Who Killed the Enlightenment?

The Untold Story

by Brendan O'Neill

There were three terrible things about 9/11.

The first was the apocalyptic barbarism, the destruction of 3,000 innocent lives. The second was the pummeling of the New York City skyline, the greatest thing yet conceived by human minds and constructed by human hands, as outrageous as if a few thousand years ago someone had blown up the pyramids.

And the third was the way this atrocity allowed Western progressives to externalize the threat to our values. To treat the withering of the Western Enlightenment as something brought about by bearded foreigners who seem to have been time-warped from the 7th century.

That third terrible thing about that terrible day might prove to be 9/11’s most toxic legacy. For not only did those plane-weaponizing madmen end lives and take down metal, glass, and concrete structures—they also helped to warp politics itself, inciting onetime critical thinkers to ditch the thought in favor of simplistically reciting that they, like an exotic virus, are destroying our values.

With 9/11, Westerners of a liberal, democratic bent seemed finally to find an answer to that most troubling question: “Who killed the Enlightenment?”

It was Islamists. Outsiders. Extremists under the spell of faraway death cults. If we in the actual West bear any bit of responsibility, apparently it’s only insofar as we have “appeased Islamism”—that is, facilitated them, the destroyers of liberal values. Sadly—tragically—this is the wrong answer to the question of who killed the Enlightenment, and we’ll pay a high price for answering incorrectly.

Argentine Drug Dealing: A Local Tour Of Hustlers, Cops And Politicians

Putting the 'organized' in organized crime, necessary for Argentina's efficient distribution of illegal drugs

By Jorge Ossona

In Argentina's big cities, drug-dealing operates in complex equivalents of distribution 'chains.' And yet as unstable and chaotic a world as it is, the illicit sale of narcotics may be ordered along two or three basic principles.

Cocaine trafficking constitutes the crux of activities that flow through an established hierarchy, from the top supplier to local-level "tips" (punteros) — your neighborhood dealer. These should not be confused with the classic political "dealer," drug dealers being in a different category even if both types recognize and interact with each other.

The dealer must inevitably have detailed information about everything happening in his or her territory, in order to formulate the widest range of solutions. Politicians usually tolerate local dealers — the "tips" — because they know they are running franchise operations conceded by the police and sections of the communal power structure. At the same time, members of their families or local supporters — indeed themselves — might very well be consumers, which is reason enough for interactive circuits to emerge between these two references of local life.

People merely perceive them differently in the neighborhood. Regardless of his or her style, the politician is considered a positive and universal mediator in the face of individual and collective emergencies, while the drug dealer is both feared and despised, being judged a "merchant of death."

Cracks and soldiers

In all neighborhoods there is a varying number of youth gangs including boys and girls who work and study, and "lazy" types — the familiarly termed "ni-nis" neither working nor studying — always party to a range of offenses. They consume considerable amounts of beer and wine at street parties, or other alcoholic beverages "blended" variously with mind-altering substances that circulate in a little-studied market.

The most compulsive of these, the "cracks" (fisura), are also small-time dealers.

Some of these can become "tips" or neighborhood dealers, for which they will need arms and vehicles — mainly motorbikes — and backers or garantors higher up in the drug hierarchy.

They must also have a parental structure that will give them the rationale they lack, through division of labor and a fixed domicile guarded by "soldiers." These youngsters' temerity is fed by showing off their cars, motorbikes, expensive phones and sophisticated weapons. Their group would eventually need an emblematic name that somehow expresses its "ethics" and the "destiny" it must live out without hypocrisy.

Above neighborhood gangs are the "wholesalers," a more silent level of suppliers who managed at some point to move up the difficult cursus honorum of drug dealing. Personal references are more important at this level than your family or group. The quantities sold here are greater than those of the neighborhood, so the only people arriving at the wholesaler's home are envoys of neighborhood dealers who are customers.

Cocaine is at the heart of the chain, but a dealer at this level can also sell marijuana independently, usually provided by Paraguayan dealers. Wholesalers have a defined jurisdiction and specific subordinates, with exclusive relationships that cannot be bypassed without breaking the professinoal "code."

Drugs and politics

Then there is the large-scale distributor, who confers the "seal" or label to the entire chain, and imposes minimum standards of quality on what neighborhood dealers sell in his or her name. The third-level trafficker's reputation and competitiveness are at stake in the neighborhood. Every week the entire chain pays those monies agreed on, with which they will pay their next-level Peruvian, Bolivian or Colombian suppliers living in luxury districts, but also "taxes" owed to the State in the zone where their franchise operates.

Situated in a comfortable position between the second and third levels is a middleman or "reference" (referente), a strategic figure ensuring that the entire chain functions. The "reference" handles total, gross quantities coming in from the third-level distributor and monies paid in by neighborhood "wholesalers." The middle man is the one who pays off the corrupt police "street chief" with what is referred to as the "toll charge."

