On some blogs such as Samizdata, the discussion often has an element of an echo chamber or a circle jerk about it, but occasionally we come across gems. Here’s one, about the difference between the ancient Romans and the modern West:

James Purefoy is playing Mark Anthony in the hit TV series, Rome, and one of the things he said struck me as really rather illuminating. He said that the difference between us and the Romans was that they regarded weakness as a vice and what we would call cruelty as a virtue. […]

The virtue we aspire to is kindness, and in everyday life this usually works pretty well. But the vices of our civilisation are mostly also related to that aspiration, it seems to me, and now more than ever before. Even as Christian theology is now laughed to scorn, by me among many thousands, Christian ethics are triumphant in our civilisation as never before. But the underside of kindness is weakness, meekness, sentimentality, thoughtlessness – niceness as a substitute for competence and for thinking it through. Instead of thoughtful and because of that all the more hideously destructive brutality – the Roman vice – we indulge in impulsive and frivolous orgies of unthinking niceness.

This, if you think about it, is the running argument we have here at Samizdata with the zeitgeist of our time.

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The US military has raided an Iraqi Interior Ministry building and found evidence of torture and maltreatment of prisoners:
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Nick Barlow writes:

Given that The Sun today includes William Hague in its not-at-all-ridiculously-hyperbolic list of ‘traitor MPs’ who dared to vote against the Blessed Tony desire to keep the streets safe and free from people who look a bit shifty, I assume that means he’ll be sacked from his News Of The World weekly column?

After all, surely no one at News International would be willing to employ a traitor, would they? I mean, one could imagine a lesser company – one run by, say, someone who’d abandon his nationality and take another one just to own a television station – taking part in a such heinous of employment, but not News International.

Hague is not a traitor, he is an MP who is doing the job he was elected to do, by protecting his constituents’ liberties.

But, if News International think he is a traitor, and they are nevertheless willing to continue employing him, then clearly News International is a nest of treason. And in these days when terrorists are on the loose, we can’t be too careful. Consequently, senior figures in News International, including Rupert Murdoch, Rebekah Wade (editor of The Sun) and Andy Coulson (editor of News of the World) should immediately be arrested, held for 90 days without charge (of course), then be charged with treason and if found guilty, imprisonsed for life.

And life should mean life.

Israel’s foreign policy is constructed around the framework of its strong relationship with the USA. But recent events where the USA has vetoed Israeli arms exports prompt me to consider that perhaps Israel would be better off in the EU than allied with the USA.

The United States of America supplies Israel with $2 billion of aid every year. This is a significant sum of money, but it’s less than 2% of Israel’s GDP so it isn’t essential to Israel. Far more important, however, is the military and diplomatic assistance the USA provides Israel. The USA provides Israel with the latest weapons, does its best to make sure that states that might be opposed to Israel don’t get good weapons, gives Israel a free pass over its nuclear arsenal, makes sure there are no UN sanctions of Israel over its occupation of Palestine, and generally provides Israel with a guarantee that if ever there is a serious threat to Israel’s security, the USA will do whatever is in its power to stop that threat becoming reality.

In short, the USA does far more for Israel than would be in the USA’s strict interests from a Realpolitik point of view.

So, you might think that Israel gets a good deal from this. However, like everything in life, you don’t get owt for nowt. Because the USA is Israel’s only ally, and is pretty much the only country that Israel can rely on to be on its side, Israel is obliged not do do anything the USA seriously dislikes.
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Have a look at this:

As someone commented: “It couldn’t happen here. But that’s what we said before they abolished detention without trial, the presumption of innocence, double jeopardy…”

I would also point out that under the We Can Do Anything We Like Act which the government passed last year, they could abolish elections without having to pass further legislation.

Remember the article on Kiva, the website that links up microcredit lenders with borrowers?

The Sharpener article was mentioned in the European Tribune, and from it was picked up by the Daily Kos — and Kiva have now had a rush of new lenders, able to fund every loan application available on their website! As a commenter on dKos put it:

Jesus, we funded every single loan available. Slashdotting for social justice!

This means that small-scale entrepreneurs in Uganda now have the seed capital to break out of the cycle of poverty. So the next time someone tells you that blogging is pointless, that it’s just intellectual masturbation, tell them from me that they’re talking bollocks.

Microcredit — lending small amounts of money to poor people to help them set up small businesses — is not a new idea; it started in the 1970s when Muhammad Yunus set up Grameen bank. Since then, Grameen has proved outstandingly successful, lending over $3 billion and empowering millions of people.

A new twist on this idea is Kiva, the world’s first peer-to-peer, distributed microloan website, set up by Jessica and Matthew Flannery.
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Following the death of toddler Andrew Morton, who earlier this year was killed by a nutter firing an airgun, the government has decided to further restrict sales of airguns:

The UK Government is to impose tighter controls on airguns following the murder of Glasgow toddler Andrew Morton, BBC Scotland has learned.

The Home Office could confirm as early as Thursday plans to restrict the sale of weapons to registered gun dealers. Firearms legislation is reserved to Westminster but the Scottish Executive has been lobbying for the law on the sale of air weapons to be tightened. The changes would be included in the UK Violent Crime Reduction bill.

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Via Crooked Timber, I read that Niall Ferguson, writing in the Los Angeles Times, decries the decline of Christianity in Britain (evil registration required, or use BugMeNot):

* A void left in ‘Christendom’ by pervasive lack of belief may be creating a soft target for the religious fanaticism of others.

Americans tend to assume that what is going on in Europe today is a struggle between Islamic extremism and Western — or Judeo-Christian, if you will — tolerance. But this is only half right.

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Bloomberg is reporting a Saudi defence contract:

Saudi King Approves $5 Bln BAE Aircraft Upgrade, Digest Says

Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) — Saudi King Abdullah approved a plan to upgrade and replace 96 Tornado fighter aircraft made by BAE Systems Plc at cost of as much as $5 billion, Middle East Economic Digest reported.

Saudi Arabia will upgrade 64 of the aircraft delivered under the 1985 Al Yamamah agreement and replace another 32 in the biggest agreement for BAE in the Persian Gulf kingdom in a decade, the London-based weekly magazine reported today, without saying how it got the information. Still, the contract hasn’t yet been signed, MEED said.

BAE has about 2,000 U.K. workers in Saudi Arabia. Under Al Yamamah, BAE supplies weapons to the kingdom in return for payments linked to the price of oil. Average annual revenue from the weapons sales amounts to almost 1.7 billion pounds ($3.1 billion). BAE’s customer solutions and support unit, which oversees the program, generated a fifth of the company’s sales in 2003.

The news item doesn’t say what the 32 Tornados will be replaced with, but if they are being replaced with new jets from BAe, the natural candidate would be the Eurofighter Typhoon. So is Saudi Arabia buying the Eurofighter? It isn’t confirmed yet, but if it’s true, it is to be welcomed.
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