Shuffling Through The Mess

Trying to keep tabs on too much stuff going on and not quite getting on top of things, but hustling up little nuggets of funny and happy here and there nevertheless - lately I've been looking and feeling quite a bit like the Zappa artwork here...



...I just wish it also sounded as good as Don "Sugarcane" Harris.

A Brief On Strategy

Sirs,

As the U.S. Navy Pacific Command worries over the growing military threat posed by the PLA to the people of Taiwan, Japan and other neighbouring islands, the imperative to form a rational domestic political strategy becomes ever more urgent. Given the objective of impeding the political annexation of Taiwan by the government in Beijing, a more defensive posture to the layout and organization of Taiwan's political institutions could be achieved by a strategy of aggressive devolution and repudiation.

Further to the recent "five city" reform in which city and county jurisdictions were merged to form "greater" metropolitan areas, an aggressive campaign to complement this reform with devolution of significant political authority would perhaps go some way to make this island less easily bought, sold and controlled from just one pivot point, and thus less easily annexed to China.

In addition to devolution of political authority, the defensive posture of Taiwan's institutional geography could be enhanced further by the repudiation of the received Western wisdom of economic interventionism whereby government departments are responsible for the funding, planning and control of areas of vast economic importance. The uncritical acceptance of the modern marxist mantra that only government can provide currency, courts, police, schools, hospitals etc has gone on for so long that few dare to question whether it is any longer sustainable, let alone just. The government of Taiwan could seek to reduce the national debt by extricating itself from its monopolistic funding and control of many such industries.

In short, a general, three-pronged strategy of devolving, repudiating and privatizing much of the institutional layout and organization of Taiwan would go some way to prohibitively raising the political and economic costs of a Chinese attempt to annex and control this green and blue island.

Yours freely,
Michael Fagan.

(Sent: Thursday 30th December 2010. Unpublished by the Taipei Times)

Postscript: curiously, the email in which this letter was sent to the TT has bounced several times. I wonder...).

None Of Tommorow's Parties

"I support any party that wishes Taiwanese to solely determine their own future free of any form of coercion."

Not so. The subject of that sentence ("party") contradicts the predicate attached to it ("determine their own future free from any form of coercion") since it (party) presupposes a State, and all States, democratic or otherwise are inherently coercive.

You should be arguing about kinds and degrees of coercion - e.g. democratically sanctioned coercion, or constitutionally limited coercion. For you, a social democrat, to issue a blanket condemnation of 'any form of coercion' merely demonstrates your incompetence at handling basic political concepts crucial to your own position.

Or else that, like Turton, you are a goddamned double-think liar.


My comment (which will probably go unpublished) to Ben Goren on his video post on Taiwan Matters. Edit: it was published and there is something approaching a discussion developing. I'm keeping an eye on it.

Distractions

The appalling eco-fascist Bruno Walther has had another crude hatchet job on Lomborg published by the Timid Times. I may write a rebuttal, but I'm preoccupied with swatting up on Wikileaks and tech-stuff at the moment; there is a lot to consider, particularly, for example, to what extent Paul Marks is correct when he claims that Wikileaks, whether deliberately or not, will serve merely as a pretext for greater regulatory control over the internet. There are various conjectures floating around - not as to whether or not this is true (the pontifications of the likes of Lieberman show this) - but as to how feasible such an attempt would be in practice. I'm not a tech-geek, so I've got what looks like a steep learning curve.

Chicken Littles In The Maldives

"...‘Mr Prime Minister. In view of the impending deluge, how much have land prices fallen on Tuvalu?‘ I stammered.

For some reason my question completely silenced the room packed with environmental press."

Ha! Australian journalist Andrew Bolt creates an awkward silence among the faithful in the Maldives. Via Counting Cats, who adds this:

"The environmental journalists knew exactly what he was asking, they knew exactly why he was asking it, and they knew exactly what the answer would mean."

Wikileaks

"And thus making even the banal gossip-like ruminations of functionaries and statesmen public is far more damaging than it might seem as it undermines the very ability to form informal yet secure relationships. By forcing the state to lock down their internal modes of communication, making them less accessible to everyone, not just Julian Assange, Wikileaks deals a more profound blow to states than a half century of earnest pro-liberty pamphleteers and people in good faith trying to work the system to roll back western panoptic regulatory statism."