This is taken to the commissioner who sends a portion of the booty onto a "communal godfather" who may be at the summit of the political pyramid. This last circuit almost always involves a territory's secretive political "dealers," who also negotiate with police the protection to be given for other crimes committed in their zone of influence.

Read more at:

http://www.worldcrunch.com/rss/culture-society/argentine-drug-dealing-a-local-tour-of-hustlers-cops-and-politicians/narc-dealer-traffic-distributors-punteros/c3s14708/#.UtluzNL8JD8

The West's Catastrophic Defeat in the Middle East

The West's double failure, incapable of building a common strategy, is a sign of a now 'post-American' region.

By Dominique Moisi

Bashar al-Assad is still in power in Damascus and al-Qaeda's black flag was recently waving above Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq. Not only has the process of fragmentation in Syria now spilled over to Iraq, but these two realities also share a common cause that could be summarized into a simple phrase: the failure of the West.

The capture, even though temporary, of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi by Sunni militias claiming links to al-Qaeda, is a strong and even humiliating symbol of the failure of the policies the United States carried out in Iraq. A little more than a decade after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime - and after hundreds of thousands of deaths on the Iraqi side and more than 5,000 on the American side - we can only lament a sad conclusion: All that for this!

In Syria, the same admission of failure is emerging. Assad and his loyal allies - Russia and Iran - have actually emerged stronger from their confrontation with the West. Civilian massacres, including with chemical weapons, did not change anything. The regime is holding tight, despite losing control of important parts of its territory, thanks to its allies' support and, most importantly, the weakness of its opponents and those who support them.

In reality, from the Middle East to Africa, the entire idea of outside intervention is being challenged in a widely post-American region. How and when can one intervene appropriately? At which point does not intervening become, to quote the French diplomat Talleyrand following the assassination of the Duke of Enghien in 1804, "worse than a crime, a mistake?"

When is intervention necessary? "Humanitarian emergency" is a very elastic concept. Is the fate of Syrian civilians less tragic than that of Libyans? Why intervene in Somalia in 1992 and not inSudan? The decision to intervene reveals, in part, selective emotions that can also correspond to certain sensitivities or, in a more mundane way, to certain best interests of the moment.

Intervention becomes more probable when it follows the success of some other action; or, on the contrary, a decision to abstain that led to massacre and remorse. The tragedy of the African Great Lakes in 1994 - not to mention the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia in 1995 - certainly contributed to the West's decision to intervene in Kosovo in 1999. In reality, the intervention of a given country at a given time is typically driven by multiple factors: the existence of an interventionist culture, a sense of urgency, a minimum of empathy towards the country or the cause justifying the intervention, and, of course, the existence of resources that are considered, rightly or wrongly, sufficient and well-adapted.

A French example

But more than "when," it is a question of "how" - the two being often inextricably linked. Intervening alone can have many benefits, including the rapidity of execution, which often leads to efficient operations. The French army was not unhappy to end up alone in Mali. On the other hand, although it can slow down the operations schedule, forming a coalition gives the intervention more legitimacy, and helps share the costs and risks between the various operators.

It is likely that France, which after the Mali operation has engaged in the Central African Republic in a much more uncertain conflict, would now prefer having some support - for reasons related to costs and resources as well as geopolitics. No one wants to share success, but no one wants to end up alone in a potential deadlock either.

America's failure - in Iraq and in Syria - should be considered the West's failure as a whole, even though Washington's share of responsibility is unquestionably the largest.

Failure is generally the result of the interaction between three main factors that are almost always the same: arrogance, ignorance and indifference. Arrogance leads to overestimating one's capacities and to underestimating the enemy's capacity for resistance. It is all too easy to win the war but lose the peace.

"Democracy in Baghdad will lead to peace in Jerusalem," a slogan of the American neo-conservatives, took a disastrous turn in Iraq.

Arrogance is almost always the result of ignorance. What do we know about the cultures and histories of the populations we want to save from chaos and dictators? Yesterday's colonial officers, who drew lines in the sand to create the borders of the new empires and states, turned their nose up at the local religious and tribal complexities. Today, the situation may be worse still. Sheer ignorance prevails.

Finally, there is the sin of indifference. Of course, the ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) is worrying Washington, thus leading to closer ties between the U.S. and Iran regarding Iraq. But the starting point was, in Syria, the U.S.'s refusal to take its responsibilities.

The result is clear: a double defeat, strategic and ethical, for the West. Washington has brought a resounding diplomatic victory to Moscow and has allowed Bashar al-Assad to stay in power.

