Fast, Healthy, Gluten-Free Meals Under Pressure

I conquered my fear of the pressure cooker two years ago. Since then I've used it to cook a lot of beans that I used in soups, stews and even baking. I asked Linda Etherton, The Gluten-Free Homemaker, to share some of her favorite recipes. Linda is one of my favorite gluten-free bloggers and her site is full of family-friendly, gluten-free recipes. Her Gluten-Free Wednesdays are a great place to find new gluten-free recipes from some of the best food blogs. Here's what Linda has to say:

These days every cook is interested in making a fast meal, at least at times.  We’re also interested in eating healthy food, but fast food is usually not healthy food.  Usually.  Using a pressure cooker is one exception.

Fast: Pressure cooking takes approximately 1/3 the amount of traditional cooking time, but it really varies according to the food you are cooking.  I cook quartered large potatoes for 10 minutes under pressure.  White rice only takes 5 minutes and brown rice takes 22 minutes.  Split pea soup also cooks in 22 minutes, and I can cook a roast in 45 minutes.  Compared to a conventional oven or normal stove top cooking, pressure cooking is always faster.

Healthy: Pressure cooking uses only a small amount of water for foods that do not need to absorb water such as potatoes, meat, and vegetables.  Therefore, fewer nutrients are lost to cooking liquid.  The lid of a pressure cooker is well sealed which means nutrients are not lost to the air either.

Pressure Cookers: As with any cooking equipment, there are differences in the quality of pressure cookers.  I have only used Kuhn Rikon which is a high quality brand.  It has two pressure settings which allows me to cook things like rice that foam at a higher pressure.  You can view which Kuhn Rikon cooker I have at this pressure cooking post on my blog.

You can find pressure cookers at different places online, including Amazon.  I even bought a second Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker from eBay.  It was a slightly older model, but had not been used and the savings made buying a second one feasible.

Split Pea SoupHoneyed BeetsRice and Quinoa PilafRecipes:  I found that after following recipes for a while, I got the hang of how to cook with a pressure cooker and started adapting my own recipes.  A new pressure cooker should come with a small recipe book. There are also great cookbooks such as Lorna Sass’ Pressure Perfect, and there are recipes to be found online.  Here are a few of mine:

Split Pea SoupChicken, Vegetable, and Wild Rice SoupHoneyed BeetsRice and Quinoa Pilaf

Linda Etherton began her gluten-free journey in 2000 when she was diagnosed with celiac disease. She shares recipes and information about living gluten free on her blog, The Gluten-Free Homemaker. Linda believes that gluten free can and should be delicious and never apologizes for serving gluten-free food.

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Online caption

Lingotto was made in the year that Merz began exhibiting with other artists associated with the Arte Povera movement. The bundles of brushwood create an imposing sculpture and are characteristic of the group’s employment of humble materials. Over the brushwood a block of beeswax rests on a steel framework, evoking a single gold bar – ‘lingotto’ means ‘ingot’ in Italian. Lingotto is also the district in the artist’s home city of Turin, famous for the Fiat factory, a modernist yellow building, where his father worked. Together these disparate references suggest the contrasts between poor and luxury and rural and modern, urban existence.


Medieval Writing
Initials and Borders
The production of decorative initials and borders in manuscript books became steadily more prolific as the middle ages progressed. Such decorations undoubtedly added prestige to a volume and to some extent can be seen as simply having been done for swank. They also have a function in the reading of the text, just as a chapter heading does in a modern book.

There are many books illustrating the beautiful decorations in medieval manuscript books, For historical and analytical approaches see Pächt 1986 also Alexander 1992 also de Hamel 1986.

The simplest, earliest and most persistent form of differentiated heading was known as rubric, the name deriving from the fact that it was executed in red. Rubrics were used for headings for sections of text, serving as simple location markers. In books of ritual such as the missal, breviary or even the book of hours, rubrics were used to differentiate instructions, or markers of the progress of the ritual, from the actual text being read or performed.

rubric heading Rubric indicating a chapter heading in an 8th century collection of patristic works (Cologne Cathedral Library, MS XCI). (From New Palaeographical Society 1905)
rubric masarker In liturgical books, rubrics can indicate the stage of proceedings, as in these two examples from missals where the words post co, for post communio, indicate the words to be recited after the act of communion.
The example above left is from a 12th century missal (British Library, add ms 16949, f.iv), by permission of the British Library. And yes, the photograph is black and white, but it is a rubric. The living colour example below is from a a page from a 15th century missal, probably French, from a private collection.
rubric marker A rubric indicates the stage of the ritual in a 15th century book of hours, by permission of the University of Tasmania Library.
Rubrics were not necessarily just brief headings. Books like the breviary contained complicated instructions for the conduct of the divine office on all the days, both ordinary and festive, of the year. These could be extensive. On the example at left, the rubric instructions take up the better part of the written area of the page, and they continue on the other side. Perhaps they are not really decorative at all, but should be considered as utility. However, every from of decorative writing in a medieval manuscript book performs some function, even when it is also designed to be very beautiful.
Leaf from a late 15th century Augustinian breviary, use of Rome, from a private collection.
In the commercial production of books in the later middle ages, the rubricator was a specialised position. As well as adding headings, they also sometimes interpolated corrections to the text. In the later medieval period these small headings, such as the chapter headings of the Bible, were sometimes produced in other colours, notably blue.
Chapter heading in red and blue from a 13th century miniature Bible, from a private collection.
Decorative initials and headings are regularly found in prestige works. As well as adding social value to the volume, they also serve as placemarkers for the text. Certain styles of decoration are diagnostic of time and place, so that examination of these details can be used for sourcing and provenancing works. Intricate swirling and interlacing designs with beasties swallowing each other, typical of Anglo-Saxon art, are found on this decorative initial.
Initial in a 9th century copy of the works of Bede (British Library, Cotton Tiberius CII, f.94), by permission of the British Library.
initial At left, an initial is surrounded by spidery and intricate late Gothic decoration on a leaf from a late 15th century book of hours, by permission of the University of Tasmania Library. At right, a decorative Gothic initial from a 15th century Dutch book of hours, from a private collection.
The use of intricate coloured penwork around decorative initials is characteristic of the Gothic era. The multicoloured penwork on the example at right is evidently characteristic of certain workshops in Haarlem in the Netherlands; and yes, the text is in Dutch. Eras and geographical regions had their own recognisable particularities in the production of decorative initials. They are a study in their own right.
The Creating French Culture exhibition shows a simple but striking initial and heading in a late 13th century French Bible (Library of the Arsenal MS5211). The Bodleian Library shows a highly elaborate initial P with intricate penwork from a late 15th century English missal (Bodleian Library, MS Don b.6, f.19r)
The use of gold in initials and line fillers added to the prestige of a volume, although it was common in even modest books of hours in the late medieval period. Gold leaf was rolled out immensely thin. The area to which it was to be applied was built up with a layer of gesso, the gold leaf glued to it and carefully burnished (with a beaver's tooth according to some traditions). The appearance is of a thick, glowing mass of gold, but it is all an optical illusion. Strictly, the term illumination applies only to manuscripts decorated with gold in this way, as the pages were regarded as glowing with their own light.
Gold leaf applied to an initial and to a decorative line filler in a page from a late 15th century French book of hours, by permission of the University of Tasmania.
Large decorative headings might serve to introduce a section of text and act as a place marker, but sometimes it seems that the expectation was that the text itself was well known and remembered, as decorative effects could render legibility difficult. Some Anglo-Saxon and early Irish manuscripts displayed headings that were like a puzzle or anagram.
The heading for Psalm 26 in the 8th century Vespasian Psalter (British Library, Cotton Vespasian A1 f.31), by permission of the British Library.
The example above reads DNS (DOMINUS) INLUMINATIO MEA. The letters are entangled into a puzzle knot.


