Turkey tries to improve relations with Armenia , sort of

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Turkish President Abdullah Gul has visited Armenia. The first ever visit by a Turkish leader to independent Armenia, which given the history between the two nations is important. However, sadly, Turkey seems still unwilling to accept its past.

President Gul said of Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian "He did not mention... the so-called genocide claims"

According to Wikipedia:

"The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace."

Between 300,000 and 1.5 million Armenians died during this period. However arguing over numbers is beside the point. It is also beside the point to consider that many Turks also died in the ensuing conflict. There is little evidence that there was a deliberate effort to wipe out Turks by Armenians.

Modern day Turks have little to fear from admitting that the Ottoman Empire discriminated against Armenians, that Armenians sought independence, and the corrupt brutal Ottoman regime co-opted many Turks to expel and execute Armenians. Germans have had to face their role in the most well known genocide of all. Turkey needs to engage internally about this dark period of history, resist nationalist pride, and acknowledge the evil of the past. Precious few alive today are likely to have had any responsibility for it, and it would be a fitting first step before seriously considering secular Turkey's membership in the European Union.

UN says eat less meat to save the planet

The Observer reports that Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has called for people to have one meat free day a week (something I do regularly if you regard meat excluding fish), because of "the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems - including habitat destruction - associated with rearing cattle and other animals".

Now setting aside the harm this causes economies with a high proportion of meat rearing agriculture, setting aside that the UN produces nothing other than exhorbitantly highly paid and underworked bureaucrats, this call blunders in so many ways. It doesn't distinguish between efficient producers and inefficient producers. How much good would be done environmentally and economically if subsidies and protectionism for meat production was ended worldwide? Oh and at the same time, do it for all other food production, so that other foods are over or underpriced? Sadly British restauranteur John Torode makes the common mistake in thinking that buy local would do it, when NZ lamb has a far lower carbon footprint than British lamb, even after transporting it.

I've noticed how little success the Green Party in NZ has had in fighting the foodmiles myth in the UK - or perhaps how little effort it has taken.

There are reasons to moderate meat intact, mainly health ones. The evidence that a high meat diet may be strongly linked to heart disease and cancers of the digestive tract is quite overwhelming. However, there are also countervailing factors, such as high fibre consumption, fish oil consumption and red wine!

Joanna Blythman in the Observer reflects:

"Try telling the Masai tribesmen who have reared livestock for millennia that they should plough up scrubby Kenyan savannah and plant millet"

and points out the value of cattle grazing in some parts of Britain:

"Heather left untamed grows out of control - stringy and lanky - and strangles the growth of other plant species. Without sheep and cattle to graze on them, heather landscapes would eventually become barren and would start to pose fire risks."

As usual, the central planner has a simple solution that does not have universal application (and may be highly damaging).

For all that, it's still some highly paid bureaucrat telling people of all nationalities, what to do, whilst living an affluent lifestyle paid for compulsorily by them. If he talked about agricultural trade liberalisation as well, I might listen, because you see that offers enormous benefits for the world economics and environment.

Polly Toynbee was wrong about Gordon Brown

but she wont admit it. Her latest column in the Guardian calls for Gordon Brown, who she once saw as being the true Labour leader (she went off Blair), to be replaced.

However, pass on the article. It's the usual bunch of leftwing Keynesian tripe about increased taxes and spending more money on those who haven't earned it. Go to the comments section. There is true magic there. My favourite is this from "Cloutman":

Another great article Polly. Marvelous to see such an eloquent demonstration of the old saw - 'the convert is the greatest zealot'. You're really starting to hit the nail on the head - your ex-hero Gordon Brown is indeed as much use as a third buttock. As you have now come to recognise, you absolutely were 100% wrong with all that guff you used to write about how wonderful he was.

And I'll let you into a secret. You know all that other stuff you write about poverty and inequality? That's all bloody tripe as well.

David Cameron outdoes John Key

In the first year or so of David Cameron’s leadership of the UK Conservative Party I was critical of how much he was willing to step back from the proud tradition of Thatcher in rolling back the state. He was embracing the anti-rationalist philosophy of environmentalism, and inefficient producer interest shackled state institutions like the NHS. He didn't seem to stand for anything that different.

