WikiLeaks

Brilliant analysis from Friedman. The critique of Assange's attitude to his own secrets is particularly poignant.

If you only read one bit, scroll right to the end for the Robert Gates quote.

-------------------------------------

Taking Stock of WikiLeaks
Stratfor
December 14, 2010
By George Friedman

Julian Assange has declared that geopolitics will be separated into pre-“Cablegate” and post-“Cablegate” eras. That was a bold claim. However, given the intense interest that the leaks produced, it is a claim that ought to be carefully considered. Several weeks have passed since the first of the diplomatic cables were released, and it is time now to address the following questions: First, how significant were the leaks? Second, how could they have happened? Third, was their release a crime? Fourth, what were their consequences? Finally, and most important, is the WikiLeaks premise that releasing government secrets is a healthy and appropriate act a tenable position?

Let’s begin by recalling that the U.S. State Department documents constituted the third wave of leaks. The first two consisted of battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. Looking back on those as a benchmark, it is difficult to argue that they revealed information that ran counter to informed opinion. I use the term “informed opinion” deliberately. For someone who was watching Iraq and Afghanistan with some care over the previous years, the leaks might have provided interesting details but they would not have provided any startling distinction between the reality that was known and what was revealed. If, on the other hand, you weren’t paying close attention, and WikiLeaks provided your first and only view of the battlefields in any detail, you might have been surprised.

Let’s consider the most controversial revelation, one of the tens of thousands of reports released on Iraq and Afghanistan and one in which a video indicated that civilians were deliberately targeted by U.S. troops. The first point, of course, is that the insurgents, in violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, did not go into combat wearing armbands or other distinctive clothing to distinguish themselves from non-combatants. The Geneva Conventions have always been adamant on this requirement because they regarded combatants operating under the cover of civilians as being responsible for putting those civilians in harm’s way, not the uniformed troops who were forced to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants when the combatants deliberately chose to act in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

It follows from this that such actions against civilians are inevitable in the kind of war Iraqi insurgents chose to wage. Obviously, this particular event has to be carefully analyzed, but in a war in which combatants blend with non-combatants, civilian casualties will occur, and so will criminal actions by uniformed troops. Hundreds of thousands of troops have fought in Iraq, and the idea that criminal acts would be absent is absurd. What is most startling is not the presence of potentially criminal actions but their scarcity. Anyone who has been close to combat or who has read histories of World War II would be struck not by the presence of war crimes but by the fact that in all the WikiLeaks files so few potential cases are found. War is controlled violence, and when controls fail — as they inevitably do — uncontrolled and potentially criminal violence occurs. However, the case cited by WikiLeaks with much fanfare did not clearly show criminal actions on the part of American troops as much as it did the consequences of the insurgents violating the Geneva Conventions.

Only those who were not paying attention to the fact that there was a war going on, or who had no understanding of war, or who wanted to pretend to be shocked for political reasons, missed two crucial points: It was the insurgents who would be held responsible for criminal acts under the Geneva Conventions for posing as non-combatants, and there were extraordinarily few cases of potential war crimes that were contained in the leaks.

The diplomatic leaks are similar. There is precious little that was revealed that was unknown to the informed observer. For example, anyone reading STRATFOR knows we have argued that it was not only the Israelis but also the Saudis that were most concerned about Iranian power and most insistent that the United States do something about it. While the media treated this as a significant revelation, it required a profound lack of understanding of the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf to regard U.S. diplomatic cables on the subject as surprising.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ statement in the leaks that the Saudis were always prepared to fight to the last American was embarrassing, in the sense that Gates would have to meet with Saudi leaders in the future and would do so with them knowing what he thinks of them. Of course, the Saudis are canny politicians and diplomats and they already knew how the American leadership regarded their demands.

There were other embarrassments also known by the informed observer. Almost anyone who worries about such things is aware that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is close to the Russians and likes to party with young women. The latest batch of leaks revealed that the American diplomatic service was also aware of this. And now Berlusconi is aware that they know of these things, which will make it hard for diplomats to pretend that they don’t know of these things. Of course, Berlusconi was aware that everyone knew of these things and clearly didn’t care, since the charges were all over Italian media.

I am not cherry-picking the Saudi or Italian memos. The consistent reality of the leaks is that they do not reveal anything new to the informed but do provide some amusement over certain comments, such as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev being called “Batman and Robin.” That’s amusing, but it isn’t significant. Amusing and interesting but almost never significant is what I come away with having read through all three waves of leaks.

Obviously, the leaks are being used by foreign politicians to their own advantage. For example, the Russians feigned shock that NATO would be reassuring the Balts about defense against a potential Russian invasion or the Poles using the leaks to claim that solid U.S.-Polish relations are an illusion. The Russians know well of NATO plans for defending the Baltic states against a hypothetical Russian invasion, and the Poles know equally well that U.S.-Polish relations are complex but far from illusory. The leaks provide an opportunity for feigning shock and anger and extracting possible minor concessions or controlling atmospherics. They do not, however, change the structure of geopolitics.

Indeed, U.S. diplomats come away looking sharp, insightful and decent. While their public statements after a conference may be vacuous, it is encouraging to see that their read of the situation and of foreign leaders is unsentimental and astute. Everything from memos on senior leaders to anonymous snippets from apparently junior diplomats not only are on target (in the sense that STRATFOR agrees with them) but are also well-written and clear. I would argue that the leaks paint a flattering picture overall of the intellect of U.S. officials without revealing, for the most part, anything particularly embarrassing.

At the same time, there were snarky and foolish remarks in some of the leaks, particularly personal comments about leaders and sometimes their families that were unnecessarily offensive. Some of these will damage diplomatic careers, most generated a good deal of personal tension and none of their authors will likely return to the countries in which they served. Much was indeed unprofessional, but the task of a diplomat is to provide a sense of place in its smallest details, and none expect their observations ever to be seen by the wrong people. Nor do nations ever shift geopolitical course over such insults, not in the long run. These personal insults were by far the most significant embarrassments to be found in the latest release. Personal tension is not, however, international tension.

This raises the question of why diplomats can’t always simply state their minds rather than publicly mouth preposterous platitudes. It could be as simple as this: My son was a terrible pianist. He completely lacked talent. After his recitals at age 10, I would pretend to be enthralled. He knew he was awful and he knew I knew he was awful, but it was appropriate that I not admit what I knew. It is called politeness and sometimes affection. There is rarely affection among nations, but politeness calls for behaving differently when a person is in the company of certain other people than when that person is with colleagues talking about those people. This is the simplest of human rules. Not admitting what you know about others is the foundation of civilization. The same is true among diplomats and nations.

And in the end, this is all I found in the latest WikiLeaks release: a great deal of information about people who aren’t American that others certainly knew and were aware that the Americans knew, and now they have all seen it in writing. It would take someone who truly doesn’t understand how geopolitics really works to think that this would make a difference. Some diplomats may wind up in other postings, and perhaps some careers will be ended. But the idea that this would somehow change the geopolitics of our time is really hard to fathom. I have yet to see Assange point to something so significant that that it would justify his claim. It may well be that the United States is hiding secrets that would reveal it to be monstrous. If so, it is not to be found in what has been released so far.

There is, of course, the question of whether states should hold secrets, which is at the root of the WikiLeaks issue. Assange claims that by revealing these secrets WikiLeaks is doing a service. His ultimate maxim, as he has said on several occasions, is that if money and resources are being spent on keeping something secret, then the reasons must be insidious. Nations have secrets for many reasons, from protecting a military or intelligence advantage to seeking some advantage in negotiations to, at times, hiding nefarious plans. But it is difficult to imagine a state — or a business or a church — acting without confidentiality. Imagine that everything you wrote and said in an attempt to figure out a problem was made public? Every stupid idea that you discarded or clueless comment you expressed would now be pinned on you. But more than that, when you argue that nations should engage in diplomacy rather than war, taking away privacy makes diplomacy impossible. If what you really think of the guy on the other side of the table is made public, how can diplomacy work?

This is the contradiction at the heart of the WikiLeaks project. Given what I have read Assange saying, he seems to me to be an opponent of war and a supporter of peace. Yet what he did in leaking these documents, if the leaking did anything at all, is make diplomacy more difficult. It is not that it will lead to war by any means; it is simply that one cannot advocate negotiations and then demand that negotiators be denied confidentiality in which to conduct their negotiations. No business could do that, nor could any other institution. Note how vigorously WikiLeaks hides the inner workings of its own organization, from how it is funded to the people it employs.

Assange’s claims are made even more interesting in terms of his “thermonuclear” threat. Apparently there are massive files that will be revealed if any harm comes to him. Implicit is the idea that they will not be revealed if he is unharmed — otherwise the threat makes no sense. So, Assange’s position is that he has secrets and will keep them secret if he is not harmed. I regard this as a perfectly reasonable and plausible position. One of the best uses for secrets is to control what the other side does to you. So Assange is absolutely committed to revealing the truth unless it serves his interests not to, in which case the public has no need to know.

