Here is an interesting review of What's Left by Nick Cohen. The piece is by a writer called Anthony Daniels, who I believe also writes under the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple, a fact that will I imagine be greeted with anticipation by some bloggers and dread by others.
Here's the review in full (another New Criterion article I'm afraid so no link available):
Finding his way
By Anthony Daniels | Volume 25, March 2007
Nick Cohen What’s Left?:
How Liberals Lost Their Way
Fourth Estate, 400 pages, £12.99
The author of this book, a respected columnist on Britain’s venerable Sunday newspaper of liberal outlook, The Observer, was born into a family in which it was assumed, as a settled matter beyond reasonable doubt, that all intelligent, cultivated, and decent people were on, and of, the Left, and that there was no serious intellectual or moral case to be made for any type of conservatism. Conservatives were not merely wrong but bad, at best motivated by a fear of change and at worst by their own narrowly material interests (the Left at that time had no material interests, at least in its own estimation). Conservatives might sometimes win elections, of course, but that was no reason to take anything they said seriously.
There comes a time, however, in many a leftist’s life when he looks around him and realizes that, all his tireless support for reform notwithstanding, many aspects of the modern world, some of them brought about by the very reform that he has so assiduously supported, do not entirely please him—and what is more, that some of his erstwhile companions in the struggle now disgust him. The world then becomes for him more ambiguous in its meaning. Mr. Cohen is on the cusp of such a change of worldview.
Changes in outlook generally have provoking causes, though there may be an underlying quasi-biological tendency in the ageing process towards conservatism. In Mr. Cohen’s case, his change of outlook was provoked by Iraq and the response of the Left to Saddam Hussein. In its opposition to the war, the Left has contrived to minimize the horrors of Saddam in order to maximize the evils of Bush and Blair: if the war was bad, then it followed that Saddam was not as bad as all that. According to Mr. Cohen, the Left had fallen for the old illusion that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, irrespective of what he is actually like. And this reasoning led Mr. Cohen to doubt whether the Left’s commitment to such desiderata as basic human rights was as strong or principled as he had hitherto supposed to it be. It was more like posturing than like real commitment.
It is, of course, perfectly possible to doubt the wisdom of the enterprise in Iraq without resort to the expedient of whitewashing Iraqi Baathism and its murderous leaders, or to the repulsively grovelling apologetics of George Galloway. One has only to read the words of Elie Kedourie, which are the fruit of deep knowledge, long and discouraging experience, and brilliant intelligence, to realize the difficulties in the way of reform in the Middle East:
It is enough for practical men to fend off present evils and secure existing interests. They must not cumber themselves with historical dogmas, or chase illusions in that maze of double talk which western political vocabulary has extended over the whole world. The very attempt to modernise middle eastern society, to make it western or “democratic” must bring about evils, which may be greater than the benefits.
Professor Kedourie, born an Iraqi Jew, knew whereof he spoke.
Mr. Cohen’s main complaint against his erstwhile companions on the Left is that they have failed to take seriously the universality of Enlightenment values such as freedom of expression and freedom from oppression by arbitrary power. Instead, whenever they saw a foreign enemy of their own country whom they could usefully co-opt as an ally in their disputes with their own domestic enemies, they resorted to nihilistic relativism and multiculturalism, thus explaining away the vileness of their new ally’s atrocities as being the expression of his sacrosanct cultural tradition.
However, it does not follow from a belief in the universality of Enlightenment values that they can, and therefore should, be imposed by force. No doubt it is desirable that people should be kind, but you cannot force or even cajole them into being kind. While philosophical enlightenment can no doubt be encouraged, it cannot be imposed: it is sought and achieved. And not everybody seeks it, let alone achieves it. There is no logical necessity for opponents of the Iraq war to be apologists for Saddam.
The question of Iraq looms so large in Mr. Cohen’s reflections because the Left, to which he once belonged and to which he retains a sentimental attachment, clearly feeling that there must be something worth saving from the ruins, has comprehensively lost the economic argument that was once its very raison d’être, and is now reduced to the work of cultural destruction and the balkanization of society into little communities of ideological monomaniacs—the feminists, homosexual and animal liberationists, and so forth. The Left lost its soul when it lost the economic argument.
As it happens, I write this in my study where I have before me books of erotica smuggled in the late 1950s to my late mother from Paris by her cousin who lived there, and which I have inherited. Published by the Olympia and Obelisk Presses, and an organization called Les Hautes Etudes, they include Henry Miller’s The Tropic of Cancer, the Marquis de Sade’s Justine, and Count Palmiro Vicaron’s Book of Limericks, none of which was obtainable in the England of that time. Personally, I don’t think England was much the loser by that.
More interesting by far than the contents of these books are the newspapers in which my cousin covered them, a method of concealment so ludicrous that it surely would have alerted any customs officer who was not actually of subnormal intelligence to the nature of their contents. A page from the Guardian for 30 November 1959, covering a compendium of 1,700 salacious limericks (complete with scholarly apparatus), reports from the Labour Party Conference of that year. Mrs. Barbara Castle, later to be an important government minister, said, “We [the state as one day to be ruled by the Labour Party] don’t want to take over industries merely in order to make them more efficient, but to make them responsible to us all.” (“We” here having changed its meaning to the whole population of the country). And Aneurin Bevan said “I insist that we will never be able to get the economic resources of this nation fully expanded unless we have a planned economy, in which the nation itself can determine its own priorities.”
These were the core beliefs and commonplaces of the Left until the advent of Mrs. Thatcher and the dissolution of the Soviet empire. So complete has been the defeat of socialism, however, that anyone who now avowed a belief in the superior efficiency of state-run industry would be more a candidate for the lunatic asylum (supposing that any remained open) than for high political office. All that the Left can nowadays propose on the domestic front is social policy so destructive that it allegedly necessitates a vast state apparatus to repair the damage it does. For this reason, the accusation of promoting only its material interests can now be more properly leveled at the Left than at conservatives, or at least at those conservatives who believe that conservatism is more than a matter of the lowest possible taxes.
