Another problem

The reverberations from the discovery that Benno Ohnesorg's killer was actually a Stasi agent are still going on. In the meantime, another potentially embarrassing discovery may have been made. It seems possible that Rosa Luxembourg's grave, "a shrine of sorts, visited every year by a procession of old communists and young left-wing activists", may not hold the murdered revolutionary's body after all.

As Der Spiegel reports:

But now, a startling discovery indicates that Rosa Luxemburg may never have inhabited that much-hallowed grave. If Michael Tsokos, head of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences at Berlin's Charité hospital, is correct, then Luxemburg's body has been stored in the hospital's basement since 1919.

One would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at this.

Apologies ...

... for not replying to comments. I am having as many technical problems as everybody else and I am immensely grateful to people who have fought their way through those problems to post comments and responses. Still trying to sort out what it is that's causing all the aggro and how to overcome it. As soon as I can, I shall reply. Please go on trying.

Whose fault was it?

There is a storm brewing up around the forthcoming 65th anniversary celebration of D-Day because of the lack of invitation to the Queen. Britain will, thus, be represented by one of the most unpopular prime ministers in modern history, Gordon Brown and there will be lots of pictures of him, President Obama and President Sarkozy. But no Her Majesty.

Not only is the Queen the Head of State in Britain and Head of the Commonwealth (ahem, who is representing the Canadians?), she is also the only living head of state who had actually served in the armed forces in World War II.

In 1945 Princess Elizabeth joined the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) as No. 230873 Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor, drove a military truck and rose to the rank of Junior Commnder. There are pictures of her in uniform; I chose one where she is actually mucking around with engines.

So who of the three self-important narcissists made the decision to insult not just the Queen but also the veterans who will be attending the ceremony? Was it President Obama, whose wife decided to treat Her Majesty as if she were a granny in an old people's home? Was it President Sarkozy, who married the luscious Carla rather hastily because she wanted to be invited to Windsor? Or was it our own Gordon Brown who is just sour enough and stupid enough to decide on such an unpopular move?

Two bloggers on Chicagoboyz have decided that it must be mostly President Obama's fault (a view that seems to be shared by other American publications such as the New Yorker).

Time Magazine thinks it was the French and find it all very amusing, though, one assumes they would be less amused if the President with his enormous entourage had been snubbed. But then his uncle (or maybe great-uncle) liberated Auschwitz (or maybe not, as that was liberated by the Red Army).

That it was the perfidious French seems to be the general assumption though, I think, they are right who consider that Sarkozy would have had the nod on it from Obama. (Sorry, but I think we can dispense with outdated titles like president.)

Me? I tend to agree with the veterans, as quoted by the Daily Mail. It was almost certainly Gordon Brown's fault. Well, it had to be. Everything else is. It seems there will be no royals at the ceremony, which means that the three narcissists can have as many photographs of themselves trying to cosy up to the veterans they are unworthy of even speaking to, as they like.


As for the Queen, I expect she will survive. She continues to be the most popular public figure in this country and hugely popular in others. And let us not forget that she, unlike venal politicians, has served this country in war and in peace. There, I have admitted it: I am an unashamed monarchist.

The other rather delightful picture is of the two princesses broadcasting from Windsor (very near London for non-British readers) to the children of Britain and the Commonwealth in October 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain.

Good point

I have just started reading Dambisa Moyo's important book "Dead Aid" and was, therefore, especially interested in Marian Tupy's article in the Financial Times today. Marian is a very sound chap, who writes about trade, freedom, Eastern Europe and Africa with occasional forays into the European Union, on which he holds all the right opinions. (He is against it for very good reasons.)

In his article Marian makes the point that all opponents of aid find themselves making sooner or later: it has a strong racist element.He compares attitudes to Africa with attitudes to post-Communist Eastern Europe:

Following the collapse of communism, virtually everyone assumed that the key to future prosperity in CEB lay in economic reforms, not in foreign aid. Implicitly, almost everyone understood that the people in the region would simply have to respond to market incentives, and produce goods and services that domestic and foreign customers would want to buy. Inability to compete with the west was inconceivable. Failure was not an option.

Such a mindset is demonstrably lacking when it comes to Africa. Globalization tends to be seen as a threat and seldom as an opportunity. Local politicians fret about competition from China and Bangladesh. Non-governmental organisations caution against liberalisation lest Africans be taken advantage of by unscrupulous westerners. Musicians and movie stars urge aid, not reform, as a solution to poverty.

Mind you, that was before the East Europeans were forced to readjust to EU rules but that is another story.

I find the idea of using the epithet "racist" against fervent proponents of aid rather an attractive one.

We need better stories

This lunchtime I went to hear Dan Ikenson of Cato Institute. Sadly, it was not in Washington DC (though, actually, I find that city rather tiring) but in London, the Adam Smith Institute, to be precise. His talk and the subsequent discussion was on the merits of free trade, the demerits of protectionism in a world of rapid transport and long production chains and the need for policy makers to understand these simple facts.

Among other points he mentioned that "we need better stories". In other words we, on our side of the political spectrum, must learn to produce good sound-bites and heart-rending stories. This can seem a problem only to economists and that is, of course, what has happened to much of the right - it has been captured by economists, who produce wonderful theories and spectacular graphs but find it hard to cope with the human side of the issues.

Mr Ikenson told of how his well-prepared presentations would be trumped by somebody referring to a clothes factory in, say, North Carolina being closed and what about the workers there. To which one should reply, said Mr Ikenson, well, what about the single mother with two children who cannot easily get a good job (or a full-time job at all) and who would have to pay far higher proportion of her income for her children's clothes if there were no cheap imports.

One could develop that story: people can get out of poverty by education and training. If that single mother with two children spends less on clothes and shoes for her children, she can spend more money on educational and training matters, such as books, visits to exhibitions, adult education classes and so on.

Let's have more and better stories. We need to collect them.

Devolving power?

There is just one point that has been missed by many of the commentariat in both old and new media about the competition between David Cameron and Jack Straw for ideas that involve tinkering round the edges of our derelict parliamentary system.

Recall of MPs, set-term parliaments, committees elected by back-bench members, more scrutiny of legislation, all sound wonderful ideas but none of them tackle the main issues of legislation being done by bodies we do not elect or control.

Cameron is also talking about devolving power to ever lower rungs of government, an idea that he may or may not have acquired from Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell. Nothing wrong with that, though having a quango to supervise the House of Commons finances does not seem to me to be a step in the right direction.

This, however, has turned into articles and headlines that tell us about David Cameron wanting to devolve power to the people. If that is what the Boy-King means then he has completely misunderstood the basic tenet of modern English and Anglospheric power structure. The state cannot devolve power to the people because it belongs to them in the first place; the state does not grant the people liberties because those liberties are the people's property. It is all the other way round: the people might, for various reasons, loan powers and agree to forego their liberties for certain purposes. It is high time our politicians grasped this simple fact.

About that North Korean nuclear explosion

Whether it is true or not and whether it is as powerful as described, we have to treat is as such. However, while all the usual suspects wring our hands, let us not forget that this is not precisely unexpected. As Powerline reminds us, John Bolton predicted it not long ago and was abused by the Left for being insane and alarmist. Apologies, anyone?

More on Instapundit. And yet, next time round, we shall go through the same pattern. Tiresome, isn't it? We know this all too well on this side of the Pond. Nobody wants the things that we on the eurosceptic side warn about; then somehow all those things happen and we are told to move on. Nobody is a very powerful person.