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Oc Language History Provence, - by Provence Beyond. Stroll: | History Index | Medieval | Oc Language | Pierre le berger |

Oc Language History Provence, - by Provence Beyond

Old Frankish. Frankish or Old Franconian (or, less correctly, Old Frankish) was the language spoken by the Germanic Franks in the Low Countries and adjacent parts of contemporary France and Germany between the 4th and 8th century.

Old Frankish

It belongs to the West Germanic language group and is thought to have given rise to the modern Franconian languages. The Franks descended from Germanic tribes that settled parts of the Netherlands and western Germany during the early Iron Age. From the 4th century, they are attested as extending into what is now the southern Netherlands and northern Belgium. In the 5th and 6th centuries, they expanded their realm and conquered Roman Gaul completely as well as client states such as Bavaria and Thuringia. Knowledge of Frankish is almost entirely reconstructed from Old Dutch and from etyma and loanwords from Old French. During this period, Frankish had a major influence on the lexicon, pronunciation and grammar of the Romance languages spoken in former Roman Gaul. French language.

French language

Other speakers of French, who often speak it as a second language,[3] are distributed throughout many parts of the world, the largest numbers of whom reside in Francophone Africa.[4] In Africa, French is most commonly spoken in Gabon (where 80% report fluency),[4] Mauritius (78%), Algeria (75%), Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire (70%). French is estimated as having 110 million[3] native speakers and 190 million more second language speakers.[5] Geographic distribution[edit] Europe[edit] Langues d'oïl.

The langues d'oïl [lɑ̃ɡᵊdɔjl][2] or langues d'oui [lɑ̃ɡᵊdwi], in English the Oïl /ˈwiːl/ or Oui /ˈwiː/ languages, are a dialect continuum that includes standard French and its closest autochthonous relatives spoken today in the northern half of France, southern Belgium, and the Channel Islands.

Langues d'oïl

They belong to the larger Gallo-Romance group of languages, which also covers most of southern France (Occitania), northern Italy and eastern Spain (Catalan Countries) (some linguists place Catalan into the Ibero-Romance grouping instead). Linguists divide the Romance languages of France, and especially of Medieval France, into three geographical subgroups: Langues d'oïl and Langues d'oc, named after their words for 'yes', with Franco-Provençal (Arpitan) considered transitional. Old French. ( , , ; Modern French ) was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century.

It was then known as the (oïl language) to distinguish it from the (Occitan language, also then called Provençal ), whose territory bordered that of Old French to the south. The Norman dialect was also spread to England , Ireland , the Kingdom of Sicily and the Principality of Antioch in the Levant . [ edit ] Etymology and phonology [ edit ] Historical influences [ edit ] Gaulish Gaulish , maybe the only survivor of the continental Celtic languages in Roman times, slowly became extinct during the long centuries of Roman dominion. Old French began when the Roman Empire conquered Gaul during the campaigns of Julius Caesar , which were almost complete by 51 BC. . [ edit ] Old Low Frankish Other Germanic words in Old French appeared as a result of Norman , i.e. Occitan language.

Occitan (English pronunciation: /ˈɒksɪtæn/;[5] French: [ɔksitɑ̃]; Occitan: [utsiˈta]),[6] also known as lenga d'òc by its native speakers (Occitan: [ˈleŋɡɔ ˈðɔ(k)]; French: langue d'oc), is a Romance language derived macrolanguage.

Occitan language

It is often described as being a single language to increase its weight in French politics, which leads speakers of its "dialects" to maintain that theirs are distinct languages.[7][8][9] It is spoken in southern France, Italy's Occitan Valleys, Monaco, and Spain's Val d'Aran: collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to unofficially as Occitania.

It is also spoken in the linguistic enclave of Guardia Piemontese (Calabria, Italy). Occitan is an official language in Catalonia (Aranese, closely related to Gascon spoken in the Val d'Aran).[10] Occitan's closest relative is Catalan.[11] Since September 2010, the Parliament of Catalonia has considered Aranese Occitan to be the officially preferred language for use in the Val d'Aran. Provençal. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Provençal may refer to:


Rinker Heritage

As the oldest American boat brand in continuous production, the Rinker Boat Company has quite a story to tell. From our humble beginnings out of Lossie Rinker's workshop on the White River in Indiana to today when we're exporting boats to more than 40 countries, we build with pride, craftsmanship and the desire to be the best value in the industry.

In the 1930s, dairy farmer Lossie "L.E." Rinker starts building fishing - and, later, racing boats -out of his workshop on the White River in Indiana. His sons, Jan and John, soon joined their father to build and race their own boats. After serving their country during the Korean War, the boys returned to Indiana to resume their boat-building careers, eventually founding the company Rinkerbuilt in Syracuse, Indiana. Rinkers are still built in Syracuse today.

In 1945, the company's first racing brand called Famous Craft is born.

In 1958, Rinkerbuilt introduces fiberglass in the manufacturing process - long before most competitors - along with innovations such as multiple gel coat colors and back-to-back seating.

In 1968, Rinkerbuilt goes international, shipping 14 boats to Sweden.

The 1980s bring a new name ("built" is dropped as the suffix), new logo, and new designs, as the now-40-year old company continues to grow. The first Rinker Fiesta Vee 255 Cruiser is introduced in 1988, which establishes Rinker as a cruiser builder.

Rinker turns 50 years old in 1995, and the Rinker Fiesta Vee line includes some of the most popular express cruisers in the world. The Rinker Captiva line is expanded and some models, such as the Captiva 232 and 236 become popular "go-fast" boats with big-block motors and exhilarating performance.


How an Old Biosphere Project Could Help Build a Better Climate Model

We only have a fragmented understanding of the complex interactions that go on in the dirt as water flows past soil and microbes. To gain fresh insight into the hydrologic processes that make life on land possible, the University of Arizona has built a trio of massive, man-made hillside labs.

Just recently, the $200 million Biosphere 2 project in Oracle, AZ, was on its last legs. Both of its high-profile habitation experiments in the 1990s had ended in failure, and the facility was slated for demolition to make way for a resort. Then, in 2011, the University of Arizona purchased it for use as a massive laboratory dedicated to studying climate change. As part of the project's decade-long plan to study how a warming atmosphere affects the movement of water, UA has constructed the world's largest (well, only) artificial water shed.

Dubbed the Landscape Evolution Observatory (LEO), this facility consists of three 100-foot long, 40-foot wide troughs tilted at a 10-degree angle, housed within a 53,000 square foot sealed greenhouse. This allows researchers to precisely control environmental variables in ways not possible in conventional large-scale observational studies.

Each trough is filled with three feet of finely-crushed volcanic rock, a 600-ton layer that mimics Arizona's local geologic conditions in antiquity. As the crushed rock slowly converts into soil, more than 1,800 sensors in each slope accurately measure soil moisture, chemistry, temperature, and the types and quantities of gases emitted. Load cells have also been installed at the base of these 1,100-ton structures to monitor changes in their total weight.

"It's the first time anyone has built an instrument like that," Biosphere 2 Science Director Peter Troch said in a press statement. "LEO provides the scientific community with a tool to learn about the landscape in ways we haven't been able to before. It will help us to really understand Earth's surface processes."

The first three years of this experiment will study abiotic processes—how rainfall and overland flows reshape the ground's surface, how long it takes water to flow through various soil densities, and how moisture is distributed through them. After the first 36 months, researchers plan to install heat- and drought-tolerant vascular plants into the landscapes and observe how they affect these abiotic processes along with the rest of the system.