PdH puts the significance of Julian Assange's organization into context. Two questions:

1. Will Wikileaks keep leaking, or will the States find new ways to securely disseminate information across their networks?
2. What bets are being made - perhaps even right now - on how to run non-secretive businesses and other organizations?

Admission of error: the real significance of the first major Wikileaks story went right over my head.

Later...

That second question of mine above is premature. So many of the shocks are going to depend upon who leaks what, when and whether Wikileaks decides to publish or not. Following the discussions elsewhere, a common feature is outrage at the apparent selectivity of leaked information, with the leaking of operational military information being a particularly good example of that. However, here is the money-quote from the essay by Assange which no doubt prompted PdH's argument:

"The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance."

Non-linearity (my emphasis). In aggregation, Wikileaks may become both a random sledgehammer and a seemingly selectively applied feather-duster. Or a seemingly selectively applied sledgehammer and a random feather-duster. 'Endivio R' makes a broadly compatible point in comment 66 on that Samizdata thread:

"I think that each leak, depending on its source, content and consequences, should be treated as a separate issue..."

Meanwhile, just look at how many mirror sites for Wikileaks there are now in the event that Wikileaks should have to switch servers.

Later, still...

'Seerak' in comment 69 of that Samizdata thread answers the second aspect of my first question in the negative:

"Look for potential gutting of FOI laws. Watch as the State becomes more and more of a black box, becoming more opaque to the oversight of the people, ever the less accountable -- and more difficult to constrain -- all under color of "security". Establishing networks for "confluence of interests" outside the reach of such as Julian Assange is trivial, and that will happen."

I am not at all sure that Assange's thesis will be proved correct, but I don't know nearly enough myself to refute it, let alone dismiss it out of hand like this guy does - yet is he justified in doing so?

An even later 'later'...

David Friedman flags up David Brin's "The Transparent Society" in tying up the Wikileaks case with the use of cell-phone video cameras against U.S. cops:

"...incidents where police officers made the mistake of misbehaving when someone had a video camera—more recently a cell phone—pointed at them. Thinking about the WikiLeaks case, it occurred to me that it was a further development in the same direction... In that sense, what we are seeing is an early stage of the transparent society."

Well at least I think I may have got my writing mojo back...

Words On The Empty Chair In Oslo

"All persons are created equal, including the Chinese. They are equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the only legitimate government is one that rules by consent of the people and honors those rights."

That's Aaron Worthing writing at Patterico's Pontifications. Meanwhile:

"In the lead-up to the prize ceremony, Chinese officials mounted a diplomatic campaign that resulted in several countries joining their boycott of the event. Other absentees included Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Venezuela, Vietnam and the Palestinian Authority."

Every single one of those 'nations' is beset by corrupt cabals calling themselves 'governments' or 'authorities' that enjoy illegitimate power over the people in whose interests they purport to exist; their diplomatic status is itself a farce and an outrage against decency.

Via: Rickety Click, via John Venlet.

Fecal Foreigners

Sirs

Contrary to the inane December 8th letter by Scott Ingram, fecal matters are no legitimate business of government. Does it not occur to Ingram that most of the stray dogs adopted by good people here are of a size such that they require regular exercise which cannot be done on the leash? Or would he go so far as to say that all dogs larger than a poodle should be rounded up and put to sleep for their own good? Does it not also occur to him that his accusation about dog-owners not cleaning up after letting their dogs off the leash is as good as baseless, relying, as it does, on his limited experience and blunt prejudice? It comes, regrettably, as no surprise to me that yet another of the thousands of westerners living in Taiwan should publicly argue for the application of yet more government violence to yet more areas of everyday life such as the simple pleasure of taking one's dog for a walk at the park. Consider also the example of Bruno Walther - arguing for the forcible elimination of private transport in a letter published December 7th - just who on earth does he think he is (aside, obviously from being an eco-fascist)? Is there not a single area of everyday life these people would not like to be subject to the principle of violent coercion, or is the scope of their ambition for government power truly total?

Yours freely,
Michael Fagan

(Sent: Wednesday December 8th 2010. Unpublished by the Taipei Times)

Scott Ingram

"We can also assume that most dog owners that allow their pets to run around freely do not clean up after their pets. I doubt that they would follow their dogs’ steps in order to clean up the poo."

If truth means anything to you other than a bunch of letters signifying a noise, then no you can't just assume that you reprehensible retard.