Daniel Hannan on Climate Change

The Conservative Party's best MEP, the somewhat libertarian Daniel Hannan expresses his view on climate change in the Daily Telegraph, and it is probably closest to my own:

I think the world is warming (I especially dislike the phase “climate change denial”: no one, as far as I’m aware, is positing climate stasis). And it may well be that human activity is playing some part in the process, although probably not to the degree claimed by some climate change professionals.

I also tend to agree with Nigel Lawson that adaptation would be more effective and cheaper than a programme of greenhouse gas reductions which, even according to its proponents, would slow global warming by only around 0.2 degrees.

So in other words, yes it might be warming, yes it might have some human contribution, but does it justify the draconian interventions being proposed? No. Is it the end of the world as some predict? No.

He characterises the core of the debate as follows:

Just as those who already believed in more regulation, more government, supra-nationalism and higher taxes honestly think that carbon emissions are overheating the planet, so libertarians and small government types honestly think that the whole thing is a crock. Each faction, convinced of its own sincerity, distrusts the motives of the other.

Which of course I do, it is seen most clearly in how the left hijacks this issue to wage war on international trade (because it likes protectionism and localism), the private car (because it is a symbol of individualism) and aviation, whilst being lukewarm on nuclear energy, eliminating trade barriers that could increase efficiency and reduce waste and cutting government barriers to low carbon industries. The holes appear when the Green Party ignores that increasing public transport is more likely to reduce people walking and cycling than switch people from driving, or when it seeks to ban foreign ships carrying domestic cargo between coastal ports as part of an international trip, because it supports the maritime unions and their Marxist closed shop agenda.

In other words, the policies promoted by the likes of the Green Party on climate change are in some cases fundamentally flawed, but in most cases are parallel with an agenda of more state control, more taxation, more regulation and less individual responsibility and freedom. The Green Party wouldn't promote people on welfare not breeding, even though that would reduce CO2 emissions.

Funny that.

What has happened is that a possible issue has been hijacked by one part of the political spectrum which has run off with grand solutions that come from the past, solutions that include enormous transfers of wealth to vested interests and in letting much of the world do nothing other than gain relatively from the kneecapping of developed economies.

It's about time that a new approach was taken to those who do this.

It's time for anyone promoting "climate change" policies to be honest about the costs of doing so, and what benefits will accrue. Real substantive benefits, and who will gain them. The true answer in most cases is "costs lots, gains nothing".

It's time for those arguing for any money to be spent on "climate change" to argue why it isn't better spent elsewhere.

It's time for those who seek to implement policies to address climate change to first, and foremost, advance policies that are consistent with less government, more freedom and more individual responsibility.

In other words, if we assume there is climate change and that there may be good reason to be cautious regarding it, what can governments do to get out of the way of individuals making better choices to reduce CO2 emissions, and let's not stop those wanting to voluntarily take their own steps to promote reducing emissions from doing so.

Finally, it may seem petty, but it is time to fisk the scum who continue to call those who question the climate change orthodoxy as deniers. They know they are seeking parallels with the Holocaust denial lowlives. Such language demeans and denigrates those who went through the Holocaust, by aligning the deliberate cruelty and sadism of that piece of history to theories of environmental changes that have largely occurred inadvertently. It also seeks to close any debate regarding the scale and extent of climate change, and the possible solutions.

Anyone using such language is beneath contempt.

So on climate change, first do no harm, and beware that all too many who want to do something, have a monomaniacal interest in reducing emissions at all costs, except, of course, the obvious option - which would be to do away with themselves.

John Key aiming low

You know something's wrong with government policy when you can read this:

I was pleasantly surprised to hear Prime Minister John Key speaking from Trinidad yesterday when he said that New Zealand had adopted and implemented a radical set of policies in the 1980s with rapid and far reaching change. Key said Australia had not followed the same path but had made changes incrementally and had done much better as a result. John Key is right.