It is difficult to see what harm the leaks have done, beyond embarrassment. It is also difficult to understand why WikiLeaks thinks it has changed history or why Assange lacks a sufficient sense of irony not to see the contradiction between his position on openness and his willingness to keep secrets when they benefit him. But there is also something important here, which is how this all was leaked in the first place.

To begin that explanation, we have to go back to 9/11 and the feeling in its aftermath that the failure of various government entities to share information contributed to the disaster. The answer was to share information so that intelligence analysts could draw intelligence from all sources in order to connect the dots. Intelligence organizations hate sharing information because it makes vast amounts of information vulnerable. Compartmentalization makes it hard to connect dots, but it also makes it harder to have a WikiLeaks release. The tension between intelligence and security is eternal, and there will never be a clear solution.

The real issue is who had access to this mass of files and what controls were put on them. Did the IT department track all external drives or e-mails? One of the reasons to be casual is that this was information that was classified secret and below, with the vast majority being at the confidential, no-foreign-distribution level. This information was not considered highly sensitive by the U.S. government. Based on the latest trove, it is hard to figure out how the U.S. government decides to classify material. But it has to be remembered that given their level of classification these files did not have the highest security around them because they were not seen as highly sensitive.

Still, a crime occurred. According to the case of Daniel Ellsberg, who gave a copy of the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam to a New York Times reporter, it is a crime for someone with a security clearance to provide classified material for publication but not a crime for a publisher to publish it, or so it has become practice since the Ellsberg case. Legal experts can debate the nuances, but this has been the practice for almost 40 years. The bright line is whether the publisher in any way encouraged or participated in either the theft of the information or in having it passed on to him. In the Ellsberg case, he handed it to reporters without them even knowing what it was. Assange has been insisting that he was the passive recipient of information that he had nothing to do with securing.

Now it is interesting whether the sheer existence of WikiLeaks constituted encouragement or conspiracy with anyone willing to pass on classified information to him. But more interesting by far is the sequence of events that led a U.S. Army private first class not only to secure the material but to know where to send it and how to get it there. If Pfc. Bradley Manning conceived and executed the theft by himself, and gave the information to WikiLeaks unprompted, Assange is clear. But anyone who assisted Manning or encouraged him is probably guilty of conspiracy, and if Assange knew what was being done, he is probably guilty, too. There was talk about some people at MIT helping Manning. Unscrambling the sequence is what the Justice Department is undoubtedly doing now. Assange cannot be guilty of treason, since he isn’t a U.S. citizen. But he could be guilty of espionage. His best defense will be that he can’t be guilty of espionage because the material that was stolen was so trivial.

I have no idea whether or when he got involved in the acquisition of the material. I do know — given the material leaked so far — that there is little beyond minor embarrassments contained within it. Therefore, Assange’s claim that geopolitics has changed is as false as it is bold. Whether he committed any crime, including rape, is something I have no idea about. What he is clearly guilty of is hyperbole. But contrary to what he intended, he did do a service to the United States. New controls will be placed on the kind of low-grade material he published. Secretary of Defense Gates made the following point on this:

“Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments — some governments — deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation.”

“Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.”

I don’t like to give anyone else the final word, but in this case Robert Gates’ view is definitive. One can pretend that WikiLeaks has redefined geopolitics, but it hasn’t come close.

"Is University really such a good thing?'

P Hitchens again:

"What are universities for anyway? I went to one and spent the whole time being a Trotskyist troublemaker at the taxpayers’ expense, completely neglecting my course. I have learned a thousand times more during my 30-year remedial course in the University of Fleet Street, still under way.

I am still ashamed of the way I lived off the taxes of millions of people who would have loved three years free from the demands of work, to think and to learn, but never had the chance.

We seem to accept without question that it is a good thing that the young should go through this dubious experience. Worse, employers seem to have fallen completely for the idea that a university degree is essential – when it is often a handicap.

For many people, college is a corrupting, demoralising experience. They imagine they are independent when they are in fact parasites, living off their parents or off others and these days often doomed to return home with a sense of grievance and no job. They also become used to being in debt – a state that previous generations rightly regarded with horror and fear."

Come to Gaza: 'Lattes, beach barbecues (and dodging missiles)'

Last year Peter Hitchens won the prestigious George Orwell Award for his foreign reporting (much to the chagrin of Guardian readers everywhere). Uncommonly for an opinion writer he takes a lot of foreign assignments, often in dangerous locations. Here is his latest, a report on life in Gaza. JP I think you'll be interested. [Follow the link to read in full]

"Lattes, beach barbecues (and dodging missiles) in the world's biggest prison camp

It is lunchtime in the world's biggest prison camp, and I am enjoying a rather good caffe latte in an elegant beachfront cafe. Later I will visit the sparkling new Gaza Mall, and then eat an excellent beef stroganoff in an elegant restaurant.

Perhaps it is callous of me to be so self-indulgent, but I think I at least deserve the coffee. I would be having a stiff drink instead, if only the ultra-Islamic regime hadn't banned alcohol with a harsh and heavy hand.

Just an hour ago I was examining a 90ft-deep smuggling tunnel, leading out of the Gaza Strip and into Egypt. This excavation, within sight of Egyptian border troops who are supposed to stop such things, is – unbelievably – officially licensed by the local authority as a 'trading project' (registration fee £1,600).

It was until recently used for the import of cattle, chocolate and motorcycles (though not, its owner insists, for munitions or people) and at its peak earned more than £30,000 a day in fees.

But business has collapsed because the Israelis have relaxed many of their restrictions on imports, and most such tunnels are going out of business. While I was there I heard the whine of Israeli drones and the thunder of jet bombers far overhead.

Then, worryingly soon after I left, the area was pulverised with high explosive. I don't know if the Israeli air force waited for me to leave, or just walloped the tunnels anyway.
The Jewish state's grasp of basic public relations is notoriously bad. But the Israeli authorities certainly know I am here. I am one of only four people who crossed into the world's most misrepresented location this morning.

Don't, please, accuse of me of complacency or denying the truth. I do not pretend to know everything about Gaza. I don't think it is a paradise, or remotely normal. But I do know for certain what I saw and heard.

There are dispiriting slums that should have been cleared decades ago, people living on the edge of subsistence. There is danger. And most of the people cannot get out.

But it is a lot more complicated, and a lot more interesting, than that. In fact, the true state of the Gaza Strip, and of the West Bank of the Jordan, is so full of paradoxes and surprises that most news coverage of the Middle East finds it easier to concentrate on the obvious, and leave out the awkward bits...."

Creationism in Israel

One of the great things about the wonderful world of Twitter and FB is stumbling on articles like this one (via @DerrenBrown). We tend to think of creationists as fundamentalist Christians, perhaps with a smattering of Muslims. But take a look at the Israeli Education Ministry's (until recently) chief scientist, Dr. Gavriel Avital. (He's not convinced by global warming either.)

And just to be clear, before you start reading, the point of this post is not 'look at the fool', but rather, to show that such opinions are not the exclusive preserve of Bible / Koran bashers. (Check out the comments too.)

Chief scientist who questioned evolution theory fired

Dr. Gavriel Avital, who called environmental groups 'green religion' and said, 'There are many people who don't believe evolutionary account is correct,' dismissed by Education Ministry

Tomer Velmer

The Education Ministry's chief scientist, Dr. Gavriel Avital, was dismissed on Monday following a scandal-filled trial period of less than a year.

Sources familiar with the affair said Avital was fired over past statements he had made, in which he questioned evolution and the global warming theory.

Avital, who was named chief scientist in December 2009, said Darwinism should be analyzed critically along with biblical creationism.

"If textbooks state explicitly that human beings' origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions. There are many people who don't believe the evolutionary account is correct," he said.

"There are those for whom evolution is a religion and are unwilling to hear about anything else. Part of my responsibility, in light of my position with the Education Ministry, is to examine textbooks and curricula,"

Avital added, "If they keep writing in textbooks that the Earth is growing warmer because of carbon dioxide emissions, I'll insist that isn't the case."

Read on here.

A history of anti-semitism in Britain

While discussing with Andy whether of not Ernest Bevin was an anti-semite (as you do) I stumbled across this rather interesting summary:

Antisemitism Embedded in British Culture

Interview with Robert Solomon Wistrich

• Antisemitism has been present in Great Britain for almost a thousand years of recorded history. In the twelfth century, Catholic medieval Britain was a persecutory society, particularly when it came to Jews. It pioneered the blood libel and the church was a leader in instituting cruel legislation and discriminatory conduct toward Jews.
• English literature and culture are drenched in antisemitic stereotypes. Major British authors throughout the centuries transmitted culturally embedded antisemitism to future generations. Although they did not do so deliberately, it was absorbed and has had a long-term, major impact on British society.
• In the new century the United Kingdom is a European leader in several areas of antisemitism. It holds a pioneering position in promoting academic boycotts of Israel. The same is true for trade-union efforts at economic boycotts. There is also no other Western society where jihadi radicalism has proved as violent and dangerous as in the UK.
• In the UK the anti-Zionist narrative probably has greater legitimacy than in any other Western society. Antisemitism of the "anti-Zionist" variety has achieved such resonance, particularly in elite opinion, that various British media are leaders in this field. Successive British governments neither share nor have encouraged such attitudes-least of all Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They have shown concern over antisemitism and the boycott movement and tried to counteract them. However, Trotskyites who infiltrated the Labour Party and the trade unions in the 1980s have been an important factor in spreading poisonous attitudes. The BBC has also played a role in stimulating pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli attitudes over the years.