Hell hath no fury like the former colleagues of a journalist who has changed his mind, and Mr. Cohen has not been altogether praised by them for what seems to them not so much a volte face as outright treachery. His book is not particularly well-written, nor does he present a structured argument: if he had, it would have been quite a lot shorter and more incisive. But it shows real thought, that of a man grappling with doctrines and presuppositions that until recently he took for granted.
He has very little to say about the domestic policy prescriptions of the modern Left, of which multiculturalism is among the most destructive. It was once the honorable goal of the Left, at least in Britain, to spread higher culture to the working class, and also to immigrants, so that every person capable by inclination and natural endowment of enjoying, participating in, or contributing to that higher culture would do so. More recently, however, the Left has devoted its energies to denying that there is any higher or lower, better or worse in cultural matters. Not coincidentally, this betrayal allows leftist intellectuals to preen themselves on the broadness of their minds while they maintain their membership of a social elite. They rarely educate their own children as if their theoretical pronouncements were true. Clearly, there is an analogy here with their betrayal of Enlightenment values in foreign affairs.
This betrayal is not new, though Mr. Cohen appears to believe that it is. It was one thing to oppose the Vietnam War because you thought it was futile and ethically worse than not fighting it (not necessarily true, but at least an honest opinion); quite another because you thought that Uncle Ho was a good man who was leading his people to freedom and prosperity, something that you could believe only by employing all the human mind’s capacity for special pleading and self-deception.
I will be interested to follow Mr. Cohen’s subsequent career. Will he reject his childhood altogether and become truly conservative? He is still young enough to do so.'
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Iran Sanctions boost civil nuclear disaster risk
The FT thinks the chances of a nuclear distaster in Iran will increase with sanctions.
'International sanctions to starve Iran's nuclear programme have heightened the risk of a radiological disaster that could spread across the Gulf, according to a new British report.
John Large of Large and Associates, UK nuclear consultants, writes that once the Bushehr civilian reactor in southern Iran goes into operation this year, a safety failure - a radioactive leak - could threaten Gulf shipping lanes and Arab Gulf states.
"The United Nations Security Council sanctions are aimed at halting, or at least impeding, the transfer of knowledge, information and equipment relating to Iran's uranium enrichment and heavy water related undertakings," the report, commissioned by the United Arab Emirates' Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, states.
"The irony here is that perhaps the culture essential to maintaining nuclear safety for Iran's separate civil nuclear power programme will be left wanting."
Full article here
'International sanctions to starve Iran's nuclear programme have heightened the risk of a radiological disaster that could spread across the Gulf, according to a new British report.
John Large of Large and Associates, UK nuclear consultants, writes that once the Bushehr civilian reactor in southern Iran goes into operation this year, a safety failure - a radioactive leak - could threaten Gulf shipping lanes and Arab Gulf states.
"The United Nations Security Council sanctions are aimed at halting, or at least impeding, the transfer of knowledge, information and equipment relating to Iran's uranium enrichment and heavy water related undertakings," the report, commissioned by the United Arab Emirates' Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, states.
"The irony here is that perhaps the culture essential to maintaining nuclear safety for Iran's separate civil nuclear power programme will be left wanting."
Full article here
Monday, April 02, 2007
Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger interviewed by Piers Morgan
Former Mirror editor Piers Morgan (PM) interviews Alan Rusbridger (AR) Editor of the Guardian. Piers accuses Alan Rusbridger of being a bit of a hypocrite and gives him a pretty hard time. It's probably quite unfair but it makes for a very funny interview.
Here are the highlights:
PM: How is your new Berliner-sized paper actually doing?
AR: It is doing, more or less, what we expected.
PM: That's what I used to say when things went badly.
AR: Do you want to see charts?
PM: No. I always used to bamboozle my critics with charts. How did you sell last week, then [December 2006]?
AR: About 386,000.
PM: And what were you selling before the Berliner redesign?
AR: We were down in the 360s, 370s. The one mistake we made was to take out 10,000 bulks, which made the figures look worse than they were.
PM: But you did that to make the relaunch look better than it was.
AR: No, we did that at the time of the relaunch.
PM: I thought you did it a couple of months before the relaunch.
AR: Er, well, we took them out a few months before and didn't put them back for the relaunch.
PM: So I was right. You did it deliberately. It's an old trick.
AR: We did. But we didn't shove them back in; that's the point.
PM: It's not my point.
AR: We were too honest.
PM: Hmmm...I read an interview in which you said that what mattered most between a paper and its staff and the readers was trust. Do you think you have to be as trustworthy privately as you are professionally?
AR: I think you have to be trustworthy in your professional life.
PM: Not personal life?
AR: [Silence for 10 seconds] I like to make a distinction between professional and private in everything we write about.
PM: Would you answer that question? Are you a public figure?
AR: Not really, no. I am accountable to the Scott Trust [owner of the Guardian Media Group], and I make The Guardian's journalism more publicly accountable than any other editor in this country.
PM: I only ask, because I remember The Guardian treating me as a public figure when I encountered various scrapes as an editor. Do you think that your own life would stand up to much ethical scrutiny?
AR: In terms of the journalism?
PM: No, I mean privately. Do you consider that infidelity is always a private matter for public figures, for instance?
AR: I think what people do legally and consensually is private.
PM: If I asked you if you had ever taken illegal drugs, would you feel compelled to answer?
AR: No, I'd say to you to mind your own business.
PM: What's your current salary?
AR: It's, er, about £350,000.
PM: What bonus did you receive last year?
AR: About £170,000, which was a way of addressing my pension.
PM: That means that you earned £520,000 last year alone. That's more than the editor of The Sun by a long way.
AR: I'll talk to you off the record about this, but not on the record.
PM: Why? In The Guardian, you never stop banging on about fat cats. Do you think that your readers would be pleased to hear that you earned £520,000 last year? Are you worth it?
AR: That's for others to say.
PM: Wouldn't it be more Guardian-like, more socialist, to take a bit less and spread the pot around a bit? We have this quaint idea that you guys are into that "all men are equal" nonsense, but you're not really, are you? You seem a lot more "equal" than others on your paper.
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Do you ever get awkward moments when your bonus gets published? Do you wince and think, "Oh dear, Polly Toynbee's not going to like this one."