Of course this comes from John Minto. The Marxist journalist agrees with John Key, of course Key is dead wrong.

There are many reasons why Australia didn't take such a radical course, primarily because Australia wasn't in such a dire fiscal and economic state as New Zealand. On top of that Australia has long ridden on the back of a broader base of commodity exporting (digging minerals out of the ground) that has subsidised a rather profligate multi layer government.

However, what is also ignored is that, until recently, Australia hadn't turned the clock back. The Hawke/Keating governments stayed the course, and the Howard government went further, although in the latter years it was fond of dishing out pork, it did not turn back the clock. The New Zealand parallel would be if David Lange hadn't had a cup of tea, and the Bolger/Richardson government had lasted until a year ago. Australia has had 24 years of steady albeit slow economic liberalisation. New Zealand had 4 fast years, another 2 slower years, another 3 fast years, then 6 glacial years, and since then 9 years of largely going backwards.

Minto of course is an economic imbecile. New Zealand's GDP per capita had fallen behind Australia years before the 1984 election, indeed it fell from being one of the highest in the world to being down with the likes of Spain by the 1980s, lower than any other Western country, unless you counted Portugal and Greece, then the poor members of the EEC.

However, for Key to express the same imbecility is absurd.

I don't expect the government to adopt all of the policies, I do expect it to be interested in some, and in encouraging further debate and discussion. At the very least I expect this term of government to be about some level of reform and turning the opposite direction of the years of Helengrad, and gearing up voters to go much further in three years time.

It isn't about that, it is about National being a Conservative party, the very same party that sat on its hands and did sweet f'all for decades whilst the New Zealand economy slowly stagnated. The same party that allowed Muldoon to inflict nine years of control freak economics, waste and bullying upon the country, whilst they meekly let the likes of Derek Quigley get crucified for standing up against this destructiveness.

Say one thing about the Labour Party, when it gets into power it has the courage of its convictions to act, to do what it believes in, and to make changes quickly and radically. It did so after 1999, after 1984, after 1974, after 1957 and after 1935. National? It's only by sheer luck and dire circumstances that Ruth Richardson was able to drive the agenda so far so fast after 1990, after Bolger lied his way to power having been warned of how unaffordable some of the promises were.

National Party = party of professional "born to rule" conservative politicians
Labour Party = party of professional "chosen to rule" socialist politicians

For now

It is worth simply linking to this and that.

It's inevitably sad and death is damned annoying. It is not "part of life", it's the end of it.

Anna's blog showed how she has lived facing death with more certainty about its imminence than others. She sadly appears to now have rapidly slipped closer to the inevitable, so now may her family and friends simply surround her with the love, affection and joy they hold for her life.

It is only because of the joy we have from the life of one that we fear and feel such sadness for the loss.

It's a lesson to be reminded of day after day.

Enjoy life, it's the only one you have, you don't know when it will come to an end. It does have a purpose, the purpose is for you to pursue your values, your passions, your joy and to do so alone or with others as you and they may choose.

It is, after all, what Anna has been doing, even with the rude interruption.

Berlin Wall Series: German Democratic Republic

The Berlin Wall itself was a response to one simple point. The abject failure of socialism to satisfy the citizens of the German Democratic Republic to want to stay. For with many east Germans able to receive west German television, and all able to receive western radio broadcasts, the contrast was clear. Coca-cola, the Beatles and capitalism were far more attractive than the dreary sameness of the GDR. Most importantly, if you had any degree of self motivation, ambition and desire to succeed, beyond shooting and spying on your fellow citizens, you had to leave.

In 1945, with the Red Army having taken around a third of conquered Germany. The remaining territories, which would be known as west Germany were occupied by American, British and (don’t laugh) French troops, until the Federal Republic of Germany was established in 1949.

Stalin’s plan was clear.
- In association with the Allies, a quarter of territory was taken for neighbouring states, including separating Austria once more.
- A third of east Germany’s industrial equipment and facilities were removed for use in the Soviet Union.
- The Red Army became firmly based in east Germany as the front line between east and west;
- East Germany would become the location of a new German society on Marxist-Leninist lines, rejecting the Nazi past.

