More on vio­lence vs. coöper­a­tion. Iowa Gov­er­nor Tom Vil­sack, per­haps test­ing a theme for a pos­si­ble 2008 pres­i­den­tial run:bq. Abra­ham Lin­coln once said: “gov­ern­ment should only do what cit­i­zens can not do for them­selves or what cit­i­zens can not do bet­ter.” Kat­rina and Rita prove the wis­dom of that approach. Orga­niz­ing mass evac­u­a­tions, res­cu­ing stranded home­own­ers, secur­ing aban­doned neigh­bor­hoods, financ­ing long term and tem­po­rary hous­ing, rebuild­ing pub­lic infra­struc­ture, attend­ing to med­ical needs, and avoid­ing future tragedies — those are items that gov­ern­ment must do. Indi­vid­u­als, non-profits, and the pri­vate sec­tor can­not, and should not, han­dle them.To reit­er­ate a theme I blogged about yes­ter­day, the mes­sage here, stripped of pre­ten­sion, is that “vio­lence is supe­rior to coöper­a­tion.” Vil­sack believes that humans can­not peace­fully pro­duce infra­struc­ture, health care, or secu­rity, so all of these things must be pro­vided through vio­lence. [Mises Eco­nom­ics Blog]

I won­der what (if any­thing) Vil­sack was think­ing when he came up with those exam­ples? He’s some­how man­aged to come up with a series of exam­ples where the gov­ern­ment failed cat­a­stroph­i­cally, and the peo­ple did very well (to the extent that they weren’t stopped from help­ing by the government).

Jam­ming Air­craft Nav­i­ga­tion Near Nuclear Power Plants. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment want to jam air­craft nav­i­ga­tion equip­ment near nuclear power plants.

This cer­tainly could help if ter­ror­ists want to fly an air­plane into a nuclear power plant, but it feels like a movie-plot threat to me. On the other hand, this could make things sig­nif­i­cantly worse if an air­plane flies near the nuclear power plant by acci­dent. My guess is that the lat­ter hap­pens far more often than the for­mer. [Schneier on Secu­rity]

That’s an idea that deserves some kind of prize for “sil­li­est false-sense-of-security mea­sure.” Per­haps the Ger­man gov­ern­ment is unaware of it, but around sixty years ago many thou­sands of pilots man­aged to fly all the way from Britain to pre­cise loca­tions in Ger­many with­out any electronics!

More war crimes from U.S. sol­diers. MORE WAR CRIMES BY U.S. SOLDIERS. In vio­la­tion of the Geneva Con­ven­tion, they’re appar­ently send­ing grue­some pho­tos of Iraqi war dead and wounded to be pub­lished on the Inter­net. Their reward: access to ama­teur porn. And appar­ently also the dubi­ous “delight” of writ­ing funny cap­tions about maimed and muti­lated peo­ple — like the cap­tion describ­ing a woman with her leg blown off and her naked crotch vis­i­ble: “Nice puss — bad foot.” The Geneva Con­ven­tion for­bids dis­play­ing and ridi­cul­ing pho­tos of war dead. Even if it weren’t a war crime, it cer­tainly blows away any notion that U.S. sol­diers in Iraq are “heroic lib­er­a­tors.” The other day, I ridiculed the idea that abuse of pris­on­ers came from “fail­ure of lead­er­ship.” But you really have to won­der … who’s in charge over there, and how clue­less can the “lead­ers” actu­ally be? Bad­mug­gafugga posted this in the midst of an oth­er­wise innocu­ous and unre­lated thread at TCF. The story deserves wider atten­tion.
[Wolfes­blog]

The notion of US sol­diers as heroic lib­er­a­tors was dead long before this, I think. I sug­gest that all the sol­diers who sent the pho­tos in ques­tion should be given dis­hon­or­able dis­charges, stripped of their weapons and equip­ment, and kicked out the door–in Iraq. I’m sure the Iraqi peo­ple will give their artis­tic and comedic tal­ents the recep­tion they deserve.

Police Super­in­ten­dent Com­pass retires. New Orleans Police Super­in­ten­dent Eddie Com­pass announced his retire­ment at a hastily called press con­fer­ence today. Mayor Ray Nagin, who… [Times-Picayune]

bq. “Although this is a sad day for New Orleans, it’s a good day for the Com­pass fam­ily,” Nagin said.

Sounds like a vari­a­tion on the rather overused line about “want­ing to spend more time with his fam­ily.” Well, good riddance.

Only the Cows Can Come Home. The New York Times reports on Rita evac­uees lin­ing up to return: Mr. Reeves has worked in the last year… [Hit and Run]

Pre­dictably, the gov­ern­ment is now inter­fer­ing with attempts to help peo­ple after Rita.

M 7.5, north­ern Peru. Sep­tem­ber 26, 2005 01:55:39 GMT [USGS M>2.5 Earth­quakes]

That’s a fairly large earth­quake. I hope it wasn’t near an inhab­ited area.

And We Call Them “Ter­ror­ists”?. I asked once before: “Is the United States a Ter­ror­ist State”? [Antiwar.com Blog]

If any state is, the US is.

Hous­ton and Mar­tial Law. As posted pre­vi­ously, I evac­u­ated from Hous­ton on Wed. before the main exo­dus and night­mar­ish traf­fic snarls started (but feel free to call me a “Rita Refugee”; I won’t be offended). A friend who was trapped there finally got out this morn­ing; the road to Waco was finally clear, as of early this a.m., he said. Appar­ently in the mean­time there is some vari­ant of mar­tial law being imposed, as a rel­a­tive still in Hous­ton told me that even though the roads are now open peo­ple are not per­mit­ted to leave their homes–it seems to be a type of mar­tial law called “shel­ter in place”. If you hit the Inter­state now you get arrested. Makes sense–as soon as the roads clear up, you can’t leave–with over 12 hours until the storm hits. By Stephan Kin­sella. [LewRockwell.com Blog]

The gov­ern­ment really doesn’t like it when peo­ple take care of them­selves in poten­tially dan­ger­ous situations.

An Explo­sive Story. The Bat­tle of Basra, where British troops “res­cued” two out-of-uniform British sol­diers who’d got­ten into a con­tretemps with Iraqi police, gets more fas­ci­nat­ing by the moment. A news item put out by China’s Xin­hua News Agency’s con­tains the fol­low­ing fas­ci­nat­ing paragraph:

“‘Two per­sons wear­ing Arab uni­forms opened fire at a police sta­tion in Basra. A police patrol fol­lowed the attack­ers and cap­tured them to dis­cover they were two British sol­diers,’ an Inte­rior Min­istry… [Antiwar.com Blog]

I used to think that the Iraqis who claimed that a ter­ror­ist bomb­ing was actu­ally done by the US were just believ­ing para­noid rumors. Now it’s start­ing to look like they were right after all.

At Least They Didn’t Shoot Him…. This unset­tling account by a Lon­don blog­ger explains how he was stopped by police on the Under­ground for, appar­ently, hav­ing a back­pack and wear­ing a coat they regarded as too bulky. They looked through his things, apol­o­gized for the incon­ve­nience… and then arrested him. He was then held for about eight hours while they carted off all the com­puter equip­ment from his apart­ment. [Hit and Run]