Daniel Pipes debates Ken Livingstone in London

Both Andy and I attended the excellent debate in London on Saturday featuring Daniel Pipes and Ken Livingstone as the key speakers. Here is Pipes' own record of the event, with some links and a couple of pictures. I keenly await a video of the discussion to be posted somewhere (keep your eyes pealed).

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My Debate with London Mayor Ken Livingstone
Daniel Pipes' Weblog
January 22, 2007

It all began with a faxed letter from Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, arriving out of the blue on April 4, 2006:

I will be hosting a conference to discuss the thesis of the "clash of civilizations" first popularized by Professor Samuel Huntington's book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. I would like to invite you to debate this thesis with me at the opening session of the conference, which will be held 10am-1pm on Saturday, 10 June 2006.

The conference was twice delayed, before finally taking place two days ago, on January 20, 2007. It was quite an event, held in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, across the street from Westminster Abbey. The mayor told me in a private chat before the event that when he conceived of the event two years ago, he wondered if anyone would show up. He need not have worried; the Greater London Authority's website indicated there had been "an unprecedented demand" for tickets and several days in advance of the event shut the ticketing. One organizer on the mayor's staff told me that the audience numbered about five thousand and that over 150 media had registered for the conference.

The mayor and I each invited a seconder to help us make our arguments: he chose Salma Yaqoob, a councillor in Birmingham, and I chose Douglas Murray, the London writer. Due to the large crowd, the event started a half hour late but even truncated, it still went for slightly over two hours.

Despite the many journalists and video cameras, and despite the GLA having recorded and simultaneously transcribed the event, and despite two and a half days having passed since it took place, there has been – quite to my surprise – not a single media account of the debate, nor a video made available, nor a transcript. (This reminds me in a way of my University of California-Berkeley talk three years ago, which created quite a stir but had zero media coverage.)

There have, however, been a number of blog accounts – interestingly, every one of them sympathetic to Murray and myself; it would seem that the mayor's supporters took a pass on reporting the event. In alphabetical order by author, here are are the fullest and most interesting accounts that I have located (the list will be updated as needed):

• Sharon Chadha, "Clash of Civilizations?" SharonChadha.com, 21 January 2007.
• Gandalf, "Clash of Civilizations." UpPompeii.com, 21 January 2007.
• Graham, "A Very Civilised Clash." Harry's Place, 22 January 2007.
• Jonathan Hoffman, "Daniel Pipes survives Livingstone's Lions' Den." Adloyada.com, 21 January 2007.
• David Pryce-Jones, "Debating Clash." National Review Online, 20 January 2007.
• Beila Rabinowitz and William A. Mayer, "Dr. Daniel Pipes and Douglas Murray Triumph over ‘Red' Ken Livingstone in London Debate." PipeLineNews.org, 22 January 2007.

Hamas Covenant and the Hizbollah Manifesto

Important to know what these groups say their aims are, I feel.

The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (ie Hamas)
18 August 1988

This one is too long to quote extensively, but do a text search for "jew" - it's worth it. Here's my fave para:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."

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An Open Letter
The Hizballah Program

Our Identity

We are often asked: Who are we, the Hizballah, and what is our identity? We are the sons of the umma (Muslim community) - the party of God (Hizb Allah) the vanguard of which was made victorious by God in Iran. There the vanguard succeeded to lay down the bases of a Muslim state which plays a central role in the world. We obey the orders of one leader, wise and just, that of our tutor and faqih (jurist) who fulfills all the necessary conditions: Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini. God save him!

By virtue of the above, we do not constitute an organized and closed party in Lebanon. nor are we a tight political cadre. We are an umma linked to the Muslims of the whole world by the solid doctrinal and religious connection of Islam, whose message God wanted to be fulfilled by the Seal of the Prophets, i.e., Muhammad. This is why whatever touches or strikes the Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines and elsewhere reverberates throughout the whole Muslim umma of which we are an integral part. Our behavior is dictated to us by legal principles laid down by the light of an overall political conception defined by the leading jurist (wilayat al-faqih).

As for our culture, it is based on the Holy Koran, the Sunna and the legal rulings of the faqih who is our source of imitation (marja' al-taqlid). Our culture is crystal clear. It is not complicated and is accessible to all.

No one can imagine the importance of our military potential as our military apparatus is not separate from our overall social fabric. Each of us is a fighting soldier. And when it becomes necessary to carry out the Holy War, each of us takes up his assignment in the fight in accordance with the injunctions of the Law, and that in the framework of the mission carried out under the tutelage of the Commanding Jurist.

Our Fight

The US has tried, through its local agents, to persuade the people that those who crushed their arrogance in Lebanon and frustrated their conspiracy against the oppressed (mustad'afin) were nothing but a bunch of fanatic terrorists whose sole aim is to dynamite bars and destroy slot machines. Such suggestions cannot and will not mislead our umma, for the whole world knows that whoever wishes to oppose the US, that arrogant superpower, cannot indulge in marginal acts which may make it deviate from its major objective. We combat abomination and we shall tear out its very roots, its primary roots, which are the US. All attempts made to drive us into marginal actions will fail, especially as our determination to fight the US is solid.

We declare openly and loudly that we are an umma which fears God only and is by no means ready to tolerate injustice, aggression and humiliation. America, its Atlantic Pact allies, and the Zionist entity in the holy land of Palestine, attacked us and continue to do so without respite. Their aim is to make us eat dust continually. This is why we are, more and more, in a state of permanent alert in order to repel aggression and defend our religion, our existence, our dignity. They invaded our country, destroyed our villages, slit the throats of our children, violated our sanctuaries and appointed masters over our people who committed the worst massacres against our umma. They do not cease to give support to these allies of Israel, and do not enable us to decide our future according to our own wishes.

In a single night the Israelis and the Phalangists executed thousands of our sons, women and children in Sabra and Shatilla. No international organization protested or denounced this ferocious massacre in an effective manner, a massacre perpetrated with the tacit accord of America's European allies, which had retreated a few days, maybe even a few hours earlier, from the Palestinian camps. The Lebanese defeatists accepted putting the camps under the protection of that crafty fox, the US envoy Philip Habib.

We have no alternative but to confront aggression by sacrifice. The coordination between the Phalangists and Israel continues and develops. A hundred thousand victims - this is the approximate balance sheet of crimes committed by them and by the US against us. Almost half a million Muslims were forced to leave their homes. Their quarters were virtually totally destroyed in Nab'a, my own Beirut suburb, as well as in Burj Hammud, Dekonaneh, Tel Zaatar, Sinbay, Ghawarina and Jubeil - all in areas controlled today by the 'Lebanese Forces',. The Zionist occupation then launched its usurpatory invasion of Lebanon in full and open collusion with the Phalanges. The latter condemned all attempts to resist the invading forces. They participated in the implementation of certain Israeli plans in order to accomplish its Lebanese dream and acceded to all Israeli requests in order to gain power.

And this is, in fact, what happened. Bashir Jumayyil, that butcher, seized power with the help also of OPEC countries and the Jumayyil family. Bashir tried to improve his ugly image by joining the six-member Committee of Public Safety presided over by former President Elias Sarkis, which was nothing but an American-Israeli bridge borrowed by the Phalangists in order to control the oppressed. Our people could not tolerate humiliation any more. It destroyed the oppressors, the invaders and their lackeys. But the US persisted in its folly and installed Amin Jumayyil to replace his brother. Some of his first so called achievements were to destroy the homes of refugees and other displaced persons, attack mosques, and order the army to bombard the southern suburbs of Beirut, where the oppressed people resided. He invited European troops to help him against us and signed the May 17th, [1984] accord with Israel making Lebanon an American protectorate.

Our people could not bear any more treachery. It decided to oppose infidelity - be it French, American or Israeli - by striking at their headquarters and launching a veritable war of resistance against the Occupation forces. Finally, the enemy had to decide to retreat by stages.

Our Objectives

Let us put it truthfully: the sons of Hizhallah know who are their major enemies in the Middle East - the Phalanges, Israel, France and the US. The sons of our umma are now in a state of growing confrontation with them, and will remain so until the realization of the following three objectives:

(a) to expel the Americans. the French and their allies definitely from Lebanon, putting an end to any colonialist entity on our land;
(b) to submit the Phalanges to a just power and bring them all to justice for the crimes they have perpetrated against Muslims and Christians;
(c) to permit all the sons of our people to determine their future and to choose in all the liberty the form of government they desire. We call upon all of them to pick the option of Islamic government which, alone, is capable of guaranteeing justice and liberty for all. Only an Islamic regime can stop any further tentative attempts of imperialistic infiltration into our country.