"In a laboratory, you can really control an experiment and understand everything that goes in and out, but it doesn't really tell you much about how big systems interact," said Stephen DeLong, the project's lead scientist said. "Here we can see how big systems interact."

[PhysOrg - Wikipedia - Biosphere 2 - LEO - UA News - Arizona Star - Image: UA School of Architecture]


The British Empire reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004
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British Empire

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The British Empire, which in the early decades of the 20th century held sway over a population of 400-500 million people (roughly a quarter of the world's population), covered nearly 30 million square kilometres, or about two-fifths of the earth's dry surface.

The British Empire came together over 300 years through a succession of phases of expansion by trade, settlement or conquest, interspersed with intervals of pacific commercial and diplomatic activity or imperial contraction. Its territories were scattered across every continent and ocean, and it was described with some truth as "the empire on which the sun never sets." It arguably reached its height in the 1890s and 1900s.

The Empire facilitated the spread of British technology, commerce, language, and government around much of the globe. Imperial hegemony contributed to Britain's extraordinary economic growth and greatly strengthened her voice in world affairs. Even as Britain extended its imperial reach overseas, it continued to develop and broaden democratic institutions at home.

From the perspective of the colonies, the record of the British Empire is mixed. They received from Britain the English language, an administrative and legal framework on the British model, as well as technological and economic development. With varying degrees of success, in decolonisation Britain sought to pass on to her colonies governments based on parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. Some argue that those countries which were colonised by Britain were spared the incompetence and brutality of some other European empires, such as the Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese empires; and almost all have since chosen to join the Commonwealth of Nations, the association which replaced the Empire.

Nonetheless, British colonial policy was always driven to a large extent by Britain's trading interests. While settler economies developed the infrastructure to support balanced development, tropical African territories found themselves developed only as raw-material suppliers. British policies based on comparative advantage left many developing economies dangerously reliant on a single cash crop. A reliance upon the manipulation of conflict between ethnic and racial identities, in order to keep subject populations from uniting against the occupuying power -- the classic "divide and rule" strategy -- left a legacy of partition or inter-communal difficulties in areas as diverse as Ireland, India, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Iraq, Guyana and Fiji.

The credit for the first ever usage of the words "British Empire" is usually given to Doctor John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I's astrologer, alchemist and mathematician.

Table of contents
1 Background: English colonialism
2 Colonisation of the Americas
3 Free trade and "informal empire"
4 The British Empire in Asia
5 Breakdown of Pax Britannica
6 Britain and the New Imperialism
7 Britain and the Scramble for Africa
8 Home Rule in white-settler colonies
9 The impact of the First World War
10 Decolonisation
11 Extent
12 Remaining Dependent Territories
13 See also
14 External links

Background: English colonialism

Queen Elizabeth I enthroned, 1558Enlarge

Queen Elizabeth I enthroned, 1558

After her conquest by Normandy in 1066, England initially supported William the Conqueror's holdings in France. England's policy of active involvement in continental European affairs endured for several hundred years. By the end of the 14th century, foreign trade, originally based on wool exports to Europe, had emerged as a cornerstone of national policy.

These centuries saw the beginnings of England's political expansion with the conquest of Wales (to 1282) and Ireland (from 1169). A short-lived English triumph in Scotland in 1296 was crushingly reversed at Bannockburn in 1314, leaving the two crowns to be united by dynastic succession in 1603. Despite the loss of Normandy in 1204, fortuitous marriage and dynastic inheritance on the part of England's post-Norman rulers brought them large territories in western France, lost finally in 1453. England after this point clung on to the strategic port of Calais, until this too was lost for good in 1563.

The overseas British Empire-- in the sense of British oceanic exploration and settlement outside of Europe and the British and Irish Isles-- was rooted in the pioneering maritime policies of King Henry VII, who reigned 1485-1509. Himself building on commercial links in the wool trade promoted during the reign of his predecessor King Richard III, Henry established the modern English merchant marine system, which greatly expanded English shipbuilding and seafaring. The merchant marine also supplied the basis for the mercantile institutions which would play such a crucial role in later British imperial ventures, such as the Massachusetts Bay Company and the British East India Company. Henry also ordered construction of the first dry dock, at Portsmouth, and made improvements to England's small navy.

Of perhaps even greater importance, Henry chartered the pioneering voyages of the Italian Giovanni Caboto (Anglicised as John Cabot) in 1496 and 1497 to North America. Following in the example of Christopher Columbus, who had reached landfall in the Caribbean in 1492, Cabot had been interested in westward routes to the trading posts of the East Indies. Cabot sailed to Newfoundland in modern Canada, explored the coastlines and islands, drew maps, and claimed the land for England on behalf of King Henry. Cabot also described in detail the teeming schools of cod that populated the Newfoundland coast, and his descriptions drew many English fishermen to the region. This resulted in a seasonal fishing colony in Newfoundland which was the first English settlement overseas, though the fishing grounds off the coast were plied by ships of many European nations.

The foundations of sea power, having been laid during Henry VII's reign, were gradually expanded to protect English trade and open up new routes. King Henry VIII founded the modern English navy, more than tripling the number of warships and constructing the first large vessels with heavy, long-range guns. He initiated the Navy's formal, centralised administrative apparatus, built new docks, and constructed the network of beacons and lighthouses that greatly facilitated coastal navigation for English and foreign merchant sailors. Henry thus established the munitions-based Royal Navy that was able to repulse the Spanish Armada in 1588, and his innovations provided the seed for the Imperial Navy of later centuries.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, from 1577 to 1590, Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe, only the second to accomplish this feat after Ferdinand Magellan's expedition. In 1579, Drake landed somewhere in northern California and claimed for the Crown what he named Nova Albion ("New England"), though the claim was not followed by settlement. Subsequent maps spell out Nova Albion to the north of all New Spain. Thereafter, England's interests outside Europe grew steadily. Humphrey Gilbert followed on Cabot's original claim when he sailed to Newfoundland in 1583 and declared it an English colony on August 5 at St. John's. Sir Walter Raleigh organised the first colony in Virginia in 1587 at Roanoke. Both Gilbert's Newfoundland settlement and the Roanoke colony were short-lived, however, and had to be abandoned due to food shortages, severe weather, shipwrecks and hostile encounters with indigenous tribes on the American continent. The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 firmly established England as a major naval power, though subsequent naval defeats at the hands of Spain in the 1590s thwarted additional settlement attempts. Finally in 1604, King James_I_of_England negotiated the Treaty of London which ceased hostilities with Spain, and the first permanent English settlement followed in 1607 at Jamestown. During the next three centuries, England extended her influence overseas and consolidated her political development at home. In 1707, the parliaments of England and Scotland were united in London as Great Britain.

Colonisation of the Americas

The British Empire first took shape from the early 17th century, with the English settlement of the eastern colonies of North America, which would later become the original United States as well as Canada's Maritime provinces, and the colonisation of the smaller islands of the Caribbean such as Jamaica and Barbados.

The period is sometimes referred to as the end of the "first British Empire", indicating the shift of British expansion from the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries to the "second British Empire" in Asia and later also Africa from the 18th century.

The sugar-producing colonies of the Caribbean, where slavery became the basis of the economy, were at first England's most important and lucrative colonies. The American colonies providing tobacco, cotton, and rice in the south and naval materiel and furs in the north were less financially successful, but had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far larger numbers of English immigrants.

England's American empire was slowly expanded by war and colonisation, England gaining control of New Amsterdam (later New York) in the Anglo-Dutch Wars. The growing American colonies pressed ever westward in search of new agricultural lands. During the Seven Years War the British defeated the French at the Plains of Abraham and captured all of New France in 1760, giving Britain control over almost all of North America.