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Or is Polly raking in so much herself that she wouldn't mind?
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Are you embarrassed by it?
AR: No. I didn't ask for the money. And I do declare it, too.
PM: But if you earned £520,000 last year, then that must make you a multimillionaire.
AR: You say I'm a millionaire?
PM: You must be - unless you're giving it all away to charity...
AR: Er...
PM: What's your house worth?
AR: I don't want to talk about these aspects of my life.
PM: You think it's all private?
AR: I do really, yes.
PM: Did you think that about Peter Mandelson's house? I mean, you broke that story.
AR: I, er... it was a story about an elected politician.
PM: And you're not as accountable. You just reserve the right to expose his private life.
AR: We all make distinctions about this kind of thing. The line between private and public is a fine one, and you've taken up most of the interview with it.
PM: Well, only because you seem so embarrassed and confused about it.
AR: I'm not embarrassed about it. But nor do I feel I have to talk about it.
PM: What about your cars? Are you still driving that ridiculous G-Wiz thing around?
AR: Yes, and I love it.
PM: But I also read that you use taxis to ferry your stuff to and from work, which sort of negates the green effort, doesn't it?
AR: That story was a bit confused. I used to cycle to work sometimes, and if I was too tired at the end of the day then I would fold up the bike and get a cab home, yes. But about a year ago I was nearly killed in a nasty accident on my bike so I gave up cycling and bought the G-Wiz.
PM: Any other cars?
AR: A company Volvo estate.
PM: A big gas-guzzler.
AR: Yes.
PM: Bit of a culture clash with your G-Wiz, then?
AR: Let me think about that. The problem is that I also have a big dog, and it doesn't fit into the G-Wiz.
PM: I'm sure the environment will understand. Any others?
AR: My wife has a Corsa.
PM: Quite an expansive...
AR: Fleet...
PM: Yes, fleet.
AR: But I've got children as well.
PM: They're privately educated?
AR: Er... [pause].
PM: Is that a valid question?
AR: I don't... think so... no.
PM: And you went to Cranleigh, a top public school.
AR: I did, yes.
PM: Do you feel uncomfortable answering that question?
AR: It falls into the category of something I don't feel embarrassed about, but you get on to a slippery slope about what else you talk about, don't you?
PM: It's not really about your private life though, is it? It's just a fact. And I assume by your reluctance to answer the question that they are privately educated.
AR: [Pause] Again, I am trying to make a distinction between...
PM: You often run stories about Labour politicians sending their kids to private schools, and you are quite censorious about it. Are you worried that it makes you look a hypocrite again?
AR: No. I think there are boundaries. It goes back to this question of whether editors are public figures or not.
PM: And you don't think they are?
AR: Well, again, I've tried to draw a distinction between making my journalism accountable, but I have never tried to go around talking about my private life and therefore making myself into a public figure.
PM: You were originally a gossip columnist on The Guardian. Did you never write about anyone's private life?
AR: I can't remember writing about someone's private life.
Here are the highlights:
PM: How is your new Berliner-sized paper actually doing?
AR: It is doing, more or less, what we expected.
PM: That's what I used to say when things went badly.
AR: Do you want to see charts?
PM: No. I always used to bamboozle my critics with charts. How did you sell last week, then [December 2006]?
AR: About 386,000.
PM: And what were you selling before the Berliner redesign?
AR: We were down in the 360s, 370s. The one mistake we made was to take out 10,000 bulks, which made the figures look worse than they were.
PM: But you did that to make the relaunch look better than it was.
AR: No, we did that at the time of the relaunch.
PM: I thought you did it a couple of months before the relaunch.
AR: Er, well, we took them out a few months before and didn't put them back for the relaunch.
PM: So I was right. You did it deliberately. It's an old trick.
AR: We did. But we didn't shove them back in; that's the point.
PM: It's not my point.
AR: We were too honest.
PM: Hmmm...I read an interview in which you said that what mattered most between a paper and its staff and the readers was trust. Do you think you have to be as trustworthy privately as you are professionally?
AR: I think you have to be trustworthy in your professional life.
PM: Not personal life?
AR: [Silence for 10 seconds] I like to make a distinction between professional and private in everything we write about.
PM: Would you answer that question? Are you a public figure?
AR: Not really, no. I am accountable to the Scott Trust [owner of the Guardian Media Group], and I make The Guardian's journalism more publicly accountable than any other editor in this country.
PM: I only ask, because I remember The Guardian treating me as a public figure when I encountered various scrapes as an editor. Do you think that your own life would stand up to much ethical scrutiny?
AR: In terms of the journalism?
PM: No, I mean privately. Do you consider that infidelity is always a private matter for public figures, for instance?
AR: I think what people do legally and consensually is private.
PM: If I asked you if you had ever taken illegal drugs, would you feel compelled to answer?
AR: No, I'd say to you to mind your own business.
PM: What's your current salary?
AR: It's, er, about £350,000.
PM: What bonus did you receive last year?
AR: About £170,000, which was a way of addressing my pension.
PM: That means that you earned £520,000 last year alone. That's more than the editor of The Sun by a long way.
AR: I'll talk to you off the record about this, but not on the record.
PM: Why? In The Guardian, you never stop banging on about fat cats. Do you think that your readers would be pleased to hear that you earned £520,000 last year? Are you worth it?
AR: That's for others to say.
PM: Wouldn't it be more Guardian-like, more socialist, to take a bit less and spread the pot around a bit? We have this quaint idea that you guys are into that "all men are equal" nonsense, but you're not really, are you? You seem a lot more "equal" than others on your paper.
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Do you ever get awkward moments when your bonus gets published? Do you wince and think, "Oh dear, Polly Toynbee's not going to like this one."
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Or is Polly raking in so much herself that she wouldn't mind?
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Are you embarrassed by it?
AR: No. I didn't ask for the money. And I do declare it, too.
PM: But if you earned £520,000 last year, then that must make you a multimillionaire.
AR: You say I'm a millionaire?
PM: You must be - unless you're giving it all away to charity...
AR: Er...
PM: What's your house worth?
AR: I don't want to talk about these aspects of my life.
PM: You think it's all private?