These are Lebanon's objectives; those are its enemies. As for our friends, they are all the world's oppressed peoples. Our friends are also those who combat our enemies and who defend us from their evil. Towards these friends, individuals as well as organizations, we turn and say:

Friends, wherever you are in Lebanon... we are in agreement with you on the great and necessary objectives: destroying American hegemony in our land; putting an end to the burdensome Israeli Occupation; beating back all the Phalangists' attempts to monopolize power and administration.

Even though we have, friends, quite different viewpoints as to the means of the struggle, on the levels upon which it must be carried out, we should surmount these tiny divergencies and consolidate cooperation between us in view of the grand design.

We are an umma which adheres to the message of Islam. We want all the oppressed to be able to study the divine message in order to bring justice, peace and tranquillity to the world. This is why we don't want to impose Islam upon anybody, as much as we that others impose upon us their convictions and their political systems. We don't want Islam to reign in Lebanon by force as is the case with the Maronites today. This is the minimum that we can accept in order to be able to accede by legal means to realize our ambitions, to save Lebanon from its dependence upon East and West, to put an end to foreign occupation and to adopt a regime freely wanted by the people of Lebanon.

This is our perception of the present state of affairs. This is the Lebanon we envision. In the light of our conceptions, our opposition to the present system is the function of two factors; (1) the present regime is the product of an arrogance so unjust that no reform or modification can remedy it. It should be changed radically, and (2) World Imperialism which is hostile to Islam.

We consider that all opposition in Lebanon voiced in the name of reform can only profit, ultimately, the present system. All such opposition which operates within the framework of the conservation and safeguarding of the present constitution without demanding changes at the level of the very foundation of the regime is, hence, an opposition of pure formality which cannot satisfy the interests of the oppressed masses. Likewise, any opposition which confronts the present regime but within the limits fixed by it, is an illusory opposition which renders a great service to the Jumayyil system. Moreover, we cannot be concerned by any proposition of political reform which accepts the rotten system actually in effect. We could not care less about the creation of this or that governmental coalition or about the participation of this or that political personality in some ministerial post, which is but a part of this unjust regime.

The politics followed by the chiefs of political Maronism through the 'Lebanese Front' and the 'Lebanese Forces' cannot guarantee peace and tranquillity for the Christians of Lebanon, whereas it is predicated upon 'asabiyya (narrow-minded particularism), on confessional privileges and on the alliance with colonialism. The Lebanese crisis has proven that confessional privileges are one of the principal causes of the great explosion which ravaged the country. It also proved that outside help was of no use to the Christians of Lebanon, just when they need it most. The bell tolled for the fanatic Christians to rid themselves of denominational allegiance and of illusion deriving from the monopolization of privileges to the detriment of other communities. The Christians should answer the appeal from heaven and have recourse to reason instead of arms, to persuasion instead of confessionalism.

To the Christians

If you, Christians, cannot tolerate that Muslims share with you certain domains of government, Allah has also made it intolerable for Muslims to participate in an unjust regime, unjust for you and for us, in a regime which is not predicated upon the prescriptions (ahkam) of religion and upon the basis of the Law (the Shari’a) as laid down by Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets. If you search for justice, who is more just than Allah? It is He who sent down from the sky the message of Islam through his successive prophets in order that they judge the people and give everyone his rights. If you were deceived and misled into believing that we anticipate vengeance against you - your fears are unjustified. For those of you who are peaceful, continue to live in our midst without anybody even thinking to trouble you.

We don't wish you evil. We call upon you to embrace Islam so that you can be happy in this world and the next. If you refuse to adhere to Islam, maintain your ties with the Muslims and don't take part in any activity against them. Free yourselves from the consequences of hateful confessionalism. Banish from your hearts all fanaticism and parochialism. Open your hearts to our Call (da'wa) which we address to you. Open yourselves up to Islam where you'll find salvation and happiness upon earth and in the hereafter. We extend this invitation also to all the oppressed among the non-Muslims. As for those who belong to Islam only formally, we exhort them to adhere to Islam in religious practice and to renounce all fanaticisms which are rejected by our religion.

World Scene

We reject both the USSR and the US, both Capitalism and Communism, for both are incapable of laying the foundations for a just society.

With special vehemence we reject UNIFIL as they were sent by world arrogance to occupy areas evacuated by Israel and serve for the latter as a buffer zone. They should be treated much like the Zionists. All should know that the goals of the Phalangists regime do not carry any weight with the Combatants of the Holy War, i.e., the Islamic resistance. This is the quagmire which awaits all foreign intervention.

There, then, are our conceptions and our objectives which serve as our basis and inspire our march. Those who accept them should know that all rights belong to Allah and He bestows them. Those who reject them, we'll be patient with them, till Allah decides between us and the people of injustice.

The Necessity for the Destruction of Israel

We see in Israel the vanguard of the United States in our Islamic world. It is the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve. This enemy is the greatest danger to our future generations and to the destiny of our lands, particularly as it glorifies the ideas of settlement and expansion, initiated in Palestine, and yearning outward to the extension of the Great Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile.

Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.

We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Therefore we oppose and reject the Camp David Agreements, the proposals of King Fahd, the Fez and Reagan plan, Brezhnev's and the French-Egyptian proposals, and all other programs that include the recognition (even the implied recognition) of the Zionist entity.

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published in The Jerusalem Quarterly, number Forty-Eight, Fall 1988

This is a slightly abridged translation of "Nass al-Risala al-Maftuha allati wajahaha Hizballah ila-l-Mustad'afin fi Lubnan wa-l-Alam", published February 16, 1985 in al-Safir (Beirut), and also in a separate brochure. It carries the unmistakable imprint of Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the Hizballah mentor, and is inspired by his book Ma'maal-Quwma fi-l-Islam (Beirut 1979). See also his article in al-Muntalak (Beirut), October 1986.

Jimmy Carters' book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid"

Jimmy Carter has written a book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid", that seems to be the worst sort of Socialist Worker "we are all Hizbollah now" drivel, riven with factual errors, reinforcing anti-semitic stereotypes of Jewish control of the media, and written by a man whose own Carter Center receives massive donations from the Arab world. Too much to quote, go read, starting with the excellent-as-ever Dershowitz.

Has Carter crossed the line?
Dec. 21, 2006 9:19
Alan Dershowitz

Ex-President for Sale
by Alan M. Dershowitz
January 08, 2007

About the Carter Center's Arab funding
Jimmy Carter and the Arab Lobby
By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com
December 18, 2006

Clinton's Middle East envoy reveals how Carter misprepresents the Camp David talks
Don't Play With Maps
Dennis Ross
9/1/07

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Actually I'll just permit myself one interesting quote from the first Dershowitz article that has a more general application than the narrow discussion of Carter's book. I've read the book it's from and recommend it:

In my book, The Case for Peace, I argued that criticism of Israel - even unfair and strident criticism - should not be equated with anti-Semitism. I went on to list a series of criteria for determining whether the line had been crossed into the abyss of anti-Semitism. Among these criticisms are:

* Employing stereotypes against Israel that have traditionally been directed against "the Jews."

* Characterizing Israel as "the worst," when it is clear that this is not an accurate comparative assessment.

* Singling out only Israel for sanctions for policies that are widespread among other nations, or demanding that Jews be better or more moral than others because of their history as victims.

* Emphasizing and stereotyping certain characteristics among supporters of Israel that have traditionally been used in anti-Semitic attacks, for example, "pushy" American Jews, Jews "who control the media" and Jews "who control financial markets."

* Accusing Jews and only Jews of having dual loyalty.

* Blaming Israel for the problems of the world and exaggerating the influence of the Jewish state on world affairs.

* Falsely claiming that all legitimate criticism of Israeli policies is immediately and widely condemned by Jewish leaders as anti-Semitic, despite any evidence to support this accusation.

* Seeking to delegitimate Israel precisely as it moves toward peace.

* Circulating wild charges against Israel and Jews.

Sex Education

A shocking story reaches us from the USA about a young, female, (and pretty hot) teacher who had sex with her underage student. Disgusting obviously, luckily nothing like that ever happened to me at school!

Read the full account (with photos and video) here.

Iranians back Taliban in Afghanistan

So the Iranians are backing the Taliban in Afghanistan and nobody wants to acknowledge it. The West really *is* committing suicide.

War on two fronts in Afghanistan
By Con Coughlin
22/12/2006

Just when it seemed matters could not get any worse in Afghanistan, along comes an altogether more alarming threat to Nato's attempts to restore order to that strife-torn region — in the form of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Ever since the US-led coalition overthrew the Taliban and their al-Qa'eda allies in late 2001, it has been assumed that the biggest threat to the successful restoration of Afghanistan as a functioning state was posed by the surviving remnants of the former regime and their sponsors in Pakistan.

