Africa 101

Normally sensible people like Powerline still don’t get aid to Africa. It’s not whether we should help, which of course we should. But how can we help? Shoveling money into the pockets of corrupt dictators DOES NOT HELP. They use it to oppress their suffering populations.

Powerline, in a reference to a singer who thinks we should aid Africa:

…don’t worry, I haven’t gone soft in the head. I generally prefer private to government assistance for humanitarian purposes, and some areas in Africa suffer from political dysfunction that makes effective aid impossible. But, humanitarian considerations aside, I think the geopolitical case for doing what we can to help Africa move forward–as some countries there are already doing quite effectively–is a slam dunk.

OK, here’s what you have to do if you want to “help Africa move forward”.

1. Kill the thugs running these countries.
2. Remove US and EU farm subsidies so that the counties can sell you their stuff.
3. Don’t give them money.

Did I miss something?

Watch Out Poland!

Idly watching the Euro tank, I picked up a gem of German morality here:

Mr Schroeder appeared to rebuff the UK’s calls for a review of farm subsidies.

Pointing to the deal reached on French farm subsidies in 2002, he said: “Germany has a habit – and I think it’s a good habit – to stick to agreements concluded and contracts signed.”

Obviously the German habit doesn’t extend to honoring treaties like the one Germany signed in 1984 guaranteeing the level of Brit funding of the EU.

Self-serving hypocrisy is in an ancient German tradition:

On September 1, 1939, Hitler told the Nazi Reichstag that Poland had tried to invade Germany, and the Wehrmacht was returning fire since 5:45 AM. Actually, in a carefully planned and highly mobile attack codenamed Fall Weiss (Case White) planned by Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Brauchitsch, German land, sea, and air forces were moving rapidly into Poland.

UN: 2 Steps Back

The UN just re-appointed its appeasing nuke inspector for an unprecedented third term, leaving him free to grease Iran’s slide to nuclear weapons.

UN nuclear watchdog IAEA board unanimously re-appointed Mohamed ElBaradei for fifth term as agency head. US which previously sought his ouster joined vote.

The only silver lining I can see is that Bush has given up on the UN & no longer cares that it’s run by appeasers, crooks and child molesters.

“You can’t fix in six months what it took 35 years to destroy.”

Wise words fromThe Command Post.

“You can’t fix in six months what it took 35 years to destroy.”

These words, spoken by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Iraq’s first democratically elected Prime Minister in half a century, should be inscribed in three-foot tall characters as a preface to all the reporting from Iraq.

And also be inscribed in the minds of the American and British people and their elected representatives.

Germany didn’t get its first democratically elected government until August 14 1949, almost 10 years after it started WW2, and 4 years after its defeat.

Why Not Juries For Supreme Courts?

The jurors’ comments following Jacko’s acquittal showed the strength of the ancient jury system. The US and UK could use that strength to control their judicial despotism.

Jurors remained guarded about details of their 30 hours of deliberations over seven days but offered some insight during a news conference, saying they were irritated by the testimony of the accuser’s mother, who at one point snapped her fingers at them.

“I disliked it intensely when she snapped her fingers at us,” said one juror, a woman. She said she thought to herself, “Don’t snap your fingers at me, lady.”

Whatever your views on the guilt or innocence of Jackson (I have none), this was the jury system working as designed. The charges were based on assertions by a few people, so the problem was to assess their credibility. And the jury decided that they were not credible.

We assess people’s credibility in every interaction, every day. But for many reasons – prejudice, pressure, culture, we can get it wrong. The jury system fixes this problem by bringing together 12 people and requiring that they agree.

There’s a lot of experimental evidence that groups of people solve such problems much better than individuals. The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowieki, offers a great primer on the topic.

A Brit scientist, Frances Galton, pioneered this field, in 1906. At a Country Fair, he witnessed a competition for folks to guess the weight of meat a live ox would provide after being slaughtered and dressed. 800 people tried their luck. Many were butchers and farmers, but many had no inside knowledge of cattle. Galton took all the guesses, graphed them (they formed a classic bell curve), and worked out the mean, which was 1,197 pounds. The actual weight turned out to be 1,198 pounds, so the crowd’s judgment was essentially perfect.

This is one of my favorite stories about experimental science: anyone can do it (Galton was 85 at the time), you need to be constantly inquisitive, mundane topics can yield stunning insights. And you should always run the numbers and ignore opinions and predispositions.

So here’s my suggestion: add juries to all State and Federal Supreme Courts and give them the final decision. No need for filibusters or nuclear options or appointing left- or right-tilted judges. Just give the power to the people – collectively, they know best.