The Berkeley law professor, the senator, and the use of language

The New Neo Posted on by

I was rather surprised to see how many people reacted to the video of the Berkeley professor, Khiara Bridges, in her exchange with Senator Josh Hawley, by saying they thought she wasn’t very bright.

On the contrary, in my opinion she’s smart, and she knows exactly what she’s saying.

What’s more, in the exchange between Bridges and Hawley that can be found at that link, my perception is that both understand what the other is saying quite well and both are smart. It’s just that they are playing a semantic and political game about the meaning of the word “woman.”

And when I call it a game, please don’t think I mean it is something trivial or light. It is a deadly serious game with large consequences for liberty. It goes to the heart of the argument between today’s left – represented by Bridges – and today’s right, represented by Hawley. That argument comes from what the great Thomas Sowell has called the conflict of visions.

Sowell wrote his book on the subject in 1987 (revised in 2007), and it set up the dichotomy this way:

The root of these conflicts, Sowell claims, are the “visions”, or the intuitive feelings that people have about human nature; different visions imply radically different consequences for how they think about everything from war to justice.

The rest of the book describes two basic visions, the “unconstrained” and “constrained” visions, which are thought to capture opposite ends of a continuum of political thought on which one can place many contemporary Westerners, in addition to their intellectual ancestors of the past few centuries…

Sowell often refers to [those with the unconstrained vision, such as Bridges in this case] as “the self anointed.” Ultimately they believe that man is morally perfectible. Because of this, they believe that there exist some people [themselves, of course] who are further along the path of moral development, have overcome self-interest and are immune to the influence of power and therefore can act as surrogate decision-makers for the rest of society.

I will add that a favorite tool of the self-anointed is to insist on changes of language in order to change both perceptions and policies, as well as the favoring of subjective feelings over objective truth (the latter of which they have a tendency to deny, except when it happens to favor their cause).

More:

Those with a constrained vision favor solid empirical evidence and time-tested structures and processes over intervention and personal experience. Ultimately, the constrained vision demands checks and balances and refuses to accept that all people could put aside their innate self-interest.

That would be Hawley’s position.

And the argument between Bridges and Hawley about the word “woman” is an argument about whose vision will prevail. It puts me in mind of the following dialogue between Humpty Dumpty and Alice, from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass:

“[T]hat shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents.”

“Certainly,” said Alice.

“And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

That is indeed the question that underlies the sparring between Bridges and Hawley, with Bridges playing the role of Humpty Dumpty and Hawley as Alice. Note also the fact that, in the passage from the book, Humpty Dumpty smiles contemptuously and later addresses Alice “in rather a scornful tone.” This was true of Bridges, as well, because the self-anointed often feel contemptuous and scornful towards those who won’t get with the program.

It’s clear, also, that Bridges seems to thinks she’s gotten the better of Hawley in that exchange, and Hawley may indeed believe that he’s the winner. I have little doubt that the viewers on each side thinks that the person with whom they agree has scored the most points (see this, for example).

But I also think the most effective way of arguing involves understanding what’s behind the arguments of the other side. In that spirit, I offer this guide to what Bridges was saying, and the philosophy behind it. I’ll summarize the logic this way:

(1) In using the terms “man” and “woman” we are beyond the simplistic, objective, biologically-determined thinking of old. In our brave new world, what matters is a person’s self-perception about being a man or a woman. This world is not binary – some people are “non-binary” – but most people will be identifying (the operative term) as man or woman. Whether a person is in fact a man or woman is completely determined by that individual’s self-perception. What’s more, the rest of the world must recognize that self-perception as the only reality and behave appropriately, and that includes not only using the correct pronouns but also a newly-appropriate use of the terms “man” and “woman” to describe such people in the manner defined by that reality. Furthermore, it is a reality that, although often recently arrived at, is considered to extend backwards in time, so that even though the person was previously considered a man or a woman (or a boy or a girl), in fact that person was always the other sex and was merely “assigned” a sex at birth that turned out to have been incorrect. Therefore birth certificates can be changed ex post facto in order to conform to the new sex the person always had, appearances at birth to the contrary. And that is also why those people who ultimately choose to have sex-change surgery are now considered to be having sex affirmation surgery, a procedure that makes their outsides conform better to what is now considered to have always been their identity.