Elections were held in the Red Army occupied east in 1946 for some form of local administration, and while past political parties (pre-Nazi) were legalised, Stalin forced the merger between the largest social democratic party and the communists, into the Socialist Unity Party. It won the election, given extensive Soviet propaganda, much based on fact, about the horrors of the Nazi era.

However, for women and girls in east Germany there wasn’t relief with the defeat of the Nazis. The Red Army unofficially tolerated widescale rape and sexual abuse of German women and girls in the years after the war. Conservative estimates put the number of female victims of the Soviet occupation at the hundreds of thousands. These stories have only been allowed to be told and confronted in the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

As the Soviet occupation continued, Stalin was concerned about Berlin. Berlin had been divided between American, British, French and Soviet zones, but surrounded by Soviet occupied east Germany. Three single access corridors were guaranteed by road and rail between the west German occupied zones and the Berlin equivalents. However, Stalin had decided this shouldn’t continue, and he wanted the west out of Berlin. He started having trains stopped and inspected on the corridor trips, and then demanded that land access be closed. This was due to frustration at the money being poured into west Germany under the Marshall Plan and the establishment of the Deutsche Mark, both of which he opposed. He closed land access and electricity supply to west Berlin on the pretext of there being no formal agreement between the allies on such corridors of access, the allied response was what is now known as the Berlin airlift. The subsequent months are well known, as planes flew every four minutes on average into Tempelhof airport, supplying food, fuel and other supplies to west Berliners. At the time, Berlin was still a devastated poor city, and malnutrition was not unknown at all in post war Germany. Stalin responded by offering “free food” to west Berliners to move east, few did. Ultimately, the airlift succeeded, Stalin blinked and land access was restored. 70 pilots are aircrew had died in crashes during the airlift, indicating the risk involved in aviation at the time.

A protest at the Brandenburg gate at Stalin’s attempts to form a single municipal government for Berlin (bear in mind no wall at the time), saw the start of the serious division of the city. Half a million rejected attempts at communist domination of the Berlin council. The response was for the Soviet sector to establish a communist local authority, whilst the western sectors remained under military control.

When the Federal Republic of Germany was declared, it incensed Stalin further. An independent liberal democratic German capitalist state, that would become a NATO ally and be at the front line of the Cold War was not how he envisaged Germany. So the German Democratic Republic was hastily created in the east, using east Berlin as its capital, although it was meant to nominally be Soviet territory.

“Don’t mention the war”, as east Germans were all told they are new socialist citizens. The official line for most was that they were members of the anti-fascist resistance. The Socialist Unity Party would lead a so-called “national front”, but in effect had a monopoly on political power.

The usual communist policies were introduced, with all property nationalised and almost all businesses state owned and controlled, except crafts. Walter Ulbricht was the Stalinist leader of the GDR, and he created the Stasi, the secret police that would be many times more pervasive than the Gestapo. 2.5% of the population worked as Stasi informers. Whilst the Nazis were militarily aggressive outside Germany, and genocidal maniacs, the communists were totalitarian towards their own on a grand scale.

In the early 1950s, large scale industrialisation was the focus, but a growing problem was the exodus west. By 1953, an average of 37,000 were migrating from east to west, as skilled and talented east Germans rejected the totalitarian society being inflicted upon them, so by the mid 1950s, the extensive land border between the two German states was sealed. This culminated in the Berlin Wall in 1961, as east Berliners were swelling west Berlin with talent, and getting passports as a result. By the time the wall was completed, east Germany had lost a quarter of its population since the war.

The ability to leave wasn’t the only response by east Germans. Increases in minimum production quotas saw workers strike in 1953 in what became known as the 1953 Uprising. Tens of thousands turned out to protest in east Berlin, before the police and army turned on them, arresting hundreds and killing up to 100. This was the first major uprising in the eastern bloc.