AR: I do really, yes.
PM: Did you think that about Peter Mandelson's house? I mean, you broke that story.
AR: I, er... it was a story about an elected politician.
PM: And you're not as accountable. You just reserve the right to expose his private life.
AR: We all make distinctions about this kind of thing. The line between private and public is a fine one, and you've taken up most of the interview with it.
PM: Well, only because you seem so embarrassed and confused about it.
AR: I'm not embarrassed about it. But nor do I feel I have to talk about it.
PM: What about your cars? Are you still driving that ridiculous G-Wiz thing around?
AR: Yes, and I love it.
PM: But I also read that you use taxis to ferry your stuff to and from work, which sort of negates the green effort, doesn't it?
AR: That story was a bit confused. I used to cycle to work sometimes, and if I was too tired at the end of the day then I would fold up the bike and get a cab home, yes. But about a year ago I was nearly killed in a nasty accident on my bike so I gave up cycling and bought the G-Wiz.
PM: Any other cars?
AR: A company Volvo estate.
PM: A big gas-guzzler.
AR: Yes.
PM: Bit of a culture clash with your G-Wiz, then?
AR: Let me think about that. The problem is that I also have a big dog, and it doesn't fit into the G-Wiz.
PM: I'm sure the environment will understand. Any others?
AR: My wife has a Corsa.
PM: Quite an expansive...
AR: Fleet...
PM: Yes, fleet.
AR: But I've got children as well.
PM: They're privately educated?
AR: Er... [pause].
PM: Is that a valid question?
AR: I don't... think so... no.
PM: And you went to Cranleigh, a top public school.
AR: I did, yes.
PM: Do you feel uncomfortable answering that question?
AR: It falls into the category of something I don't feel embarrassed about, but you get on to a slippery slope about what else you talk about, don't you?
PM: It's not really about your private life though, is it? It's just a fact. And I assume by your reluctance to answer the question that they are privately educated.
AR: [Pause] Again, I am trying to make a distinction between...
PM: You often run stories about Labour politicians sending their kids to private schools, and you are quite censorious about it. Are you worried that it makes you look a hypocrite again?
AR: No. I think there are boundaries. It goes back to this question of whether editors are public figures or not.
PM: And you don't think they are?
AR: Well, again, I've tried to draw a distinction between making my journalism accountable, but I have never tried to go around talking about my private life and therefore making myself into a public figure.
PM: You were originally a gossip columnist on The Guardian. Did you never write about anyone's private life?
AR: I can't remember writing about someone's private life.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
U.N. Watch exposes the U.N. Human Rights Council
Thanks to Andy for putting me onto this. UN Watch is an NGO whose name betrays their interests, and here one of their guys telling the UN a few home truths. The most interesting thing is the hostile reaction to his speech, while outrageous lies from the likes of Syria and Zimbabwe receive thanks.
The New York Sun reported on this below.
'I Will Not Express Thanks'
New York Sun
March 30, 2007
Every once in a while there comes a diplomatic moment to remember, and New Yorkers who want to share one can go up on youtube.com and watch the representative in Geneva of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, in a March 23 speech before the 4th session of the Human Rights Council. In the adjacent columns, we print the full text of his remarks, lamenting the loss of the dream of Eleanor Roosevelt and other architects of the human rights movement within the United Nations system. Mr. Neuer offers the substance. But it's worth watching the full clip (it's only a few minutes long) to catch the scandalous behavior of the president of the council, as he — for what may be the only time in its history — refuses to thank a speaker for his intervention and declares he will ban Mr. Neuer, or any other critic of the commission, if he says anything similar again.
To provide the full context, UN Watch has put together a compendium of clippings (Watch Video) called "Admissible and Inadmissable at the U.N. Human Rights Council." It shows actual film clips of the president of the Human Rights Council, Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, thanking various diplomats for their testimony. He thanks a speaker for Zimbabwe talking about the ignorance of a delegate who has criticized human rights under President Mugabe. He thanks the delegate from Cuba for insulting a human rights expert who exposed abuses of the communist regime. When the permanent observer of Palestine asserts that the one that has a "monopoly on human rights violations" is Israel, which, he adds, is the darling of not only the ambassadors of America and Canada but also of the human rights commissioner, Louise Arbour, the observer is thanked by Mr. de Alba. On the clip one can see Mr. de Alba thanking the delegation of Sudan for a statement saying that reports of violence against women in Darfur has been "exaggerated."
Then one can watch and hear an envoy from Nigeria assert that "stoning under Sharia law for unnatural sexual acts … should not be equated with extrajudicial killings …" Or watch an envoy of Iran defend the Holocaust denial conference. Or watch a defense of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. Or speaker after speaker liken Israel to the Nazis, only to get thanked by Mr. de Alba or whoever is presiding. Then one can watch Mr. de Alba lean back demonstrably in his chair and fold his arms across his face and adopt a disapproving visage as Mr. Neuer of UN Watch begins his recent testimony. He notes that 60 years ago, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rene Cassin, and others gathered on the banks of Lake Geneva to reaffirm the principle of human dignity and created the Commission on Human Rights. He asks what has become of "this noble dream" and offers a devastating answer with a reprise of all the human rights abuses on which the council has been silent.
"Why has this council chosen silence?" Mr. Neuer asks. "Because Israel could not be blamed." He ticks off the actions against Israel, the only one the council takes. When Mr. Neuer is done, Mr. de Alba says, "for the first time in this session, I will not express thanks for that statement. ... I will not tolerate any similar statements in the council." And he threatens to strike any similar statements from UN Watch from the record of the proceedings. We had to tip our hat to Mr. Neuer, who has, on occasion, written for these pages. Newspapermen have to have strong stomachs, but it's nothing compared to what he needs to sit through these sessions. He presents with memorable force and dignity. The compendium of clips runs only seven minutes or so and is winging its way around the World Wide Web. It's worth watching, a reminder of the wisdom of the decision of America's former ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, and his colleagues in the Bush administration to stand down from participating in this charade.
The New York Sun reported on this below.
