2/15/2005 04:28:00 PM|||Nathan Moore|||

There is a fellow, by the name of Neil Clark, who fancies himself an expert apologist for both the Milosevic regime and the former communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe. He has been hit hard already in many quarters, and deservedly so. Scott Burgess notes his lunacy, as does Tim Worstall. The sad fact is that this piece is taken seriously and presented as legitimate thought by The Guardian, an allegedly legitimate left wing periodical. Besides the fact that Mr. Clark employs communist era statistics to bolster his argument, he also forgets the role of scarcity and demand/supply problems of production in the former communist states. Worstall above goes into good detail about just that. I admit that I do find it amusing that I'm even taking the time to address the arguments of a communist loving fool who time has long ago forgotten. Unfortunately, the langoliers were off the job when Mr. Clark's number was called.

The funniest part of the column, however, is this

Membership of Nato - the other western club that eastern Europe's reformers were so desperate to join - means that member states must spend at least 2% of their GDP on defence, regardless of the impact on overall state expenditure. At the same time as the Hungarian government insists that there is no alternative to the "economic reorganisation" of the country's public health service, the Hungarian defence ministry announces it will spend an extra £7.7m on new medium-range, air-to-air missiles from the US arms manufacturer Raytheon. This is on top of a further £34.5m earmarked for training reforms to "adapt" the armed forces to the demands of Nato and EU membership.

Two things. First, Mr. Clark conveniently omits any statistical references to the percentage of GDP the former Eastern Bloc governments spent on defense procurements (selective recollection is such a brilliant tactic).

Second, who knew that the EU had "armed forces" demands?

I say again: what a fool.

|||110850718621927444|||Sickeningly Amusing