I thought it might be of interest to impdec readers. And by readers I mean 'reader'. And by reader, I mean JP.

Read on here.

Peter H on Peter T and the Pope

Peter Hitchens on Peter Tatchell and the Pope's visit:

"Here comes the Pope, though he would have much more fun if he stayed in Rome for root canal dentistry.

His mysterious visit, to the country in Europe where he is most likely to be insulted, is the target of every liberal elitist in Britain.

A whole assembly of crackpot sexual revolutionaries and wild ultra-Leftists will be ranged against him.
Such people normally do not have much popular support. Against the previous Pope, their campaign would have been insignificant squeaking, barely heard above
the applause.

But thanks to the abuse of children by some priests, and the Roman Church’s
feeble efforts to punish them, all that has changed. It is now respectable again to be anti-Catholic.

Well, that’s reasonable. Paedophilia is disgusting, and particularly so among men supposedly dedicated to goodness.

But the Vatican doesn’t actually tell its priests to abuse children. The vast majority of them do not so do. And it has tried to stamp out the problem and to offer genuine apologies to the victims.

I (as a non-Roman Catholic) have examined some of the main charges levelled against Benedict XVI by his attackers, and found that several of them are simply untrue, whereas others have been crudely distorted.

I have also examined the record of one of the main critics of the Papal visit. This is Peter Tatchell, prominent in the ‘Protest the Pope’ campaign.
Set for a battle: The Roman Church's feeble efforts to punish priests who have abused children have left many with criticisms of the Pope

Set for a battle: The Roman Church's feeble efforts to punish priests who have abused children have left many with criticisms of the Pope

I admire Mr Tatchell’s physical and moral courage, notably when he was badly beaten by Robert Mugabe’s bodyguards for attempting a citizen’s arrest of that monster. The effects of that beating still trouble him.

But this does not cancel out what I believe is the hypocrisy of his attempt – and that of the Left in general – to wage war on the Pope by employing the charge of condoning or failing to act against paedophilia (it is No  5 in the charge-sheet set out by ‘Protest the Pope’).

For on June 26, 1997, Mr Tatchell wrote a start­ling letter to the Guardian newspaper.

In it, he defended an academic book about ‘Boy-Love’ against what he saw as calls for it to be censored. When I contacted him on Friday, he emphasised that he is ‘against sex between adults and children’ and that his main purpose in writing the letter had been to defend free speech.

He told me: ‘I was opposing calls for censorship generated by this book. I was not in any way condoning paedophilia.’

Personally, I think he went a bit further than that. He wrote that the book’s arguments were not shocking, but ‘courageous’.

He said the book documented ‘examples of societies where consenting inter-generational sex is considered normal’.

He gave an example of a New Guinea tribe where ‘all young boys have sex with older warriors as part of their initiation into manhood’ and allegedly grow up to be ‘happy, well-adjusted husbands and fathers’.

And he concluded: ‘The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.

‘While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.’

Well, it’s a free country. And I’m rather grateful that Mr Tatchell, unlike most of his allies, is honest enough to discuss openly where the sexual revolution may really be headed.

What he said in 1997 remains deeply shocking to almost all of us. But shock fades into numb acceptance, as it has over and over again. Much of what is normal now would have been deeply shocking to British people 50 years ago. We got used to it. How will we know where to stop? Or will we just carry on for ever?

As the condom-wavers and value-free sex-educators advance into our primary schools, and the pornography seeps like slurry from millions of teenage bedroom computers, it seems clear to me that shock, by itself, is no defence against this endless, sordid dismantling of moral barriers till there is nothing left at all.

Yet when one of the few men on the planet who argues, with force, consistency and reason, for an absolute standard of goodness comes to this country, he is reviled by fashionable opinion."


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1311193/PETER-HITCHENS-Question-Who-said-Not-sex-involving-children-unwanted-abusive-Answer-The-Popes-biggest-British-critic.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz0zJWwvBec

Peter Hitchens on teaching children to be religous

Lots for contributors to impdec to disagree with here I'm sure:

"It is notable that the work of my brother, Christopher Hitchens, and that of Richard Dawkins coincide closely on one striking point. My brother devotes a chapter in his 2007 book God Is Not Great to the question "Is religion child abuse?" Amid a multitude of fulminations about circumcision, masturbation and frightening children with stories of hell, he lets slip what I suspect is his actual point: "If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world." This is perfectly true, as is his earlier statement that "the obsession with children, and with rigid control over their upbringing, has been part of every system of absolute authority." There is a revealing assumption buried in these statements and also in the opening part of the chapter, in which he says, "We can be sure that religion has always hoped to practise upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young, and has gone to great lengths to make sure of this privilege by making alliances with secular powers in the material world." Does he realize that he is here describing Soviet Communism?

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins too has a lengthy section on "Physical and Mental Abuse." He recounts how "in the question time after a lecture in Dublin, I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland. I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place."

The word "abuse" used here by both Richard Dawkins and my brother is far stronger than it first seems to be. In modern Britain and slightly less so in the United States, an accusation of "child abuse" is devastating to the accused. It is almost universally assumed to be true. Juries and the media are instantly prejudiced against the defendant before any evidence has been heard. To suggest that any person so charged may be innocent is to risk being accused of abuse oneself.

To use the expression "child abuse" in this context is to equate such education with a universally hated crime. If Professor Dawkins genuinely believes what he said to the Dublin audience, then he should logically believe that "bringing the child up Catholic" should be a criminal offence attracting a long term of imprisonment and public disgrace. If he does not mean this, what does he mean by the use of such wildly inflated language, and what is he trying to achieve by it?

And what is my brother doing in his competing anti-theist volume? Interestingly, he does not really answer his own inquiry. The chapter drains away into some ramblings on the subject of evolution, circumcision, masturbation, and the actual sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests. I will not be trapped into defending them; their actions were atrocious, particularly because of who and what they were, and the Roman Catholic Church has been feeble in dealing with them. But it can hardly be claimed that they were the only people ever to abuse children sexually or cover it up, or that they were in any way following the dictates of their church. State-run homes for children have no doubt had their share of sexual abuse, but this has never been used as an argument against the existence of the state, nor would it be a very good argument if it were.

The use of this claim that religious instruction is a form of child abuse in an argument for atheism is propaganda, not reason. We read to the young, show them beautiful things, introduce them to good manners, warn them against dangers, teach them their letters and multiplication tables, and make them learn poetry by heart, precisely because they are most impressionable in childhood -- and therefore best able to learn these things then, in many cases long before they can possibly understand why they matter. In the same way, we warn them against various dangers that they cannot possibly understand. It is also true, as I think most observant parents know, that children are much more interested in the universe and the fundamental questions of existence than are adults.

So this is the moment at which we try to pass on to them our deepest beliefs, and the moment when they are most likely to receive them. As Philip Pullman has rightly said, " 'Once upon a time ...' is always a more effective instructor than 'Thou Shalt Not ...,' " so we do this most effectively with stories. But if we ourselves believe -- and are asked by our own children what we believe -- we will tell them, and they will instantly know if we mean it and also know how much it matters to us. They will learn from this that belief is a good thing. We will also try to find schools that will at the very least not undermine the morals and faith of the home. And for this, we are to be called abusers of children? This has the stench of totalitarian slander, paving the road to suppression and persecution.

By contrast, I say unequivocally that if a man wishes to bring his child up as an atheist, he should be absolutely free to do so. I am confident enough of the rightness of Christianity to believe that such a child may well learn later (though with more difficulty than he deserves) that he has been misled. But it is ridiculous to pretend that it is a neutral act to inform an infant that the heavens are empty, that the universe is founded on chaos rather than love, and that his grandparents, on dying, have ceased altogether to exist. I personally think it wrong to tell children such things, because I believe them to be false and wrong and roads to misery of various kinds. But in a free country, parents should be able to do so. In return, I ask for the same consideration for religious parents."

"Bad for the Jews" - Paul Krugman

Where do other readers to impdec stand on this blog post by Paul Krugman? Do they think he is right or wrong to critise the anti-defamation league for opposing the construction of a mosque near ground zero?

Here's the blog post:

"

Outside my usual beat, but this statement from the Anti-Defamation League opposing the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero is truly shocking. As Greg Sargent says, the key passage — it’s a pretty short statement — is this one:

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.

Translation: some people will feel bad if this thing is built, and we need to take these feelings into account, even though proponents “have every right to build at this site.”

So let’s try some comparable cases, OK? It causes some people pain to see Jews operating small businesses in non-Jewish neighborhoods; it causes some people pain to see Jews writing for national publications (as I learn from my mailbox most weeks); it causes some people pain to see Jews on the Supreme Court. So would ADL agree that we should ban Jews from these activities, so as to spare these people pain? No? What’s the difference?