Later, settlement of Australia (starting with penal colonies from 1788) and New Zealand (under the crown from 1840) created a major zone of British migration, although indigenous populations suffered terribly through war and particularly disease, reducing numbers by some 60-70% over a century. The colonies later became self-governing colonies and became profitable exporters of wool and gold.

See also British colonization of the Americas, Colonial history of America.

Free trade and "informal empire"

For details, see the main article Pax Britannica.''

The old British colonial system began to decline in the 18th century. During the long period of unbroken Whig dominance of domestic political life (1714-62), the empire became less important and less well-regarded, until an ill-fated attempt to reverse the resulting "salutary neglect" (or "benign neglect") provoked the American War of Independence (1775-83), depriving Britain of her most populous colonies.

The period is sometimes referred to as the end of the "first British Empire", indicating the shift of British expansion from the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries to the "second British Empire" in Asia and later also Africa from the 18th century. The loss of the United States showed that colonies were not necessarily particularly beneficial in economic terms, since Britain could still dominate trade with the ex-colonies without having to pay for their defence and administration.

Mercantilism, the economic doctrine of competition between nations for a finite amount of wealth which had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, now gave way in Britain and elsewhere to the laissez-faire economic liberalism of Adam Smith and successors like Richard Cobden.

The lesson of Britain's North American loss - that trade might continue to bring prosperity even in the absence of colonial rule - contributed to the extension in the 1840s and 1850s of self-governing colony status to white settler colonies in Canada and Australasia whose British or European inhabitants were seen as outposts of the "mother country".

During this period, Britain also outlawed the slave trade (1807) and soon began enforcing this principle on other nations. By the mid-19th century Britain had largely eradicated the world slave trade. Slavery itself was abolished in the British colonies in 1834, though the phenomenon of indentured labour retained much of its oppressive character until 1920.

The end of the old colonial and slave systems were accompanied by the adoption of free trade, culminating in the repeal of the Corn Laws and Navigation Acts in the 1840s. Free trade opened the British market to unfettered competition, stimulating reciprocal action by other countries during the middle quarters of the 19th century.

Some argue that the rise of free trade merely reflected Britain's economic position and was unconnected with any true philosophical conviction. Indeed, Britain has always been far more enthusiastic about urging the policy upon others, than she has been about practicing it herself. Despite the earlier loss of Britain's North American colonies, the final defeat in Europe of Napoleonic France in 1815 left Britain the most successful international power. While the Industrial Revolution at home gave her an unrivalled economic leadership, the Royal Navy dominated the seas. The distraction of rival powers by European matters enabled Britain to pursue a phase of expansion of her economic and political influence through "informal empire" underpinned by free trade and strategic pre-eminence.

Between the Congress of Vienna of 1815 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Britain was the world's sole industrialised power. As the "workshop of the world", Britain could produce finished manufactures so efficiently and cheaply that they could undersell comparable locally produced goods in foreign markets. Given stable political conditions in particular overseas markets, Britain could prosper through free trade alone without having to resort to formal rule.

The British Empire in Asia

For details, see the main article Imperialism in Asia.

The victory of forces of the British East India Company at Plassey in 1757 opened the great Indian province of Bengal to British rule, though later famine (1770) exacerbated by massive expropriation of provincial government revenues aroused controversy at home. The 19th century saw Company rule extended across nearly the whole of India. Following the Indian Mutiny of 1857 the Company's territories were placed (1858) under the administration of the Crown. Queen Victoria (1837-1901) was proclaimed Empress of India in 1876.

Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Burma were added to Britain's Asian territories, which extended further east to Malaya and, from 1841, to Hong Kong following a successful war in defence of the Company's opium exports to China.

British interest in China began in the late 18th century as Britain became a large importer of tea. This trade created a bilateral trade deficit which the British sought to resolve by exporting opium from India to China, despite opposition among Chinese officials to the trade. Conflict over the trade resulted in the Opium Wars in which Britain twice decisively defeated China.

After the Opium Wars, Britain maintained a complex relationship with China. Although Britain annexed Hong Kong, most of its trade with China was regulated by treaties which allowed trade through a number of coastal ports. As a result, Britain was interested in maintaining an independent Chinese state since the collapse of China would open opportunities for territorial gains by other Western Powers.

At the same time, Britain was opposed to a Chinese state that was too strong, because this would allow China to cancel or renegotiate its treaties. These interests explain the apparent contradictions of British policy in China: Britain provided the Qing dynasty with aid during the Taiping rebellion, but at the same time, in alliance with France, engaged in the Second Opium War against the Qing court.

Breakdown of Pax Britannica

As the first country to industrialise, Britain had been able to draw on most of the accessible world for raw materials and markets. But this situation gradually deteriorated during the 19th century as other powers began to industrialise and sought to use the state to guarantee their markets and sources of supply. By the 1870s, British manufactures in the staple industries of the Industrial Revolution were beginning to experience real competition abroad.

Industrialisation progressed rapidly in Germany and the United States, allowing them to clearly outstrip over the "old" British and French capitalisms. The German textile and metal industries, for example, had by 1870, surpassed those of Britain in organisation and technical efficiency and usurped British manufactures in the domestic market. By the turn of the century, the German metals and engineering industries would even be producing for the free trade market of the former "workshop of the world".

While invisible exports (banking, insurance and shipping services) kept Britain "out of the red," her share of world trade fell from a quarter in 1880 to a sixth in 1913. Britain was losing out not only in the markets of newly industrialising countries, but also against third-party competition in less-developed countries. Britain was even losing her former overwhelming dominance in trade with India, China, Latin America or the coasts of Africa.

Britain's commercial difficulties deepened with the onset of the "Long Depression" of 1873-96, a prolonged period of price deflation punctuated by severe business downturns which added to pressure on governments to promote home industry, leading to the widespread abandonment of free trade among Europe's powers (in Germany from 1879 and in France from 1881).

The resulting limitation of both domestic markets and export opportunities led government and business leaders in Europe and later the U.S. to see the solution in sheltered overseas markets united to the home country behind imperial tariff barriers: new overseas subjects would provide export markets free of foreign competition, while supplying cheap raw materials. Although she continued to adhere to free trade until 1932, Britain joined the renewed scramble for formal empire rather than allow areas under her influence to be seized by rivals.

Britain and the New Imperialism

For details see the main article New Imperialism.
Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria

The policy and ideology of European colonial expansion between the 1870s and the outbreak of World War I in 1914 are often characterised as the "New Imperialism". The period is distinguished by an unprecedented pursuit of what has been termed "empire for empire's sake", aggressive competition for overseas territorial acquisitions and the emergence in colonising countries of doctrines of racial superiority which denied the fitness of subjugated peoples for self-government.

During this period, Europe's powers added nearly 23,000,000 kmò to their overseas colonial possessions. As it was mostly unoccupied by the Western powers as late as the 1880s, Africa became the primary target of the "new" imperialist expansion, although conquest took place also in other areas — notably south-east Asia and the East Asian seaboard, where the United States and Japan joined the European powers' scramble for territory.

Britain's entry into the new imperial age is often dated to 1875, when the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Ismail's shareholding in the Suez Canal to secure control of this strategic waterway, since its opening six years earlier a channel, under Emperor Napoleon III, for shipping between Britain and India. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882.