The subsequent years saw Stalinism rolled back slowly in the 1960s, Ulbricht followed Czechoslovakia in allowing more autonomy for industrial units, hiring management based on skills and ability, more than politics. Technical competence would be rewarded. The results were improved levels of production, but although Ulbricht supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, forces within the Socialist Unity Party were moving to overthrow him.

Erich Honecker conspired with Brezhnev to overthrow him on the pretext that he was moving away from Marxism-Leninism to a more pragmatic economic policy, although at the same time Ulbricht participated in discussions on normalising relations with western countries including the Federal Republic of Germany.

Honecker pushed Ulbricht to the sidelines in 1971, and refocused propaganda on Marxism Leninism. Meanwhile, the movements of Ulbricht on improving relations with the west continued, so by 1973 the Berlin and Basic Agreements saw significant changes in the relationship. Postal and telecommunication links were reopened, and greater freedom of movement for westerners to the east (though not vice versa). This allowed families divided by the Cold War to have some contact.

East Germany had a reputation for the highest standard of living in the communist bloc, which was true. Industrial production had become more oriented towards (poor quality) consumer goods, partly because there was so much awareness of the west through broadcasting. It was virtually impossible to enforce bans on listening or viewing foreign broadcasts, although the Stasi would certainly use evidence of such activities as a reason to harass.

One way the GDR pushed national pride was sports, with the tragic use of steroids and hothouse training conditions for GDR Olympic athletes. Arts and culture were focused on socialist realism, but from the 1970s on east German cinema also went beyond the stultifying Stalinist themes and had an unusual genre of American Western type films, which would have the native Americans as heroes against the imperialist USA. There was strong support for classical music, but also underground rock and pop music bands would appear, occasionally harassed by the authorities, influenced by Western broadcasts.

Ultimately, this pervasiveness of Western broadcasts meant that it became increasingly unsustainable for the GDR regime to resist change whilst perestroika was being carried out in the USSR. Notwithstanding that, Honecker insisted in carrying out 40th anniversary celebrations for the German Democratic Republic, months before he was removed and the Socialist Unity Party surrendered its monopoly on power.

Honecker had been inspired by Tiananmen Square and had ordered a “shoot to kill” policy to respond to protests which culminated in Leipzig. Fortunately, the military refused, and so the murderous tyranny he ran, ran out.

The fall of the wall has already been discussed, but the subsequent events demonstrated how weak and insubstantial the whole German Democratic Republic was. The Peaceful Revolution resulted in the first and only free elections in east Germany in March 1990, which ended months of protests calling for the reformed communists to leave power. The former communists got 16% of the vote, against 48% for a centre right coalition and 22% for the centreleft opposition. The result was for the GDR to be dissolved and for east Germany to be incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany.

A third of Germany had been shifted from a genocidal totalitarian nightmare to a more Orwellian totalitarian nightmare. No doubt the GDR was less murderous than Nazi Germany, but it did execute opponents, it executed those seeking to leave. It ran a prison state, it ruined the lives of many through psychological torment, and it wasted the lives of millions in stagnation and mediocrity. Most of all it showed the utter destruction of humanity in being a contrast between two systems. The difference in living standards made it clear, and the inability to censor broadcasts from the west meant east Germans knew only too well they had the raw deal, and all the state wanted to do is make sure they shut up and trusted the Party. East Germans were all “in it together”, but individually they were nothing, just a part of a machine. Aspiration and success would only be rewarded if it fitted in with the goals of the party, and east Germans had to go underground to have some sense of freedom.

East Germany was also the frontline of ambitions to destroy the west. The Red Army was there to be the footsoldiers for any future advance, and east Berlin sponsored terrorism in the west, with the Red Army Faction including the infamous Baader-Meinhof gang. Murderous thugs to the letter as they were.