Read more at:

 http://www.worldcrunch.com/default/the-west-039-s-catastrophic-defeat-in-the-middle-east/obama-assad-post-american-isil-diplomacy/c0s14712/#.UtlvBdL8JD8

Ariel Sharon and the death of the Israeli Dream

Sharon's shift from ‘hawk’ to negotiator told a bigger story about Israel

By DANIEL BEN-AMI

Despite the bitter differences between the admirers and critics of Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister who died on Saturday, most share one outlook in common. They claim to have divined a continuity in his career despite his apparent shift from ultra-nationalist hawk to architect of Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza.

It is understandable that both sides should fall for this temptation, since it provides the easiest way to make sense of Sharon’s contradictions. Either he was a pragmatic Zionist who would do whatever was necessary to protect the embattled Jewish state. Or alternatively he was a ruthless butcher of the Palestinians whose latter-day talk of peace was merely a cynical cover for greater repression.

Both sides fail to grasp the fundamental shift that has taken place in Israeli society since the 1970s. Until that decade, the vast majority of Israelis were united behind the project of building a Jewish state within Eretz Yisrael (the historic Land of Israel that includes the present-day West Bank). This goal was generally seen as a necessary response to the scourge of anti-Semitism rather than being viewed as a religious mission. Indeed, most of the original founders of Israel considered themselves socialists. The earlier settlements, including those in the West Bank and Gaza, were founded under the auspices of early leftist Israeli governments.

Since the 1970s, however, support for this classical conception of Zionism has steadily eroded. Many Israelis have become unsure about what their country stands for. The pioneering ardour has gone, and controlling land occupied by large numbers of Palestinians is seen as problematic at least. The one important exception to this disaffection is the mainstream religious community, the backbone of the settler movement, which retains its own particular conception of Zionism.

Sharon in many ways personified the shifts within Israel itself. Indeed, in some respects he was behind the times since he was an ardent supporter of settlement for longer than many in the Israeli elite. He only retreated from the goal of settlement expansion in his final years in office.

Read more at:

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/ariel_sharon_and_the_death_of_the_israeli_dream/14517#.UtcuytLg98E 

Global warming's glorious ship of fools

Has there ever been a better story? It's like a version of Titanic where first class cheers for the iceberg

By Mark Steyn

Yes, yes, just to get the obligatory ‘of courses’ out of the way up front: of course ‘weather’ is not the same as ‘climate’; and of course the thickest iciest ice on record could well be evidence of ‘global warming’, just as 40-and-sunny and a 35-below blizzard and 12 degrees and partly cloudy with occasional showers are all apparently manifestations of ‘climate change’; and of course the global warm-mongers are entirely sincere in their belief that the massive carbon footprint of their rescue operation can be offset by the planting of wall-to-wall trees the length and breadth of Australia, Britain, America and continental Europe.

But still: you’d have to have a heart as cold and unmovable as Commonwealth Bay ice not to be howling with laughter at the exquisite symbolic perfection of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition ‘stuck in our own experiment’, as they put it. I confess I was hoping it might all drag on a bit longer and the cultists of the ecopalypse would find themselves drawing straws as to which of their number would be first on the roasting spit. On Douglas Mawson’s original voyage, he and his surviving comrade wound up having to eat their dogs. I’m not sure there were any on this expedition, so they’d probably have to make do with the Guardian reporters. Forced to wait a year to be rescued, Sir Douglas later recalled, ‘Several of my toes commenced to blacken and fester near the tips.’ Now there’s a man who’s serious about reducing his footprint.

But alas, eating one’s shipmates and watching one’s extremities drop off one by one is not a part of today’s high-end eco-doom tourism. Instead, the ice-locked warmists uploaded chipper selfies to YouTube, as well as a self-composed New Year singalong of such hearty un-self-awareness that it enraged even such party-line climate alarmists as Andrew Revkin, the plonkingly earnest enviro-blogger of the New York Times. A mere six weeks ago, pumping out the usual boosterism, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that, had Captain Scott picked his team as carefully as Professor Chris Turney, he would have survived. Sadly, we’ll never know — although I’ll bet Captain Oates would have been doing his ‘I am going out. I may be some time’ line about eight bars into that New Year number.