Fear of Russia's centuries-old southward expansion was a further factor in British policy: in 1878 Britain took control of Cyprus as a base for action against a Russian attack on the Ottoman Empire, after having taken part in the Crimean War 1854-56 and invading Afghanistan to forestall an increase in Russian influence there. Britain waged three bloody and unsuccessful wars in Afghanistan, as ferocious popular rebellions, invocations of jihad and inscrutable terrain frustrated British objectives. The First Anglo-Afghan War led to one of the most disastrous defeats of the Victorian military when an entire British army was wiped out by Russian-supplied Afghan Pashtun tribesman during the 1842 retreat from Kabul. The Second Anglo-Afghan War led to the British debacle at Maiwand in 1880, the siege of Kabul and British withdrawal into India. The Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919 stoked a tribal uprising against the exhausted British military on the heels of World War I and expelled the British permanently from the new Afghan state. The "Great Game" in Inner Asia ended with a bloody and wholly unnecessary British expedition against Tibet in 1903-04.

At the same time, some powerful industrial lobbies and government leaders in Britain, later exemplified by Joseph Chamberlain, came to view formal empire as necessary to arrest Britain's relative decline in world markets. During the 1890s Britain adopted the new policy wholeheartedly, quickly emerging as the front-runner in the scramble for tropical African territories.

Britain's adoption of the New Imperialism may be seen as a quest for captive markets or fields for investment of surplus capital, or as a primarily strategic or pre-emptive attempt to protect existing trade links and to prevent the absorption of overseas markets into the increasingly closed imperial trading blocs of rival powers. The failure in the 1900s of Chamberlain's Tariff Reform campaign for Imperial protection illustrates the strength of free trade feeling even in the face of loss of international market share. Historians have argued that Britain's adoption of the "New imperialism" was an effect of her relative decline in the world, rather of strength.

The evolution of colonialism in India should dissuade people sweeping generalisations and over-simplifications regarding the roles of inter-capitalist competition and accumulated surplus in precipitating the era of the New imperialism. Formal empire in India, beginning with the Government of India Act of 1858, was a means of consolidation, reacting to the abortive Indian Mutiny, which was in itself a conservative reaction among Indian traditionalists to British policy in the subcontinent.

Britain and the Scramble for Africa

For details see the main article Scramble for Africa.

In 1875 the two most important European holdings in Africa were Algeria and the Cape Colony. By 1914 only Ethiopia and the republic of Liberia remained outside formal European control. The transition from an "informal empire" of control through economic dominance to direct control took the form of a "scramble" for territory in areas previously regarded as open to British trade and influence.

As French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region threatened to undermine orderly penetration of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 sought to regulate the competition between the powers by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims, a formulation which necessitated routine recourse to armed force against indigenous states and peoples.

Britain's 1882 military occupation of Egypt (itself triggered by concern over the Suez Canal) contributed to a preoccupation over securing control of the Nile valley, leading to the conquest of the neighbouring Sudan in 1896-98 and confrontation with a French military expedition at Fashoda (September 1898).

In 1899 Britain set out to complete her takeover of South Africa, begun with the annexation (1795) of the Cape, by invading the Afrikaner republics of the gold-rich Transvaal and the neighbouring Orange Free State. The chartered British South Africa Company had already seized the land to the north, renamed Rhodesia after its head, the Cape tycoon Cecil Rhodes. Criticism for this takeover led to Britan's Splendid Isolation.

British gains in southern and East Africa prompted Rhodes and Alfred Milner, Britain's High Commissioner in South Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" empire linking by rail the strategically important Canal to the mineral-rich South, though German occupation of Tanganyika prevented its realisation until the end of World War I.

Paradoxically Britain, the staunch advocate of free trade, emerged in 1914 with not only the largest overseas empire thanks to her long-standing presence in India, but also the greatest gains in the "scramble for Africa", reflecting her advantageous position at its inception. Between 1885 and 1914 Britain took nearly 30% of Africa's population under her control, compared to 15% for France, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and only 1% for Italy: Nigeria alone contributed 15 million subjects, more than in the whole of French West Africa or the entire German colonial empire.

Home Rule in white-settler colonies

Britain's empire had already begun its transformation into the modern Commonwealth with the extension of Dominion status to the already self-governing colonies of Newfoundland (1855), Canada (1867), Australia (1901), New Zealand (1907), and the newly-created Union of South Africa (1910). Leaders of the new states joined with British statesmen in periodic Colonial (from 1907, Imperial) Conferences, the first of which was held in London in 1887.

The foreign relations of the Dominions were still conducted through the Foreign Office of the United Kingdom: Canada created a Department of External Affairs in 1909, but diplomatic relations with other governments continued to be channelled through the Governors-General, Dominion High Commissioners in London (first appointed by Canada in 1880 and by Australia in 1910) and British legations abroad. Britain's declaration of war in World War I applied to all the Dominions.

But the Dominions did enjoy a substantial freedom in their adoption of foreign policy where this did not explicitly conflict with British interests: Canada's Liberal government negotiated a bilateral free-trade Reciprocity Agreement with the United States in 1911, but went down to defeat by the Conservative opposition.

In defence, the Dominions' original treatment as part of a single Empire military and naval structure proved unsustainable as Britain faced new commitments in Europe and the challenge of an emerging German High Seas Fleet after 1900. In 1909 it was decided that the Dominions should have their own navies, reversing an 1887 agreement that the then Australasian colonies should contribute to the British navy in return for the permanent stationing of a squadron in the region.

The impact of the First World War

British Empire memorial for the First World War in the Brussels cathedralEnlarge

British Empire memorial for the First World War in the Brussels cathedral

The aftermath of World War I saw the last major extension of British rule, with Britain gaining control through League of Nations Mandates in Palestine and Iraq after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, as well as in the former German colonies of Tanganyika, South-West Africa (now Namibia) and New Guinea (the last two actually under South African and Australian rule respectively).

But although Britain emerged among the war's victors, and although her rule expanded into new areas, the heavy costs of the war undermined her capacity to maintain the vast empire. The British had suffered millions of casualties and liquidated assets at an alarming rate, which led to debt accumulation, upending of capital markets and manpower deficiencies in the staffing of far-flung imperial posts in Asia and the African colonies. Nationalist sentiment grew in both old and new Imperial territories, fuelled by pride at Empire troops' participation in the war and the grievance felt by many non-white ex-servicemen at the racial discrimination they had encountered during their service to the Empire.

The 1920s saw a rapid transformation of Dominion status. Although the Dominions had had no formal voice in declaring war in 1914, each was included separately among the signatories of the 1919 peace Treaty of Versailles, which had been negotiated by a British-led united Empire delegation. In 1922 Dominion reluctance to support British military action against Turkey influenced Britain's decision to seek a compromise settlement.

Full Dominion independence was formalised in the 1926 Balfour Declaration and the 1931 Statute of Westminster: each Dominion was henceforth to be equal in status to Britain herself, free of British legislative interference and autonomous in international relations. The Dominions section created within the Colonial Office in 1907 was upgraded in 1925 to a separate Dominions Office and given its own Secretary of State in 1930.

Canada led the way, becoming the first Dominion to conclude an international treaty entirely independently (1923) and obtaining the appointment (1928) of a British High Commissioner in Ottawa, thereby separating the administrative and diplomatic functions of the Governor-General and ending the latter's anomalous role as the representative of the head of state and of the British Government. Canada's first permanent diplomatic mission to a foreign country opened in Washington in 1927: Australia followed in 1940.

The Irish Free State, accorded Dominion status in 1921 after a bitter war against British rule, ended its formal constitutional link with the crown in 1937 (renaming itself Éire), and became the Republic of Ireland outside the Commonwealth in 1949. Egypt, formally independent from 1922 but bound to Britain by treaty until 1936 (and under partial occupation until 1956) similarly severed all constitutional links with Britain.

M.K. Gandhi was a leader of the Indian independence movement

The rise of anti-colonial nationalist movements in the subject territories in the first half of the 20th century challenged an imperial power now increasingly preoccupied with issues nearer home. First India, then other territories in Asia and Africa demanded independent statehood. After sometimes disastrous attempts to stem the tide, Britain's eventual acceptance of the new situation led to the Empire's transformation into today's Commonwealth.