Indeed, the main thrust of last summer's Nato offensive was concentrated along the Pakistani border, where a hard core of about 1,000 Taliban fighters have been attempting to re-establish a power base that could be used for an attempt to seize Kabul.

The British Army — which is in the vanguard of Nato's efforts to control the south — fought the fiercest engagements it has encountered since the Second World War in its campaign to subjugate the Taliban, and has been, in the main, successful in defeating a determined enemy.

The entire Nato effort in Afghanistan, moreover, has been predicated on the assumption that the key to success lies in suppressing the Taliban resurgence in the south, and persuading the Pakistanis to take effective action to dismantle the Taliban's training infrastructure in its lawless North-West Frontier provinces.

At no point have Nato's planners paid any serious attention to the other country whose border stretches for hundreds of miles along Afghanistan's western border, even though Iran's visceral hostility to the presence of a massive Western force so close to home is hardly a secret. This is despite the fact that the Iranians have actively supported, equipped and trained the insurgent groups that have caused coalition forces so much discomfort in southern Iraq.

But whenever I have raised the issue of Iranian involvement in Afghanistan on my visits to Nato headquarters over the past year, I have invariably been greeted with either blank stares or an eagerness on the part of senior commanders to move quickly to another, more amenable topic of conversation.

That state of affairs is unlikely to persist following the appearance in court earlier this week of a top British military aide on spying charges. Cpl Daniel James, who acted as the official translator for Lt-Gen David Richards, the British commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, has been charged with "prejudicing the safety of the state" by passing information "calculated to be directly or indirectly useful to the enemy" to a foreign power, whose identity sources have suggested is Iran.

Irrespective of the outcome of the James case, the mere suggestion that Iran should be seeking to recruit someone with access to the innermost counsels of Nato's high command is indicative both of Teheran's intense interest in Nato's activities in Afghanistan, and its determination to ensure that the West is not allowed to succeed in transforming the country from Islamic dictatorship into stable democracy.

It also makes a mockery of the recent suggestion, advanced in both Washington and London, that the only way to resolve the region's difficulties is by engaging in a constructive dialogue with Teheran. Whether it be in Iraq or Afghanistan, the over-riding priority of the regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is to ensure the coalition's efforts at nation-building end in failure.

As in Iraq, the history of Iran's involvement in Afghanistan has been complex, but rarely benign. During the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, the Iranians supported one of the fiercest Mujahideen groups. More recently, the Iranians helped hundreds of al-Qa'eda fighters to escape from Afghanistan following the coalition's military campaign to remove the Taliban from power in 2001. Recent intelligence reports have indicated that many senior al-Qa'eda leaders — including two of Osama bin Laden's sons — are still living in Teheran under the protection of the Revolutionary Guards, where they are being groomed for a possible takeover of the al-Qa'eda leadership.

Nor is Iran's involvement in the region confined to Afghanistan. The Iranians also have close links with Pakistan, where they have been identified as one of the countries that bought blueprints for making nuclear weapons from A. Q. Khan, the so-called "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb.

Given the extent of Iran's interests in the region, it might appear strange that Nato commanders have appeared reluctant even to discuss the possibility that the Iranians might have their own agenda in upsetting coalition attempts to establish an effective government, particularly when commanders in Iraq have been frank in blaming the Iranians for helping to orchestrate the roadside bombs that have killed and maimed so many soldiers.

The reason for this apparent reticence on the part of Nato commanders is that, given the limited resources at their disposal, they have a big enough challenge dealing with the threat posed by the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, without running the risk of extending their field of operations elsewhere. But all that might soon change if, as some intelligence reports suggest, concrete evidence emerges that Iran is actively supporting and providing equipment to Taliban-related groups fighting Nato forces in Afghanistan.

"The Iranians are playing a very clever game in Afghanistan," a Western intelligence official based in Kabul recently told me. "On the surface, they give the impression they have no interest in what is going on, but behind the scenes they are working hard to influence groups such as the Taliban who are causing Nato the most problems."

Which would explain why the heavily fortified Iranian embassy in central Kabul, which is located less than a mile from the British mission, is second in size only to that of the sprawling American embassy.

If, as now seems likely, the Iranians are to become serious players in the new Great Game taking place in Afghanistan, then it is essential that Nato be given sufficient numbers of combat troops to ensure that the hazardous mission it has been asked to undertake ultimately ends in victory.

Georgia Chain Gang

This is a really disturbing story. In Georgia, a seventeen year old boy has been sentenced to ten years imprisonment for having consensual oral sex with a 15 year old girl.

The presiding judge argued that he had to lock the boy up for ten without parole:

"...while I am very sympathetic to Wilson's argument regarding the injustice of sentencing this promising young man with good grades and no criminal history to ten years in prison without parole and a lifetime registration as a sexual offender because he engaged in consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old victim only two years his junior, this Court is bound by the Legislature's determination that young persons in Wilson's situation are not entitled to the misdemeanor treatment now accorded to identical behavior..."

As Andrew Sullivan says 'A decade for a consensual "act of oral sodomy"? I suppose the lad's lucky he isn't being castrated.'

British armed forces poorly treated by their own government

This is another one where I just can't understand what our government is up to. I suspect Keegan is right that there is "an anti-military clique in the Treasury".

God help our poor bloody soldiers
The Sunday Times
December 10, 2006
Minette Marrin

...

The newly retired General Sir Mike Jackson emerged from years of discretion to say on Wednesday in his Dimbleby lecture that our armed forces are underpaid, under-equipped and poorly housed; they are shabbily treated and absurdly overstretched, attempting impossible tasks with inadequate means. We do not offer enough of our treasure for their blood.

Many people think he should have said this while he was still in charge of the army ... One could argue that despite his duty of discretion he should in extreme circumstances have spoken out, as has Sir Richard Dannatt, his brave successor. For these are extreme circumstances. Even though this country is involved in two difficult wars, there seems to be a cultural agreement in Whitehall that our troops can be fobbed off with second or third best. According to John Keegan, the military historian, there is an anti-military clique in the Treasury.

Gordon Brown must answer for this; it was the chancellor who personally took part in cutting the army’s infantry battalions at a time when infantry was urgently needed to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. But generally, too, there seems to be a remarkable lack of understanding or sympathy for the armed forces.

If the government had deliberately set out to demoralise them and undermine recruitment it could hardly have done a better job. Only a couple of weeks ago the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had to admit that it had supplied British soldiers in Afghanistan with duff ammo. Shortly after our charming prime minister had been out to schmooze the troops fighting the Taliban, it emerged that they had been sent cheap and defective machinegun bullets made in Pakistan or the Czech Republic instead of the usual more expensive stuff. These cheap bullets kept jamming their machineguns during heavy fighting. British soldiers had to scrounge rounds from the Canadians and Americans. It was only when the Paras kicked up a fuss that anything was done.

Then there was the body armour scandal of 2003. The government sent troops into Iraq without enough enhanced body armour, having ignored requests from the army for two months. Sergeant Steven Roberts was killed by bullets on the fifth day of the invasion; he had selflessly given his own body armour to a colleague because there was not enough for everyone in his regiment. With body armour he would have survived. It has taken three years for the MoD to accept liability. Such prevarication only adds insult to bereavement.

The same goes for the delay in holding inquests into army deaths. There is, incredibly, a backlog going back to 2003, meaning that families have to wait years for an account of what happened.

One hardly knows where to begin with the substandard treatment offered to the armed forces. Dannatt has been bold enough to speak about this. So many military hospitals have been closed (largely under the Conservatives) that servicemen and women have to go into civilian wards and take their chances. One wounded paratrooper in uniform was screamed at by a Muslim visiting a patient. “You have been killing my Muslim brothers in Afghanistan,” he shrieked at a man who should have been enjoying a hero’s welcome. Another wounded soldier was told to remove his uniform for fear of “offending” anyone.

Lord Bramall, former chief of the defence staff, has reported claims that wounded soldiers face long delays on general National Health Service waiting lists and poor aftercare. This lack of respect is astonishing. If anyone has been brave enough to risk death and injury in the service of our country, the least we could do is to provide top-quality specialised hospital care in dedicated military hospitals or wards, as the Americans do. We don’t.

As for what servicemen and women are paid, it is pitiful: £1,000 a month is hardly an incentive to risk your life in Iraq. And it is pointless perhaps to compare the derisory £2,400 bonuses offered to combat troops with the £41m paid to MoD civil servants over the past four years. As for what service families live in, it can in many cases only be called slum housing — “frankly shaming” as Jackson said. Our government — and our society — cannot seriously be bothered with our armed forces.