Unlike Scott, Amundsen and Mawson, Professor Turney took his wife and kids along for the ride. And his scientists were outnumbered by wealthy tourists paying top dollar for the privilege of cruising the end of the world. In today’s niche-market travel industry, the Antarctic is a veritable Club Dread for upscale ecopalyptics: think globally, cruise icily. The year before theAkademik Shokalskiy set sail, as part of Al Gore’s ‘Living On Thin Ice’ campaign (please, no tittering; it’s so puerile; every professor of climatology knows that the thickest ice ever is a clear sign of thin ice, because as the oceans warm, glaciers break off the Himalayas and are carried by El Ninja down the Gore Stream past the Cape of Good Horn where they merge into the melting ice sheet, named after the awareness-raising rapper Ice Sheet…

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Anyway, as part of his ‘Living On Thin Ice’ campaign, Al Gore’s own luxury Antarctic vessel boasted a line-up of celebrity cruisers unseen since the 1979 season finale of The Love Boat — among them the actor Tommy Lee Jones, the pop star Jason Mraz, the airline entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, the director of Titanic James Cameron, and the Bangladeshi minister of forests Somebody Wossname. If Voyage of the Gored had been a conventional disaster movie like The Poseidon Adventure, the Bangladeshi guy would have been the first to drown, leaving only the Nobel-winning climatologist (Miley Cyrus) and the maverick tree-ring researcher (Ben Affleck) to twerk their way through the ice to safety. Instead, and very regrettably, the SS Gore made it safely home, and it fell to Professor Turney’s ship to play the role of our generation’s Titanic. Unlike the original, this time round the chaps in the first-class staterooms were rooting for the iceberg: as the expedition’s marine ecologist Tracy Rogers told the BBC, ‘I love it when the ice wins and we don’t.’ Up to a point. Like James Cameron’s Titanic toffs, the warm-mongers stampeded for the first fossil-fuelled choppers off the ice, while the Russian crew were left to go down with the ship, or at any rate sit around playing cards in the hold for another month or two.

But unlike you flying off to visit your Auntie Mabel for a week, it’s all absolutely vital and necessary. In the interests of saving the planet, IPCC honcho Rajendra Pachauri demands the introduction of punitive aviation taxes and hotel electricity allowances to deter the masses from travelling, while he flies 300,000 miles a year on official ‘business’ and research for his recent warmographic novel in which a climate activist travels the world bedding big-breasted women who are amazed by his sustainable growth. (Seriously: ‘He removed his clothes and began to feel Sajni’s body, caressing her voluptuous breasts.’ But don’t worry; every sex scene is peer-reviewed.) No doubt his next one will boast an Antarctic scene: Is that an ice core in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

The AAE is right: the warm-mongers are indeed ‘stuck in our own experiment’. Frozen to their doomsday narrative like Jeff Daniels with his tongue stuck to the ski lift in Dumb and Dumber, the Big Climate enforcers will still not brook anyone rocking their boat. In December 2008 Al Gore predicted the ‘entire North Polar ice cap will be gone in five years’. That would be December last year. Oh, sure, it’s still here, but he got the general trend-line correct, didn’t he? Arctic sea ice, December 2008: 12.5 million square kilometres; Arctic sea ice, December 2013: 12.5 million square kilometres.

Read more at:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9112201/ship-of-fools-2/

France Praying for Miraculous Metamorphosis

Nothing Left to Lose?

by Pater Tenebrarum

In a recent article at Reuters, the hope was expressed that the approval rating of France's president Francois Hollande (lately renamed 'LOL-lande' in the French press and 'Niemandshand' in the Dutch press for reasons explained further below) has by now finally fallen to such an extremely low level, that he has nothing to lose anymore by engaging in meaningful reform. Since he cannot sink any lower, he can only win, or so the reasoning goes. What has inspired this epiphany is the recent revelation by a French tabloid newspaper that the president is involved in a secret nocturnal affair, sneaking out under the cover of darkness to presumably offer the services of his conjugal dipstick to an unknown female.

It was noticed that the allegation has failed to move the needle on his approval-meter further into the red. 80% of the population thought Hollande was a failure prior to the tryst coming to light, and 80% are still thinking so. Apparently things are as bad as they are going to get. Hence it is reckoned that he might be due for a metamorphosis, turning into a 'French Blair' or a version of Gerhard Schroeder (can you imagine a mixture of Blair and Hollande? One could probably quite easily make a successful horror movie starring that creature).  

“Yet with polls showing most French are blase about his private life, the real question is whether he will use the media event to show he is ready to tackle the double burden on the French economy: rising taxes and public spending.

"As is often the case, there are good intentions. But we will judge the deeds," said analyst Bruno Cavalier at Paris-based Oddo Securities.

The Socialist Hollande, who in his 2012 election campaign labeled the world of finance his enemy, ignited speculation of a U-turn with a New Year's address to the nation offering business leaders a "responsibility pact" trading lower taxes and less red tape for company commitments to hire more staff. Striking a new tone which has already raised hackles with unions, he also declared it was time to stamp out abuses of France's generous welfare state, and cut public spending so as to create room for tax reductions after a series of rises. Some see echoes of the about-turn made 30 years ago by Hollande's mentor Francois Mitterrand, who in 1983 halted a policy of nationalization and expansion of worker benefits just two years into his mandate as public finances crumbled.