One thing I thought Jews were supposed to understand is that they need to be advocates of universal rights, not just rights for their particular group — because it’s the right thing to do, but also because, ahem, there aren’t enough of us. We can’t afford to live in a tribal world.

But ADL has apparently forgotten all that. Shameful — and stupid."

crime and punishment vs reform and rehabilitation

Peter Hitchens is running an interesting debate on his blog about crime and punishment and the purpose of prisons. Hitchens is debating with one of the readers of his blog, who draws heavily on articles by Johan Hari in his replies to Hitchens, so much so in fact, that Hitchens' own replies can also be read as a response to Hari's liberal critique of prisons. Worth reading.

"Something for the weekend - my latest rebuttal of the Storke Fallacy, for those interested

I'll respond to Mr Storke by interleaving my replies with his contribution.

Mr Storke: ‘Mr Hitchens amazingly asks: “Why do left-wingers still act and talk as if they were bold rebels, when in fact their ideas are the conventional wisdom of the governing elite and the academy?” Are you serious?’

My response: Mr Storke must learn to treat his opponents with basic respect. Of course I am serious. I have never been more so. I believe Mr Storke is serious, too, which is why I am devoting so much of my week to rebutting his arguments. Mr Storke should recognise that other people may differ from him, instead of falling into a sort of fainting fit when he encounters an opponent who doesn't share his world view.

Mr Storke: ‘Left-wing ideas are not conventional wisdom in our prison policy.’

Me: That is Mr Storke's *opinion*. It is not an established fact. If he would only read my book, especially the essay on Wormwood Scrubs, he would be able to argue this matter effectively. As it is, he will not make the effort to understand my position, which I am making to understand his.

Now, why might this opinion be incorrect? First, who runs the prisons, makes their rules, decides what their purpose is? Why, it is an agency under the control of government which has for almost 60 years been controlled by social democrats and social liberals of three major parties, who believe (like Mr Hari and Mr Storke) that crime is a symptom of 'social diseases' such as bad housing, poverty, the class system etc.

Secondly, what is the ethos of the prisons system? Does it believe that prisons should be punitive, as conservatives do?

How can it? It would be wholly inconsistent of it to do so. It does not believe that crime is the result of wilful wrongdoing (as the old Prison Commissioners did before the modern era). So how could punishment, or deterrence, be morally justified in its view? It believes (like Mr Storke and Mr Hari) that crime is a symptom of other wrongs. If pressed on the question of punishment, it says that the deprivation of liberty in prison is the only punitive element of it. Its stated purpose is a hope that the imprisoned person may be rehabilitated - though it offers no evidence that any such thing takes place, or ever has.

The organisation of HM Prisons is based upon this ethos. Prisoners are not punished as such while they are in prison - except by their fellow-inmates. There are no imposed disciplines, no compulsory hard labour, no real uniform, no severe deprivation of pleasures. On the contrary, the authorities turn a blind eye to the sale of stupefying drugs, and to the presence of illegal mobile phones, as well as permitting phone links with the outside world, lightly-supervised and frequent visits, TVs and other entertainments. In most cases, the sentences served are so short in practice that the deprivation of liberty is a minor inconvenience.

This was once a respectable view, that is, it was respectable before it was tried in modern Britain. Now it is plainly not working. It is not frightening convicted criminals into staying out of prison, nor is it deterring potential criminals from embarking on criminal careers. Nor is it rehabilitating anyone. This is either because rehabilitation of habitual and incorrigible criminals (virtually the only people in prison apart from the deranged) is impossible. Or it may be because it is too difficult and expensive. I tend to the former view, but am prepared to accept the possibility that the second may be correct, if only because it has never been tried and therefore has never been disproved.

The conservative (indeed, the intelligent and constructive) response to this situation would be to accept that the liberal approach has failed, and to reinstate prison's original punitive nature. The liberal response is to keep the prisons for outward show, while continuing to eviscerate the penal system. Wormwood Scrubs, with its grim, penal exterior and its much more relaxed and liberal interior, is a good metaphor for this.

Interestingly, the liberal establishment hires a state-employed inspector of prisons to call, in a series of reports which never address the fundamental problem, for even more liberal approaches. This is because the liberal state maintains prison buildings (as it orders its judges to pass fictional sentences, only half of which will ever be served, at most) only as a sop to the voters. It would much rather not have prisons, or any punitive elements in the system, at all. Its tender conscience rebels at the idea of incarcerating, let alone executing, another human being. But it lacks the political courage to try this on the electorate, hence the absurd arrangement at the moment under which people who don't believe in punishment operate a system which was physically designed to punish, and is no longer allowed even to make moral judgements. One other result of this is that police have become neutral mediators between 'victims' and 'offenders', who are morally equal in the eyes of the law - so much so that a 'victim' who defends himself on the assumption that he has a moral right to do so is treated very harshly indeed.

So it would perhaps be more correct to say that we have a prison system which still has the outward form of a conservative punitive system, but whose actual internal workings and purpose are entirely the work of liberal world-reformers.

Mr Storke again: ’If left-wing ideas are directing our prison policies why is it that The Adult Learning Inspectorate found fewer than 8 percent of prisoners are taught to read and then given meaningful work that could lead to a job on the outside?’

Me: Sigh. One more time. Because left-wing ideas are also directing our schools, which regard effective teaching methods as 'authoritarian' and refuse to use them, resulting in widespread illiteracy. And because undisciplined and disorderly prisons, full of serial offenders on short sentences, are far from ideal places for remedial schooling.

Mr Storke again: ’Worse, one third of prisoners are released to ‘No Fixed Abode’.
As Johann Hari writes, “If we send prisoners back out homeless and illiterate, what do we expect will happen?”

Me: This is a confusion. Prisoners have 'no fixed abode' presumably because they have lost their former abodes while in prison. Does Mr Storke want them rushed to the top of the council waiting list? Does he want their rent paid by the law-abiding while they are locked up? Or what? Plenty of people with small incomes struggle to find places to live and don't commit crimes. Many of them are presumably illiterate, given the prevalence of illiteracy in our population (a problem whose cause Mr Storke has consistently ignored throughout this whole long discussion). But Mr Storke unintentionally raises a different question. If prisons are significantly more comfortable than life on the outside, people will not make much effort to stay out of them. The kind of prisons I envisage would not generally see any of their inmates twice. They would much rather live honestly in a homeless hostel than return.

Mr Storke: ‘If left-wing ideas were the “conventional wisdom” of the elite, Mr Hitchens, then we would not be locking up mentally-ill people without treatment,’

Me: Here we go again, the blank refusal to respond to my repeated point that the use of the word 'mentally-ill' without specifying what he means is obfuscation. I imagine Mr Storke is a victim of the syllogism which says that anyone who does bad things is mentally ill because he does bad things, and does bad things because he is mentally ill. Alas, I cannot accept this logic myself because (as I keep trying to point out) our chief difference is that I believe that people are responsible for their actions and he doesn't.

But, leaving that aside, I have no doubt that 'mentally-ill' people are indeed 'treated' in prison with the drugs which our medical system so readily hands out on the thinnest excuse. What other 'treatment' is available for these subjective complaints, I do not know.

Mr Storke: ‘…offering literacy training to fewer than 8 per cent of prisoners, (despite the fact 60 per cent have a reading age lower than a six-year-old)’

Me: I imagine this has something to do with the practicalities I mention above.

Mr Storke: ‘…refusing to fund rehabilitation projects, (such as the Open Book Project, and the drug rehabilitation projects which Cheshire Drug Squad tried with such excellent effectiveness in the 1980's,)’

Me: Hang on. Weren't these projects publicly funded? And when, please, are we going to get the details of this amazing Cheshire Drug Squad triumph, which I have asked for again and again, and am never given?

Mr Storke: ‘…and closing down 100 drug rehab centres in one year alone (as Mr Hari reported we did in 2009).’

Me: Perhaps they weren't working. I'd need the details.

Mr Storke: ’If left-wing ideas were ‘conventional wisdom’ we would, by now, have tried Switzerland's policies on drugs,’

Me: Not necessarily. But it seems to me that our own legal system's refusal to prosecute, let alone punish people for possessing illegal drugs, and the whole trend of British drugs policy since Baroness Wootton's defeatist report of 1968, has been very similar to the Swiss policy. Has Mr Storke never heard of the Methadone programme? Can he give me a recent instance of a heroin user being prosecuted for possession, and given any sort of punishment?

Mr Storke: ’…and Denmark's policies of rehabilitation and education for prisoners.’

Me: I have now pointed out three times that Denmark, a very wealthy, tiny country entirely different from ours, is a poor comparison. I have also repeatedly asked for details of its alleged successes, which Mr Storke has never supplied. This is the last time I shall bother to respond to him on this topic, at all, unless he provides the evidence to back up his extravagant claims.

Mr Storke: ’We have done neither. All we have done is lock more people in dank, squalid, overcrowded dumps, severed by distance from any contact with relatives, denied any education, or treatment, and released back onto the streets, homeless and illiterate, and worse than they were when they went to jail.’