The end of Empire gathered pace after Britain's efforts during World War II left the country all but exhausted and found its former allies disinclined to support the colonial status quo. Economic crisis in 1947 forced the Labour government of Clement Attlee to abandon Britain's attempt to remain a first-rank power, and to accept United States strategic pre-eminence. Britain entered a tortuous realignment with western Europe that remains unresolved to this day.

Britain's declaration of hostilities against Germany in September 1939 did not commit the Dominions, other than Australia, which had not yet legally adopted the Statute of Westminster. The other Dominions issued their own declarations of war, except for Eire, which had negotiated the removal of British forces from its territory the year before, and which now chose to remain neutral throughout the war.

World War II fatally undermined Britain's already weakened commercial and financial leadership and heightened the importance to the Dominions of the United States as a source of military assistance. Australian prime minister John Curtin's unprecedented action (1942) in successfully demanding the recall for home service of Australian troops earmarked for the defence of British-held Burma demonstrated that Dominion governments could no longer be expected to subordinate their own national interests to British strategic perspectives.

After the war, Australia and New Zealand joined with the United States in the ANZUS regional security treaty in 1951 (although the U.S. repudiated its commitments to New Zealand following a 1985 dispute over port access for nuclear vessels). Britain's pursuit (from 1961) and attainment (1973) of European Community membership weakened the old commercial ties to the Dominions, ending their privileged access to the U.K. market.

In the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, post-war decolonisation was accomplished with almost unseemly haste in the face of increasingly powerful (and sometimes mutually conflicting) nationalist movements, with Britain rarely fighting to retain any territory. Britain's limitations were exposed to a humiliating degree by the Suez Crisis of 1956 in which the United States opposed Anglo-French intervention in Egypt, seeing it as a doomed adventure likely to jeopardise American interests in the Middle East.

The independence of India in 1947 ended a 40-year struggle by the Indian National Congress for first self-government and later full sovereignty, though the land's partition into India and Pakistan entailed violence costing hundreds of thousands of lives. The acceptance by Britain, and the other Dominions, of India's adoption of republican status (1949) is now taken as the start of the modern Commonwealth.

Burma achieved independence (1948) outside the Commonwealth, Ceylon (1948) and Malaya (1957) within it. Britain's Palestine Mandate ended (1948) in withdrawal and open warfare between the territory's Jewish and Arab populations. In the Mediterranean, a guerrilla war waged by Greek Cypriot advocates of union with Greece ended (1960) in an independent Cyprus.

The reign of [[Queen Elizabeth IIEnlarge

The reign of [[Queen Elizabeth II

saw the gradual dismantling of the Empire.]]

The end of Britain's Empire in Africa came with exceptional rapidity, often leaving the newly-independent states ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of sovereignty: Ghana's independence (1957) after a ten-year nationalist political campaign was followed by that of Nigeria (1960), Sierra Leone and Tanganyika (1961), Uganda (1962), Kenya and Zanzibar (1963), The Gambia (1965), Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland) and Lesotho (formerly Basutoland) (1966), and Swaziland (1968).

British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was complicated by the region's white settler populations: Kenya had already provided an example in the Mau Mau Uprising of violent conflict exacerbated by white landownership and reluctance to concede majority rule. White minority rule in South Africa remained a source of bitterness within the Commonwealth until the ending of apartheid policy in 1994.

Although the white-dominated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland ended in the independence of Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) and Zambia (the former Northern Rhodesia) in 1964, Southern Rhodesia's white minority (a self-governing colony since 1923) declared independence rather than submit to African government. The support of South Africa's apartheid government kept the Rhodesian regime in place until 1979, when agreement was reached on majority rule in an independent Zimbabwe.

Most of Britain's Caribbean territories opted for eventual separate independence after the failure of the West Indies Federation (1958-62): Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago (1962) were followed into statehood by Barbados (1966) and the smaller islands of the eastern Caribbean (1970s and 1980s). Britain's Pacific dependencies underwent a similar process of decolonisation in the latter decades. At the end of Britain's 99-year lease of the mainland New Territories, all of Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997.

At its height, the British Empire consisted of the following territories -

The Americas and Atlantic

Remaining Dependent Territories

Now only a few small territories remain under British administration, mostly for reasons of perceived insufficiency as sovereign states. The last remaining Dependent Territories are:

Territories possessing substantial self-government

Other territories

See also

External links


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Ileana del Carmen

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The Two Sources Of Belonging

We all want to belong to a group. Some of us less or more than others. But few of us want to be ostracized from it.

We can obtain that sense of belonging through empathy if we are similar, and duty if we are not. Empathy through shared interpretation. Duty through shared action in pursuit of mutually beneficial ends.

Women vary less. They sense more. At least, on average, they tend to belong through empathy. Men vary more. They sense less. They are action rather than perception oriented.

Dominance is the corollary of empathy. We must learn to use our dominance against the physical world, and in defense of life and property, and not as a means of self expression or control of others.

Misused empathy is just as dangerous as misused dominance. The damage we have done to the world by our supposedly charitable activities is as great as the damage we have done by war.

We have lost the ancient understanding of our dual natures.

To cohabitate and to cooperate politically we must master both empathy and dominance in relation to how we possess them.

And in doing so create belonging by both empathy and duty.

Riffing On Scott Sumner: German Membership In The Euro Is Preventing The Advancement Of The Poorer Countries

The eurozone excludes Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Britain and Switzerland.

…Germany is one of the few northern countries that’s actually in the eurozone…

And it seems to me that here you have a massive adverse selection problem. Because of Abraham Lincoln, affluent states like Massachusetts can’t suddenly decide they want no part of our fiscal union, and would rather just reap the benefits of our large single market. But Switzerland, Norway can and did make that choice. Britain almost certainly would, and both Sweden and Denmark might as well. In contrast, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia would like nothing more than to join such a union. And all the likely future expansion of the EU is into areas further east, and much poorer than even Greece and Portugal. Places like Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine (a country nearly the size of France) Belarus, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Moldova (the saddest place on Earth—even the name is depressing.) And did I mention Turkey? Indeed why not Russia at some distant point in the future?

People often compare Europe to the US. That’s wrong; the eurozone is sort of like the US, although a bit poorer. But Europe as a whole is far poorer than the US, far more corrupt, backward, inefficient, whatever other pejoratives you want to apply. Even America at its worst (say the treatment of ethnic minorities) isn’t as bad as the treatment of gypsies in Eastern Europe.

My point was not to predict the future, but rather to provide a warning. Once you start down that road [to creating a united states of europe], there will be constant pressure to go further. Quite likely at some point the northern European taxpayers will rebel, and we won’t end up with a United States of Europe. The policy will collapse.

The eurozone really only has two options; a more expansionary monetary policy or a breakup. There’s no point in looking for alternative solutions.

The argument I consistently make, is that of course Germanic Protestant northern tax payers will rebel. And likewise, so will germanic northern european americans rebel. Which is what they’re doing today. We call it polarization.

Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, should leave the eurozone and germany should reissue the Mark. (Belgium is already divided between french and german cultures, and they despise each other as much as the french and english canadians do.)

The success of the euro then, will be as a vehicle for poor countries to unite, and possibly (I say with uncharacteristic hope) focus on group improvement, rather than transfers from the north to the south.

In fact, the most important and valuable strategy that the United States could adopt for the world today, is to dismantle the empire both domestically and internationally. The anglo people have succeeded in spreading consumer capitalism. We’ve modernized the planet. But it’s one thing to invent and evangelize a technology. It’s another to try to control it.