This is not just wrong. It is decadent. For if we lack the will to defend ourselves, or rather to defend those who are there to defend us and to fight for us, then we are simply rolling over to display the soft underbelly of decadence to the world’s predators and scavengers. Those who think that our armed forces don’t matter will soon discover that other people’s do.

James Baker's Iraq Study Group report

Well said. I'm still waiting for the explanation of why Sunnis are shooting Shi'ites in the back of the head because of what Israel does to other Arabs. Or why Iran, invaded by a strong Iraq, would not want the bloody chaos there to extend indefinitely.

A Commission’s Folly
FrontPageMagazine.com
December 7, 2006

Headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, the Iraq Study Group issued its highly anticipated report yesterday, stating that the “situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating” and “violence is increasing in scope and lethality.” So far, the obvious. While not an absolute failure, as some analysts assert, the ISG report is nonetheless a self-contradictory mix of recommendations that affirms some of President Bush’s Iraq policy in the short term, while threatening to undermine the War on Terror by calling for a “new diplomatic offensive” [1] that will only empower Iran, Syria and, by extension, their terrorist proxies who are responsible for the “scope and lethality” of Iraqi violence.

...

Already, terrorists are rejoicing at the report, calling the new plan a victory for “Islamic resistance.” Hamas asset Abu Abdullah exclaimed, “The big superpower of the world is defeated by a small group of mujahedeen. Did you see the mujahedeens' clothes and weapons in comparison with the huge individual military arsenal and supply that was carrying every American soldier?” In this, he sounds very much like Osama bin Laden's assessment of Vietnam, Beirut, and Mogadishu.

...

Although the report avoids confirming the prejudices of the antiwar Left in terms of withdrawal, its recommendation that the Bush administration reverse policy in regard to Iran and Syria mistakes the nature and interests of the enemy we face. On this count, moreover, the study actually contradicts itself, since it says at another point that promoting unrest in Iraq allows Iran to frustrate American aims in the region. The report calls for the immediate launch of a “diplomatic offensive” to engage Iran and Syria by appealing to “their interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq.” [4] However, bogging our forces down in Iraq and focusing international attention on the supposed failure of U.S. foreign policy particularly suits Iranian and Syrian interests. Chaos in Iraq only deflects international attention from Iran’s nuclear program as well as Iran and Syria’s covert war against Lebanon and Israel, through its terror proxy Hezbollah. For these reasons, Iran has worked so diligently to further chaos in Iraq. Why would anyone presume that they would change their way when their strategy is fnally paying off?

The other option that the report gives for engaging these two terror regimes is the use of incentives. But we have already offered both countries various economic incentives, which they have spurned. On top of this, believing that “incentives” or “disincentives” can influence Islamist fanatics like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who avow that the United States must submit to Islam or be destroyed, is folly. Rewarding the leading state sponsors of terrorism for facilitating the killing of Americans is a recipe for increased militancy, as the terrorsts' reactions demonstrate.

The report also ridiculously demands a “sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace,” including a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. [5] How settling a sixty-year-old Arab-Jewish dispute will settle a civil war between Muslim sectarians, fueled by Iran and Syria, defies comprehension. Nor does it make sense to push for a two-state solution at a time when the Palestinians have so clearly demonstrated, in Gaza in particular, that they will merely convert any acquired territory into a staging ground for their own terrorist war against Israel. There have, in fact, been reports of al-Qaeda assets in “Palestine.”

The Left’s unremitting criticism of a war its elected officials voted to launch, fueled by its hatred of President Bush personally, has spread dissatisfaction throughout the nation and amplified the calls of those who demand we get out. Their rhetorical success has forced the president to consider quick solutions in Iraq. President Bush has repeatedly told the American public that Iraq is part of a long War on Terror, requiring sacrifice and patience. It will take time to stabilize Iraq and fend off our enemies. To declare failure and urge a significant retreat by 2008 when Iraq’s present government has only been six months in office will only embolden our enemy and hand Iraqis into the hands of those who seek to perpetrate a massive bloodbath before establishing a new Caliphate, from whence they may export terrorism to new vistas. At this stage, it will be the greatest folly for us to abandon this central front in the War on Terror and, along with it, the hope for democracy in the Middle East.

Tories say it's time to ditch Churchill

The Guardian reports "Polly Toynbee, not Winston, should set Tory social agenda, says [conservative] adviser"

I'm sorry but ... what?! Polly Toynbee is considered too left wing by most of New Labour. What's next 'Cameron attacks Labour for not being Communist enough'?

It's a very dangerous strategy Cameron is playing here. Let's hope for the Conservatives' sake that this fellow's reaction to the "More like Polly Toynbee" suggestion isn't typical:

"I can't even feel the left side of my face. My eye is now opening and closing uncontrollably, and I fear a blood vessel is about to burst in my forehead. I look like Herbert Lom in an old Pink Panther movie. Jesus Christ, Polly Toynbee is giving me a stroke. Where's the number for NHS24? Here we go... Engaged! Fuck! Help! HELP!

[...]

The thumping vein bursts; blood splatters the screen of my computer. "Effective analysis"? Please tell me you’re yanking my chain, Greg. Please tell me this is all some monstrous, intricate practical joke, that someone has hacked in to my laptop and put a spoof news story in there to cheese me off."

Read the whole post for the full enraged effect.

And for a more thoughtful response read the ever excellent Chris Dillow.

Race and faith: a new agenda

Here is an excellent article on Community politics in the Guardian.

The quotes:

"Thirty years since the passing of the Race Relations Act, Britain faces a crisis of discourse around race and faith. These have always been sensitive topics, but the debate has hit new lows of simplicity and hysteria in the past few years. People want to talk. They need to talk. But how do they engage in a discussion which has been manipulated by recent governments to demonise minority groups, while being increasingly hijacked by self-appointed "community leaders"

[...]

"In a throwback to the colonial era, our politicians have chosen to appoint and work with a select band of representatives and by doing so treat minority groups as monolithic blocks, only interested in race or faith based issues rather than issues that concern us all, such as housing, transport, foreign policy and crime.

Unfortunately, many self-appointed community representatives have an incentive to play up their victimisation. This arrangement allows politicians to pass on the burden of responsibility to them and treat minorities as outsiders. MPs have increasingly sought to politicise problems of segregation, political apathy, criminality and poverty into problems of race and religion, and shift responsibility onto appointed gate-keepers rather than find ways of engaging with all Britons."

[...]

"The struggle for equality and better access to public services is a struggle for all Britons not just ethnic minorities. White working-class families also face problems with deprivation, injustice and demonisation. Their concerns should not be ignored or blamed on other groups.

We are not arguing that faith or race based groups should be restricted, but rather that their arguments be treated as one argument amongst many others and on their own merit. They have a right to argue for the enforcement of civil liberties and minority rights but they should be seen as lobby groups, not representatives of millions of people.

We need to foster a climate in which people can have private differences which include religion, language and culture, but also have a public space where such differences are bridged. The right to freedom of speech and expression of culture, faith and public debates must remain paramount."

The New Republic on Iraq

Here is The New Republic's Editor's comment on Iraq:

"At this point, it seems almost beside the point to say this: The New Republic deeply regrets its early support for this war. The past three years have complicated our idealism and reminded us of the limits of American power and our own wisdom. But, as we pore over the lessons of this misadventure, we do not conclude that our past misjudgments warrant a rush into the cold arms of "realism." Realism, yes; but not "realism." American power may not be capable of transforming ancient cultures or deep hatreds, but that fact does not absolve us of the duty to conduct a foreign policy that takes its moral obligations seriously. As we attempt to undo the damage from a war that we never should have started, our moral obligations will not vanish, and neither will our strategic needs."

Butterflies and Wheels

Not Alexander Pope, not the Rolling Stones, but another online magazine that I thought might be of interest.

It's called butterfliesandwheels.com and is dedicated to 'fighting fashionable nonsense'. The site's creators are also the authors of the anti-relativist work 'Why Truth Matters'. (Incidentally they've taken their name from a disparaging remark made about Dawkins.)

Here's what they say about themselves:

Butterflies and Wheels has been established in order to oppose a number of related phenomena. These include:

1. Pseudoscience that is ideologically and politically motivated.
2. Epistemic relativism in the humanities (for example, the idea that statements are only true or false relative to particular cultures, discourses or language-games).
3. Those disciplines or schools of thought whose truth claims are prompted by the political, ideological and moral commitments of their adherents, and the general tendency to judge the veracity of claims about the world in terms of such commitments.

There are two motivations for setting up the web site. The first is the common one having to do with the thought that truth is important, and that to tell the truth about the world it is necessary to put aside whatever preconceptions (ideological, political, moral, etc.) one brings to the endeavour.