Nothing in Europe exemplified more the economic, intellectual and moral bankruptcy of “really existing socialism” than east vs. west Germany. As JFK once said “at least we don’t have to build a wall to keep our people in”.

As a footnote, Erich Honecker fled to Moscow after the end of the Berlin Wall, to escape charges of conspiracy to murder - because he decided on the shoot to kill policy for escapees. He took refuge in the Chilean embassy, but extradited by the Russian government of Boris Yeltsin where he faced trial. However he was too ill for trial in 1993, so it was discontinued and he had his final year in Chile, dying of liver cancer.

His wife remains in Chile, she had been a Minister under the communist regime and she still argues life was better then.

Berlin Wall Series: Bulgaria

By contrast to Czechoslovakia, it would be fair to say Bulgaria is for many a “far off country of which we know little”. Today it is a member of NATO and the EU, which would have been almost impossible to conceive 20 years ago.

However, Bulgaria’s importance is underestimated, being one of those countries on the “frontline” of the Iron Curtain bordering Greece and therefore NATO. Bulgaria isn’t known for having had any high profile attempts at resistance and liberalisation, like Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. It isn’t the centre of Europe like Germany, and it did not have quite the megalomaniac like Romania.

Bulgaria’s status in World War 2 owes a lot to Tsar Boris III. He took the Bulgarian throne in 1918 after his father abdicated due to Bulgaria being on the losing side of World War 1. Bulgaria had faced reparations and loss of territory as a result. During the period of his reign Bulgaria swung between coups and plots from communists and militarists, culminating in a military coup in 1934 by the Zveno group. It established an authoritarian state abolishing political parties and trade unions, and attempting a corporatist economy. In other words state direction of private enterprise. The coup reduced Tsar Boris’s role to one of a figurehead, which he did not tolerate so he staged a monarchist counter coup in 1935. He appointed allies to be Prime Ministers, and in 1939 Bulgaria was neutral in the war, but within a year Boris III had allied himself with the Axis powers. Anti-Semitic laws were introduced barring Jews from intermarriage, government employment and from certain geographical areas. However, even the pro-German regime successfully resisted attempts to deport Bulgarian Jews en-masse.

The Bulgarian shift in favour of the Axis was in part due to the Axis offering to return land to Bulgaria that had been ceded to Romania and Yugoslavia. German troops used Bulgaria as a transit point, but Bulgaria notably never declared war on the USSR even after the German invasion. However in 1943, Boris died suddenly, and as his eldest son was only a child, governance effectively swung to a pro-German regency council.

The effect of the alliance with the Germans was to bolster support for a resistance movement, which the communists and the agrarian movement led. By 1944 both a lack of popular support and losses by the Axis, saw Ivan Bagrianov, a pro-Western politician, appointed by the Regency Council to seek peace with the Allies. However, neighbouring Romania, which had been with the Axis powers as well, turned towards the USSR, as the Red Army marched on. In early 1944 a new government was set up under the Fatherland Front, comprising communists, the authoritarian Zveno movement and anti-Nazi supporters, but this did not stem the Red Army from invading. The Fatherland Front government told the army to not resist and it allied itself with the USSR against Germany. Bulgaria fought with the Red Army to recapture what is now known as Yugoslav Macedonia and Serbia all the way to Hungary.

Following the end of the war, with Soviet backing, the communists in the government arrested many politicians and officials charging them of war crimes. The government was purged of past supporters of alliance with Germany, and an ally of Stalin, Georgi Dimitrov was appointed Prime Minister. A plebiscite was held to abolish the monarchy, which apparently got a 95% vote for such an abolition, and rigged elections were held in 1946. The agrarians and other anti-Nazi parties boycotted the elections in disgust. The young Tsar Simeon II was forced to flee, and a pro-communist government was installed before the People’s Republic of Bulgaria was established on Stalinist lines.

