. Most adaptation expenditures would be local, while mitigation requires action on a global scale. Few would suggest doing nothing by way of mitigation, and few would suggest no adaptation expenditures at all. But the policy literature seems to us to be overly focussed on mitigation. We therefore urge the Government to ensure that greater efforts are made to understand the relative costs and benefits of adaptation compared to those of mitigation.

First, labor intensive industries are a source of employment generation, especially for low wage labor. By rendering them uncompetitive, aid inflows could reduce a major avenue by which surplus agricultural labor is absorbed, and inequality and poverty reduced. Thus real appreciation induced by aid inflows could have side effects on distribution, as well as the previously documented effects on growth.
Second, aid inflows do alter the growth trajectory of a country – moving it away from export oriented labor intensive manufacturing. Apart from the foregone growth, this choice may also have spillover effects. Not only could these sectors be the source of productivity improvements or learning, these industries, which by necessity are on the efficiency frontier, could also be a strong political force pushing for sensible government policy to ensure their continued competitiveness. Their shrinkage (and we know that not just growth but also the share of labor intensive industries is lower in countries that receive more aid – estimates available from authors) could have wider repercussions.

I defy anyone to show that this tariff structure optimizes European welfare. More to the point, it’s just fantasy to expect this absurdity to be negotiated into something sane. Line-by-line negotiations will get us nowhere.
So here’s my suggestion for Blair and Brown. Forget negotiation. Fighting street-to-street on this won’t work. Why not just announce, unilaterally, that the UK will have no part in this absurdity, and will allow free imports from everywhere? This will give the rest of the EU three options.
1. They could do nothing, in which case their tariffs will become redundant as goods are freely imported to the UK and re-exported.
2. They could retaliate by imposing tariffs on the UK. This would show clearly to all Europeans that EU leaders want to impoverish Africa and harm European consumers in order to please their lobbyists and special interest groups.
3. Do the right thing, and follow the UK’s example.
If Blair and Brown were serious about wanting to help Africa (and indeed UK consumers) they’d do this today. Both are surely well aware of the text: "follow not a multitude to do evil."
Or do they prefer to just drool and drivel that they care, without actually doing anything?

Public bodies, in fear of litigation, act in highly risk-averse and peculiar ways. We have had a local authority removing hanging baskets for fear that they might fall on someone’s head, even though no such accident had occurred in the 18 years they had been hanging there.

Inspired by the need for Congress to be seen to do something dramatic, Sarbanes-Oxley has imposed the threat of criminal penalties on managers and substantial new costs on American business: an average of $2.4m extra for auditing for each company. The burden is especially heavy on smaller companies, the real risk-takers in the market. Firms with a revenue of less than $100m per annum now pay out more than 2.5% of turnover in compliance costs. Cumulatively the costs run into billions of dollars. There is a delicious irony in this which illustrates the unintended consequences of regulation. Sarbanes-Oxley has provided a bonanza for accountants and auditors, the very professions thought to be at fault in the original scandals.

if an old person falls on the floor, the regulations currently decree that the care worker cannot help them to their feet. They have to go and find some hoists before they can help. No doubt, most care-workers help anyway but if basic human acts of care like this are being prevented by intrusive regulation, it is absurd.

Volgens Hayek is de doorslaggevende politieke tweedeling deze tussen diegenen die voorstanders zijn van groter overheidsingrijpen en diegenen die de overheid zoveel mogelijk aan banden willen leggen. Hayek noemde de eerste groep socialisten en de tweede groep (klassiek-)liberalen. In de Amerikaanse politieke terminologie spreekt men echter van “liberals” voor de eerste groep en “conservatives” voor de tweede groep. Vandaar de verwarring, die soms verholpen wordt door de eerste groep links-liberalen en de tweede rechts-liberalen te noemen. Isaiah Berlin had het zelfs over twee vrijheidsbegrippen: de positieve vrijheid en de negatieve vrijheid. Negatieve vrijheid betekent de afwezigheid van staatsbemoeienis. Volgens Berlin is dit de ware vrijheid. Positieve vrijheid is de misvatting dat de staat de mens zou moeten bevrijden van de cultuur waarin hij is geboren. Het is het begrip vrijheid zoals dat ook door de communisten werd gebruikt. “Liberalisme is per definitie ontvoogdend, bevrijdend,” schrijft Van der Kelen. Het hangt er maar vanaf waarvan we bevrijd moeten worden: de staat of de moraal.

