A healthy response to government regulation

Elling Lien, in the St. John's community newspaper The Scope, responds to City Council's new, state-of-the-art by-law requiring that all our household garbage be covered by nets or put in metal or plastic containers:

Just to avoid the trouble of covering it, I've taken to shredding all of my garbage in a wood chipper and flushing it down the toilet. That way the gulls can truly enjoy it.

(St. John's sewage is discharged picturesquely in the middle of the harbour, where the seagulls do indeed enjoy a perpetual banquet.) I can't wait to hear what he plans on doing about the incandescent lightbulb ban . . .

Peter Hitchens in Iran

Peter Hitchens recently took a ten-day trip to Iran, and has written down his observations in three articles which are worth reading:

      Persian Diary Part 1 (April 23)
      Persian Diary Part 2 (April 25)
      Mail on Sunday article on Iran (April 21)

Hitchens is sympathetic to most of the Iranians, as distinguished from their régime, seeing them as "our natural ally in the Middle East" (possibly forgetting about the existence of Israel here). He believes the régime may fall provided that Iran is not attacked from outside. He may, however, be so anxious to avoid war with Iran that he evades the question of what to do in the event that Iran does succeed in acquiring nuclear weapons.

Burke on the democratic element

Edmund Burke strongly upheld the mixed constitution of 18th century Britain, with its monarchical, aristocratic and democratic (or at least popular) elements. To those who insist on unfettered or "Volkskammer" democracy as their ideal, Burke, who by the standards of his time was fairly liberal, is now likely to seem a reactionary. Modern democrats might be surprised, however, if they looked at what Burke says about the popular element of the mixed constitution in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents. His basic position is that while the popular element should not overwhelm the other two, the popular representative assembly itself should nevertheless be genuinely popular—not vitiated by aristocratic or monarchical tendencies . . . . CONTINUE

Spengler on a new war over Kosovo

Asia Times columnist Spengler has just posted an important article in which he describes tensions between Russia and the West over Kosovo—and the possibly far-reaching implications of these tensions. "Washington proposes to sacrifice the remaining [100,000] Christians in Kosovo in order to earn Muslim support" in the Middle East, Spengler says (adding that such an effort to earn Muslim support seems futile). Serbia and her traditional ally Russia would quite reasonably prefer the Kosovo Christian areas, which are part of the traditional Serbian heartland, to be transferred to Serbia, but the UN/American plan for Kosovo insists on creating an independent Muslim-controlled country without dividing its territory . . . . CONTINUE

Iraq food distribution system failing?

Here is a UPI article from April 11, which doesn't seem to have attracted much attention, describing a breakdown in Iraq's state-run food distribution program, on which a large proportion of Iraqis are more or less dependent. There are alleged to be problems with both lack of security, corruption and managerial incompetence. The Iraqi government is said to be refusing to acknowledge the scope of the crisis. An additional twist in this story is that the government is refusing for political reasons to transfer the PDS (food ration) cards of internal refugees to their new locations, as to do so would constitute official recognition of the population movements which are changing the ethnic and sectarian makeup of the different regions of the country. Thus many internal refugees are presumably going hungry.

Eric Voegelin (14)

A guarded optimism

In his essay "Immortality: Experience and Symbol" Voegelin sketches what he regards as the decline of the West since the High Middle Ages—when religious doctrine separated from experience—through a series of "ever lower levels of spiritual and intellectual order" punctuated by wars and revolutionary chaos, ending in a contemporary "global madhouse". But he also descries a recent "progress of a sort" in the intellectual sphere, a development which ought to "become a living force, sooner or later, in the actual restoration of order" . . . . CONTINUE

Burke on vengeance

The Commons of Great Britain are not disposed to quarrel with the Divine Wisdom and Goodness, which has moulded up revenge into the frame and constitution of man. He that has made us what we are has made us at once resentful and reasonable. Instinct tells a man that he ought to revenge an injury; reason tells him that he ought not to be a judge in his own cause. From that moment revenge passes from the private to the public hand; but in being transferred it is far from being extinguished. My Lords, it is transferred as a sacred trust to be exercised for the injured, in measure and proportion, by persons, who feeling as he feels, are in a temper to reason better than he can reason . . . . CONTINUE

On party discipline (3)

In the first post in this series I claimed that a representative assembly could allow "horizontal" political pressure among the representatives (such as that found within internally democratic parliamentary parties) without losing its character as an independent check on the executive. This claim has to be qualified considerably . . . . CONTINUE

Karzai, the Taliban, and civil aviation

This AP article may be a revealing glimpse of the Afghan state (though one hopes not). Afghanistan's state-owned airline, Ariana, is said to be days away from possible collapse due to corruption and mismanagement. "The collapse of the 52-year-old airline, which survived the Taliban regime despite international sanctions, would be a potent symbol of failure by the administration of President Hamid Karzai and would reinforce growing perceptions of corruption and incompetence." The article quotes an allegation by a former Ariana president that a "high-level government mafia wants Ariana to fail so officials can start—and profit from—their own airline."

In view of the absence of references to large passenger aircraft in the Koran, shouldn't it have been the Taliban who were unwilling or unable to run a modern airline?