About time too, say those who argue that public spending at around 57 percent of national output – some 12 points more than Germany's – is a burden the economy cannot afford. French debt at 93.4 percent of GDP and rising is now "in the danger zone", the national audit office warned last week.

The prospect of a policy shift has been applauded by France's main employers federation Medef, due to start talks in coming week with Hollande's government on tax cuts it hopes will restore corporate margins among the weakest in Europe. Left-wing newspaper L'Humanite dubbed him "Francois Blair" after the centrist British prime minister who dreamed up "New Labour" pragmatism, while others asked whether Hollande would follow the reforms implemented in Germany in the last decade.

"What indeed if, after 18 months of empty words and drift, Francois Hollande became the French Gerhard Schroeder?" Marc Touati of the ACDEFI economic consultancy asked, referring to the former Social Democrat chancellor who implemented painful labour market reform in the 2000s.

But he predicted: "This is a sort of bluffing tactic intended to gain time, soften up ratings agencies and investors but which will not result in hard measures." Pension and labour reforms implemented last year, while significant first steps, have hardly broken the mould. Projected 2014 French growth of just one percent will struggle to create private sector jobs.

So far, this year's budget foresees public spending cuts of 15 billion euros or some 0.7 percent of GDP. Yet the government still has to explain how the bulk of these will be achieved before it goes on to examine further possible cuts. Moreover the rapprochement with business risks alienating the moderate CFDT trade union which has so far been a vital ally to Hollande, backing pension and other reforms despite resistance from other, more hardline, labour organizations.

"I am issuing a warning: the trade unions have got to be players in all this," CFDT Secretary-General Laurent Berger said last week, insisting there could be no "blank cheque" for companies without benefits to labor as well.

[…]

Hollande may conclude he has nothing to lose now from taking a few risks. A survey by pollster Ifop released in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper this weekend showed little impact on his poll ratings from the allegations of a secret affair.

With Hollande currently enjoying little more than 20 percent of support, Ifop deputy chief Frederic Dabi noted: "He is already so unpopular that it hasn't changed anything." 

(emphasis added)

Admittedly, such metamorphoses do sometimes happen. A wily politician may well come to the conclusion that he has nothing to lose by changing course. And it is possible that Hollande will indeed decide to follow in Mitterand's footsteps and nix the socialist program in favor of a more pragmatic approach to economic policy. The reality is though that little is known about his views. We don't even know whether he truly understands the economic problems faced by France and why what he has hitherto done has made them worse. After all, he is a lifelong bureaucrat/politician and his actions to date indicate that he believes that governments are not subject to economic laws and that he 'can order nature around' as Fred Sheehan once put it.

We also cannot really tell how much of an ideologue he is. In any event, we do know that he occasionally casts a wary eye in the direction of those who try to overtake him from the left of the political spectrum and has done his best to preempt them and remain in the good graces of typical socialist client organizations such as the unions. Note the remark by union leader Laurent Berger above: "I am issuing a warning: the trade unions have got to be players in all this." Will Hollande risk a confrontation with the unions? We kind of doubt it actually.

Read more at:

http://www.acting-man.com/?p=27949

A Tyrant’s Best Friend

Architect of Destruction

Oscar Niemeyer’s architectural vision needed the support of authoritarian governments.

By DEMÉTRIO MAGNOLI

This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine published a photo essay, accompanied by a single paragraph of prose by Julie Bosman, as a hagiographic memento for the late Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. The photos were all of Niemeyer’s work in Algeria: four buildings built out of 12 designs approved. Bosman’s paragraph says that Niemeyer was “a Communist who fled to France following the military takeover of Brazil in 1964.” The passing mention of Niemeyer’s communism seems somehow to suggest that this was a badge of honor, albeit one that has nothing to do with his architectural style. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

In a 1920 documentary one can see Le Corbusier rubbing a thick black pencil over a wide area of ​​the map of central Paris “with the enthusiasm of Bomber Harris planning the annihilation of a German city in World War II”, wrote Theodore Dalrymple in a tasty article for City Journal. The celebrated architect, founder of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), was busy designing a delusional, totalitarian fantasy: the Plan Voisin, a geometric collection of 18 cruciform towers of offices sixty-stories high supplemented by series of residential buildings outlining superblocks. That’s Niemeyer’s achitectural template. His communism was most certainly not incidental to his style. 

The Cathedral of Brasilia, as seen from inside.