Therefore:

(2) a biological male transitioning to becoming a trans woman should always be called a woman because that’s what he (now “she”) believes he (now “she”) is, and what he (now “she”) wishes to be called. So “he” is now “she” and is defined as a woman, although he-now-she cannot get pregnant – therefore this is a woman who cannot get pregnant. In addition, this he-now-she was always a “she,” and to suggest otherwise is to harm that person, because words are violence.

(3) a biological female transitioning to becoming a trans man should always be called a man because that’s what she (now “he”) believes she (now “he”) is, and what she (now “he”) wishes to be called. However, if she (now “he”) still has an intact vagina, ovaries, and uterus – which many such people have because they’ve not gotten so-called “bottom” surgery – then she-now-he can become pregnant. In addition, this she-now-he was always a “he,” and to suggest otherwise is to harm that person, because words are violence. Ergo, he can become pregnant. Therefore, since this person is a man, it is correct (and even obligatory) to say that a man can become pregnant. To suggest otherwise is, in Bridges words, to deny the existence of such a person – and that is violence.

Similar arguments go for so-called “binary” people, but I won’t go into the tedious details except to add that they tend to prefer other pronouns (such as “they”) and tend not to want to be called either “man” or “woman.”

These arguments seem absurd because they deny biological reality. But they are not illogical; they have an internal logic and progression. Such positions once were confined to leftists in academia, but now they have gone out into the general society and the left is trying to impose them through shaming. When Bridges accuses Hawley of “violence” – even implying that he can cause suicides among fragile people through his questioning – she is using a tried-and-true tactic of shaming those who won’t get with the program and use the approved leftist language.

It seems surreal, but so is Lewis Carroll’s book that takes us Through the Looking Glass into another world. The book is written in the spirit of play, but the game between Bridges the professor and Hawley the policy-maker is not fun, and the stakes are high.

Social media censorship and government collusion

The New Neo Posted on by

This could get very interesting:

There has been much public evidence that the Biden administration has pressured large social media and tech companies to censor political opponents under the guise of designating such speech “disinformation” or “misinformation.”

On May 5, 2022, the states of Missouri and Louisiana filed a Complaint alleging that such collusion violated, among other things, its citizens first amendment rights.

From the complaint:

2. A private entity violates the First Amendment “if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.” Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia Univ., 141 S. Ct. 1220, 1226 (2021) (Thomas, J., concurring). “The government cannot accomplish through threats of adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly.” Id.

3. That is exactly what has occurred over the past several years, beginning with express and implied threats from government officials and culminating in the Biden Administration’s open and explicit censorship programs. Having threatened and cajoled social-media platforms for years to censor viewpoints and speakers disfavored by the Left, senior government officials in the Executive Branch have moved into a phase of open collusion with social-media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social-media platforms under the Orwellian guise of halting so-called “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “malinformation.”

A federal court has granted the Motion for Expedited Discovery, which means that certain internal documents of government officials and social media platforms are likely to be revealed. There are four main topics alleged to have been suppressed at the government’s request:

1. The Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 Presidential election;
2. Speech about the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin;
3. Speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns; and
4. Speech about election integrity and the security of voting by mail.

As I said, should be interesting.

On Uvalde: notes on the ALERRT report

The New Neo Posted on by

No, I’ve haven’t forgotten that I said I was planning to write another post (or several posts) on the lengthy McCraw presentation to the Texas legislature about Uvalde and the police response. It’s just that so many events have intervened that I haven’t gotten around to it, and time marches on.

And this isn’t that post about McCraw’s testimony either, not yet. This is about a related subject, though, the Texas State University ALERRT report entitled “Robb Elementary School Attack Response Assessment and Recommendations.” A reader was kind enough to send me a link to the 26-page document.

I had already read something about the report and wrote the following concerning it as part of this July 6 comment:

It would also be really nice to know whether the Texas State people had access to all the interviews and videos and all of that, or whether they’re working off newspaper reports. I hope for everyone’s sake it’s the former and not the latter. But neither of the two articles I’ve read so far (the NBC one you linked and the Texas Tribune one I linked) sees fit to mention the sources involved in the Texas State study.