The inability of the LDCs to export to the developed-country market is largely (though, admittedly, not exclusively) the result of the supply-side constraints that are of their own making. The sooner we recognize this fact the more urgently will the countries and international institutions focus their attention on how best to overcome these constraints. Telling the countries that the developed countries are responsible for their woes may make one popular but it does the countries no good. It only encourages complacency towards domestic policy reform in these countries and without those reforms no amount of opening up by the developed countries will kick off growth.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any Form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations upon such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

PRESIDENT BUSH yesterday challenged EU leaders to scrap massive subsidies paid to their farmers, saying free trade with Africa would eliminate the need for Third World aid. Mr Bush, on the eve of the G8 summit in Gleneagles, said that Europe paid “tremendous” agricultural subsidies, and that the US was ready to drop its own payouts to American farmers if Europe had the courage to do the same. Mr Bush’s challenge — in an interview with Sir Trevor McDonald to be screened by ITV tonight — is likely to be rejected not only by France and Germany, but by many in his own country. But it appeared to be a bold rhetorical step by his Administration to get the world’s richest nations away from talk of aid and toward free-market solutions in the quest to alleviate poverty in Africa. Asked directly if America would drop its subsidy system if the EU abandoned the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Mr Bush said: “Absolutely. And I think we have an obligation to work together to do that. “Because if we do achieve this business of free trade, and if markets in the West are opened up to countries in Africa, they could be so successful, they could eliminate the need for aid. The benefits that have come from opening up markets — our markets to them and their markets to us — far outweigh the benefits of aid.” Mr Bush’s call to scrap agricultural subsidies in the developed world follows that of Tony Blair, who recently said the system of over-generous subsidies was “hypocrisy” that could no longer be ignored.

Government figures now show farmers in New Zealand to be the least subsidized and among the most productive among the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Farming products, excluding forestry, earn more than 40 percent of New Zealand’s export income, and agriculture contributes about 17 percent to New Zealand’s gross domestic product.

Since farm subsidies were withdrawn in New Zealand, the number of sheep has dropped to about 40 million from 58 million, the number of dairy cows has risen to more than five million from 3.5 million, and deer stocks have risen 64 percent. Productivity has risen in each area.

Only 1 percent of farms went under, far less than the 10 percent predicted by the government at the time.

"It was the cost of doing business in New Zealand which was killing farmers, not the prices in the market," Ian Robb said. "The rest of New Zealand was trying to live at a standard which was above what the country could afford. For me, no country can subsidize their major export."

Federated Farmers of New Zealand, the leading farmers’ organization, has prepared a report, "Life After Subsidies," to show other countries contemplating an end to subsidies that there is nothing to fear.

"As they saw it at the time," the report says, "New Zealand farmers were cut adrift by their government. Yet, the farming sector in New Zealand has grown and is more dynamic than ever. The intervening years have been a struggle for many, but now farmers are proud of their achievements."

Ian Ewen-Street, agriculture spokesman for the Greens Party of New Zealand, himself a farmer, said that any attempt to bring back subsidies would face intense opposition, led by farmers.

"Even as a Green," he said, "when I look at the U.S. and Europe, with subsidies up, I wonder why we can do it and others can’t."

