Utopia, you are standing in it!

As Israel’s troops and tanks sit waiting at the border to invade Gaza, I’m starting to wonder if they really will invade.  For when I remember that Israel’s avowed aim is to get rid of Hamas, and then think of the options  Israel has (I’ve concluded that a ground invasion was the best tactic), I […]

New questions about the war

Below is my column in The Hill on the imposition of a gag order on former President Donald Trump by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. Despite my long-standing criticism of Trump’s personal attacks on judges and critics, this gag order should be curtailed or struck down on appeal. While the odds tend to favor the lower…

The Trump Gag Order Should Be Struck Down

‘The Coalition promised regime change but instead brought about state collapse.’ (Unnamed Iraqi general quoted on page 101) This is a disappointing book. Emma Sky is mentioned half a dozen time in Thomas E. Ricks’s book The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006 to 2008. Her story is extraordinary. […]

The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq by Emma Sky (2015)

Randomistas: Fighting Poverty with Science  by Esther Duflo Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters  by Steven Pinker Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker  Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are  by Seth…

Book recommendations (in no particular order)

I’ve written a few sceptical posts here over the years about the annual (or so) Technology Investment Network’s (TIN) boosterish reports on the New Zealand tech sector. The overall story was just even close to as upbeat as the reports liked to make out. Yesterday a link to a new TIN report turned up in […]

The manufacturing sector

The other day I reproduced the montage of headlines below from The Free Press, a montage showing how New York Times headlines about the Gazan hospital “explosion” changed from day to day. First it was an “Israeli strike” that killed hundreds in the hospital, then just a “strike” (there must have been some doubt then…

NYT “explains” changing headlines about hospital bombings as a result of taking what Hamas says as “news”

I got this Algemeiner link from reader Norm, who added: Far-left representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives are calling for a cease fire in “occupied Palestine.” These representatives seem not to understand that Gaza has been a self-governing entity since 2005–occupied by Hamas. Or, perhaps they do know this and are referring the entire […]

“Progressives” introduce cease-fire bill aimed at Israel and “Occupied Palestine”

‘If you put my cousin on the council, I will slit his throat.’ (Typical threat from an Iraqi sheikh, Occupational Hazards, page 231) Rory Stewart Stewart (born 1973) is posh. He comes from a family of Scottish landed gentry. Like lots of poshos born into a family which helped administer the last shreds of empire, […]

Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq by Rory Stewart (2007)

Workers’ Power. The power of the NZ working-class reached its zenith in 1974, when 10,000 workers marched in protest at the Drivers Union leader, Bill Andersen’s, arrest – and secured his freedom. The Labour Government of Norman Kirk was frightened of the organised working-class then. Fifty years later, there’s precious little left of the private…

Losing The Working Class.

I wrote more than four years ago about a misguided soda tax in Philadelphia. This video from John Stossel updates us on what’s happened. As usual, John makes good points I’m especially amazed that he was able to get an overpaid local politician to go on camera to defend such an indefensible levy. And it […]

Soda Taxes Are Wrong, but Not Educating Kids is Worse

Poland held its general election for both parliamentary chambers yesterday, 15 October. An alliance of parties opposed to the incumbent Law and Justice party (PiS) has won. In the voting for the first chamber (Sejm) PiS retains a plurality but is down to 36.4% of the votes (per Wikipedia with around 90% reporting). Civic Coalition, […]

Poland 2023 (and, more briefly, Slovakia)