'I Will Not Express Thanks'
New York Sun
March 30, 2007
Every once in a while there comes a diplomatic moment to remember, and New Yorkers who want to share one can go up on youtube.com and watch the representative in Geneva of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, in a March 23 speech before the 4th session of the Human Rights Council. In the adjacent columns, we print the full text of his remarks, lamenting the loss of the dream of Eleanor Roosevelt and other architects of the human rights movement within the United Nations system. Mr. Neuer offers the substance. But it's worth watching the full clip (it's only a few minutes long) to catch the scandalous behavior of the president of the council, as he — for what may be the only time in its history — refuses to thank a speaker for his intervention and declares he will ban Mr. Neuer, or any other critic of the commission, if he says anything similar again.
To provide the full context, UN Watch has put together a compendium of clippings (Watch Video) called "Admissible and Inadmissable at the U.N. Human Rights Council." It shows actual film clips of the president of the Human Rights Council, Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, thanking various diplomats for their testimony. He thanks a speaker for Zimbabwe talking about the ignorance of a delegate who has criticized human rights under President Mugabe. He thanks the delegate from Cuba for insulting a human rights expert who exposed abuses of the communist regime. When the permanent observer of Palestine asserts that the one that has a "monopoly on human rights violations" is Israel, which, he adds, is the darling of not only the ambassadors of America and Canada but also of the human rights commissioner, Louise Arbour, the observer is thanked by Mr. de Alba. On the clip one can see Mr. de Alba thanking the delegation of Sudan for a statement saying that reports of violence against women in Darfur has been "exaggerated."
Then one can watch and hear an envoy from Nigeria assert that "stoning under Sharia law for unnatural sexual acts … should not be equated with extrajudicial killings …" Or watch an envoy of Iran defend the Holocaust denial conference. Or watch a defense of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. Or speaker after speaker liken Israel to the Nazis, only to get thanked by Mr. de Alba or whoever is presiding. Then one can watch Mr. de Alba lean back demonstrably in his chair and fold his arms across his face and adopt a disapproving visage as Mr. Neuer of UN Watch begins his recent testimony. He notes that 60 years ago, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rene Cassin, and others gathered on the banks of Lake Geneva to reaffirm the principle of human dignity and created the Commission on Human Rights. He asks what has become of "this noble dream" and offers a devastating answer with a reprise of all the human rights abuses on which the council has been silent.
"Why has this council chosen silence?" Mr. Neuer asks. "Because Israel could not be blamed." He ticks off the actions against Israel, the only one the council takes. When Mr. Neuer is done, Mr. de Alba says, "for the first time in this session, I will not express thanks for that statement. ... I will not tolerate any similar statements in the council." And he threatens to strike any similar statements from UN Watch from the record of the proceedings. We had to tip our hat to Mr. Neuer, who has, on occasion, written for these pages. Newspapermen have to have strong stomachs, but it's nothing compared to what he needs to sit through these sessions. He presents with memorable force and dignity. The compendium of clips runs only seven minutes or so and is winging its way around the World Wide Web. It's worth watching, a reminder of the wisdom of the decision of America's former ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, and his colleagues in the Bush administration to stand down from participating in this charade.
Iran captures 15 British Royal Marines
I haven't been following this story that closely, but the bit that has always bothered me the most (even more than where *did* this thing actually take place?) is how come a 5000 ton warship did nothing to prevent the capture in the first place?'.
Here's an article that discusses exactly that, and let me warn you, friends, it does not make good reading for supporters of the once-great Royal Navy, nor for our politicians.
-----------------------
Focus: In the eye of the storm
Fifteen sailors snatched and publicly humiliated without a single shot fired. Tony Allen-Mills, Michael Smith and Marie Colvin on a shambles Britain could have avoided
Sunday Times
April 1, 2007
They should have known the Iranians might spring a trap. Several months before the current hostage crisis a small group of American and Iraqi soldiers had been patrolling near the Iranian border 75 miles east of Baghdad.
They spotted a single Iranian soldier lurking in Iraqi territory near the town of Balad Ruz and moved forward to question him. The Americans were, according to a US army report obtained by The Sunday Times, promptly ambushed by a much larger platoon of Iranian soldiers who had been hiding across the nearby border.
An Iranian captain warned the Americans that “if they tried to leave their location, the Iranians would fire upon them”. For a few moments the US paratroopers must have felt as helpless as the British sailors in inflatable speedboats who were surprised 10 days ago by more heavily armed Iranian vessels.
The US incident last September ended very differently. Firing broke out. Both sides scattered and a potential hostage crisis was averted as the Americans escaped unhurt.
By contrast, the 14 British service-men and one woman proved humiliatingly vulnerable to a low-tech Iranian naval manoeuvre that has provoked mocking headlines around the world. Yesterday they were still at the mercy of their unpredictable Iranian captors, reduced to making forced false apologies for breaching Iranian territory.
Nathan Thomas Summers, one of the captured crewmen, was paraded on television. “We trespassed without permission,” he said. “I deeply apologise for entering your waters.”
Yesterday Hussein Shari’atma-dari, a senior adviser to the regime, described the incident as a “plot from London to put more pressures on Iran”. He said: “The path taken by Britain and the West shows that they do not want to take any step for the release of the British soldiers, therefore Iran must put them on trial.”
How could the British forces have been caught so unawares? They should have been alerted months ago by the Balad Ruz clash to the heightened threat of an Iranian assault. They might even have read subsequent warnings – reported in The Sunday Times as recently as two weeks ago – that Tehran was threatening to kidnap “a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers”.
As Iranian radicals rejoiced at their propaganda triumph last week, even some of Britain’s friends were scathing in their condemnation of military impotence and political incompetence.
“Wimping out on Iran” was one of the more polite commentaries in the New York Daily News. John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, dubbed the British government’s performance as “pathetic”.
The crisis has reduced Tony Blair and several of his officials to the status of irrelevant foghorns, issuing empty warnings about “stepping up the pressure” and “moving to the next phase”.
Such is the shambles that senior Royal Navy officers at the fleet’s operational headquarters have been directed to review the rules of engagement for naval boarding parties. If necessary they will recommend changes to ensure Britain’s forces are never again seized so easily without a shot being fired.
