Comments on: All about oil?

By: David T

David T — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 11:45:00 +0000

Laughland aside, what’s wrong with Cato-style state-sovereignty anti-interventionism? Nothing. I was just trying to place this guy and his organisation on the political map. Now, I think, I have.

By: David T

David T — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 11:44:27 +0000

Laughland aside, what’s wrong with Cato-style state-sovereignty anti-interventionism? Nothing. I was just trying to place this guy and his organisation on the political map. Now, I think, I have.

By: David T

David T — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 11:43:55 +0000

Laughland aside, what’s wrong with Cato-style state-sovereignty anti-interventionism? Nothing. I was just trying to place this guy and his organisation on the political map. Now, I think, I have.

By: David T

David T — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 11:43:16 +0000

Laughland aside, what’s wrong with Cato-style state-sovereignty anti-interventionism? Nothing. I was just trying to place this guy and his organisation on the political map. Now, I think, I have.

By: informant

informant — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 06:02:31 +0000

The US is currently net-gaining a new person every 11 seconds. There are 293 million people here today. So in less than 3 years we’ll hit 300 million. The world population hit 6 billion on October 12, 1999. It’s now at 6,384,241,104. In less than 5 years the world has gained enough people to fill the US one and a half times over. This has nothing to do with available land or water, or any other quantifiable essential resource. It has everything to do with a moral system that is baselessly anthropocentric and delusionally confident in its own superiority, self-deifying and hopelessly incompetent. Without space travel as a safety valve there’s only abrupt reduction in human population worldwide ahead. Even with it. That’s the real issue. This is superficial kindness hiding ruthless manipulation. We can’t let all these people die, from hunger or disease, or let them kill each other, and yet we can’t feed them, and the burdens of human overpopulation are making it impossible for anything other than humans and their symbionts to survive, and then only in increasingly artificial environments that have no longevity. It’s the refusal to accept the responsibilities of the godlike powers of life and death we hold. We save lives and then abandon them to the inevitable consequences of millions of other saved lives. It’s cowardice. Bogus morality and a steady attrition of human character. At the same time there’s a rise of callous viciousness, an adolescent nastiness that is crueler than any 19th century eugenicist’s dream of utopian efficiency. Are we going to be nice to the people around us now, or to the ones who come after us? Economically we’re taxing our children, taking money from them to support a way of life that’s heedless and selfish. Environmentally we’re taxing life itself, feasting on it like feudal barons, without a thought for tomorrow, or next year. It’s tragic to see those deaths in Darfur. Are we seeing the bodies of the women and children of Faloojeh? Are we seeing the traffic statistics here in the US? Cars still kill more children than any other single cause. We have this godlike vision, but we don’t see everything, and what we do see isn’t in perspective. What’s the perspective for Darfur? What’s the perspective for anywhere, for anyone? The power of all this information is being wielded by infants, who just want the bad things to stop, and they don’t want to have to think about the consequences, of what happens when you keep saving people’s lives in a finite world. The knee-jerk response is to say -well, what should we do then? I can only suggest that if you’re going to be gods, then be gods. Don’t get halfway into it and decide you’d rather be children.

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 04:16:30 +0000

Reasons why calls for intervention in darfur might not deserve the skepticism apparently necessary after Afghanistan and Iraq (not necessarily conclusive): Novelty of the cause: Even after a year the issue is new so there is no timing puzzle. With Iraq it is not clear why intervention was not earlier, eg after first Gulf War, during the subsequent uprising or later after building a consensus and allowing the inspectors to do their work. In some sense the problem is being pursued as it arises so there need not be a hidden extra ingredient in the decision. Pure motives: Mission accomplished only when the killing has stopped rather than when the Taliban is ousted or Saddam toppled. No alternative: If nothing is done then there will be genocide and famine so ohw could it be worse? Redemption: Intervention in Darfur would prove that our (Angloosphere) motives at least really do live up to our rhetoric. Not sure how convincing these are but I think they are real differences.

By: Jonathan Edelstein

Jonathan Edelstein — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 03:18:54 +0000

By the way, in the old days the UN defined genocide as killing off about a tenth of an ethnic grouping. Genocide has had a legal definition since 1948, as provided in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
This article is arguably over-inclusive (what does it mean to intend to destroy an ethnic group "in part?"), but overall it isn't a bad working definition. In order to constitute genocide under the convention, an act (1) must be one of the five prohibited activities, and (2) must be committed with the intent to destroy the target group, either by physically annihilating it or making it cease to exist as a group. In Darfur, the janjaweed are committing at least three of the prohibited activities, so the question is one of intent. If they mean to destroy the Fur, then they are guilty of genocide; if they intend to drive the Fur into exile and grab their land, then they are guilty of crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute. Given the eliminationist rhetoric of the janjawid and the sheer scale of their mass murder, there's at least a plausible case for genocide; at the very least, they are guilty of multiple crimes against humanity.

By: reader

reader — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 01:24:40 +0000

I was a discussant for a 2001 AEI panel on international law, in which Laughland was presenting. My three word assessment: Completely, totally, nuts. That’s easy targeting, Dan. A short scan of your blog from before the Iraq war get these funny items (besides your connection with the AEI): – linking to Safire as a source?? That guy is even sillier than the subject here. – French bashing every other day. – nice observations like: “Gee, I thought great powers were capable of doing more than one thing at a time. That’s why they’re called great powers.” An especially relevant observation re. sending troops to Darfur. That’s the trouble of publishing things. The subject of today might be slightly more eccentric than you, but that’s probably because he spends too much time in France, eh?

By: abb1

abb1 — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 23:45:33 +0000

As you can see I’d also googled Laughland, and come to the conclusion that he was some form of freewheeling state-sovereignty anti-interventionist type: perhaps a bit like the Cato Institute people. Laughland aside, what’s wrong with Cato-style state-sovereignty anti-interventionism? What do regime-change interventionists have to brag about: Kosovo – is that it? Anything else? Give me a break.

By: mc

mc — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 21:42:32 +0000

“So the Guardian also runs a few of them. It would be a boring newspaper otherwise.” Eh, exactly… since when is the Guardian supposed to be moderate? They’ve published far more debatable stuff. They’ve also published far better stuff. If I want fair and balanced I know where to turn… er, not. I’d rather take one potential Guardian crackpot once in a while, thanks.

By: Dan Drezner

Dan Drezner — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 21:22:43 +0000

I was a discussant for a 2001 AEI panel on international law, in which Laughland was presenting. My three word assessment: Completely, totally, nuts.

By: Tom Runnacles

Tom Runnacles — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 21:15:00 +0000

Fascinating – I read Laughland’s piece in the print edition en route to work today, and wondered what on earth it was doing in the Guardian. Nice digging chaps.

By: David

David — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 20:56:52 +0000

Antiwar.com has at least one Laughland piece: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/laughland16.html And Pat Buchanan’s magazine American Conservative also has at least one piece by him: http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/feature.html

By: Reader

Reader — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 20:53:33 +0000

It is customary to have outspoken and foolish op-ed writers. The good old NY times sets the standard with people from W. Safire to Mr. Air Miles. So the Guardian also runs a few of them. It would be a boring newspaper otherwise.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 19:05:47 +0000

This post, and the complementary one at Harry’s Place by David T, are prime examples of the utility of blogs. Between them Chris and David have totally undermined an editorial in The Guardian, that would previously sat there unchalleneged, except for a critical letter or two. One can only hope that the Guardian editorial board have read both posts and will perhaps consider more carefully who they invite to write op-eds.