Taste is just taste, of course. You might like the Capanema Palace in Rio de Janeiro, a 1936 Niemeyer design based on a sketch by Le Corbusier (I do like it, in fact). You might like the Cathedral of Brasilia (I love it), built in 1958, or the Itamaraty Palace (it’s gorgeous), the headquarters of the Foreign Ministry erected in Brasilia in 1960. You might even like the sumptuous headquarters of the French Communist Party in Paris (I do not), or the hideous Latin America Memorial in São Paulo, or the ridiculous Contemporary Arts Museum in Niteroi. But like or dislike, love or hate, there is no intellectual justification for separating the oeuvre of Oscar Niemeyer from its doctrinal roots. Niemeyer is an heir of the Le Corbusier matrix, the founding father of an architecture of destruction wholly devoted to the aesthetic of power and to hatred for history, living public spaces and, above all, common people.

Niemeyer was certainly no naive epigone of Le Corbusier, with “big boxes on sticks” (Frank Lloyd Wright), that were “a common hallmark of the modern form” (Lewis Mumford). This Brazilian was an inventor: His contours sinuously curved the masses of concrete, giving a tropical identity to modern architecture. But look again to the photos reproduced in The NYT Magazine: Niemeyer’s compositional strategies and his narrow repertoire of forms are not derived from purported renaissance or baroque inspirations, but from the neoclassical principles which are those of Le Corbusier.  

Main façade of the Itamaraty Palace and its reflecting pool.

Furthermore, Niemeyer shared with his master the fundamental belief in the “civilizing mission” of the state—namely, the state privilege of hoarding unlimited acres of urban land to carve the city (and society) according to the ideals of the ruling elite. The two architects, Le Corbusier and Niemeyer, demand the patronage of tyrants – or, rather, tyrants with a Vision. The New York Times Magazine does not tell its readers that Niemeyer’s Algerian projects overlap with the most authoritarian stage of the Boumediene dictatorship, between 1971 and 1975.

In the Brazilian press, Niemeyer’s death in 2012 (at the age of 104), was accompanied predominantly by two types of reviews. One kind stated that his work was genius because it reflected the “humanist thought” of the unrepentant Stalinist architect. This is an abominable opinion, but a coherent one. The other kind stated that his incredible body of work should be separated from his deplorable political beliefs. This is flimsy and inconsistent criticism. The architecture of Niemeyer, as of Le Corbusier’s, is not only a derivation of his ideological leanings but also a platform for his desired alliance between the architects and the tyrants. Le Corbusier served both Stalin and the collaborationist Vichy regime. “France needs a father”, pleaded the architect shortly before the publication of The Radiant City, whose title page says: “This book is dedicated to the Authority.” Here is the key to deciphering his work, and Niemeyer’s.

The Piazza della Signoria, which has no trees, is a wonder of the dessicated human spirit. You don’t need to be a romantic, nor do you need to shed any tears for the “green”, to be repulsed by the brutality of Niemeyer’s modernism. One doesn’t need to subscribe to the whole set of principles of organic architecture to repudiate the ignominious monumentalism of the Modern Temple. “The plan shall govern. The street must disappear”, wrote Le Corbusier in 1924, pointing to the direction adopted by Niemeyer. The destructive impulse is contained in each of the architectural interventions of both designers, whether the result happens to be beautiful or, more often, not.

Niemeyer’s buildings never establish meaningful or functional relationships with the surrounding structures, which he despises because they didn’t originate from his pencil. The residual spaces between volumes never acquire identity, functioning only as belvederes for contemplating his monuments to Authority. The larger the scale of the project, the more evident his “anachronistic modernity.” “The guiding role of open spaces, with its streets, squares, meeting places and markets” is diluted in Brasilia, “in a space without limits or other function than to frame isolated and sculptural buildings.” (J. C. Durand & E. Salvatori).

Niemeyer’s aesthetics make a political statement. In Brasilia, as James Holston has emphasized, the typological contrast between public buildings (“exceptional, figural objects of monumental nature”) and residential buildings (“repeated, serial objects of trivial nature”) epitomize the regressive utopia desired by the architect. A letter by Alberto Moravia to an Italian newspaper at the time of Brasilia’s inauguration as the capital noted that the city made ​​people feel “like the tiny inhabitants of Lilliput” seeking, “in the empty sky, the threatening form of a new Gulliver.” 

Read more at:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/01/09/architect-of-destruction/

Time for a Cease-Fire In the War on Poverty

The poor would be better off without it

The typical fate of a big government program: it produced the exact opposite effect of what was officially 'intended' 

By Bill Boner

The unemployment numbers came out on Friday. They were worse than expected. Only 74,000 jobs added – about one-third of the consensus estimate. Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate – the amount of people either employed or actively seeking work – went from 66% to 62%. That's a loss of about 5 million from the available workforce … or about 100,000 a month.

In December, more people left the job market than entered it. So, the official "unemployment" rate went down. The bad news had little effect on stocks.

