“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder”

The Brit historian Arnold Toynbee said this after analyzing all of the civilizations up to WW2. He would have put this in the suicide category.

WASHINGTON (AP) — — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses — even against their will — for private economic development.

It was a decision fraught with huge implications for a country with many areas, particularly the rapidly growing urban and suburban areas, facing countervailing pressures of development and property ownership rights.

The 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

As a result, cities have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes to generate tax revenue.

English common law, which is incorporated in the US constitution, secured the liberty of the person and their property.

According to Adam Smith, the expectation of profit from “improving one’s stock of capital” rests on private property rights, and the belief that property rights encourage the property holders to develop the property, generate wealth, and efficiently allocate resources based on the operation of the market is central to capitalism. From this evolved the modern conception of property as a right which is enforced by positive law, in the expectation that this would produce more wealth and better standards of living.

The Supreme Court has jettisoned this in favor of:

Socialism’s fundamental principles are centered on a critique of this concept, stating, among other things, that the cost of defending property is higher than the returns from private property ownership, and that even when property rights encourage the property-holder to develop his property, generate wealth, etc., he will only do so for his own benefit, which may not coincide with the benefit of other people or society at large (and which often goes directly against the interests of non-property-holders).

This is a corrupt real-estate broker’s charter, enacted by men and women who are corrupted by power. I don’t know where we go from here.

The Madness of Elites – Brit Doctors

Elite Brit doctors are obsessed with “child abuse”, so parents of young children should treat all Brit doctors as adversaries. One terrible example is on trial now.

His name is Meadow, and he coined “Meadow’s Law”:

…that one cot death in a family was a tragedy, two were suspicious and three was murder…

He reached this conclusion by squaring the probability of a child dying for causes unknown. Nobody with any statistical training would make this mistake – it treats deaths like throws of a dice, each of which is independent. But real life events are usually correlated, for causal reasons. If your house is burgled, you’re much more likely to be burgled again. If you live to 70, your life expectancy is much longer than it was at birth. And your kids are likely to resemble each-other.

I feel bad about this guy. The first useful thing I did after leaving college was to use statistical correlation to show why some US missiles were malfunctioning. Over the years, I noticed Meadow in news reports, shrugged at his idiocy, and assumed someone else would put him right. They didn’t – he went on to testify against dozens of women who had lost their babies, arguing that:

the chance of two babies dying of cot death within an affluent family was one in 73 million.

The real figure, it emerged yesterday, was one in 77.

Nobody understands these early deaths, but its probably genetic. So, if you lose one baby, you’re more likely to lose the next.

Based on this madman’s evidence, Brit courts sent dozens of parents – people just like you and me – to jail and put their children into care homes. They even forced some to have their kids adopted.

Following a court case in 2000 where, on the evidence of Professor Sir Roy Meadow, they were held responsible for poisoning their youngest child by giving her 12-16 improving tablets prescribed for their eldest child’s bedwetting, the two elder children were put with foster carers and the two younger ones adopted.

“I wouldn’t even recognize the younger ones now,” says Michelle, looking at a picture taken at the “goodbye” meeting when they were only three and five.

Meadow is now retired, and the worst he faces is losing his license. I hope that he gets sued for every last cent he has, but the Brit medical elite will probably prevent that.

Doctor who accused father of killing sons escapes total ban

A doctor who falsely accused a father of killing his two baby sons, on the evidence of a television interview, avoided being struck off for misconduct yesterday.

Prof David Southall, 57, described by the judge as a “paediatrician of international renown”, concluded that Stephen Clark had killed his children after watching a documentary on Channel 4 in 2000.

Unfortunately, doctors get the backing of lefty family-hating social workers.

In the early 1990s…in Rochdale, 20 children were removed from their homes after a six-year-old boy told teachers he had seen babies murdered; the claims were dismissed by the High Court.

In the Orkney islands, village gossip about satanic practices led to the removal of nine children from their homes; after a £6 million inquiry, all charges were dismissed and social workers criticized for planting ideas in children’s heads.

Criticized, that must have hurt!

Justice, Italian Style

Opinion Journal interviews the renowned Italian journalist being prosecuted for publishing a book critical of Islam. The episode illustrates the yawning gulf between US and European freedoms of speech and the sheer awfulness of Italian justice.

Oriana Fallaci faces jail because last year she published a book:

…which has sold many more than a million copies all over Europe — called “The Force of Reason.” Its astringent thesis is that the Old Continent is on the verge of becoming a dominion of Islam, and that the people of the West have surrendered themselves fecklessly to the “sons of Allah.”