Me: This is simply, straightforwardly not true of the drug abusers Mr Storke is talking about. (It is only partially true of the treatment of convicted habitual criminals, the main occupants of our prisons, as qualified by what I have written above, and by the prisons chapter in my book, which I urge Mr Storke to read.) This country's treatment of illegal drug users, who are generally treated as in need of treatment rather than of punishment, is utterly different from what Mr Storke describes, and he knows it.

Mr Storke: ’If prison policy is governed by left-wing ideas, how is that the Howard League for Penal Reform found, when it visited child prisoners at Deerbolt Young Offenders Institute, that, although over 60 per cent of these kids could not write their own name, 50 per cent of them there were getting no schooling whatsoever. And that is how we try to turn around the lives of child criminals? No wonder we have such high reoffending rates among adults.’

Me: Because this is what happens when left-wing ideas dominate a country. Because left-wing ideas are based on several fundamental misapprehensions about human nature. And because this ends in chaos and pathos of this kind. Always has, always will. That's why. But I would also mention that the Howard League is not exactly a neutral observer, and that Mr Storke's use of the word 'child' to describe the hulking, feral louts who generally populate YoIs is disingenuous.

Mr Storke: ’Mr Hari reports over 50 per cent of male prisoners lose touch with their families because, due to prison overcrowding, over 5000 prisoners are kept in jails more than six hours from relatives, and many can’t afford the journey. Yet figures show those prisoners who can stay in touch with their families (so they are not released back into life, alone and bereft of contact with their children or relatives) are 20 per cent less likely to reoffend.’

Me: Perhaps. I'd like to see these 'figures', which (if they are like most of Mr Storke's research) might mean something else entirely. But some points arise. The prisons are overcrowded because they aren't frightening enough, and too many people are ready to risk being sent to them. Prisoners are not there because they've behaved responsibly towards their families, or anyone else. Perhaps they should have thought about their family life before they committed the crimes that put them there.

Mr Storke: ’Mr Hitchens continues to dispute the Zurich research.’

Me: No, I don't. This is a perfect example of how Mr Storke doesn't pay attention. I haven't *seen* the accursed Zurich research. So far as I can tell, Mr Storke hasn't seen it either, just partisan reports of it.

Mr Storke: ’I am afraid the facts demolish Mr Hitchens’ position.’

Me: No, they don't. Mr Storke (who loves to use words like 'demolish’ rather than to address the points I raise) has yet to realise that if the Zurich project had completely ended the use of illegal heroin in that city (which I doubt) I would still oppose it. I think the possession of heroin is a crime to punished, not a desire to be subsidised at the expense of the law-abiding. I think that if heroin users were locked up for their crimes, we would have very few of them.

Mr Storke: ’Heroin abuse did not just fall by 4 per cent, Mr Hitchens. It fell by 4 per cent EACH YEAR.’

Me: I know. I know because it was I who produced this figure, which Mr Storke had unaccountably omitted from his version of the 'Independent 'story. He hasn't explained why. And now he has the nerve to wave this fact about as if I am suppressing or ignoring it. What larks.

Mr Storke: ’It has now fallen by 82 per cent. In Zurich alone, the number of addicts dropped from 850 when the scheme began, to just 150, by 2002.’

Me: But what is it that has actually fallen? The fact is that the policy (as again described in a sentence omitted from Mr Storke's version and supplied by me) means that these heroin users are now taking an alternative stupefying drug all the time, paid for at a rate of £33 a day per head, by the taxpayers of Switzerland. To say they are no longer 'heroin addicts' may be technically correct, but it is not really the truth about their lives.

The filthy crime of drug-abuse has not stopped. It has instead become a nationalised industry.

Mr Storke: ’Mr Hitchens says there has only been a significant fall in new users of drugs. But these are the people the policy is aimed at. The purpose of this policy, like the purpose of deterrence, (which Mr Hitchens likes so much) is not just to help existing users but, most importantly, to prevent potential drug users taking up drugs.’

Me: But I do not think it is doing so. They are just using legal drugs given to them by the state. Deterrence would not have this effect.

Mr Storke: ’Like the purpose of deterrence is not just its effect on existing criminals, but on potential criminals, too. In this respect, it has been a roaring success, with an 82 per cent overall reduction in new users, and a massive ‘de-glamourisation’ of the drug among teens and young people (who are the group most vulnerable to experimentation with drugs).’

Me: See above.

Mr Storke: ’Mr Hitchens chose to ignore the crucial quotes from the report's authors, that the drug policy also led to a decline in crime, and drug-related deaths (whereas Britain, which does not have the Swiss policy, has the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe).’

Me: Sorry about that. I was at least busy answering Mr Storke's other questions, though he never answers any of mine. Well, if you ‘avoid crime’ by paying criminals to commit crime, using money squeezed out of honest hardworking folk in taxes, then it seems to me that you have made the state an accomplice to crime, so that the taxman robs us all on behalf of the criminal heroin user. The arrangement of ‘Subsidise disgusting workshy self-indulgent behaviour, or face having your home broken into by wild-eyed junkies’ seems to me to be fundamentally wrong, on a moral level with a protection racket or a blackmail demand. Even Mr Storke, I imagine, would oppose a scheme for paying would-be Bernie Madoffs millions of pounds in taxpayers' money, in return for them restraining themselves from robbing their clients. But the principle is the same. And I am against it, on principle.

Mr Storke: ‘But another fact (sorry, but this is again from a Johann Hari article) shows the Swiss burglary rate has also fallen by 70 per cent since they tried this approach (see the excellent Hari article Crime Problem?: Just Lock ‘Em In The Lavatory).’

Me: Source again, please? And see above, anyway.

Mr Storke: ’Mr Hitchens complains that I ask him to check sources with Mr Hari. I do this, because Mr Hari won’t reply to my emails,’

Me: Has Mr Storke actually asked Mr Hari to help him? And has Mr Hari actually refused, or ignored him? If so, I shall have something to say about that. If it is just a case of Mr Storke being too overcome with admiration for his hero to dare to approach him, then I urge him to try. Mr Hari, in my experience, is not puffed up or grand.

Mr Storke: ’…but, as a respected journalist, he would reply to yours.’

Me: I am touched by his faith. Perhaps so, but perhaps not. Anyway, if Mr Storke is not ready to do his own research, I'm not really ready to nursemaid him. I try to be fair to opponents, but there are limits to my generosity. As for Mr Hari's willingness to reply to me, some people like to debate with their readers. Others don't. I myself found it impossible to handle my e-mails, in the days when I published an address. I tried, but it was just too much.

Mr Storke: ’I also do this, because Mr Hitchens questions the Denmark statistics. Yet Mr Hari has quoted them in three separate articles. So, if you won’t believe them, are you saying he made it up?’

Me: No. I just make it a rule to read research before employing it in an argument.

The rest of Mr Storke's post seems to me to go round and round an old circuit, and I haven't time to rehearse my replies to his elderly and much-used points."

Hitler's Muslim Legions

6 days left to listen to this one!

Hitler's Muslim Legions
BBC Radio 4
26/07/2010

It was after Germany's invasion of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1941 that Hitler's attention was first drawn to the potential for Muslim recruits to swell his ranks. For the many thousands of captured Soviet Muslims, the opportunity to serve in the Wehrmacht offered an escape from the brutality and starvation of the prison camps. Elsewhere, a major recruitment drive amongst Bosnian Muslims led to tens of thousands signing up for the Waffen-SS. Formed into exclusive Muslim units, these men fought in some of the most brutal campaigns of the entire war.

This programme investigates why Hitler and Himmler apparently cast aside their Nazi ideal of an Aryan master race, justifying the admission of Islam into their ranks. It asks what attracted these men to fight for the Third Reich, how they were treated by their German officers and how they conducted themselves in the bedlam of war. Were they hopeless soldiers who committed unspeakable atrocities; or did they fight bravely for the Fuhrer?

We examine the fate of these Muslims at the end of the war. With Hitler dead and the Third Reich defeated there was nothing to protect them, and most were killed as traitors.

McCarthy: there were reds under the bed

5 days left to listen to this one!

McCarthy: there were reds under the bed
BBC Radio 4
25/07/10
David Aaronovitch thinks the unthinkable about the McCarthy period.

The hunt for the so called 'Reds under the beds' during the Cold War is generally regarded as a deeply regrettable blot on U.S history. But the release of classified documents reveals that Joseph McCarthy was right after all about the extent of Soviet infiltration into the highest reaches of the U.S government.

Thanks to the public release of top secret FBI decryptions of Soviet communications, as well as the release under the fifty year rule of FBI records and Soviet archives, we now know that the Communist spying McCarthy fought against was extensive, reaching to the highest level of the State department and the White House.

We reveal that many of McCarthy's anticommunist investigations were in fact on target. His fears about the effect Soviet infiltration might be having on US foreign policy, particularly in the Far East were also well founded.

The decrypts also reveal that people such as Rosenberg, Alger Hiss and even Robert Oppenheimer were indeed working with the Soviets. We explore why much of this information, available for years to the FBI, was not made public. We also examine how its suppression prevented the prosecution of suspects.