Investors thought it was good news, but they weren't quite sure. On the one hand, it seemed to point toward more EZ money from the Fed. On the other, even taking the effects of bad weather into account, it looks as though the economy could be weaker than commonly thought.

The 'War' Goes On

Meanwhile, the 50^th anniversary of the feds' "War on Poverty" came and went last week, without much notice. No flags flying. No speeches. Veterans on both sides took their money and kept quiet. But that didn't stop hands from wringing, hearts from bleeding and bellies from aching.

So, the "war" goes on.

But as in many other of the feds' wars, we don't know which side we should be on. We've got nothing against poverty. Then, again, we've got nothing against wealth either. People should be able to decide for themselves what they want out of life. But during the Johnson administration the rich got the idea that they should exterminate poverty … or at least gain a political advantage by appearing to try to do so.

So it was that on January 8, 1964, LBJ declared war: 

“This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” 

That was 50 years and $20 trillion ago.

Jesus Christ warned us that eradicating poverty wouldn't be easy. "The poor will always be with you," he said. So far, it looks like he was right.

About 15% of Americans still live in poverty – roughly the same percentage as in the mid-1960s. And that's despite the government spending about $1 trillion a year on eradicating poverty!

A New Kind of 'Poor'

But wait. It depends on how you define "poor." What we take from the recent article in the Wall Street Journal by senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation Robert Rector, titled "How the War on Poverty Was Lost," is that the "poor" are too rich for their own good.

The feds spend $9,000 a year on each of the roughly 100 million recipients of their various means-tested welfare programs. That, and other sources of revenue, give the typical poor person a rather rich life. According to Rector, the typical American living below the poverty level: 

“… lives in a house or apartment that is in good repair, equipped with air-conditioning and cable TV. His home is larger than the home of the average non-poor French, German or English man. He has a car, multiple color TVs and a DVD player. More than half the poor have computers and a third have wide, flat-screen TVs. The overwhelming majority of poor Americans are not undernourished and did not suffer from hunger for even one day of the previous year.” 

Sound pretty good? Yes, but there's more to life than creature comforts. And by attempting to exterminate material poverty, the feds created a new kind of poverty that is far worse.

We have some experience of it: In the 1980s and 1990s we lived in a war zone – a "ghetto" in northwest Baltimore. There, too, there was plenty of money – at least, there was enough to buy gadgets and drugs. Everybody had a TV. And everybody had alcohol and drugs. There was a whooping party whenever the welfare checks arrived. But it was not a very nice place to live.

When you pay people not to do much, that is what they do. And then, after doing so little for so long, they can do nothing else.

Tales from Druid Hill

 The Druid Hill area of Baltimore, where we lived for about 10 years, was the front line in the War on Poverty. Few people had jobs. Instead, they hung around. Idleness begat disorder. And trouble. In personal lives, family lives and the life of the community. People slept at all hours … and stayed up late at night partying. Children were poorly tended – often out on the street in the middle of the night. The sidewalks were trashy and dangerous. Gunshots were frequent. Violent deaths were not uncommon. The red and blue lights of the gendarmes were never far away.

It had its charms. One of our neighbors had murdered another man in a drug dispute. He seemed like a nice fellow – at least as long as you didn't get him too mad. He and a few others formed a kind of glee club … singing Motown hits until they passed out drunk.

They could get drunk every night because they didn't have to get up to go to work in the morning. The work world imposes order. You have to get up in the morning. You have to get along with your coworkers. And you have to get the job done. Mother Necessity is a powerfully civilizing force. Take her out of a community, and the place goes to hell.

Marriage, too, comes with civilizing requirements. You have to get along with your spouse. You have to learn to live together. You have to take responsibility for other people … and cooperate to get the job done. But there were almost no marriages and no jobs in Druid Hill. Why?

The War on Poverty made them unnecessary. You didn't need to have a job to support yourself. And you didn't need to get married to support your children either. The feds would do it for you. Rector totes up the consequences: 

“In 1963, 6% of American children were born out of wedlock. Today the number stands at 41%. As benefits swelled, welfare increasingly served as a substitute for a bread-winning husband in the home. [...] Children raised by a single parent are three times as likely to end up in jail and 50% more likely to be poor as adults.” 

The War on Poverty? The poor would be better off without it.

And as this chart shows, it didn't come cheap.

Read more at:

http://www.acting-man.com/?p=27971

The tide is rising for America’s libertarians

The new spirit in a rising climate of anti-politics has become an attitude, rather than a movement

By Edward Luce

Robert Nozick, the late US libertarian, smoked pot while he was writing Anarchy, State and Utopia. He would applaud the growth of libertarianism among today’s young Americans. Whether it is their enthusiasm for legalised marijuana and gay marriage – both spreading across the US at remarkable speed – or their scepticism of government, US millennials no longer follow President Barack Obama’s cue. Most of America’s youth revile the Tea Party, particularly its south-dominated nativist core. But they are not big-government activists either. If there is a new spirit in America’s rising climate of anti-politics, it is libertarian.