THE streets of Tehran were largely empty last week as Iranians celebrated Norouz, their new year festival. There was a chill in the air and snow on the distant mountains as Mullah Ahmad Khatami mounted his podium in the courtyard of Tehran University to lead Friday prayers.
Khatami, viewed as a rising hard-liner, quickly turned to the hostage crisis. “Britain must know that this is not the 19th century and it should not be taking an imperial posture,” the burly mullah said.
“Everyone knows that Britain is a defeated nation that acts as a political broker [for the Americans],” he went on. “You cannot frighten Iran by sending gunboats and doing whatever pleases you. Iran today is a strong Iran and is the only country that stands up to the Americans.”
Iran has been resisting a campaign led by the United States and Britain at the UN to force the mullahs to end Iran’s programme of enriching uranium. Iran claims it will be used to produce civilian nuclear power but the West fears Iran wants to produce a nuclear bomb.
Khatami said his religious colleagues sent their “warmest congratulations” to the “mighty border guards” who had seized the British sailors. He condemned London for “bullish declarations and devious actions” and warned: “Britain should understand that if they want to continue that path of bullying, they would pay a huge price.”
This was scarcely the response that Blair can have been hoping for when he warned last Tuesday that Britain’s campaign to free the captives would “move into a different phase” if Iran did not respond.
Blair added: “I hope we manage to get them to realise that they have to release them.”
While there was no doubting the outrage shared by British ministers, it was equally clear by Thursday’s cabinet meeting that Britain’s big mistake was to have allowed the sailors to be captured in the first place.
“It’s not as simple as just being tough with the Iranians,” Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, argued to her colleagues.
“They have tentacles in all sorts of areas such as the Afghan warlords, the Iraqi insurgents and Hamas.”
In other words, Beckett was suggesting, any military action against Tehran was likely to be met by a barrage of terrorist reprisals by Iranian allies around the globe. “We have to be more sophisticated,” she insisted.
At 10 Downing Street, senior officials took a similar line. “There is no real point in sabre-rattling for its own sake,” said one official. “We have been looking for the opportunity to engage through our multilateral contacts.”
Variations on that peacemongering theme were expressed widely in Whitehall last week. John Williams, a former Foreign Office director of communications who was intimately involved in protracted negotiations over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, said he believed Beckett’s hands were tied. “The Foreign Office objective is to get our people out safely. There is just too much at stake for any other approach,” he said.
Such diplomatic hand-wringing was last week driving American hawks to distraction. “The Brits have laboured mightily for many years to prevent the United States from pursuing vigorous action against Iran,” sneered Michael Ledeen, a prominent neocon and Middle East scholar who has long argued for regime change in Tehran. “Now they will have to answer to the families of the hostages.” Ledeen argued that coalition forces should “undertake the legitimate self-defence to which we are entitled”, and attack terrorist training camps and bomb factories inside Iran.
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican congressman who is considering a presidential bid, urged Britain to use military force to destroy Iran’s petrol production company. If a lack of petrol for their cars forced Iranians to “go back to walking and using oxen to pull carts”, the people might rise against the ayatollahs, Gingrich said.
None of which will come as much comfort to the frightened family of Leading Seaman Faye Turney, 26, who has become the human face of the crisis. Psychologists have had a field day analysing the pitiful videos of Turney attempting to cooperate under obvious duress.
The three letters she has purportedly written to her parents. to a “representative of the House of Commons” and to “British People” were obviously dictated in large part by her Iranian captors. Yet however crude Iran’s propaganda may seem in Britain, it is mainly aimed elsewhere. Iran is patently showing off to its radical acolytes around the globe, revelling in the chance to kick sand in the face of the West.
The so-called confessions of Turney and Summers were first aired not in Farsi, which is spoken by most Iranians, but on an Arab-language television station watched widely in Iraq and Arab Gulf countries. The message was clear – the Arab world must look to Tehran if it wishes to vanquish the American invaders and see off their yapping British lapdogs.
How they must have laughed in Iran last week when Britain failed to persuade the UN even to “deplore” the seizure of its sailors. The UN security council expressed “grave concern” instead. “That’ll really show the Iranians we mean business,” commented one disillusioned British diplomat. WITH diplomatic efforts apparently stalling, attention is likely to return this week to how the Royal Navy, pride of Britain for at least 350 years, allowed this disaster to happen in the first place. Have we really sunk so low that we cannot fight off a few Iranian thugs in what amounted to little more than militarised speedboats?
Vice-Admiral Charles Style, a deputy chief of defence staff, made a good fist of defending the navy’s position at a Ministry of Defence press conference on Wednesday. He had all the right satellite coordinates and charts to show the Iranians were at fault, but everyone listening knew that it no longer really mattered exactly where our chaps had been arrested – they should not have been arrested at all.
That point was rammed home by an officer on board the US frigate that is the other main ship in Task Force 158, the British-commanded fleet patrolling off Iraq. Lieutenant-Commander Erik Horner of the USS Underwood said US sailors’ rules of engagement meant they not only had the right to defend themselves against that kind of aggression, but also were obliged to do so. “Our reaction was: why didn’t your guys defend themselves?” Horner said.
John Pike, one of America’s leading military analysts, was similarly baffled that the sailors’ home ship, HMS Cornwall, was up to 11 miles away, too far to offer immediate cover as the British inflatables searched an Indian freighter in a routine antismuggling check. Despite all the evidence that Iran was looking to capture “blue-eyed officers”, Pike said, “there seems to have been a loss of situational awareness on the part of the folks on Cornwall that their boarding party could be snuck up on like that”.
Admiral Sir Alan West, the former first sea lord, defended the lack of aggression on the British side, pointing out that UK rules of engagement “are very much deescalatory, because we don’t want wars starting”. He added: “The reason we are there is to be a force for good, to make the whole area safe. So we try to downplay things. Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were . . . captured.”
The British lapse was all the more surprising because the same thing happened in June 2004, when eight sailors and marines were seized in the same area and released three days later. The defence ministry compiled a “lessons learnt” paper to ensure that those mistakes were not repeated.