In other words, I was very puzzled that this long report was issued and then reported on, and some of its findings cited, without a word in the MSM about what the report’s sources were.

Well, now I know [emphasis mine]:

The information presented in this report is based on a incident briefing held for select ALERRT staff on June 1, 2022. The briefing, which was held for approximately 1 hour, was led by an investigating officer with knowledge of the event and investigative details. Briefing materials included surveillance footage from the school, Google Maps, a brief cell phone video, and verbal questions and answers between ALERRT staff and the investigator. We were first oriented to the location of this incident by the investigator via Google Maps. We were then given a chronological timeline of events and actions by the investigator as we reviewed the cell phone and school surveillance video. All times presented in this report are based on timelines provided by investigators. Additionally, we have received additional information as the investigation is still ongoing. The timeline presented here is based on the most current information as of 6/30/2022.

That’s a bit vague as to the extent and timing of the “additional information,” but it seems to pertain mostly to updates in the timeline, as far as I can tell. Otherwise this took one hour, including questions, in a briefing held about a week after the shootings? That certainly gives a new meaning to the term briefing.

I watched four and a half hours of McCraw’s presentation to the legislature on June 21 (my first post on it was here), as well as hours of testimony from others later that day, and the experience raised more questions than it answered. I simply cannot imagine what kind of presentation could be given in an hour, even without the question-and-answer period, and how a report could be based mostly on that.

That’s not to say that this report isn’t accurate. Most of it matches much of the information we already have and can be found on this blog and its links, as well as comments here. The timeline the report gives contains a little more detail in some portions (including seconds rather than just minutes, for example), and it is more clear about certain aspects. For example, as had been hinted and as I had suspected, the initial flurry of shooting by the perp – and almost certainly the killing and wounding of teachers and children – happened as soon as the perp entered the classrooms, from 11:33:32 to 11:36:04. And it’s still not 100% clear whether the perp entered room 111 or room 112 first, a distinction which will become more important when I discuss the doors in one of the posts I have planned for later that’s based on McCraw’s longer legislative testimony.

Three Uvalde police officers enter the building at 11:35:55. That’s nine seconds before the last shot in the fusillade, but they’re not yet at the classrooms, which are down a hall and around a corner. Four other officers enter the building at 11:36:00 and four more at 11:36:03. As the officers get to the classrooms (the report says the “threshold” of the classrooms), they are fired upon by the perp (at 11:37:00 and 11:37:10). As we already know, two were injured – the report says “by building material fragments caused by the suspect’s rounds passing through the walls” – and then the group moves away from the doors but remains in halls nearby. After that, over the rest of the time they are in the hall, the perp fires two isolated shots, but unfortunately the report doesn’t answer the question of whether the shots were towards the hallway or not (I have read that police said they were, but I would guess there’s no way to substantiate that).

On page 12 of the report is a useful diagram of how rooms 111 and 112 relate to each other, and it contains some information that is new to me. I already knew (from some reports and also from McCraw’s legislative presentation) that the surveillance cameras had trouble picking up which door, 111 or 112, the perp had entered first. That was partly because the camera was mounted somewhat far away and therefore the perspective of the video of the doors wasn’t of great quality, but now I see it also was because the two doors are smack next to each other with no space at all in between. They constitute what’s more or less a double door.

McCraw’s presentation had already featured the doors themselves, so I knew what a classroom door in Robb Elementary looked like, but on page 13 of the report there is a photo and you can see the narrow window in the door. An important point is here (page 16) (one also mentioned in McCraw’s legislature presentation):

We received information from the investigating officer that the lock on room 111 had been reported as damaged multiple times; however, this has not been confirmed through work orders at this time. Regardless, the suspect is seen entering the room, exiting the room, and then reentering the room again prior to officers entering the building at 11:35:55. The only way to engage the lock is to insert a key from the hallway side of the door. At no point is the suspect observed entering the hallway and engaging the locking mechanism. Based upon this, we believe that the lock to room 111 was never engaged.

However – and again, this is part of a future post I plan to write about the doors and the locks – McCraw actually said some contradictory things during that presentation that made the issue quite confusing. In addition, the idea that a key was necessary to lock the doors from the outside was contradicted by at least one teacher interview I read, as well as the contradictions from McCraw. In other words, it was hard to make sense of what McCraw was saying, although I listened to the relevant portion several times. As I said, I hope to explain this in a later post; please bear with me, because it’s somewhat complicated.