On the face of it this ought to pose a bigger challenge to the Republican party – at least for its social conservative wing. Mr Obama may have disappointed America’s young, particularly the millions of graduates who have failed to find good jobs during his presidency. But he is no dinosaur. In contrast, Republicans such as Rick Santorum, the former presidential hopeful, who once likened gay sex to “man on dog”, elicit pure derision. Even moderate Republicans, such as Chris Christie, who until last week was the early frontrunner for the party’s 2016 nomination, are considered irrelevant. Whether Mr Christie was telling the truth last week, when he denied knowledge of his staff’s role in orchestrating a punitive local traffic jam, is beside the point. Mr Christie’s Sopranos brand of New Jersey politics is not tailored to the Apple generation.

The opposite is true of Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator, whose chances of taking the 2016 prize rose with Mr Christie’s dented fortunes last week. Unlike Ron Paul, the senator’s father, who still managed to garner a large slice of the youth vote in 2008, Rand Paul eschews the more outlandish fringes of libertarian thought. Rather than promising an isolationist US withdrawal from the world, he touts a more moderate “non-interventionism”. Instead of pledging to end fiat money, he promises to audit the US Federal Reserve – “mend the Fed”, rather than “end the Fed”. Both find echo among the Y generation. So too does his alarmism about the US national debt. Far from being big spenders, millennials are more concerned about US debt than other generations, according to polls. They are also strongly in favour of free trade. More than a third of the Republican party now identifies as libertarian, according to the Cato Institute. Just under a quarter of Americans do so too, says Gallup.

All of which looks ominous for Ted Cruz, the Texan Republican whose lengthy filibuster against Obamacare last year lit the fuse for the US government shutdown. Mr Cruz, also a 2016 aspirant, leads the pugilistic wing of the Republican party that is prepared to burn the house down in order to save the ranch. Although also a Tea Partier, Mr Paul is cultivating a sunnier Reaganesque optimism that draws on the deep roots of US libertarianism. His brand of politics also strikes a chord with those who fear the growth of the US surveillance state – the types who view Edward Snowden (another millennial) as a hero rather than a traitor. Last year the US House of Representatives came within 12 votes of passing a bill to defund the National Security Agency. Mr Paul led the bill in the Senate. Next time they could succeed.

Read more at:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cc9a31b8-7928-11e3-b381-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2qVU5fyvi

Europe’s Future: Inflation And Wealth Taxes

This time is no different than other cases of highly indebted countries in Europe’s history – just look to the post-War examples as similar cases in point

by David Howden

Tax burdens are so high that it might not be possible to pay off the high levels of indebtedness in most of the Western world. At least, that is the conclusion of a new IMF paper from Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.

Reinhart and Rogoff gained recent fame for their book “This Time It’s Different”, in which they argued that high levels of public debt have historically been associated with reduced growth opportunities.

As they now note, “The size of the problem suggests that restructurings will be needed, for example, in the periphery of Europe, far beyond anything discussed in public to this point.”Up to this point in the Eurocrisis the primary tools used to rescue profligate countries have included increased taxes, EU and IMF bailouts, and haircuts on government debt.

These bailouts have largely exacerbated the debt problems that existed five short years ago. Indeed, as Reinhart and Rogoff well note, the once fiscally sound North of Europe is now increasingly unable to continue shouldering the debts of its Southern neighbours.

General government debt (% GDP)

Source: Eurostat (2012)

Six European countries currently have a government debt to GDP ratio – a metric popularlised by Reinhart and Rogoff to signal reduced growth prospects – of over 90%. Countries that were relatively debt-free just five short years ago are now encumbered by the debt repayments necessitated by bailouts. Ireland is a case in point – as recently as 2007 its government debt to GDP ratio was below 25%. Six years later that figure stands north of 120%! “Fiscally secure” Scandinavia should keep in mind that fortunes can change quickly, as happened to the luck of the Irish.

The debt crisis to date has been mitigated in large part by tax increases and transfers from the wealthy “core” of Europe to the periphery. The problem with tax increases is that they cannot continue unabated.

Total government tax revenue (% GDP)

Source: Eurostat (2012)

Already in Europe there are seven countries where tax revenues are greater than 48% of GDP. There once was a time when only Scandinavia was chided for its high tax regimes and large public sectors. Today both Austria and France have more than half of their economies involved in the public sector and financed through taxes. (Note also that as they both run government budget deficits the actual size of their governments is greater yet.)

Read more at:

http://mises.ca/posts/blog/europes-future-inflation-and-wealth-taxes/