The Plastic Sword of Terror.

(source)

By now, you've probably heard that the terrifying sword seized as evidence during the September anti-terrorist raids was actually a toy sword, made of plastic. Yes, a plastic toy, believe it or not.

According to Rachel Olding, writing last Tuesday for SMH:

"It was one of the most frightening, powerful images to emerge from counter-terrorism raids across Sydney last month.
"As one man was charged with conspiring to behead a random person in Sydney's CBD, police removed a sword in an evidence bag from a Marsfield home.
"But the owner of the menacing item has revealed that it is actually a plastic decoration common in almost every Shiite Muslim household."

And note the detail: the plastic sword of terror was found in a Shiite home, not a Sunni.

Overseas readers may be LTFAO, and that's understandable. That was the initial reaction here; some Aussies still manage to sort of smile:

"I guess it's a lucky thing the raids only turned up a plastic sword then. What if those 800 cops had found a toy light sabre? The headlines would have screamed 'ISIS develops terrifying Stars Wars capability'. The SAS might have been despatched to Tatooine."

However, dear readers, this may not be such a laughing matter, as Fergal Davis, from the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at UNSW Law School, wrote for The Guardian (Australia):

"The reaction on social media has been one of bemusement. The assumption, which I suspect is true, is that the sword was taken in error. But Australian law is broad enough to potentially criminalise the possession of a plastic sword.
"There are at least two relevant provisions."

Under these provisions a person could be sentenced to between 15 and 25 years.

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Join the dots: (1) a terrible law, (2) a climate of hysteria fostered by the media, (3) an inept government intent on diverting the public's attention, and (4) a servile opposition.

Now, by all means, keep on laughing.

A Keynes for Every Occasion.

(source)

For conservative Bruce Bartlett, Keynes was really a conservative (and that's a good thing). Bartlett quoting John Kenneth Galbraith with approval:

"The broad thrust of his efforts, like that of Roosevelt, was conservative; it was to ensure that the system would survive." 

For Misesian Vernon Orval Watts, Keynes was really a socialist (and that's really, really bad):

"In general, moreover, Keynesian proposals for 'compensatory' policies follow Marxian socialism in seeking to force individuals to obey the rule, 'From everyone according to his abilities, to everyone according to his needs.' Arguments and theories used to support these proposals are essentially Marxian."

For New Keynesian and centre-left Simon Wren-Lewis, Keynes and Keynesianism weren't really Left, or Right, but simply about how the macroeconomy works (and that's really, really good):

"So my argument is that Keynesian theory is not left wing, because it is not about market failure -- it is just about how the macroeconomy works."

For this Post-Keynesian ("progressive" liberal?), Keynes was really a "progressive" liberal and that's better than better:

"To cut a long story short, Keynes was a 'progressive' liberal, not a conservative and not a direct supporter of the UK 'Labour' party, in contrast to some people who seem to think Keynes was a conservative".

For Noah Smith (centrist?), it's Hayek's fault that people think "Keynesianism is socialism-lite". In reality, Keynes and Keynesianism were unjustly opposed by Hayek, but neither Keynes nor Keynesianism are "socialist", "progressive", or "liberal":

"If you use the word 'Keynesian' as a synonym for 'socialist,' 'progressive,' or 'liberal,' well my friend, you're doing it wrong."

Robert Vienneau says that "Hayek [was] not opposed to Keynes on political principle".

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For what it is worth, I agree with Bartlett (and Galbraith): Keynes was essentially a conservative (but for me, unlike Bartlett, that's not a good thing). To the extent that Vienneau considers that Hayek and Keynes were more or less equally conservative, I agree with him, too.

Anyway, there you have it: a Keynes for every occasion.

Feel free to choose whichever you like, but remember this: your and your children's future are at stake here. Whether Keynes was liberal, conservative, left, right, up or down, he looked at people like us with plenty of contempt (here, here). That doesn't make the options offered by these people any better.

He remember this: a two-edged sword cuts both ways.

UPDATE:
08/10/2014. Believe it or not, I just realized this: I actually agree with Noah Smith on something! Man, miracles do happen! Department of Whiskey, Tango, Foxtroxt, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang.

Social Democracy in The Communist Manifesto.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels writing in 1848 about the formation of trade unions and how they would evolve into working-class political parties:

"Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades' Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.
"Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.
"This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours' bill in England was carried." (here)

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Britannica Library Adults, about the history of the Labour Party (political party, United Kingdom):

"The Labour Party was born at the turn of the 20th century [i.e. some 50 years after the Communist Manifesto was first published] out of the frustration of working-class people at their inability to field parliamentary candidates through the Liberal Party, which at that time was the dominant social-reform party in Britain. In 1900 the Trades Union Congress (the national federation of British trade unions) cooperated with the Independent Labour Party (founded in 1893) to establish a Labour Representation Committee, which took the name Labour Party in 1906. The early Labour Party lacked a nationwide mass membership or organization; up to 1914 it made progress chiefly through an informal agreement with the Liberals not to run candidates against each other wherever possible. After World War I the party made great strides, owing to a number of factors: first, the Liberal Party tore itself apart in a series of factional disputes; second, the 1918 Representation of the People Act extended the electoral franchise to all males aged 21 or older and to women aged 30 or older; and third, in 1918 Labour reconstituted itself as a formally socialist party with a democratic constitution and a national structure". (paywalled, but see also here and here)

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A similar story applies to the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD):

"The SPD traces its origins to the merger in 1875 [i.e. some 30 years after the Communist Manifesto's publication] of the General German Workers' Union, led by Ferdinand Lassalle, and the Social Democratic Workers' Party, headed by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht. In 1890 it adopted its current name, the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The party's early history was characterized by frequent and intense internal conflicts between so-called revisionists and orthodox Marxists and by persecution by the German government and its chancellor, Otto von Bismarck."

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Pretty much like Marx and Engels wrote, decades in advance.

True, this kind of parties have changed since their origins (and, ab ovo, were vitiated by reformist. moderated, "pragmatist" elements, greatly aided -- I must add -- by academics); true, even the gains achieved were temporary and in the long-run costly in terms of political mobilization.

Still, in that passage of the Manifesto you see the working class struggles evolving from individual workers to small associations to national labour federations (facilitated by modern technology: railways); from labour federations to political parties: political struggle carried on by labour institutions, resulting in regulations shaping the distribution of resources to the workers' benefit.

To me (and that's me: I'm no big-shot professor) it doesn't sound too shabby, particularly considering that, according to Acemoglu and Robinson (here), and Milanovic (here), Marx ignored institutions, technology, politics, and their impact on the distribution of resources in a society:

"We argue that all of these general laws are unhelpful as a guide to understand the past or predict the future, because they ignore the central role of political and economic institutions in shaping the evolution of technology and the distribution of resources in a Society".

But, whatever Marx and Engels wrote, they must be wrong. After all, professors and academics -- whose livelihoods depend on your well-being, surely? -- say so. Trust these people: you'll do just fine. Right?

Questions from a Worker Who Reads.

[A]

Questions from a Worker Who Reads 

by Bertolt Brecht (h/t David Ruccio).

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
Of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada
Went down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Years’ War. Who
Else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man.
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.
So many questions.

Image Credits:
[A] "Day scene. Wheaton Glass Works. Boy is Howard Lee. His mother showed me the family record in Bible which gave birth July 15, 1894. 15 years old now, but has been in glass works two years and some nights. Started at 13 years old. Millville, N.J., 11/1909". Photographed by Lewis Hine. This work is in the public domain. Wikipedia.