As I’ve said many times before, in my opinion a big problem with the police response was that it was chaotic and disorganized. With this, the university report certainly concurs: “It appears that the officers did not create an immediate action plan.” It certainly does – or rather, whatever plan they did create (which was also chaotic and disorganized) was based on a false premise, that this was a barricaded subject rather than an active shooter. From the report:

It is not surprising that officers who had never been shot at before would be overwhelmed by the directed gunfire. This is especially the case if they had not been consistently training to deal with this type of threat.

From McCraw’s legislature presentation, I’ve developed a novel (and rather strange) hypothesis as to why the officers hesitated to act for so long and considered the perp to be a barricaded subject rather than an active shooter. But that’ll have to wait for another post.

The university report then goes on to give alternative approaches that should have been considered for getting into the classrooms, some of which seemingly could have been tried and should have been tried, such as going in through the windows in a coordinated effort. The report goes on to discuss various breaching methods, which would make sense if the officers felt it was an active shooter situation. We already know that for some mysterious reason they did not, and the report doesn’t try to figure out why they were so mistaken. It’s something I’ve pondered, and as I said I’ve come up with a somewhat strange possibility, which I plan to detail in a future post.

The report adds a couple of things I hadn’t known before, which is that miniblinds on the outer windows made it hard if not impossible to see from outside into the classrooms, and if the window entry had been tried the blinds would have had to have been “raked” by police. The classrooms were somewhat dark for that reason although it was daytime, and that could have made it somewhat difficult to see in accurately from the hallway through the narrow window in the door. In addition, of course, there would have been the possibility of hitting children if officers fired through the door without getting a good view of the perp.

I’ve said before – but it bears repeating – that I see the police response somewhat differently than most people see it. It’s partly a drama – and a tragedy – involving courage (or lack thereof) as well as training (or lack thereof), and I certainly agree that those are issues. But in addition, and importantly, I see the failures of the police that day as emanating from incorrect perceptions and poor communication. I hope to elaborate on that in a future post or posts.

I’ll stop there for today; this is already long enough. And it only scratches the surface.

I don’t usually pay attention to Jill Biden…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but this is so spectacular I couldn’t ignore it:

…[Jill] Biden messed up not once, but twice in the same sentence, first by saying the Latin community is “as distinct as the bogidas (sic) of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami, and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio.”

Who on earth would ever think those metaphors were a good idea? I am especially taken with the “breakfast tacos…in San Antonio.” How unique are they? I was in San Antonio once, but alas, I missed my chance for a breakfast taco. And in fact I must confess I’ve never had a breakfast taco anywhere, so even if I’d had one in San Antonio I probably wouldn’t be able to appreciate their uniqueness.

But if you’re going to be in San Antonio, you could sample from this list of ten breakfast taco places in the city. Just to give you some of the – ahem – flavor, here’s the first one:

Caracheo’s
This hole-in-the-wall does breakfast exactly as it should be: simple, fast and cheap. With 23 all-day options (plus a wide variety of add-ons), your taco can be as elaborate as you want, but we think the unfussy tacos are the best. Try the simple chorizo and egg and add onions and cilantro for a little freshness. Need a little extra heat? The excellent homemade red jalapeño salsa might cause you to break a sweat, but the complex flavor is worth it.

Okay, I get it – there are a lot of breakfast tacos in San Antonio. But tacos are not people, Jill. Not even latino people. Egg rolls are not people, not even Chinese people. Bagels are not people – well, you get the idea.

The First Lady experienced such a hue and cry that her press secretary tweeted this apology:

After all, Jill Biden admires and loves her tacos.

Democrats were already having a bit of trouble keeping the Hispanic community reliably voting Democrat. This can’t possibly help.

First Webb images

The New Neo Posted on by

Here they are.

The correct – although overused – word is “awesome.”

For example:

Webb’s First Deep Field is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.

Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying more distant galaxies, including some seen when the universe was less than a billion years old. This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths…

This image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, with many more galaxies in front of and behind the cluster.