The second has to do with the tendency of the political Left (which both editors of this site consider themselves to be part of) to subjugate the rational assessment of truth-claims to the demands of a variety of pre-existing political and moral frameworks. We believe this tendency to be a mistake on practical as well as epistemological and ethical grounds. Alan Sokal expressed this concern well, when talking about his motivation for the Sokal Hoax: ‘My goal isn't to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit (we'll survive just fine, thank you), but to defend the Left from a trendy segment of itself. Like innumerable others from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, I call for the Left to reclaim its Enlightenment roots.’ (Reply to Social Text Editorial)

They look like a fun bunch. Julian Baggini (author of The Pig That Wants to be Eaten) writes a "fortnightly column on bad argumentative moves."

Sort out your ad hominems from your abductions. An essential resource for detecting woolly arguments in all their guises!

What larks! But I like it, anyway. Elsewhere you'll find articles on the veil (natch), cultural relativism, and links to pieces that they find of interest, such as the phenomenology of smell (!)

Enjoy. Or not.

Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman Dies

Milton Friedman, hugely influential economist and one of my personal heroes, passed away today at the age of 94.

......

Cato Institute:

"Prominent free-market economist Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economic Science, passed away today at the age of 94. Friedman was widely regarded as the leader of the Chicago School of monetary economics, which stresses the importance of the quantity of money as an instrument of government policy and as a determinant of business cycles and inflation. In addition to his scientific work, Friedman also wrote extensively on public policy, always with primary emphasis on the preservation and extension of individual freedom. Friedman's ideas hugely influenced both the Reagan administration and the Thatcher government in the early 1980s, revolutionized establishment economic thinking across the globe, and have been employed extensively by emerging economies for decades."

.......

Milton Friedman quotations:

"Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government."

"Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property."

"I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal."

"The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit."

"Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it."

It's War-hol, actually...

Gratuitous Bowie references aside I was struck by this comment on Leorockwell.com about the sale of Warhol's 'Mao'.

Marxist Mass Murderers Are 'Iconic'
But imagine the reaction, says David Kramer, if Andy Warhol had painted Hitler instead of Mao.

I couldn't find a link to the afore-mentioned David Kramer, but while looking for one I found this:

In a piece entitled "Mao and the Godfather", Eddie Driscoll describes seeing a photo of Francis Ford Coppola with a picture of Mao behind him. (You can see the photo if you follow the link.)

[T]he photo [...] "knocked me for six", as the English would say. Here's Francis Ford Coppola, at the height of his powers, shortly after making his fortune from the first two Godfather movies. It's taken, I believe, in Coppola's Napa Valley mansion, in what I assume is either his dining room, or perhaps a conference room.

In any case, notice the Warhol Mao print, and its placement directly behind Coppola, who it's safe to assume always sat at the head of the table. It was clearly hung there to establish some sort of "we're both powerful men" relationship.

Perhaps (and I'm being really charitable here), Coppola was making a statement about how dictatorships are powerless before the power of mass media (Warhol of course, cranked these prints out like mad). But probably not. Imagine dining with someone who had a print of Hitler, Stalin, or Castro (heck, that last one is probably still hanging in more than a few unrepentant leftists' homes). Wouldn't you have some second thoughts about your host?

What is it with the left and their love of evil men who have the murders of tens of millions of people on their hands? Is it the desire to seek some sort of weird, Palpatine-like father figure? Is it a belief that all of the evidence against their heroes is slanderous? (I'd pull off an Orwellian, "seeking the love of Big Brother" reference here, but that would be awfully cliched.) Or that the genocide they commit--all those broken eggs---is justified?

I don't know enough about Coppola's politics to speculate as to why he had the Mao print (maybe he was just a fan of Warhol), but I thought the central question (how would you feel if it was a print of Hitler) was a good one. Examining my own reactions I realise that I'd feel a lot more queasy about a pic of Adolf than I would about Mao or Stalin - why is that? I can't really see any justification for it.

Europe is Finished, Predicts Mark Steyn

Love him or hate him, Steyn knows how to start a good argument!

Europe is Finished, Predicts Mark Steyn
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
November 14, 2006

Mark Steyn, political columnist and cultural critic, has written a remarkable book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (Regnery). He combines several virtues uncommonly found together – humor, accurate reportage, and deep thinking – then applies these to what is arguably the most consequential issue of our time: the Islamist threat to the West.

Mr. Steyn offers a devastating thesis but presents it in bits and pieces, so I shall pull it together here.

He begins with the legacy of two totalitarianisms. Traumatized by the electoral appeal of fascism, post-World War II European states were constructed in a top-down manner "so as to insulate almost entirely the political class from populist pressures." As a result, the establishment has "come to regard the electorate as children."

Second, the Soviet menace during the cold war prompted American leaders, impatient with Europe's (and Canada's) weak responses, effectively to take over their defense. This benign and far-sighted policy led to victory by 1991, but it also had the unintended and less salutary side-effect of freeing up Europe's funds to build a welfare state. This welfare state had several malign implications.

* The nanny state infantilized Europeans, making them worry about such pseudo-issues as climate change, while feminizing the males.
* It also neutered them, annexing "most of the core functions of adulthood," starting with the instinct to breed. From about 1980, birth rates plummeted, leaving an inadequate base for today's workers to receive their pensions.
* Structured on a pay-as-you-go basis, it amounted to an inter-generational Ponzi scheme, where today's workers depend on their children for their pensions.
* The demographic collapse meant that the indigenous peoples of countries like Russia, Italy, and Spain are at the start of a population death spiral.
*It led to a collapse of confidence that in turn bred "civilizational exhaustion," leaving Europeans unprepared to fight for their ways.

To keep the economic machine running meant accepting foreign workers. Rather than execute a long-term plan to prepare for the many millions of immigrants needed, Europe's elites punted, welcoming almost anyone who turned up. By virtue of geographic proximity, demographic overdrive, and a crisis-prone environment, "Islam is now the principal supplier of new Europeans," Mr. Steyn writes.

more...

Why Poor Countries Are Poor

Fascinating and depressing in equal measure.

Why Poor Countries Are Poor
Tim Harford
Reason Magazine
March 2006 Print Edition

NOTE: If you're interested in the topic, David Landes' Wealth and Poverty of Nations is one of the best books I've ever read.

Tony Blair and the 'progressive' case for public service reform

Tony Blair has posted an article on public service reform on the Euston Manifesto site. It's an interesting piece. But for my money Daniel Finkelstein completely demolishes Blair's case in this post:

'...[the Prime Minister's article] demonstrates the confusion that has bedevilled his public service reform programme.

Here, for instance, is the way he describes the phases of his policy:

"Our strategy for public services has been through three phases. The first phase was a zero tolerance approach to failure, with strong central direction and public targets, to ensure that under-investment could not be used as an excuse for endemic failure. This was then followed by a correction of the long period of under-investment. We are now into the third phase: progressive reform."

This is a good description, but a terrible strategy.

Surely the right way to reform, would have been the other way round entirely. You start with the reform, put the money in as the reforms begin to bite and finish by correcting any serious political problems caused by deregulation.

The piece also contains an important contradiction. Mr Blair advocates much greater consumer choice (that is what he means by progressive reform) and then says:

"A service can and must be designed to ensure that access is equitable. The content of what is provided, the ways that staff work, the outcomes expected for citizens: all these are subject to stringent regulation. These regulations apply to all sectors and the claims that the reforms lead to two-tier services are quite wrong."

But if all these things are going to be equal, what would consumers be choosing between? You would be imposing a cost (making a choice) without providing a benefit (the access to a better service).

Altogether, I thought this article very important. It illustrates that the Blair public service reform agenda (which I'd always rather unthinkingly supported because it seemed to point in the right direction) is totally incoherent.'

Tory stupidity

A majority of Conservative Euro MPs have voted for the UK to join the Euro. Dumb move. The Tories supporting the Euro now would be like the investment managers who resisted buying into internet companies for years before finally deciding to buy big just as the dot com crash arrived. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Political Correctness, Multi-Culturalism and Moral Relativism

Here you go, I thought this topic deserved it's own thread at last.

To start it off here's a rather grim story on racially motivated murders (nearly half of the victims are white):

Racial murders: nearly half the victims are white

Home Office release official figures as police claim that political correctness is stifling the debate.

The Observer

Nearly half of all victims of racially motivated murders in the last decade have been white, according to official figures released by the Home Office.

The data, released under Freedom of Information legislation, shows that between 1995 and 2004 there have been 58 murders where the police consider a racial element played a key part. Out of these, 24 have been where the murder victim was white.