The Sunday Times has learnt that the paper highlighted the need for “top cover” for boarding parties, which should always have been covered from the air by the presence of a helicopter. The Cornwall’s Lynx – armed with a .50 machinegun that could have caused serious damage to the Iranian fast boats – had apparently been overhead when the sailors boarded the Indian freighter.
Why did it turn back, leaving the sailors exposed? The ministry initially said last week that it needed to refuel before retreating behind an insistence that there was no standard procedure for keeping a helicopter in place.
It also remained a mystery how the Cornwall’s advanced radar and sonar systems failed to alert its crew to a problem. As a type22 frigate, the Cornwall has the capability to track ships up to 200 miles away. One recently retired naval officer said even basic navigation radar should have picked up motorboats at shorter range, assuming someone was looking out for them.
An official board of inquiry will ultimately be charged with examining the incident and establishing, among many other things, why no immediate effort was made to intercept the Iranians as they departed with their captives.
Less easy to predict is how the standoff will be resolved. “A military confrontation would just be losing all round. Both sides realise that,” said Robert Lowe of the Chatham House think tank. He said the solution had to be one where “neither side loses face”.
One experienced source who has dealt with Iran in the past expects the hostages to be released after a week to 10 days, but he said that was likely only if Britain relaxed its pressure. “They will not want to be seen to be reacting to anything we are saying or doing,” he said.
A rescue attempt, if successful, would be hugely popular in Britain and might restore Blair’s tattered image in America. “There are plans being made [for a possible rescue],” one senior British source acknowledged. But it is not even clear where the sailors are being held.
Nor is history on the prime minister’s side. A US attempt to rescue embassy hostages in Iran in 1980 ended in a fiasco of colliding aircraft in the desert. Those hostages were held for 444 days.
Here's an article that discusses exactly that, and let me warn you, friends, it does not make good reading for supporters of the once-great Royal Navy, nor for our politicians.
-----------------------
Focus: In the eye of the storm
Fifteen sailors snatched and publicly humiliated without a single shot fired. Tony Allen-Mills, Michael Smith and Marie Colvin on a shambles Britain could have avoided
Sunday Times
April 1, 2007
They should have known the Iranians might spring a trap. Several months before the current hostage crisis a small group of American and Iraqi soldiers had been patrolling near the Iranian border 75 miles east of Baghdad.
They spotted a single Iranian soldier lurking in Iraqi territory near the town of Balad Ruz and moved forward to question him. The Americans were, according to a US army report obtained by The Sunday Times, promptly ambushed by a much larger platoon of Iranian soldiers who had been hiding across the nearby border.
An Iranian captain warned the Americans that “if they tried to leave their location, the Iranians would fire upon them”. For a few moments the US paratroopers must have felt as helpless as the British sailors in inflatable speedboats who were surprised 10 days ago by more heavily armed Iranian vessels.
The US incident last September ended very differently. Firing broke out. Both sides scattered and a potential hostage crisis was averted as the Americans escaped unhurt.
By contrast, the 14 British service-men and one woman proved humiliatingly vulnerable to a low-tech Iranian naval manoeuvre that has provoked mocking headlines around the world. Yesterday they were still at the mercy of their unpredictable Iranian captors, reduced to making forced false apologies for breaching Iranian territory.
Nathan Thomas Summers, one of the captured crewmen, was paraded on television. “We trespassed without permission,” he said. “I deeply apologise for entering your waters.”
Yesterday Hussein Shari’atma-dari, a senior adviser to the regime, described the incident as a “plot from London to put more pressures on Iran”. He said: “The path taken by Britain and the West shows that they do not want to take any step for the release of the British soldiers, therefore Iran must put them on trial.”
How could the British forces have been caught so unawares? They should have been alerted months ago by the Balad Ruz clash to the heightened threat of an Iranian assault. They might even have read subsequent warnings – reported in The Sunday Times as recently as two weeks ago – that Tehran was threatening to kidnap “a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers”.
As Iranian radicals rejoiced at their propaganda triumph last week, even some of Britain’s friends were scathing in their condemnation of military impotence and political incompetence.
“Wimping out on Iran” was one of the more polite commentaries in the New York Daily News. John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, dubbed the British government’s performance as “pathetic”.
The crisis has reduced Tony Blair and several of his officials to the status of irrelevant foghorns, issuing empty warnings about “stepping up the pressure” and “moving to the next phase”.
Such is the shambles that senior Royal Navy officers at the fleet’s operational headquarters have been directed to review the rules of engagement for naval boarding parties. If necessary they will recommend changes to ensure Britain’s forces are never again seized so easily without a shot being fired.
THE streets of Tehran were largely empty last week as Iranians celebrated Norouz, their new year festival. There was a chill in the air and snow on the distant mountains as Mullah Ahmad Khatami mounted his podium in the courtyard of Tehran University to lead Friday prayers.
Khatami, viewed as a rising hard-liner, quickly turned to the hostage crisis. “Britain must know that this is not the 19th century and it should not be taking an imperial posture,” the burly mullah said.
“Everyone knows that Britain is a defeated nation that acts as a political broker [for the Americans],” he went on. “You cannot frighten Iran by sending gunboats and doing whatever pleases you. Iran today is a strong Iran and is the only country that stands up to the Americans.”
Iran has been resisting a campaign led by the United States and Britain at the UN to force the mullahs to end Iran’s programme of enriching uranium. Iran claims it will be used to produce civilian nuclear power but the West fears Iran wants to produce a nuclear bomb.
Khatami said his religious colleagues sent their “warmest congratulations” to the “mighty border guards” who had seized the British sailors. He condemned London for “bullish declarations and devious actions” and warned: “Britain should understand that if they want to continue that path of bullying, they would pay a huge price.”
This was scarcely the response that Blair can have been hoping for when he warned last Tuesday that Britain’s campaign to free the captives would “move into a different phase” if Iran did not respond.
Blair added: “I hope we manage to get them to realise that they have to release them.”
While there was no doubting the outrage shared by British ministers, it was equally clear by Thursday’s cabinet meeting that Britain’s big mistake was to have allowed the sailors to be captured in the first place.
“It’s not as simple as just being tough with the Iranians,” Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, argued to her colleagues.