As Boudin goes, so goes Gascon?

The New Neo Posted on by

One can hope:

A preliminary count of signatures submitted in a petition to recall Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón totals 715,833, L.A. County elections officials reported Saturday.

L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said his office has completed the first step in the review of the petitions submitted Wednesday and is now working on verifying signatures. The process must be completed no later than Aug. 17.

At least 566,857 valid signatures are required before voters can decide whether to recall Gascón from office. Fueled in part by rising crime and homelessness, Gascón and his progressive policies have been the subject of intense criticism since he was elected in 2020.

Although the recall campaign said it turned in more than 715,000 signatures, some of those will be disqualified during the verification process conducted by the county registrar.

At least 50% of voters would have to cast ballots to oust Gascon for it to happen.

Gascon is unrepentant, of course. About a week ago:

Gascon called the recall a political power grab that is attempting to “circumvent the democratic process.”

“The Republican-led recall effort in L.A. is on the ‘cusp’ of qualifying for the ballot this November,” it reads. “And if they’re successful, they will reverse all our progress.”

I think that’s the point, George – to reverse all your “progress,” somewhat like the citizens of San Francisco did to Chesa Boudin’s “progress.” As for “democracy,’ you can fool some of the people some of the time…as you did when you got elected.

Bari Weiss on our revolution of culture

The New Neo Posted on by

Several people have recommended this piece by Bari Weiss. It’s the transcript of a speech she gave to the students at the new University of Austin (UATX), a school dedicated to old-fashioned things like free speech. An excerpt:

Disinvitation—now called deplatforming—has become a regular feature of American life as the politics of censoriousness, forced conformity and ideological obedience have taken hold…

These incidents are not discreet little firestorms. They are deeply interconnected. They are the result of a zealous and profoundly illiberal ideology that has infiltrated our largest companies, our media, our universities, our medical schools, our law schools, our hospitals, our local governments, our elementary schools. Our friendships. Our families. Our language…

…[T]his is a revolution of culture. A revolution of ideas.

For far too long, it resisted description. The revolution’s proponents went from pretending it didn’t exist and insisting that those who suggested it did were wearing tinfoil hats . . . to declaring it was here, and it was excellent, and that if you didn’t get on board you were a bigot and a bad person.

It’s a long speech and an interesting one. Weiss is a person of the type that used to be far more common: a moderate liberal Democrat (if she identifies that way at all anymore). That places her on the right these days, whether she acknowledges it or not. She takes pains to tell us she’s not a Trump fan, for example. I’ve written about Weiss before and I think she’s doing important work; I’ll leave it at that for now.

This part of her speech especially interested me:

The other day my wife [NOTE: Weiss is a lesbian] got an email from an old friend of hers. The friend’s note was like a missive from the Soviet Union in that it demanded that my wife prove her purity of politics by disavowing . . . me. This is not the first time she or I has been asked to do something of this nature.

A politics that forces its adherents to put their most intimate relationships to a litmus test is a politics of totalitarianism.

That was the impetus for me starting this blog – my own experience with being the recipient of anger and/or shunning from some liberal friends and relatives who had previously not been interested in my politics or even been aware of my political positions. That “othering” (to use a leftist term) phenomenon was already widespread nearly eighteen years ago (!) when I started this blog. And it’s only gotten worse, much worse, since then.

Those who exercise that sort of boycott of people they formerly liked or loved do not see themselves as the totalitarians, of course. They see the people they’re are turning away from as the crazy or evil ones, the fascists, the totalitarians, the racists, the you-name-it. Sometimes they sever relationships reluctantly, sometimes with vigor. Sometimes they explain, sometimes they don’t.

It definitely isn’t every Democrat, liberal, “progressive,” or leftist who operates this way. Some sail right along with no disruption in their relationships. Some merely grow a bit colder and more tense. Some have episodic outbursts but retain the relationship. And some, of course, break it off. I’ve experienced all of the above, and there’s really no predicting who will do what. It doesn’t seem to depend on strength of the person’s leftist political beliefs, that much I can say. It appears to be more dependent on personality and perhaps the strength of the previous bond.