The disclosure will add to the intense debate over multiculturalism in British society. The figures also overturn the assumption that almost all racial murders are committed against ethnic minority victims.

(hat tip Spiked)

Spiked

I've just been looking at an online magazine that I thought might be of interest to other impdecers.

It's called Spiked and describes itself thusly:

Spiked is an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms. spiked is endorsed by free-thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, and hated by the narrow-minded such as Torquemada and Stalin. Or it would be, if they were lucky enough to be around to read it.

I can't vouch for all its contents - I've glanced at a couple of articles on Free Speech that I quite liked the look of - but I think it's worth checking out. As I understand it, spiked is a descendant of Living Marxism, its founders being former members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, who have since metamorphosed into pro-corporate libertarians. (They seem to oppose a lot of the conventional wisdom on climate change, which at the very least suggests they are willing to march to the beat of their own drum. Or more specifically, that they'd like to march up and down on George Monbiot.) Frank Furedi is one of their regulars.

On a personal note, I like them because they oppose the band on junk food advertising to kids. (It's a TV thing.)

Anyhoo, see what you think.

Irwin Stelzer on immigration

Irwin Stelzer's answer to the immigration dilema:

'The solution to all these problems lies in a four-phase policy. First, limit those allowed in to those most likely to enrich the nation. Secondly, allocate the available places to those who will be the largest net contributors to British economic life. Thirdly, require the beneficiaries of immigration to share their gains with those who bear the costs. Fourthly, bar immigration from countries noted for producing terrorists.'

But wouldn't that include the UK? The 7/7 bombers were British citizens after all. Is Stelzer suggesting baring British imigrants from other countries too?

Lets talk about Tax

There's been a lot of nonsense in the press about the recent Tax proposals recommended by a Tory Party policy group. The Times reports that if all the proposed cuts where implemented they would amount to £21 Billion in tax cuts.

The thing is that isn't a lot of money.

I know that sounds insane, how can £21 Billion not be a lot of money? Well for a start and just to be absolutely clear it wouldn't mean cutting public spending. I repeat, it wouldn't mean cutting public spending. The £21 Billion would imply slowing the growth of public spending (i.e public spending would grow by about 1.2% a year compared to the 1.7% Gordon Brown is pencilling). Secondly, and I think this is more important, this is really taking off only about 1.5% of GDP. To put it another way, the Tax burden is set to rise further under the current Government, so if it evolves as the Treasury expects and the Tories won the election and implemented all of these proposals they would be slashing the tax burden back to the level of ... 2005/2006. Hardly radical.

Matthew Parris vs the Neo Cons

Matthew Parris in The Saturday Times attacks the Neo Cons. He argues that the excuse that the strategy was awful won't wash. The vision was fatally flawed from the beginning.

'It is no small thing to find oneself on the wrong side of an argument when the debate is about the biggest disaster in British foreign policy since Suez; no small thing to have handed Iran a final, undreamt-of victory in an Iran-Iraq war that we thought had ended in the 1980s; no small thing to have lost Britain her credit in half the world; no small thing — in the name of Atlanticism — to have shackled our own good name to a doomed US presidency and crazed foreign-policy adventure that the next political generation in America will remember only with an embarrassed shudder.

[...]

Our British neocons have invested heavily in this ill-fated craft, and the wreck is total. How shall they be saved? Never fear. They’ve been working on the elements of a rescue plan. By Christmas all will be singing from the same sheet. All together, now, warrior-columnists and soon-to-be-former Cabinet ministers: one, two three . . .

“The principle was good but the Americans screwed up the execution.”

[...]

Funny, because I don’t quite recall most of you saying it at the time — some of you wrote columns and some of you delivered speeches declaring that Iraq was making giant strides; most of you blamed the difficulties on “Saddam loyalists and foreign fighters”, and some of you actually visited and returned rejoicing at the progress — but let’s overlook that. Let’s for the sake of argument grant that you worried from the start that the US just didn’t have the hang of this nation-building business. Now, you declare, we know that’s the reason the whole strategy hit the rocks.

Crap. The strategy failed because of one big, bad idea at its very root. Your idea that we kick the door in. Everything has flowed from that.

We were not invited. We had no mandate. There were no “good” Iraqis to hand over to. We had nothing to latch on to, no legitimacy. It wasn’t a question of being tactful, respectful, munificent, or handing sweets to children. We were impostors, and that is all.'

Well, I don't consider myself a Neo-Con but I must admit I did think some good might have come out of the invasion. Now, well I'm not so sure. I also believe the strategy was flawed and far too naive about the challenge of establishing a functioning democracy. I still think that. Parris dismisses the suggestion that there weren't enough troops saying that more than 100,000 troops is hardly derisory as a military presence but historically it really isn't many soldiers. As Naill Ferguson writes in the Telegraph 'The number of troops currently in Iraq is less than 140,000. That's roughly as many soldiers as Britain sent to the same country to defeat an insurgency in 1920 — at a time when the population of Iraq was a tenth of what it is today.'

Parris is right about one thing though, things don't look good for Neo-Cons. Both the UK and the US have made signals that they will be looking to start handing over sooner rather than later. The US Iraq Study Group, headed by Republican grandee James Baker, is recommending the US military withdraws to bases outside Iraq and seeks Iranian and Syrian help. And if the Democrats win both House and Senate (which is a possibility, partly due to the growing unpopularity of the war) the US will attempt to get out of Iraq even quicker.

Should Britain separate Church and State?

An excellent long article from the estimable Bryan Appleyard.

Is it time to take God out of the state?
The Sunday Times
October 22, 2006
Bryan Appleyard

Faith groups are increasingly demanding new rights or complaining of being wronged. Some say the time has come for Britain to create a clear divide between state and religion. Are they right?

Detainee Rights

I've blogged quite a bit about the erosion of our civil liberties by the UK government in Labour's Authoritaranism. Well, if Gordon Brown's recent promise to push for 90 day detention is anything to go by these erosions look set to continue apace. With all this in mind, I found this article comparing detainee rights in Israel with America particularly interesting. The article suggests that Israel, which is under constant terrorist threat appears to operate with a greater deference to human rights standards than the USA.

[...]

BEFORE ENACTING the ``Detainee Bill " (otherwise known as the Military Commissions Act) two weeks ago, Congress should have spent more time learning from the Israeli experience. Compared with Israel's security measures during a long and difficult experience with terrorism, the US Congress has gone too far in its willingness to compromise human rights and civil liberties. Security considerations, as legitimate and forceful as they are, do not justify such excessive measures, as the Israeli practice demonstrates.

[...]

The article compares the US Military Commissions Act and the Unlawful Combatants Law passed by the Knesset in 2002. Read it here.


(via TNR's blog The Spine)

Old fashioned British Multiculturalism

(courtesy of Mark Steyn)

'In a culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of “suttee” — the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

India today is better off without suttee. If you don’t agree with that, if you think that’s just dead-white-male Eurocentrism, fine. But I don’t think you really believe that. Non-judgmental multiculturalism is an obvious fraud, and was subliminally accepted on that basis . . . . But if you think that suttee is just an example of the rich, vibrant tapestry of indigenous cultures, you ought to consider what your pleasant suburb would be like if 25, 30, 48 percent of the people around you really believed in it too. Multiculturalism was conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own: it is, thus, the real suicide bomb ..'

Iraqi Bloggers on the War

13 Iraqi bloggers were asked the question 'Do you think the War was worth it or not?' Their answers are a must read for anyone interested in what Iraqis really think about the War.

Here are just two of the responses given to that question:

'Yes. The war was totally worth it. Why? Because I now decide what I want to do with my life, not the dictator'

and

"It was worth it from the side.. that we are over with Saddam dictatorship..(even though the situation now is incomparable with the situation when Saddam was is power.. it was way better)..and its not worth it from the side that we lost our safety.. now criminals, gangsters and kidnappers.. roam in the streets.. do whatever they want.. and there is no law to stop them.. as well as for the Islamic militias.'

Read the whole thing here.

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker is one of my favourite science writers right now, and he has been mentioned in the blog before, for example:

A Natural History of Jewish Intelligence

Top Public Intellectuals

and

Labour's Authoritarianism

I just read about a debate, encompassing the political, philosophical and the scientific, between Pinker and George Lakoff, a rival linguistics professor, who wrote an anti-Republican book Freedom?: The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea, which Pinker castigated in a review. Lakoff fought back, and you can follow the intellectual ding-dong in the links below.

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

Pinker's actual review (scroll down a bit)

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

Lakoff's response: Defending Freedom

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

Some blog comments:

Pinker v. Lakoff
ScienceBlogs.com
October 7, 2006

George Lakoff has published two new political books, Whose Freedom?: The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea, and Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, as follow ups to his Moral Politics and Don't Think of an Elephant. Steven Pinker's review of Whose Freedom? in the New Republic has sparked a reply from Lakoff, and a debate is born.