An activist judge in Bergamo, in northern Italy, took it upon himself to admit a complaint against Ms. Fallaci that even the local prosecutors would not touch.

The complainant, one Adel Smith — who, despite his name, is Muslim, and an incendiary public provocateur to boot — has a history of anti-Fallaci crankiness, and is widely believed to be behind the publication of a pamphlet, “Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci,” which exhorts Muslims to “eliminate” her.

(Ironically, Mr. Smith, too, faces the peculiar charge of vilipendio against religion — Roman Catholicism in his case — after he described the Catholic Church as “a criminal organization” on television. Two years ago, he made news in Italy by filing suit for the removal of crucifixes from the walls of all public-school classrooms, and also, allegedly, for flinging a crucifix out of the window of a hospital room where his mother was being treated. “My mother will not die in a room where there is a crucifix,” he said, according to hospital officials.)

Which confirms that Italian justice is indeed totally politicized by “activist” (= socialist) judges.

The good news is that Oriana Fallaci is safe in New York City protected by the First Amendment. At 72, she’s still a stylish Italian woman:

…stricken with a cancer that, for the moment, permits only the consumption of liquids…we drank champagne in the course of a three-hour interview…

Long may she live. And maybe Mrs G and I should abandon our Italian project.

Updated Blogroll

Some changes, focusing on sources of hard data, incisive analysis, openness, humor.

I’ve dumped Samizdata and No Pasaran for not accepting comments – either technical snafus or cliquish. The whole point of the blogosphere is that you get to shoot back!

New entrants:

Data: Missile Threat, Strategy Page (also has a cute begging parrot!)

Analysis: American Future, National Review, Weekly Standard (I’ve relented), VDH

EU numbers: EU ROTA

Comment: Melanie Phillips’s Diary, Mark in Mexico, London Calling

Funny: Scrappleface

Our troops: Major K, Lt Rusten Currie, 365 And A Wake Up, Michael Yon

The Madness of Elites – The Euro Disaster

Much is made of the madness of crowds. But crowds are actually wise, and the madness of elites is more pervasive and more damaging – here’s the first of several examples.

The 17th Century tulip-mania and 1990s dot-com boom are cited as proofs of the madness of crowds. In fact these are examples of investors acting rationally (buy on the up), & all but the later investors did well.

The madness of elites is a nasty phenomenon that is common in Europe – elites there model themselves on the monarchs and courtiers they’ve replaced. Mark Steyn remarks:

My favorite headline last week was in the International Herald Tribune: “EU leaders and voters see paths diverge.” Traditionally in free societies, when the paths of the leaders and the voters “diverge”, it’s the leaders who depart the scene.

Not so in Europe. The Euro is a great example of a mad elite. When the Euro was mooted in the mid 90s, the Germans felt their economy was being stifled by the Mark being “too strong”. All the others (France, Greece, Italy etc) thought their currencies too weak. The magic solution was to merge them, and like Goldilocks and baby bear’s prorridge, get something that was just right.

Things went well for a while – the Euro dropped to 82 cents. The German elite was happy with a weak currency (the German people were not, but who cared about them). The other countries had stronger currencies, and mortgages got cheaper. However prices shot up – when we were in Rome a while back there was strike against this. Still, that was just the proletariat.

Sadly, the German economy continued to tank – turned out that their problem was high taxation and regulation, not the high Mark.

Then reality intervened. 9/11 had the US fighting for its life, and the $ weakened. Many Americans stopped buying weasel-goods – my neighbor in Virginia put a placard on his (Daimler) Chrysler minivan: “Made In America, Not Germany“. The US withdrawal from continental Europe started, moving billions of $ annually out of Germany. The Euro rose, as the markets worried about American failure in the war.

In a clever move, the Germans and French reduced the Euro to junk status by dumping the Stability Pact they’d enacted to underpin the Euro. But it still kept rising because the markets thought it safer than the wartime US$.

By now the whole of continental Europe was in trouble. Double-digit unemployment, stagnant or declining economies. not able to afford to defend itself – Israel has superior armed forces to the whole bunch combined.

But then, the voters in just two of the nations finally got to rate the EU, and gave it failing grades. The markets decided the EU is a house of cards & the Euro is back where it was 18 months ago, and is forecast to hit $1 by the year-end.

The voters were wise, since a weak Euro is good for Europe. Economies will pick up as they sell more and they’ll buy more domestically.

Longer term though, I think Europe is not democratic enough to solve the problems of its declining population, huge entitlement programs, over-regulation, and weak technology base. It’s best hope is it becomes a suburb of India. Failing which, it’ll end up a suburb of Egypt.

Let’s hope the voters get to choose the option.