One thing that occurred to me recently, while mulling the phenomenon over, is that I believe the leftist emphasis on January 6th has the function of purposely escalating this sort of division. January 6th has acted – at least for some people I know – as a litmus test by which the left bonds internally, and which it simultaneously uses to exclude those who don’t agree with the leftist characterization of the events of that day as a dangerous “insurrection.” This seems so self-evident to them that anyone who doesn’t see it that way has gone over to the Dark Side. It then serves as an instrument for more shunning and more severe division, which is what the leftist leaders desire.

Going green in The Netherlands and Sri Lanka

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s hard to say whether a governmental policy of required Green farming – currently causing problems in The Netherlands and even bigger ones in Sri Lanka – is the result of wishful thinking on the part of the government or whether it’s a desire for willful destruction.

In Sri Lanka:

One-third of Sri Lanka’s farm lands were dormant in 2021 due to the fertilizer ban. Over 90% of Sri Lanka’s farmers had used chemical fertilizers before they were banned. After they were banned, an astonishing 85% experienced crop losses. The numbers are shocking. After the fertilizer ban, rice production fell 20% and prices skyrocketed 50 percent in just six months. Sri Lanka had to import $450 million worth of rice despite having been self-sufficient in the grain just months earlier. The price of carrots and tomatoes rose five-fold. While there are 2 million farmers in Sri Lanka, 70% of the nation’s 22 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on farming.

Things were worse for smaller farmers. In the Rajanganaya region, where the majority farmers operate just a hectare (2.5 acres), families reported 50% to 60% reductions in crop harvest. “Before the ban, this was one of the biggest markets in the country, with tonnes and tonnes of rice and vegetables,” said one farmer earlier this year. “But after the ban, it became almost zero. If you talk to the rice mills, they don’t have any stock because people’s harvest dropped so much. The income of this whole community has dropped to an extremely low level.”

But the damage to tea was the key to Sri Lanka’s financial failure. Tea production had generated $1.3 billion in exports annually. Tea exports paid for 71% of the nation’s food imports before 2021. Then, tea production and exports crashed 18% between November 2021 and February 2022, reaching their lowest level in 23 years. The government’s devastating ban on fertilizer thus destroyed the ability of Sri Lanka to pay for food, fuel, and service its debt.

Sri Lanka had other problems, too. But the Green anti-chemical-fertilizer laws seem to have been key in the destruction there.

The free part of the article ends with the questions: “What, exactly, were Rajapaksa and other Sri Lankan leaders thinking? Why did they engage in such a radical experiment?”

If any of you are able to access it, I’d be curious what the author’s answer is. But this article mentions some of the other problems and then characterizes the fertilizer decision as “ill-conceived” and “overnight.” So this was an impulsive move?

Gotabaya Rajapaksa had outlined his vision for an organic transition in his presidential manifesto. He was eager to rein in the use of chemicals that had been linked to kidney disease in Sri Lanka’s central and northern provinces, where they had washed into the water supply. Quixotically, this would have made him a global leader in going organic.

However, in a nation where more than 30 per cent of people are employed in the agricultural ukorale, a single 42-year-old farmer near Ballapana, a village 90 minutes’ drive north-east of Colombo, was floored when the ban was imposed in April last year. As urea, a key top dressing for rice paddy fields, and other fertilisers disappeared from shelves in less than a month, the remainder hoarded by those with the deepest pockets, Atukorale was forced to abandon a rice paddy she had leased after two successful harvests.

“The government told us to make our own organic fertiliser, from using dung from goats, from chicken and from cows and leaves from discarded material,” she says. “I didn’t have the means to make enough for two acres of paddy, so I left it.”

Manufacturers of organic fertilisers didn’t have the capacity to cover for chemical products coming off the market, Gotabaya Rajapaksa has since conceded, and what was provided by the government to farmers also proved nowhere near as effective. Atukorale has maintained another rice paddy in the area, afraid of losing the lease when it expires if she doesn’t, but after previously extracting 1000 kilograms of rice from it during a single harvest, it has since produced only 400 kilograms.

There’s much more at the link. The fertilizer decision was not the only factor in Sri Lanka’s fall, but it was a huge one and a self-inflicted one, top-down. The most benign explanation is that the leaders of the country are operating under a delusion or a set of delusions about how a change of such magnitude could ever be accomplished, and what its economic and physical results would be. And if so, they are hardly alone.