I don't really know where to start on this. Lakoff's reply is one of the most intellectually dishonest pieces of writing I've seen from a cognitive scientist, and if anyone other than Lakoff had written it, I'd probably just ignore it. But Lakoff is not only famous, he's influential, and more than a few liberal bloggers take him seriously. So I feel compelled to say something. I guess the best way to go about this is to detail their disagreements, and show where Lakoff sinks to all new lows in defense of his position.

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

Fight! Fight! Pinker vs. Lakoff

Parenting

A placeholder for "parenting" discussions (obviously). Since I'm not a parent, I'll defer to impdecers who are!

What do those parents think of this? One of the interviewees, Annette Mountford of the charity Family Links, thinks that a parent should never call a child 'naughty', as it's bad for the child's self-confidence.

BBC Radio 4
Today Program
16/10/06

0837 Should we call our children naughty?

Listen | Permalink

At last, some weapons found!

Andy alerted me to this:

A large cache of bombs, chemicals and rocket launchers has been found in two houses in North West England. Both houses were owned by men with links to an extremist group... but it's not an Islamist one.

Read the story here and here.

Comment from bloggers here and here, pondering why the story hasn't had more coverage.

You Al Qud'nt Make it Up

Alright, it is a VERY weak pun, but the story (I think) is serious.

Please follow the link below to Harry's Place and read more about Al Quds day, what it commemorates, who's speaking and so on. The nice people at HP are thinking that it might be worth organising a counter demo (like German anti-fascists have successfully done) but acknowledge that they've probably left it a bit late this year.

Anyway, please read all about it here:

http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2006/10/11/against_al_quds_day.php

The BBC - where facts are expensive and comments run far too free

Nick Cohen on the BBC:

Although it is impossible to generalise about such a vast organisation, the bias charge has enough truth in it to stick. If you doubt me, research one opinion outside the liberal consensus. Read up on the arguments for making Britain a fairer country by giving trade unionists more rights, for instance, or saying that abortion is murder or that Tony Blair’s foreign policy is correct in its essentials.

You don’t have to believe it, you just have to convince yourself that serious people can hold it for good reasons. You will then notice something disconcerting about most BBC presenters. Although they subject opponents of, say, abortion to rigorous cross-examination, their lust for ferocious questioning deserts them when supporters of abortion come on air. Far from being tested, they treat upholders of the liberal consensus as purveyors of an incontestable truth.

The way out for the BBC is not to swing to the right - it is not an advance to replace soft interviews for Menzies Campbell with soft interviews for John Reid - but make a tactical withdrawal from the opinion business. Less airtime should be given to talking heads and celebrity interviewers in London studios and more to reporters who leave Television Centre to find out what is happening in the world.

Read the full article here.

Republicans - Fuck, Yeah!

Follow the link to Dizzy Thinks for the most unbelievable political ad I've ever seen. It was directed by David Zucker of Airplane / Naked Gun but has been pulled in the wake of the N. Korea nuclear test.

Makes our own party political broadcasts look a tad tame.

Watch it. Now! (Regardless of what you think of the actual message,)

http://dizzythinks.blogspot.com/2006/10/gop-pulls-prescient-electoral-ad.html

(This should perhaps have gone in JP's N. Korea thread, but then I couldn't have had my groovy headline.)

North Korea

Stratfor Intelligence Report
10/09/06

Red Alert: North Korea: Underground Nuclear Test Reported

Reports spread Oct. 9 that North Korea tested a nuclear device in the eastern part of North Hamgyong province at 10:35 a.m. local time. China has indicated it did detect a small underground test, although the South Korean military has not raised its alert level. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said his government has confirmed there has been seismic activity from North Korea, although he has not received reports on its magnitude.

The U.S. Geological Survey detected a 4.2 tremor in North Korea, which is smaller than expected and not big enough to make North Korea an unequivocal nuclear power.

If a test did occur, the most immediate U.S. response will likely be a strong condemnation and a call for a U.N. mandate for sanctions. If there is no U.S. military response, Pyongyang will see that as an acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear power.

Many questions remain, however. Even if this were a nuclear test, it is not clear that it was a weapon rather than a device. A nuclear device produces an in-place blast from a mechanism of indeterminate size and structure. A weapon can be fitted on a missile or on an aircraft, and is therefore highly compact and ruggedized.

China's response will be hesitant. China does not seem ready to cut off food or fuel to North Korea, particularly before winter sets in. Beijing has deployed additional troops to the border, but that is to seal the frontier. Beijing will be angry, but its primary concern is to keep the North Korean people from spilling across the border into northeast China.

South Korea will, of course, suspend cooperation in Kaesong and Kumkang and will probably put its forces on alert. With the drawdown of U.S. troops in South Korea, the South Korean army is now the border patrol. U.S. military units remaining will have to go on heightened alert and rush Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries to the peninsula. South Korea could deploy high-level officials to North Korea

Japan will work for U.N. for sanctions and Chapter 7 invocation. Japan also will heighten its military posture and increase diplomacy with China and South Korea in an attempt to show a united front against North Korea

North Korea will go on high alert nationwide. The military will assume a high-readiness posture, and the North Koreans will proclaim their entry into the nuclear club, using sanctions to tighten control and rally domestic backing. Pyongyang might quickly invite the International Atomic Energy Agency in to make its nuclear status "legitimate." It will petition international bodies to accept the new reality.

In any event, North Korea will view the test as a victory. It will mark the acceptance of the government as a nuclear state. Further negotiations will have to take place under this new reality. North Korea cannot be isolated forever. North Korea has bet that anything less than a complete military invasion is a capitulation. Pyongyang will press for acceptance, similar to Pakistan. China and South Korea will be key; both desperately want to avoid any military action. They will end up negotiating with North Korea, finding a way to make the North comply with international regulations.

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Red Alert: North Korea -- Is There a Military Solution?

Summary

Whatever the political realities may seem to dictate after a North Korean nuclear test, an overt military strike -- even one limited to cruise missiles -- is not in the cards. The consequences of even the most restrained attack could be devastating.

Analysis

The reported detonation of a nuclear device by North Korea on Oct. 9 raises the question of potential military action against North Korea. The rationale for such a strike would be simple. North Korea, given its rhetoric, cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Therefore, an attack to deny them the facilities with which to convert their device into a weapon and deploy it is essential. If such an attack were to take place, it is assumed, the United States would play the dominant or even sole role.

This scenario assumes that North Korea is as aggressive as its rhetoric.

But what about North Korea's well-armed neighbors -- Russia, China, South Korea, Japan? Would they not be willing to assume the major burden of an attack against North Korea? Is the United States really willing to go it alone, even while engaged in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Leaving these obvious political questions aside for the moment, let's reverse the issue by posing it in military terms: What would a U.S. strike against North Korea look like?

The USS Kitty Hawk is currently sitting in port at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan. The USS Enterprise is operating in the Arabian Sea, while the Nimitz and the Stennis are conducting exercises off the coast of California. All are an ocean away, and none is less than a week's transit from the region. Nevertheless, naval cruise missiles are readily available, as are long-range strikes by B-2A Spirit stealth bombers and B-52H Stratofortresses and B-1B Lancers currently supporting NATO operations in Afghanistan out of Diego Garcia. A more robust strike package would take longer to deploy.

When U.S. military planners have nightmares, they have nightmares about war with North Korea. Even the idea of limited strikes against the isolated nation is fraught with potential escalations. The problem is the mission. A limited attack against nuclear facilities might destabilize North Korea or lead North Korea to the conclusion that the United States would intend regime change.

Regime preservation is the entire point of its nuclear capability. Therefore, it is quite conceivable that Kim Jong-Il and his advisors -- or other factions --might construe even the most limited military strikes against targets directly related to missile development or a nuclear program as an act threatening the regime, and therefore one that necessitates a fierce response. Regime survival could very easily entail a full, unlimited reprisal by the Korean People's Army (KPA) to any military strike whatsoever on North Korean soil.

North Korea has some 10,000 fortified artillery pieces trained on Seoul. It is essential to understand that South Korea's capital city, a major population center and the industrial heartland of South Korea, is within range of conventional artillery. The United States has been moving its forces out of range of these guns, but the South Koreans cannot move their capital.

Add to this the fact that North Korea has more than 100 No-Dong missiles that can reach deep into South Korea, as well as to Japan, and we can see that the possibility for retaliation is very real. Although the No-Dong has not always been the most reliable weapon, just the possibility of dozens of strikes against U.S. forces in Korea and other cities in Korea and Japan presents a daunting scenario.