Finally, we explore the extent to which Joseph McCarthy, with his unsavoury methods and smear tactics, could have done himself a disservice, resulting in his name being forever synonymous with paranoia and the ruthless suppression of free speech.

Hearing from former FBI, CIA and KGB operatives as well as formerly blacklisted writers, David Aaronovitch, himself from a family of communists tells the untold story of Soviet influence and espionage in the United States.

London parents let children cycle to school alone - shock

Wonder what ImpDec parents make of this? I'm with the RoSPA guy & Boris.

Note: it's a wealthy area that I know well.

--------


Now No10 backs couple under fire for letting their small children cycle to school on their own
Daily Mail
6th July 2010

The parents criticised by a headteacher for allowing their children to cycle to school were yesterday hailed as 'heroes' for giving the youngsters a taste of independence. Oliver and Gillian Schonrock let their five-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter make the one-mile trip on their own to teach them self-confidence and responsibility.But the couple were warned they could be reported to social services after the school said it was concerned about the safety of the children.

Mark O'Donnell, headteacher of £12,000-a-year Alleyn's Junior School, in Dulwich, south-east London, told them he had a legal responsibility to notify the council if he feared the children's wellbeing was being put at risk. ...

London Mayor Boris Johnson described the couple as heroes as he attacked 'barmy' health and safety rules. 'If Mr and Mrs Schonrock have carefully assessed the route, and considered the advantages and disadvantages, then they should overwhelmingly be given the benefit of the doubt and the freedom to make up their own minds,' he said.

'They have taken the sword of common sense to the great bloated encephalopathic sacred cow of elf and safety and for this effrontery they are, of course, being persecuted by the authorities.'

The Schonrocks' children cycle on the pavement from their home to the school. Their route takes them alongside roads that become busy. At the halfway point, they cross where there is a lollipop lady on duty.

Paul Osborne, of transport charity Sustrans, said: 'Ultimately it is a decision for the parents and they have decided their children are skilled enough to travel under their own steam. 'The key thing here is the safety of the children and they have considered this. 'They have arranged for the children to travel together to let them experience something the parents did as children. 'They are travelling on the pavement, which is acceptable for those under 10, and are crossing with the help of a lollipop lady.'

Kevin Clinton, of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said children can develop valuable skills when they are allowed out on their own. He added: 'One of RoSPA's key principles is that life should be as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible.

'We believe that children can develop valuable skills for life when they are given opportunities to get out and about to experience risks and learn how to cope with them.'...

Osborne's 2010 "austerity budget"

Hat tip Andy for this on Osborne's "austerity budget".

My own feeling is that it is ridiculous to ring-fence NHS spending, giving the huge real increases there have been in that department in the last few years. Why single out one lot of waste for special privileges? This is not to say that an identical across the board departmental % cut is the only way to go, but that's where I would have started.

--------

IFS reaction to the Budget
BBC Comment
Stephanie Flanders
Wednesday, 23 June 2010

So far the most striking figure from the IFS post-mortem briefing is this: applying the planned squeeze in public spending evenly across departments would require an average cut of 14% in real terms by 2015-16. The only reason we are talking about 25% cuts for most departments is the decision to protect the NHS. ...

According to the IFS, unprotected departments like the Home Office and environment could have their budgets cut by as much as a third, if the NHS and overseas aid budgets are protected from real cuts, and defence and education are cut by less than others, as indicated by the chancellor.

The think tank calculates that this real cut for every other department would fall to 25%, if the spending review could identify another £13bn to cut from the benefit bill. The total benefit bill is £270bn, but that includes the basic state pension and local authority-financed expenditure. There is about £154bn that could plausibly be cut.

One State Solution - Haaretz

Surprising and thought provoking article in Haaretz arguing that the one state solution's time has come:

"Strenger than Fiction / Israel should consider a one-state solution - it might soon be its only option

In a recent op-ed, Moshe Arens suggested that Israel seriously consider the option of a single state west of the Jordan, in which Palestinians be granted full citizenship.

The one-state solution is advocated by a number of Palestinian intellectuals and is becoming rather popular within the European left. Their reason is generally that the one-state solution would give more justice to the Palestinians - this position is mostly seen as anti-Israeli. Israel’s extreme right favors holding onto the greater land of Israel, generally on theological grounds.

Arens raises his idea from a different standpoint, because he is a secular liberal who indeed believes in full equality for Israel’s Arabs. Even though I have for years argued that the one-state solution is not feasible, Aren's idea needs to be explored - at least as a thought experiment - because it may well be that the window of opportunity for the two-state solution is about to close. So far no Israeli government has succeeded in implementing it; Palestinians are beginning to reject it, and Israel may not be able to uproot more than one hundred thousand settlers.

[...]

Arens’ idea raises a real challenge for Israel: It would, for the first time, have to truly face the task of radically revising its political system and culture and to think carefully about how ethnicities, religions and worldviews can truly live side by side with each other instead of struggling for cultural hegemony.

One consequence of Arens’ idea is that the state would have to sever its ties to all religious institutions, and would have to become completely secular, along the French or U.S. model. Both Jews and Muslims would have to accept that religion cannot play any role in affairs of the state, and religious institutions would become completely voluntary and communitarian. In order to avoid tensions between the various religious groups, and between religious and secular lifestyles, the Swiss confederative model might be considered. The federal government’s involvement in the canton’s internal affairs would be low to allow for maximal cultural flexibility.

Both Jews and Palestinians would have to be willing to renounce the struggle for hegemony. The political culture would have to be structured in a way that avoids such a struggle. Jews would have to be willing to accept Jabotinsky’s suggestion that the President of the state could be sometimes Jewish and sometimes Arab.

Of course the most attractive feature of the one-state solution is a complete restructuring of the Middle East. Arab rejection of a fully liberal Israel-Palestine would no longer have a case. Of course radical Islamists might continue to object to the presence of non-Muslims, but the majority of Arabs would feel much more comfortable with a bi-national state.

I continue to be skeptical about the one-state solution. I am afraid that it will be very difficult to implement, and it is almost unimaginable that a cohesive society would emerge after a century of bloody conflict, particularly if you consider that even states like Belgium are on the verge of falling apart. Economic inequality, which is very high in Israel today, would increase even further and create huge problems.

Arens’ challenge must be taken seriously, for a number of reasons:

First, we are close to the point at which only the one state solution will be possible.

Second, because we need to face that the culture wars have led to the point where Israel is currently on the verge of falling apart as a country. The events surrounding the refusal of Haredi parents in Immanuel to have their daughters study with Mizrahi girls must be seen as what they are. The Haredi community has staged the imprisonments of these parents into a grand event of martyrdom for the Torah. For them Israel’s legal system simply has no legitimacy.

Paradoxically, not only Ashkenazi Haredim think this way - the Haredi state of mind was made fully explicit by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Shas’ spiritual leader, who condemned the High Court of Justice for intervening. He said that the offended Mizrahi parents should not have turned to arka’ot - the term traditionally used by Jews to designate the courts of the gentile countries in which Jews lived. It was seen as a betrayal of Jews by Jews to turn to these courts instead of a rabbinical court. Add to this that some Haredim used terms like the Chelmnitzky pogroms and ‘inquisition’ to describe these events. This rhetoric shows the depth of the chasm between the Haredim and the rest of the country.

De facto, approximately one million Jews - Haredim and part of the settler community - have ceased accepting the authority of the state. Add to this that most of Israel’s 1.5 million Arabs do not identify with the state and you get a society without little cohesion and a state whose legitimacy is question from within and from without.

Given this situation we need to see that Israel will have to rethink its conceptual and legal foundations. Even if the two-state solution would finally be achieved, Israel would do well to apply some of the features of the one-state solution: to become a truly liberal, secular state without ethnic dominance in which subgroups no longer try to impose their way of life on each other. It should seriously consider a confederative structure to defuse its culture wars that are tearing it apart."

Benefit claiments

Interesting post by the blogger, 'Working Class Tory':

"Data for benefits claimants per constituency were released yesterday, here. It's interesting to see where your constituency ranks. It seems to be the case that if the number of benefits claimants is in excess of 3,000, it's very unlikely to be a Tory seat, with perhaps one or two exceptions.

In light of that, perhaps it's not so surprising that Hampstead and Kilburn, Hammersith and Westminster North did not go blue, as their number was closer to 3,500."

In a way it shows that Conservatives more than Labour have a self-preserving incentive to keep both unemployment and welfare dependency down.

Bloody Sunday

Here's Peter Hitchens on the Bloody Sunday inquiry report:

"I have said for years that the British government should apologise for Bloody Sunday. This is for firmly Unionist reasons. Londonderry ( as I still call it) is in my view a British city ( and certainly felt like one to me when I at last managed to go there a few years back). I've nothing against those who wish to call it 'Derry'(or 'Doire'), provided they don't mind me calling it Londonderry. But I think the BBC, being a British institution, should stick with 'Londonderry' - as should ministers in the British government. I'll relax my view of this if ever I hear an Irish politician , or RTE, the Republic's equivalent of the BBC, refer to the city as 'Londonderry' in a gesture to its Protestant inhabitants.