The widely differing views of China were vividly evident in 2001 when military and Wall Street officials came together at the World Trade Center in New York to share thoughts on the impact of China’s economic and military rise. The organizer, Thomas Barnett, then a teacher at the U.S. Naval War College, hoped to bring the two constituencies closer together. Instead, their opposing views were reinforced. Mr. Barnett, now a writer and consultant, says the Wall Street participants concluded, "’When I think of the security issues I realize how a strategic partnership with China is all the more imperative,’ and the military guys would say, ’Wow, realizing all the economic competition, war with China is that much more inevitable.’"...

Mr. Barnett argues that most of Asia’s economic success stories had, in effect, one-party government as China does today: Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan. Today, all are important trading partners and pro-U.S. Meantime, North Korea, which cut itself off from the world, is mired in poverty and is one of the U.S.’s chief antagonists.

I asked in passing whether there was a single thing the state does better than the private sector, where comparisons are possible.

Phil Hunt at the Sharpener points to two things: the quality of the BBC’s websites (not its TV programmes), and the “state-developed Internet network and the state-developed World-Wide Web hypertext system.”

I had thought my rhetorical question was rather over-stated. But these examples do little to undermine it.

The quality of the BBC’s websites is due to two things: the vast amount of money that’s been spent on them, and the beneficial effect of competition from other sites. Pound-for-pound, it’s not clear that the BBC’s sites are so superior to other ones.

Nor does the development of the internet greatly undermine my argument. It was not simply “state-developed.” Yes, Darpa provided a lot of the early demand. But the development of the internet was a team effort. It was certainly not an achievement of the state, in the sense that politicians took the lead. This paper says:

Not only US projects were involved in the beginnings of the Internet. Not only government funded US research programs were involved in the beginnings of the Internet. Not only telcos and the commercial sector were involved in the beginnings of the Internet. Neither Arpanet nor TCP/IP is present in all valid theories.We conclude that any claim by a nation, project, person, or team of individuals, or participants in any single event to "the beginnings of the Internet" is wrong.

What’s more, many of the “fathers of the internet”, such as JCR Licklider, got their ideas in private firms or private universities. That’s an example of the message of this research, that private universities are better than state ones at developing commercially useful technologies than state ones.

The message I’d take from these examples is that the state can do some good but only when it doesn’t behave like a state – that is, when it abandons hierarchical command and control structures in favour of loose networks and when it exposes itself to competition.

It’s an open question whether Live Aid did more harm or good. As David Rieff explains in the British magazine Prospect, organizations involved in delivering relief became complicit in the Ethiopian government’s Stalinist program of forced agricultural collectivization and relocation, which helped create the disaster. Today, Ethiopia is significantly poorer than it was 20 years ago, and, as David Plotz explained in this 2003 dispatch, perpetually dependent on charity. This is, sadly, the story of aid to sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. While the developed world has contributed more than $500 billion over the last 40 years, Africans have continued to fall farther behind.

Expanded trade, by contrast, offers significant hope for African economic progress. Growth prospects in most sub-Saharan African countries depend on greater access to heavily protected textile and agricultural markets in the developed world. Unfortunately, Africa advocates wearing white wristbands (including Tony Blair) aren’t arguing for free trade. They’re calling for something called "trade justice." Make Poverty History, the group behind the armbands, contends that developed countries should drop agricultural subsidies and remove barriers to African imports without insisting that African countries open their markets. One-way protectionism may be an improvement on the two-way kind, but it won’t jump-start stagnant economies. To secure foreign investment and grow, African nations need trade in two directions. And for that, they need to be pushed to reduce both the bureaucratic obstacles and endemic corruption that deter businesses, both domestic and foreign.

At the moment, the most promising model appears not to be government-to-government grant-making, but a new style of targeted, goal-driven, private philanthropy. To take the most significant example, the Gates Foundation has spent more than $4 billion, with tremendously encouraging results, to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other infectious diseases, primarily in Africa. It ruthlessly scrutinizes and evaluates its own programs in a way governments seldom do, with the aim of directing additional money where it has the best chance of success.