North Korea has cultivated a reputation for unpredictability. Although it has been fairly conservative in its actions compared to its rhetoric, the fact is that no one can predict North Korea's response to strikes against its nuclear facilities. And with Seoul at risk -- a city of 20 million people -- the ability to take risks is limited.

The United States must assume, for the sake of planning, that U.S. airstrikes would be followed by massed artillery fire on Seoul. Now, massed artillery is itself not immune to countermeasures. But North Korea's artillery lies deep inside caves and fortifications all along the western section of the demilitarized zone (DMZ). An air campaign against these guns would take a long time, during which enormous damage would be done to Seoul and the South Korean economy -- perhaps on the order of several hundred thousand high-explosive rounds per hour. Even using tactical nuclear weapons against this artillery would pose serious threats to Seoul. The radiation from even low-yield weapons could force the evacuation of the city.

The option of moving north into the North Korean defensive belt is an option, but an enormously costly one. North Korea has a huge army and, on the defensive, it can be formidable. Fifty years of concerted military fortification would make Hezbollah's preparations in southern Lebanon look like child's play. Moving U.S. and South Korean armor into this defensive belt could break it, but only with substantial casualties and without the certainty of success. A massive stalemate along the DMZ, if it developed, would work in favor of the larger, defensive force.

Moreover, the North Koreans would have the option of moving south. Now, in U.S. thinking, this is the ideal scenario. The North Korean force on the move, outside of its fortifications, would be vulnerable to U.S. and South Korean airstrikes and superior ground maneuver and fire capabilities. In most war games, the defeat of North Korea requires the KPA to move south, exposing itself to counterstrikes.

However, the same war-gaming has also supposed at least 30 days for the activation and mobilization of U.S. forces for a counterattack. U.S. and South Korean forces would maintain an elastic defense against the North; as in the first war, forces would be rushed into the region, stabilizing the front, and then a counterattack would develop, breaking the North Korean army and allowing a move north.

There are three problems with this strategy. The first is that the elastic strategy would inevitably lead to the fall of Seoul and, if the 1950 model were a guide, a much deeper withdrawal along the Korean Peninsula. Second, the ability of the U.S. Army to deploy substantial forces to Korea within a 30-day window is highly dubious. Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom both required much longer periods of time.

Finally, the U.S. Army is already fighting two major ground wars and is stretched to the breaking point. The rotation schedule is now so tight that units are already spending more time in Iraq than they are home between rotations. The idea that the U.S. Army has a multidivisional force available for deployment in South Korea would require a national mobilization not seen since the last Korean War.

It comes down to this: If the United States strikes at North Korea's nuclear capabilities, it does so placing a bet. And that bet is that North Korea will not respond. That might be true, but if it is not true, it poses a battlefield problem to which neither South Korea nor the United States will be able to respond. In one scenario, the North Koreans bombard Seoul and the United States makes a doomed attempt at shutting down the massive artillery barrage. By the time the guns are silenced -- even in the best-case scenarios -- Seoul will be a mess. In another scenario, the North Korean army executes an offensive of even minimal competence, which costs South Korea its capital and industrial heartland. The third is a guerrilla onslaught from the elite of the North Korean Army, deployed by mini-subs and tunnels under the DMZ. The guerrillas pour into the south and wreak havoc on U.S. military installations.

That is how a U.S. strike -- and its outcome -- might look. Now, what about the Chinese and Russians? They are, of course, not likely to support such a U.S. attack (and could even supply North Korea in an extended war). Add in the fact that South Korea would not be willing to risk destroying Seoul and you arrive at a situation where even a U.S. nuclear strike against nuclear and non-nuclear targets would pose an unacceptable threat to South Korea.

There are two advantages the United States has. The first is time. There is a huge difference between a nuclear device and a deployable nuclear weapon. The latter has to be shaped into a small, rugged package able to be launched on a missile or dropped from a plane. Causing atomic fission is not the same as having a weapon.

The second advantage is distance. The United States is safe and far away from North Korea. Four other powers -- Russia, China, South Korea and Japan -- have much more to fear from North Korea than the United States does. The United States will always act unilaterally if it feels that it has no other way to protect its national interest. As it is, however, U.S. national interest is not at stake.

South Korea faces nothing less than national destruction in an all-out war. South Korea knows this and it will vigorously oppose any overt military action. Nor does China profit from a destabilized North Korea and a heavy-handed U.S. military move in its backyard. Nevertheless, if North Korea is a threat, it is first a threat to its immediate neighbors, one or more of whom can deal with North Korea.

In the end, North Korea wants regime survival. In the end, allowing the North Koran regime to survive is something that has been acceptable for over half a century. When you play out the options, the acquisition of a nuclear device -- especially one neither robust nor deployable -- does not, by itself, compel the United States to act, nor does it give the United States a militarily satisfactory option. The most important issue is the transfer of North Korean nuclear technology to other countries and groups. That is something the six-party talk participants have an equal interest in and might have the leverage to prevent.

Every situation does not have a satisfactory military solution. This seems to be one of them.

Jack Straw Talks Sense Shock!

I don't have time to this justice, but basically Jack Straw has said he prefers Muslim women to remove their veils when they meet him as he thinks it's quite nice to see people's faces. You can read the story here and here (if you're worried that the Telegraph is making the whole thing up) and get the Harry's Place view here (includes Galloway's risible response.)

Worth looking at the reactions from the Muslim community. Those hostile to Straw display a predictable disparity between what he actually said and what they are condemning. The response of the Tories and LibDems (quoted in the Telegraph piece) range from disappointing and banal to frankly vomit inducing (Simon Hughes.)

It's also worth quickly noting the extent to which 'assimilation' has become a dirty word because it "is saying that one culture or one way of life is superior to another". Uh, yeah. It is. Deal with it. My dad (an immigrant) used to use 'assimilated' as a term of high praise for anyone who had successfully adapted to the customs of the host country and was able to fully participate in it. But he was an apostate, so what did he know anyway?

Thatcher on Tax Cuts

This quote came from an interview with Brian Walden in January 1983.

Brian Walden: You used to say "Let's have the tax cuts and then we shall get the growth".

Margaret Thatcher: No. Not always. That was a Laffer-ism you know, and I remember having arguments with Laffer and saying "Yes, but there's probably a three year gap and how are we going to get back that three years, how are we to survive that three years?" And also, I've been in politics a long time—you know that, we were in it together—and I've watched many many years reductions in public spending as an objective… If you actually hold it, you're doing very well, and then you take the growth to reduce your personal taxation. Once or twice one's been able to do certain reductions because one's found inefficiencies.

(hat tip Daniel Finkelstein)

Borat

Here is the Kazakh Ambassador to the UK on Borat.

Fair point?

Or a massive sense of humour failure?

And here is Borat's official website if you still can't decide.

Funding the Threat: Dr Liam Fox Speech

Shadow Defence Secretary, Dr Liam Fox's Speech on the link between oil and national security:

We are all too familiar with the fact that recent years have seen substantial rises in the price of crude. What is seldom discussed is the cumulative wealth shift that this represents, how it is being spent and the foreign and security policy implications that flow from it.

Let me begin with a few numbers. In the past five years Europe alone has pumped $49bn into the economy of Iran and an astonishing $232bn into the former Soviet Union, mainly Russia- and this for crude oil alone. This does not include the financial transfers resulting from gas or petroleum product sales. Of these two examples, at a national level, Germany has contributed $54bn to Russia while Italy handed $10.1bn to Iran. The global figures are, of course, much greater still.

In both Russia and Iran this windfall has been used to finance military buildup. In other words we in the West find ourselves in a security Catch-22. Our dependence on oil means that we cannot avoid paying whatever price is demanded of us. That in turn produces huge financial flows out of our economies into those oil producers, some of whom may be hostile to us. They in turn use this to finance a defence build up. In other words, our addiction to oil results in us funding the potential threat against us and our interests.

There is, in addition, the consequence that there is little incentive for a state like Iran to reduce international tension as greater uncertainty will inflate the oil price and keep revenues high.

You can read the whole article here.

Health Matters

A placeholder for any discussions we might want to have about Health matters. Here's one on the Brits and their awful diets for starters.

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Given that I consumed two bananas while blogging this, my mind is currently boggling: One in five [Brits interviewed] claimed that it was just "impossible" to eat the Government's recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

Ready-made excuses put Britons off healthy food
Telegraph
02/10/2006

Reducing obesity may be the aim of doctors, Government ministers and health campaigners but most people lack the discipline to change their eating habits and are brilliant at making excuses, a survey has found. Researchers identified 10 common excuses used by people to justify their consumption of unhealthy food.

...read on...