Europe doesn’t need one federation. It needs two or three. Because germanic, latin, and byzantine europe are different cultures if not different civilizations. They always have been. They always will be.

And multiculturalism is impossible.

2000 Years Of Economic History In A Chart? What Would That Chart Tell Us?

I don’t know what we’re supposed to learn from this chart from The Atlantic, but as others have already stated with passion, it’s pretty bad information design. And even without that criticism, almost every conclusion that one would draw from it certainly appears to be simply meaningless or false – at least without some sort of prevarication.

It reminds me of the biggest statistical sin in current economics: using ‘families’ rather than individuals. If someone uses that measure, then everything that follows is false. Families have changed too much. More so than the economy itself. The economy is noise by comparison. Likewise, for such gross categorization as this chart seeks to make use of, economic activity is meaningless without the sizes of the geography and the population. Boundaries are meaningless unless what happens within them is substantially different per person per square mile/km. Perhaps even, limited to per person per acre of arable land.

Otherwise all the chart tells you is that big arbitrary geographic areas produce more income than small arbitrary geographic areas. Which tells us precisely nothing that isn’t absurdly obvious.

What any such chart would allow us to draw the conclusion that:

    i) navigable rivers or seas made a very big difference, and
    ii) a hostile winter environment is beneficially eugenic for an agrarian population, but not for non-agrarians,
    iii) An east-west geography transports knowledge and goods more easily than a north south geography,
    iv) as of the industrial revolution, rivers are slightly less important, and populations with property rights and literacy matter increasingly instead.

Economic history is not complicated. People need:

    a) an environment that is not overly hostile (such as subsaharan africa or siberia),
    b) a means of transportation of goods (rivers),

They need institutional technologies which do not so much require the state as require the state not abuse:

    c) a monopoly of control over that territory within which they feel able to allocate property, take risks, establish norms, and where necessary laws and from which they can prohibit others from establishing different allocations of property, different norms and laws.
    d) property rights (law, contracts, courts), and
    e) tools that allow them to calculate the future and to cooperate in increasing numbers (numbers, money, accounting, banking, credit).

And, they need those institutions that *are* complicated: social aspects we too often ignore, and which appear to require intervention on the part of the state:

    f) the change in mating patterns (outlawing inbreeding) and property rights that allow us to transform human relations from that of tribal familialism to that of commercial universalism; thereby allowing us to trust, risk, produce and trade in increasing complexity. And
    g) the consequential prohibition on rent seeking and corruption that plagues humanity everywhere in the world except among the germanic protestants above the Hanjal line. And
    h) the need for aristotelian reasoning (objective reasoning, debate, and science) as a compliment and competitor to the emotionally and socially binding mysticism that seems to be a required property of all social orders.

A chart that is useful, will be the chart that illustrates that the only value of a state is in creating these institutions (a) thru (h).

Is Islam A Political Ideology? (And Are Progressivism, Scientism, Democratic Secular Humanism Religions?)

From The Global Secular Humanism Group:
“Should ‘Islam’ be considered as a political ideology and a religion at the same time?”

The question should be restated in this fashion in order to illustrate Islam’s political content:

A) Should Islam be considered a Religion? (Yes/No)
YES: Religions consist of Myths and rituals. It does appear that religions require some form of magian reasoning. However, scientism, secular humanism, progressivism, all require ‘faith’ (in methodology, reason, or technology) that is expressly counter to the historical evidence. So, it is quite possible to create a personal philosophy that is the premise for a religion (scientism, secular humanism, progressivism) on faith. Scientism has myths, rituals and institutions. Progressivism has them too. Secular humanism is getting close, but I tend to treat secular humanists as simply anti-christian atheists and progressives as Democratic Secular Humanists. That means Secular Humanism is a minor ideology, and Democratic Secular Humanism as a major ideology. Both of which rely upon faith. But Democratic (Socialist) Secular Humanism, like islam, has both laws (human rights), institutions (academia, the press, the party structure, and it’s developed expressly for use in majority rule under parliamentarianism). So it appears to be both an ideology, a religion and a political system.

B) Should Islam be considered a political Ideology? (Yes/No)
YES: The purpose of an ideology is to obtain political power through excitation of the masses. Islam was invented to obtain political power. Islam was used as a means of conquest, and succeeded in obtaining political power. Islam is used to obtain, justify and use political power. Political power is the power to enforce the primacy of a set of laws. Islam contains a code of laws with explicit commandment to their primacy. Therefore islam is a political ideology.

C) Should Islam be considered a political system? (Yes/No)
YES: While a primitive political system only requires the ability to resolve disputes, A political system capable of coordinating investments (taxes and expenditures on infrastructure) requires at a minimum, laws, and an organization that mandates the exclusivity of those laws above all other laws, rules and norms. Islam has both a set of laws (Sharia) and a system of producing judges for those laws (Mullahs) and a system of intergenerational teaching for the purpose of propagating those laws (Religious Schools). In effect islam is a legal system with magian origins (instead of natural rights). That islam does not include other formal institutions (a parliament) is simply a function of it’s antiquity and tribal authoritarianism. Islam conquered a roman state (Byzantium) and assimilated it’s administrative structure. But did not include it on it’s own. In fact, much of islamic administration relied upon slaves and eunuchs because the byzantine administration could not adapt to Arab tribalism. (See Fukuyama’s recent book.)

Islam is a religion, a political ideology, and a political system. If one argues that it is not, then one must define the terms religion, political ideology, and political system. And that exercise would lead to either confirmation of that it is a religion, ideology and political system, or one would define those terms using selection bias by sampling normative rather than structural rules.

A Note To Jonathan Haidt: An Explanation Of Elite Conservative Strategy Since Reagan

Jonathan Haidt first attacks republicans then rescinds it. I try to put conservative strategy in context. And in that context it’s quite simple. It’s an extension of the tactic used against world communism: “Resist until they go bankrupt.” If you understand this strategy everything the conservatives and Republicans do makes complete sense. Everything.

Very interesting post, and equally interesting comments.

One commenter above writes that you (Jonathan) should perhaps seek to understand conservative elite theory. (People like me.)

The conservative intellectuals succeeded in defeating world communism and socialism through a variety of military, political, economic, and intellectual tactics. But conservatives failed to come up with a strategy for defeating democratic redistributive socialism and the secular progressive attack on the meritocratic hierarchical conservative society. Due to this failure, the libertarians, who are explicitly economic in their strategy, took over leadership of the anti-collectivism, and whenever possible, the conservatives adopted the libertarian economic and political program.

But about the time of Reagan, conservative thought leaders looked at the demographic data and determined that the program of expanding statism would win out over time. So, the conservatives abandoned their belief that they could gain a majority and keep control of the state, or even defend themselves against it. And instead, they increased militarism, worked to increase home ownership, and tried to rekindle entrepreneurship rather than government as the central narrative behind western success. They then allied with the capitalist class to attempt to bankrupt the state before european style nanny state could develop. This was consistent with the approach to communism: “Just resist them and wear them out. They will eventually fail because their concept of an economy is unsustainable.” The conservative battle against the state is simply the conservative tactic against world communism replayed.

It is perhaps useful to note that the conservative argument against central planning, urban planning, welfare disincentives, laxity on crime and punishment, the social and economic impact of the dissolution of the institution of marriage, as well as the problem of the ponzi financing strategy of social programs (rather than the Singapore model of forced and subsidized savings) were all correct. The conservative vision of hubristic man and economic incentives is more accurate a world view than the liberal egalitarian ideal. And while it is not that we cannot use the ideas of both sides. It is that progressive desires must be accomplished through conservative means: retaining the relationship between cause, effect and incentives.