You can come up with the less benign explanations yourself.

And then there are the Dutch farmers. What do Dutch farmers have to do with Sri Lankan farmers? This:

Roughly 40,000 protesters gathered in central Netherlands to protest plans to curb the emissions of nitrogen and ammonia last month. Weeks later, the protests have continued across the country with no sign of abating…

The Dutch government is aiming to cut nitrogen and ammonia emissions by 50% by 2030 in a bid to improve air, land and water quality. The plans include cutting back on fertilizer used on farms and ratcheting back the number of livestock by an estimated 30%.

The country is one of the largest agricultural producers in the world, exporting roughly $97 billion in 2020 worth of fruit, flowers, vegetables, dairy products and meat…

Farmers say they are being unfairly targeted by the rules while other industries, such as aviation, construction and transportation, are also contributing to emissions and face fewer rules. Farmers also argued that they have not been provided a clear picture of their futures in light of the reforms.

Again we have the same questions: are the people who run the government merely abysmally stupid and in the grip of fantasy? Or are they actively destructive as part of The Great Reset? I guess it’s not either/or, because the two are not mutually exclusive.

Here’s an article from about a month ago, attempting to explain:

Nitrogen pollution is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which releases nitrogen oxide, and manure from farm animals (when dung and urine mix), which emits ammonia.

The Dutch use “nitrogen” (stikstof) as an umbrella term in order to add up and compare emissions from industry and farms. Industries cause a small share of ammonia emissions, mostly in waste management, and farms cause a small share of nitrogen oxide emissions, mostly from the heating of greenhouses with natural gas…

Farms cause 85 percent of ammonia emissions and 40 to 45 percent of overall nitrogen emissions.

But they cause 60 percent of nitrogen deposits in conservation areas (to which they are more likely to be in proximity than industry)…

Dutch animal farming is among the most intensive in the world…

…The Netherlands has 162 [conservation areas]. They range from the dunes of Holland to the Veluwe National Park to the Wadden Sea to tiny preserves that dot the countryside in the interior. All are protected by EU law.

Excess nitrogen deposits in those so-called Natura 2000 areas are the proximate cause of the crisis. They cause some plants, like grass, to grow faster, but others to wither and die.

That can wipe out entire ecosystems. When plants die, so do the bugs that feed on them, which in turns kills the birds and ducks that eat the bugs — and a major impetus for the whole Natura 2000 program in the 1990s was to protect European bird species…

That year, the Council of State, the Netherlands’ highest administrative court, ruled that more needed to be done. It took Rutte’s four-party coalition, which includes the traditionally pro-farmer Christian Democrats and the environmentally-friendly D66, almost three years to come up with a solution.

In the meantime, judges struck down construction permits for not only farms but energy companies, housing developments, infrastructure and industry, because building causes nitrogen emissions, and the Netherlands was already in violation of its commitment to protect the Natura 2000 regions…

That plan is for farms to cut nitrogen emissions by 12 to 70 percent, depending on their proximity to conservation areas. In exceptional cases, where farms are situated in Natura 2000 areas, they would have to cut emissions by 90 percent to stay — which is impossible.

Farmers who cannot meet their targets would be given three options:

Downside, or switch from animal farming to crops.
Relocate.
Quit.

There is so much more in the article; I suggest you read the whole thing. The author appears to be mostly in favor of the government restrictions and against the farmers, by the way, but it’s still an interesting look at the positions and arguments on both sides. But I’ll just add this, which indicates the role the EU plays:

Farmers argue the models to calculate pollution are imprecise, the standards for deposits are arbitrary and the whole problem only exists because the Netherlands declared so many areas Natura 2000 preserves…

Perhaps previous governments should have been more conservative about setting aside lands for conservation, but now the Netherlands would need the European Commission’s permission to remove Natura 2000 classifications — and it is in no mood to help out a country that predictably hectors others when they break (debt and deficit) rules.

As I read this, it reminds me a bit of Soviet collectivization efforts. Less obviously brutal, of course, but the product of people operating under a theory that ignores reality. They are either extremely disinterested in the plight of the ordinary human beings living in their countries or actively hostile to them. I’m not sure there’s much of a difference between those two concepts.