But the main point of this is simple. If such a thing had happened to Her Majesty's peaceful subjects in Portsmouth, Cardiff, Hull, Liverpool or Aberdeen, the government would - and should - have fallen the next day.

And it remains shameful that Edward Heath and his Cabinet did not resign the morning after this dreadful blunder, which was of course perpetrated by soldiers - but by soldiers whose orders and deployment originated in London, and in the not-very-bright policies of the day towards Ireland.

So I am glad of the apology, far too long delayed. I think David Cameron delivered it with proper gravity and without any attempt to qualify it. This was right.

But I am annoyed by the report, which seems to me to have an entirely political purpose and may not be a wholly accurate account of events. How can we know, in such detail, so long afterwards? It is interesting to examine one's memory, when events which took place in one's own lifetime gradually solidify into historical events. I can remember hearing the news of the shootings on the Sunday evening on the radio (as I generally heard news in those days of scarce TVs and infrequent bulletins) that freezing cold weekend in York, and the angry demonstration we students mounted the following day, its indignation for once entirely justified. But if you asked me for details of either day, instead of brief and probably misleading scraps of memory, I would be unable to help you.

In fact a couple of years ago, on an assignment in Moscow, I travelled by metro to the district where I had lived for a year in 1992. When I arrived at the familiar station, I made for the steps by which I was sure I had always exited, and walked as if to go to my block of flats. I was completely wrong. The exit was wrong. My direction was wrong. I walked the wrong way. in increasing bafflement, for half a mile because I was so sure I was right. Reluctantly, I had to accept that my memory, for all its insistent clarity, was misleading, to put it mildly. And that was a distance in time of about 16 years, less than half the period which separates us all from Bloody Sunday.

I'll have more to say about this later, but if we are to go on a voyage of rediscovery through the Northern Ireland Morass, I think we need to be a good deal more even-handed about what we study.

And by the way, the closed-minded people who always write in and say that I am some kind of patsy for the 'Loyalist' scum are completely wrong. I loathe the violent racketeers of the 'Loyalist' side just as much as I loathe the IRA. My case is and remains that the compromise which kept Northern Ireland British could have been reformed peacefully, and under British rule - and that Direct Rule was actually rather a good thing, which could and should have been made permanent. It was those who insisted on the 'Irish Dimension' who turned this from a reasonable campaign for reform into a struggle over sovereignty which is not yet over. And it was those people who also marginalised the decent and the lawful, and brought into power the bloodstained and the lawless.

If we ever conducted a proper inquiry into the whole Northern Ireland shambles, from 1969 to now, the Irish Republican Army and its front men and women would be the principal culprits, making trouble where there was none, pretending to be what they were not, always preferring hate and violence to peaceful compromise."

Nick Clegg - polyglot

Nick Clegg apparently speaks German, French, Spanish and Dutch - his mother's Dutch, and his wife Spanish.

Here's an example of the Spanish, and here the Dutch. If anyone finds an example of him speaking German or French, lemme know.

Michael Gove - 'The Heroes of Balsall Heath'

Anyone else on the blog heard about the 'Heroes of Balsall Heath"? Michael Gove mentioned it as an example of the power of civic action. Here's the quote:

"If you have an institution like the group of people who transformed Balsall Heath in Birmingham, a group of citizen volunteers, who've taken an area that was polluted by prostitution, that was scarred by drug addiction, that faced underdevelopment and deprivation - and those individuals, by their own efforts, working in partnership with Birmingham Council - they've transformed Balsall Heath for the better - now, I'm talking about that part of Birmingham on the Radio 4 Today programme for the first time, because Today, and the press generally, always tend to look at Government initiatives, they always tend to say 'how can we spend more State money ?'. What they rarely do is celebrate the power of civil society to transform our lives. Now I believe that Government, if we have a change of government, can do that, and the heroes of Balsall Heath can have their achievement celebrated on the Today programme, and the heroines of Birkenshaw and Gomersall , the mums and dads who want a transformed education system, they too can have their moment instead of being marginalised".

Here's a bit more info on the campaign he mentions:

"At the height of the picket, Amin had 500 people on the streets every night, armed with notebooks to take down the numberplates of kerbcrawlers and posters which warned, 'Your wife will get to hear of this.'

'The Muslim community had the will-power, the determination and the cohesion to act,' says Ward. The Christian community was split over the need to be compassionate towards the prostitutes' problems, an approach which baffles and infuriates the Muslims. As a result, Ward was the only clergyman to give the campaign his backing.

Meanwhile, the police were watching the pickets with concern. 'We were afraid of a backlash from the pimps,' says community liaison officer Sergeant Steven Bruton. 'We thought any day one might wind down his car window and blast away at the pickets with a gun. We were afraid the prostitutes might get assaulted. And we were afraid there might be riots. When it first started, the picket attracted a lot of people from all over. We thought the hotheads might have a go.'

In spite of a few allegations of assault, threats from the pimps and accusations from a group of liberal feminists, these fears did not materialize. 'The people involved were decent, God-fearing people,' explains Bruton."

This campaign also inspired one in Bradford a year later:

" On the edge of Bradford's red-light district, in a dimly lit Indian restaurant, sit two scared prostitutes. They shake, smoke and drink coffee. Sally and Fran have just been chased from their regular spot on Lumb Lane, north of the city centre, by a car of masked youths which hurtled towards them, almost knocking them from the pavement. The driver warned them to "stay away"...

But while the action has ostensibly been modelled on a similar campaign in Birmingham's Balsall Heath, where prostitution was beaten by peaceful picketing, the scenes here are more menacing. Punters have been stoned and prostitutes have been picked up and physically carried from the area. Some "vigilantes" have been threatened by pimps waving sawn-off shotguns.

The self-appointed guardians retaliated by hospitalising a prostitute's boyfriend who had spoken out on local TV. ("Let's just say he was a bit lippy, so a few of us did him over," grins an Asian youth.) Last week there was a firebomb attack on a cafe used by local prostitutes. Police are struggling to control all sides, but pleasing none...
From 8pm each evening, up to 100 local vigilantes from a pool of 500 are out in force and stay into the early hours. Most noticeable are the youths. They patrol in boisterous packs, clad in baggy jeans, big trainers and bomber jackets, often wearing bandanas as masks.

Typical of these is Abdul - not his real name - a bright-eyed, highly charged A-level student. "We've had guns, baseball bats and knives put to our heads by pimps," he says. "Our mums can't sleep at night - mums have that sort of mentality, they're weaker-hearted - but someone has to do it. The vice squad won't ever stop prostitution because they'd do themselves out of a job. In six weeks we've turned Lumb Lane from the M1 into a minor road. Now we're guarding our territory. We'll stay out until everyone knows this is no red-light district any more."...

So far, only one vigilante has been arrested for breach of the peace. "We're desperately trying not to make martyrs out of this. The last thing we need is a folk hero."

So finally, to my question, I wondered if other impdecers agree with this blogger "that While the urge of the Muslims to clean up their streets (although, as one prostitute remarked, 'we were here first') was understandable, there can be no doubt that a similar campaign by white Christians would have encountered both the full weight of the law and the full weight of liberal opinion, amplified in the liberal media feedback loop to one long howl of outrage."

Israel and the Gaza aid flotilla

Good summary of the legal situation surrounding the aid flotilla attack.

-------

Is Israel's blockade legal?
BBC Today Program
01/06/2010

Maritime lawyer Douglas Guilfoyle, Lecturer in Law at UCL, was asked on the Today Programme about the legality or otherwise of Israel's actions over the blockade of ships carrying aid into Gaza, involving landing commandos on ships in international waters. I summarise his response here, but it's only 3'31", so you might as well go listen yourself:

Legality of blockade - Guilfoyle says:

• A naval blockade does have a legal status, it is a recognised instrument of warfare
• However it should not be implemented or continued 'if the damage to the civilian population is going to be excessive in relation to the military advantage'.
  

Evan Davies, the interviewer, then asked 'if the blockade itself were legal, is what Israel did yesterday legal?'

Guilfoyle's answer: Yes, there's a document called the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, 12 June 1994 about enforcing blockade on high seas, which permits what Israel did, as long as the blockade is legal. The controversy is about whether insufficient aid is getting through, thus whether the blockade is legal in the first place

Davis then asked about the proportionality of the Israeli response.

Guilfoyle's answer: A legal blockade give you right to intercept vessel, but actions must be necessary & proportionate. There are two separate issues:

1. Is the act of putting soliders on a boat to try to turn it round proportionate?
Guilfoyle gave the answer 'normally it would be'.

2. Was the degree of force used proportionate?
Guilfoyle says the answer to this hinges on whether there was a deliberate use of force to stop vessel, or whether it was a case of actual or mistaken self-defence. This latter is Israel's (and to some extent the protestors') version of events. Once you invoke self-defence, it's a different legal defence. Even with this defence the use of force could be excessive and thus unlawful, but this is no longer a question about the law of blockade, but one about the law of self-defence.