The early leaders, Dimitrov and Kolarov had died by 1950 and so leadership was effectively taken by Vulko Chervenkov who sought to rapidly industrialise the country. He attacked the Orthodox Church, put dissidents in labour camps, and imposed strict rule upon the country. He established a personality cult, and introduced free compulsory education and a public healthcare system. However, he had little support within the party so that once Stalin died, he was replaced as General Secretary and subsequently Prime Minister. He was replaced by the man who would dominate communist Bulgaria to the very end, Todor Zhivkov (that's his official website).

Zhivkov was previously a member of the resistance against the alliance with Germany, and subsequently a member of the Stalinist faction in the party, responsible for the forcible collectivisation of farms in a region he was in charge of. Over the subsequent years from 1954 to 1971 he consolidated rule around himself. He rejected Stalinism, allowing a nationalist view of Bulgaria, although he ceded claims to Slavic Macedonia to Yugoslavia. He bent with the wind, having been pro-Khrushchev, before becoming more hard line again under Brezhnev. He even strengthened relations with China in the late 1950s starting a brief and abortive “Great Leap Forward”. The Sino-Soviet split saw Zhivkov align himself with the USSR more, and he fended off a Stalinist coup.

However, this sort of leadership would mean Bulgarians would pay a price of uncertainty. As Czechoslovakia started a new economic policy, so would Bulgaria, under the Prague Spring saw central planning reasserted, and all those involved in running companies on a market basis would be arrested and purged. He closed down labour camps in the early 1960s, but changed the focus to having a Police state to arrest, frighten and monitor the public. However, unlike his neighbour Ceausescu he resisted having a personality cult, but he did establish a complex system of privileges of luxury goods and service for the elite and supporters to enjoy.

In the 1970s Zhivkov remained closely aligned with the USSR, and gained much material support as being at a frontline of the Cold War. Bulgaria made much foreign exchange by gaining cheap Soviet crude oil to refine and export at global market prices. Apparently Zhivkov even asked the USSR if Bulgaria could be a republic of the USSR, but Brezhnev rejected the request.

Zhivkov’s regime did not tolerate dissent, although in the field of the arts, as long as no political messages were given, his daughter Lyudmila promoted openness. Her sudden death at age 38 affected Zhivkov, and he took it out on ethnic Turks, banning the Turkish language and forcing all Bulgarian Turks to adopt Bulgarian names. His reputation dropped, and by the time Gorbachev had taken over Moscow, Zhivkov was elderly and more resistant to change. He had poured money into defence, increasing the size of the armed forces to be a loyal servant of Moscow.

Little had happened by 1989, but news of change in other eastern European states came through to Bulgarians via Radio Free Europe, BBC World Service and Voice of America, so Bulgarians became brave enough to hold protests in Sofia, ostensibly on environmental issues. The Communist Party sensing the need for change, overthrew Zhivkov on November 10 1989. He was replaced by Petar Mladenov who only distinguished himself by delaying the surrender of the communist monopoly on power by a few months. In June 1990 free elections were held, which were won by the reformed communists who had rejected authoritarian rule and had purged Zhivkov. Zhivkov was arrested and convicted of embezzling public funds, and sentenced to seven years imprisonment. He was put under house arrest, but was acquitted in his old age two years before his death in 1998.

Meanwhile Bulgaria slowly reformed its economy, as the Socialist Party (former communists) did not take dramatic steps to confront what needed to change, beyond political freedoms. In 1992 the government changed to the anti-communist Union of Democratic Forces which engaged in mass privatisation by giving shares in government enterprises to citizens, which had mixed results, primarily as so many government enterprises were grossly underproductive, inefficient and so closed down. High unemployment in the 1990s saw governments change at every election, but eventually some stability ensued. Political freedoms were high, so Bulgaria joined NATO in 2004 and the EU in 2007. Most interestingly, the child Tsar, Simeon II, who was expelled by the communists in 1946, was elected in 2001, with his party winning many seats. The Tsar returned, Bulgaria became a new magnet for European property investors, and the poor forgotten land was never to turn east again.