“They have tentacles in all sorts of areas such as the Afghan warlords, the Iraqi insurgents and Hamas.”
In other words, Beckett was suggesting, any military action against Tehran was likely to be met by a barrage of terrorist reprisals by Iranian allies around the globe. “We have to be more sophisticated,” she insisted.
At 10 Downing Street, senior officials took a similar line. “There is no real point in sabre-rattling for its own sake,” said one official. “We have been looking for the opportunity to engage through our multilateral contacts.”
Variations on that peacemongering theme were expressed widely in Whitehall last week. John Williams, a former Foreign Office director of communications who was intimately involved in protracted negotiations over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, said he believed Beckett’s hands were tied. “The Foreign Office objective is to get our people out safely. There is just too much at stake for any other approach,” he said.
Such diplomatic hand-wringing was last week driving American hawks to distraction. “The Brits have laboured mightily for many years to prevent the United States from pursuing vigorous action against Iran,” sneered Michael Ledeen, a prominent neocon and Middle East scholar who has long argued for regime change in Tehran. “Now they will have to answer to the families of the hostages.” Ledeen argued that coalition forces should “undertake the legitimate self-defence to which we are entitled”, and attack terrorist training camps and bomb factories inside Iran.
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican congressman who is considering a presidential bid, urged Britain to use military force to destroy Iran’s petrol production company. If a lack of petrol for their cars forced Iranians to “go back to walking and using oxen to pull carts”, the people might rise against the ayatollahs, Gingrich said.
None of which will come as much comfort to the frightened family of Leading Seaman Faye Turney, 26, who has become the human face of the crisis. Psychologists have had a field day analysing the pitiful videos of Turney attempting to cooperate under obvious duress.
The three letters she has purportedly written to her parents. to a “representative of the House of Commons” and to “British People” were obviously dictated in large part by her Iranian captors. Yet however crude Iran’s propaganda may seem in Britain, it is mainly aimed elsewhere. Iran is patently showing off to its radical acolytes around the globe, revelling in the chance to kick sand in the face of the West.
The so-called confessions of Turney and Summers were first aired not in Farsi, which is spoken by most Iranians, but on an Arab-language television station watched widely in Iraq and Arab Gulf countries. The message was clear – the Arab world must look to Tehran if it wishes to vanquish the American invaders and see off their yapping British lapdogs.
How they must have laughed in Iran last week when Britain failed to persuade the UN even to “deplore” the seizure of its sailors. The UN security council expressed “grave concern” instead. “That’ll really show the Iranians we mean business,” commented one disillusioned British diplomat. WITH diplomatic efforts apparently stalling, attention is likely to return this week to how the Royal Navy, pride of Britain for at least 350 years, allowed this disaster to happen in the first place. Have we really sunk so low that we cannot fight off a few Iranian thugs in what amounted to little more than militarised speedboats?
Vice-Admiral Charles Style, a deputy chief of defence staff, made a good fist of defending the navy’s position at a Ministry of Defence press conference on Wednesday. He had all the right satellite coordinates and charts to show the Iranians were at fault, but everyone listening knew that it no longer really mattered exactly where our chaps had been arrested – they should not have been arrested at all.
That point was rammed home by an officer on board the US frigate that is the other main ship in Task Force 158, the British-commanded fleet patrolling off Iraq. Lieutenant-Commander Erik Horner of the USS Underwood said US sailors’ rules of engagement meant they not only had the right to defend themselves against that kind of aggression, but also were obliged to do so. “Our reaction was: why didn’t your guys defend themselves?” Horner said.
John Pike, one of America’s leading military analysts, was similarly baffled that the sailors’ home ship, HMS Cornwall, was up to 11 miles away, too far to offer immediate cover as the British inflatables searched an Indian freighter in a routine antismuggling check. Despite all the evidence that Iran was looking to capture “blue-eyed officers”, Pike said, “there seems to have been a loss of situational awareness on the part of the folks on Cornwall that their boarding party could be snuck up on like that”.
Admiral Sir Alan West, the former first sea lord, defended the lack of aggression on the British side, pointing out that UK rules of engagement “are very much deescalatory, because we don’t want wars starting”. He added: “The reason we are there is to be a force for good, to make the whole area safe. So we try to downplay things. Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were . . . captured.”
The British lapse was all the more surprising because the same thing happened in June 2004, when eight sailors and marines were seized in the same area and released three days later. The defence ministry compiled a “lessons learnt” paper to ensure that those mistakes were not repeated.
The Sunday Times has learnt that the paper highlighted the need for “top cover” for boarding parties, which should always have been covered from the air by the presence of a helicopter. The Cornwall’s Lynx – armed with a .50 machinegun that could have caused serious damage to the Iranian fast boats – had apparently been overhead when the sailors boarded the Indian freighter.
Why did it turn back, leaving the sailors exposed? The ministry initially said last week that it needed to refuel before retreating behind an insistence that there was no standard procedure for keeping a helicopter in place.
It also remained a mystery how the Cornwall’s advanced radar and sonar systems failed to alert its crew to a problem. As a type22 frigate, the Cornwall has the capability to track ships up to 200 miles away. One recently retired naval officer said even basic navigation radar should have picked up motorboats at shorter range, assuming someone was looking out for them.
An official board of inquiry will ultimately be charged with examining the incident and establishing, among many other things, why no immediate effort was made to intercept the Iranians as they departed with their captives.
Less easy to predict is how the standoff will be resolved. “A military confrontation would just be losing all round. Both sides realise that,” said Robert Lowe of the Chatham House think tank. He said the solution had to be one where “neither side loses face”.
One experienced source who has dealt with Iran in the past expects the hostages to be released after a week to 10 days, but he said that was likely only if Britain relaxed its pressure. “They will not want to be seen to be reacting to anything we are saying or doing,” he said.
A rescue attempt, if successful, would be hugely popular in Britain and might restore Blair’s tattered image in America. “There are plans being made [for a possible rescue],” one senior British source acknowledged. But it is not even clear where the sailors are being held.
Nor is history on the prime minister’s side. A US attempt to rescue embassy hostages in Iran in 1980 ended in a fiasco of colliding aircraft in the desert. Those hostages were held for 444 days.
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