It seems Mr. Cameron has moved forward. With the gap between the Tories and Labour growing ever wider, he has become more confident. He now calls for the state to be wound back, if slowly.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph he makes it clear that the state must shrink to give the British public some of their money back. He is calling for tax reductions that are affordable. However more important he wants the proportion of GDP going to the state to shrink.

He opposes state intervention to rebolster the mortgage market, preferring to cut the punitive stamp duty - a tax on property sales.

He advocates the type of school choice ACT is promoting - the Swedish voucher system whereby the private sector gets funding per pupil as parents send their kids to the school of their choice.

However in New Zealand, after National had a wide gap with Labour, it became even more limp wristed and gutless! Bill English says that the growth in state spending should be less than under Labour. He doesn’t want the state to shrink, he just wants it to grow less. National rejected Rodney Hide’s suggestion that state spending grow no faster than population and inflation – which over time would be less than GDP growth. This modest proposal by ACT should be core National policy, on the basis that the state should be getting more efficient and if successful should progressively disengage itself from people’s lives.

Labour believes the opposite. Have no bones about it, Labour would increase the size of the state given the chance, as it has been. Working for Families is a part of that, free GP visits, student loan handouts, more state housing, state subsidised rural telecommunications, a grandiose underground railway for Auckland, greenplating a motorway so it costs $2 billion in a tunnel instead of a quarter that above ground. It is a vision of taking from everyone to giving to everyone, just in different proportions.

National is apparently incapable of fighting this, incapable of really articulating a vision that in a growing economy the state can easily and appropriately take a proportionately lesser role.

John Key is calling for tax cuts, but there is plenty of poor government spending that should be highlighted and cut. Come on John, if David Cameron can do it after 11 years of relatively centre-right New Labour, you can do it after 9 years of centre-left Clarkistani policy.

Kim Jong Il close to croaking?

Well Sky News says so and so does the International Herald Tribune citing a South Korean newspaper. This is on the basis that he hasn't been seen in public for three weeks (which isn't actually that much of a big deal in North Korea). The South Korean National Intelligence Service says he has heart disease and diabetes, which means he wont outlast his father (and let's face it Kim Jong Il since his teens has had a rich lifestyle, with little need to undertake any work), and apparently several Chinese doctors entered the country and remain there (though this could mean anything).

The Korean Central News Agency (which has an absolute monopoly on news from North Korea) of course says nothing of General Secretary Kim Jong Il. In fact its news reports are worth reading for tragic/humour value. Take this:

"Art performance "Really Good Country" of kindergarteners from across the country was given at the Pyongyang Schoolchildren's Palace on Sept. 4 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the DPRK...The numbers included small chorus "The General Goes along the Endless Road to the Front" and instrumental ensemble "Bean-based Milk Van Dashes Forward" which make one keenly feel the noble traits of General Secretary Kim Jong Il."

Well yes "Bean-based milk van dashes forward" certainly inspire feelings about Kim Jong Il, especially if stands in front of it. If there wasn't so much vile tragedy, murder, brainwashing and psychological abuse in this nightmare necrocracy (as Christopher Hitchens points out, the 14 year dead Kim Il Sung is still President), it would be really funny.

Meanwhile North Korea stopped disabling its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, after blackmailing the world to keep propping its vile regime up, and continues to enslave and torture children of political prisoners in gulags.

Meanwhile the Green Party says nothing about either.

UPDATE: Now, according to the Daily Telegraph, a Japanese professor claims Kim Jong Il has been dead since 2003, and doubles have been used ever since for speeches and public appearances. He has written a book called "The True Character of Kim Jong Il". I'm not convinced, but such a hermetically sealed state will create such speculation. It is also known that several dictators had doubles, including Saddam Hussein, and Albania's Enver Hoxha - the latter of which inspired the novel/story by New Zealand author Lloyd Jones called "Biografi", which is definitely a good read.