The USA, as a set of political institutions, faces the multicultural problem that faces all empires. It currently must cope with the combination of a)”The Demands Of Empire” that give the state greater scope than just the nation + b)”Nine Nations Of North America” which represent geographic differences in culture + c)”Racial Self-Preference in Association, and Differences In Ability” + d)”Gender Biases” + e) The class exaggerating effect of the extraordinary economic advantage of having an IQ greater than 105 in the information economy. All of these biases exist within a set of political institutions designed to resolve conflicts in priority between property owning males with homogenous norms. It is not possible to resolve conflicts over ends using decision making by majority rule. In the market we cooperate on means and are ignorant of one another’s ends. In majority rule government, there are winners and losers because we argue over ends. Majority rule must (as Federalist papers 10 stated) lead to extra-political resolution of conflict between groups with such mutually exclusive goals. Liberals slant toward the female reproductive strategy (the largest number of human births with the most equal experience) and the conservatives slant toward the male reproductive strategy (the most competitive tribe with the best people in charge of it.) This level of conflict over instinctual preference will not be resolved by the liberal desire to use our instituions of majority rule to suppress the instincts of the other side any more than conservatives would succeed in encouraging liberals to adopt conservative norms.

For this reason, something has to give. Either demographics have to play out (it’s possible), or the federal government has to devolve (unlikely without catastrophic military or economic causes) or we will have to develop new institutions that allow us to federate while pursuing opposing social ends (Just as unlikely). But it’s also just as likely that we will lose our high trust society as groups seek extra-political means of status seeking (like Mediterranean’s and Eastern Europeans, and Russians.) And if we lose that we will also lose our risk taking – which is why we’re a wealthy economy. Risk taking creates innovation.

But the USA is too big and too diverse ann empire to persist as we have known it. Classical liberalism is a means of governance for a small state or a small federation. Not an empire. And the USA is an empire. The Classical mutli-house model did not work for the british empire, and it will not work for the american empire.

So while I believe you have finally supplied the social sciences with the language by which to understand political conflcits I do not believe that the conflict is resolvable. People under Russian and Chinese socialism developed ‘black markets’ for everything. People under majority rule who have opposing interests will develop extra-political ‘black markets’ for power. They will circumvent the political institutions to achieve their desired ends. The state will attempt to preserve itself by increasing control, which will only expand the black markets. The liberals circumvented the constitution, and the conservatives circumvent the state apparatus.

There is no solution here without changes to our institutions. In government, big is bad and small is good. The city state and a mobile population allow the greatest diversity and freedom. So the problem we have is finding an institutional solution to that equilibrium: allowing federation of some things but not federation of norms.

Stiglitz Joins In On Keynesian Spending In Order To Expand The Oppressive State

The Keynesian debate promoted by such writers as Krugman, Delong, Thoma, Smith, and Stiglitz is misleading. Human beings are well aware that spending can increase demand, and that demand will improve the economy. The problem is, that we’re also aware of the externalities that are caused by that spending: the increase in government interference in our lives, the expansion of government’s size, the corruption created by the use of the funds, the use of the funds to support one’s opposition, the destruction of our savings, and the near prohibition on the institution of saving.

These negative consequences all support the secondary Keynesian objectives: the strong and increasingly egalitarian state. So Keynesians promote spending as much because of it’s externalities as for its impact on the economy. Just as we oppose those externalities because we desire freedom from an oppressive state, even if we must pay a high cost for doing so.

The germans resent supporting the greeks, italians and spanish just as much as americans resent supporting their liberal leaning underclasses. And while it may be true that the scale of our economy allows us to print money, that is not to say that each of us could not be more free, more prosperous, more secure and more competitive, as smaller collections of states rather than a continental federation of states oppressed by the coasts.

The Keynesian arguments are convincing on first blush. But they are only convincing because in their simplicity they ignore the true costs of government spending – the externalities that come from empowering the state: it is not debt alone that we face. It’s the destruction of meritocracy and the submission to the state.

The germans and the americans are right to oppose it.


V for Vendetta

This belongs to Gracee.

I’ve always felt like I am compromising a lot of things I believe in to be more comfortable, and in the process I am being held hostage by my own wants. This sentence from Valerie’s letter reminds me that whatever happens, no matter how much we tend to lose ourselves by our own or others’ doing, there is always that inch — our integrity — where we can be completely free.

Font used is called Porcelain, but my artist, Dyuntats of 55 Tinta in the Philippines, have made some adjustments due to the size and positioning of the tattoo.

Literary Tattoos: V for Vendetta Alan Moore

- Valerie’s Letter, V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

Literary Tattoos: Watchmen Dave Gibbons Alan Moore

This image is from the comic Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. It is the signature/calling card of the vigilante Rorschach.  It was submitted by ElleVee:

Yes, I love the comic. Yes, I love the character of Rorschach. But I got this tattoo more for what it (and Rorschach) stood for. Not the character’s opinions or quirks, (I’m not a homophobic/anti-woman hobo vigilante, to my knowledge, although I do eat sugar cubes) but for his ideals. He never compromised. He believed in something, and he fought for it, and never wavered in his belief, and was willing to do whatever it took to maintain those beliefs. Even when it would have been easier to give in and roll over, like everyone else, he stood fast, because it was right, and because sometimes that’s what you have to do. He never doubted himself, and he made his own morals. Then he stood by them, without fear or regret. And as someone who has, throughout their life, been wracked with self-doubt, anxiety, and the tendency to bend to others’ wills, I feel that this is something to remember. Not to be inflexible, but to be true to yourself and the things that are important to you, regardless of what others might say or think. Be who you are, without compromise or apology. Hold fast to your ideals (not politics or opinions, but ideals), and aspire for a better world.

Also, my friend pointed out the humor that the character of Rorschach would have enormous problems with my tattoo because, A) He doesn’t seem like a tattoo kind of guy, and B) It’s on a GIRL OH NOES. I too find this funny.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

Literary Tattoos: Watchmen Dave Gibbons Alan Moore

This tattoo was submitted by w m r and reads “quis custodiet ipsos custodes”. From Wikipedia:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, which literally translates to “Who will guard the guards themselves,” and is variously translated in colloquial English as “Who watches the watchmen?”

The Watchmen movie is coming out tomorrow; have you read the graphic novelLiterary Tattoos: Watchmen Dave Gibbons Alan Moore by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons yet?


Count On

Back to number 29

On to number 31

To refresh her spirits,
See-Far Woman
has a cup of green tea
every thirty minutes.

Two cups to the hour,
with no milk or sugar,
certainly seems to increase
her numbers-power.

Grace Nichols

On their THIRTIETH wedding anniversary
The present he gave her was cursory
Just one pearl, not a string
What a miserly thing!
Oh well- it's for better or for worser, eh?

A Stanton

CleopatraMark Anthony and Cleopatra died in 30 AD.

At 30 kilograms the great bustard is the heaviest flighted bird.

Dancer and actor Fred Astaire appeared in 30 Hollywood films.

In the UK the speed limit in a built up area is 30 miles per hour.

Oil30% of the world's oil comes from the Persian Gulf region.

English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking was honored for his theories by being made the youngest fellow of the Royal Society, at the age of 30

30 days hath September, April, June and November (all the rest have 31 except February which has 28 and 29 in a leap year).

The maximum length for a water polo court is 30 metres. Goals must be 30 centimetres deep.

LionLions cautiously stalk their prey but once within striking distance sprint at speeds of upto 30 miles per hour.

A volleyball court is 30 feet wide and each side is 30 feet long.

Tokyo's population is about 30 million making it the most populated city in the world.

The 30 year's war lasted from 1618 to 1648. It involved most of the countries of western Europe, and was fought mainly in Germany.

The 30 years anniversary is a pearl anniversary.