Boys convicted of attempted rape: branded criminals for 'playing doctors and nurses'

Wonder what people think of this one, today's lead story in the Telegraph:

--------

Boys convicted of attempted rape: branded criminals for 'playing doctors and nurses'
Telegraph
24 May 2010

Two boys have been convicted of the attempted rape of an eight-year-old girl even though she admitted in court that she lied about her ordeal. The defendants, who were both 10 at the time, are the youngest people ever to be convicted of the sex offence.

Their case immediately provoked a debate over whether juveniles should appear in a Crown Court, either as defendants or witnesses, especially in a sex offence case where they may be too immature to understand the allegations involved.

The jury was not told that the trial judge had admitted to having misgivings about allowing the case to go ahead. Mr Justice Saunders conceded that the Old Bailey case would have been dropped if the victim had been an adult, because the evidence the girl gave via videolink was so contradictory. The judge also admitted that the system involving child witnesses was far from “ideal”, noting that the victim had been subjected to a string of leading questions which she may not have understood. He said he would write to the Lord Chief Justice suggesting “lessons” should be learned from the way the case was handled.

The girl had told her mother and police that the boys had “done sex” with her in a field near her home in Hayes, west London, last October. Under cross-examination, she denied that either boy had raped her, agreeing that they had just been playing a game.

One of the boys’ barristers suggested that they had been playing ''you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’’, or ''that age-old game, doctors and nurses’’.

After two days of deliberations, the jury cleared the boys, now 10 and 11, of rape but found each guilty of two counts of attempted rape by a majority verdict. The defendants, who both denied the charges, could face lengthy custodial sentences and will be put on the sex offenders’ register, though the judge conceded: “I am not quite sure how it applies to children of this age.”

Senior lawyers and children’s charities described the trial as “horrific and absurd”. Felicity Gerry, a barrister and author of the Sexual Offences Handbook, questioned the decision to take the boys to court, saying sex offences were different from crimes of violence, such as the murder of James Bulger by two schoolboys.

“A lot of children may know that to kill a three-year-old with an iron bar or to drop concrete on a child is wrong, but proper sexual awareness only comes with greater maturity,” she said. “One might think [these defendants] would benefit from good social intervention rather than prosecution.”

...

The jury was not told that, after the girl had given evidence, the judge expressed misgivings about the process, saying: “I don’t think anyone who has sat through this trial would think for a moment that the system that we employ is ideal. However, the reality remains that we have a witness who said one thing and has now said completely the opposite ... if you had an adult witness who said what this girl said the Crown would not be proceeding.”

The judge rejected an attempt by the defence to have the case stopped, ruling that it was up to the jury to decide whether the girl had told the truth. At the end of the trial he said: “I will at some stage be sending my views about the procedure to those who are most concerned with it.’’

The Ministry of Justice said it would examine the case and any communication from the judge to see if there were issues which needed to be resolved. Both defendants, who cannot be named, were released on bail for psychological reports to be compiled before they are sentenced.

Smelly Little Orthodoxies - Peter Hitchens on winning the Orwell Award for Journalism

Hitchens reflects on winning the George Orwell Award for Journalism:

"In the meantime, I'd like to indulge myself and post a few mildly controversial thoughts on the Orwell Prize for Journalism, which I am proud to say I won last week. This was the one prize I had always wanted, as someone who has steeped himself in Orwell since the age of 15 and regards him as the pattern of honest writing. Because Orwell was of the Left (though a very troubled and troublesome member of that movement) he is regarded by many on the modern left as their perpetual property. I disagree. I think Orwell belongs to the truth, not to the left. And I think the judges recognised this crucial fact when they chose to quote from Orwell's essay on Charles Dickens in their citation (this was the moment when I, having pretty much assumed that it would be awarded to someone else, began to hope that I might win after all).

By the way, I really do have to thank the judges, Peter Kellner and Roger Graef, for their magnanimity in giving me the award when they must have known that so many of their friends would strongly disapprove. I can hear the aggrieved cries of ‘How could you give it to him?’, which they will now have to endure. By showing that magnanimity, they showed that they - and the Prize in general - understand the spirit of Orwell better than do many of those who resent my getting it.

Orwell wrote of Dickens as ‘a man who is always fighting against something but who fights in the open and is not frightened...a man who is generously angry...a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.’

No, it's not that I presume to compare myself with Dickens (though I would cite 'Great Expectations', 'David Copperfield' and 'A Tale of Two Cities' as among the greatest books ever written). But I do think it's the case that - if you do your job properly - you will be loathed by the smelly little orthodoxies of your own age.

My thanks to those who sent kind wishes on my winning it. My thanks also to those who didn't. One of the delights of winning this award, for which I have entered unsuccessfully several times, is that quite a lot of the right, or left sort of people will be annoyed that I have got it. I even like to think that Orwell himself might have enjoyed the sharp intake of breath among London's left-wing mediocracy when they were reminded last Wednesday night that I was on the short-list. (They behaved impeccably when the actual award was announced, I should add). He might also have enjoyed the tiny, tiny mention of my name in the Guardian's report on the award, which dwelt mainly on the Blog Prize given to the pseudonymous social worker 'Winston Smith'.

Soon afterwards there was the comment by Roy Greenslade on his blog: ‘I would guess that some, more than some, leftish-inclined journalists were a little put out by Peter Hitchens having been awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism. The iconoclastic Mail on Sunday columnist picked up the award for his foreign reporting. Evidently, a friend warned Hitchens afterwards to be careful because people would now think he was respectable. “Never”, he replied, “they'll hate me even more for this.” ’

The reported conversation did take place exactly as described, by the way, and I stand by it.

And I will always treasure another Guardian blog comment by legal expert Afua Hirsch, the closest anyone has come to saying openly that they disagree with the judges. Under the headline ‘Some wins more surprising than others’, Ms Hirsch wrote: ‘This year's Orwell prize steered close, as ever, to the most current political issues of the moment. Despite having nominated an array of journalists feted for their coverage of issues including protest rights or social breakdown, the award for journalism went to the Mail on Sunday's Peter Hitchens. The audience – comprised of liberal, political writers and bloggers – struggled to express an informed view on that choice of award because so few of them read the Mail on Sunday.’

And no doubt they're all proud of that, that so few of them read the MoS. And yet I read 'The Guardian' and 'The Observer' and I would be ashamed to be a member of my trade and admit that I didn't.

I think that 'despite' and the tortured grammar that follows it, speak volumes. Oddly enough, I do write about protest rights (on this blog particularly but elsewhere too, see the posting 'It's not debatable') and incessantly about social breakdown, but not perhaps in a way that Ms Hirsch would want me to.

What is it that I like about Orwell? Above all it is the good, clear English and the desire to be truthful even at some cost. Orwell ran into a great deal of trouble with the left (especially over 'Homage to Catalonia') because he refused to be an orthodox servant of his own cause. He once wrote (in a preface to 'Animal Farm' which was then itself not published):

‘Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals ... If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’

The paradox in this is that 'Animal Farm' itself was very nearly not published, not least thanks to the disgraceful behaviour of T.S.Eliot, a man who really should have known better.

I have explained (well, to some people, anyway) how this orthodoxy works in some ways in an earlier posting on bias in the publishing industry. But I know that Orwell never had a column in a national Sunday newspaper. So again, I am not in any way claiming a martyr's crown here, merely pointing out that I meet hostility and obstruction where a more orthodox writer would not. It is also the case that, in these times, conservative newspapers and magazines are more likely to foster and project unorthodox voices than are the journals of the left, which are bland and smug, while imagining themselves to be exciting and radical.

It's pointless to speculate on what Orwell would have made of the post Cold War world, of the 1960s cultural revolution, or of the controversies of today. We cannot know, and nobody should claim him as their own. But I have absolutely no doubt that, had he lived, he would have continued to annoy people by telling truths they did not wish to hear. There's a quotation I can't properly remember in which he said that a genuinely controversial opinion would always be a dangerous thing, because it would arouse serious fury (any Orwellians out there who can identify this? It was much better put).

And I wouldn't dare claim that I am somehow the inheritor of his mantle. That would be absurd. The point is, the Guardian isn't the inheritor of his mantle either.

But I do think that his extraordinary attempt to combine fierce patriotism with radical politics, in 'The Lion and the Unicorn' is in many ways as upsetting to the radical orthodoxy, who are never patriotic, as is his hostility to Stalinist totalitarianism (which they all excoriate now it's safe to do so, but would have apologised for when it was still powerful and fashionable, as they prove with their attitude towards Cuba).

I would also point to a strong cultural conservatism and dislike for crass modernity in much of his writings, especially in my favourite among his light novels, 'Coming up for Air'. And I always like to tease his modern partisans by pointing out that he specified in his Will that he should be buried (as I hope to be) according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England as set out in the 1662 Prayer Book, about the most uncompromising, raw, earthy and traditional religious service anywhere in any language. He'd also expressed a wish, granted thanks to his friend David Astor, to be laid in an English country churchyard.

And last Saturday evening, partly because there were no trains between Didcot and Oxford, I took the opportunity to bicycle through Sutton Courtenay, the rather lovely village where he is buried, and to pay my respects at his properly modest grave, six feet of English earth (no metres for him), under a Yew tree, near the Thames."